DISCURSIONS
Speaking generally, I have no doubt that it is true that an experienced
traveller is far less liable to get into trouble on his journeys than
a novice. But that any experience, no matter how great and varied,
can render a traveller immune from the troubles of travel is a fond
and vain superstition, only believed in by those who have had no
experience. Take a recent experience of my own, for instance, and with
it comfort, ye who have hitherto blamed your own inexperience for
trouble into which you have fallen on some journeys. I am a Londoner,
and I lived in London at the time of which I speak. I may say that
although my experience of travelling in London and elsewhere was
extensive and peculiar, I was handicapped by a great difficulty in
breathing which made it hard for me to get about in this rapid age.
It chanced that I was due to lecture at Charterhouse one Saturday
evening, and had, as usual, planned to return home after the lecture.
It had been foggy the previous day, and the South-Western system,
according to its wont in fog, had gone all to pieces, but twelve hours
of perfectly clear weather had been experienced since, and I trusted
therefore that my late afternoon train would be running as usual. But
when I arrived at Waterloo I was met by the all too frequent experience
of travellers whom a cruel fate condemns to use that most labyrinthine
of stations, viz. an utter ignorance on the part of the officials as to
when my train would start or which platform it would start from. Crowds
of bewildered passengers hurried from one gate to another, badgering
and exasperating the helpless officials with utterly futile questions,
until, I suppose in desperation, a whole lot of them were embarked
upon a train bound somewhere. How gladly they passed in through the
barriers, had their tickets clipped and took their seats. And how
wretched was their condition when, the train being full, an official
arrived from somewhere, took down the direction board, and replaced
it with a totally different one, resulting in the whole of them being
turned out and cast adrift again.
But that such things happen continually at Waterloo I might endeavour
to emphasise them, in order to be believed, but we all accept the
South-Western as we do any other affliction which we are powerless to
avoid, cease to wonder at its vagaries, and resign ourselves to them
with what philosophy we may. I shall only, therefore, add that I did
get a train to Godalming, starting only an hour late, but I learned
that it was a train which should have started an hour earlier than the
one I had intended to go by. However, I arrived at Charterhouse in time
for a little dinner and my lecture, and was hospitably offered a bed
by Mrs. Fletcher, as the running of the trains was so capricious. But
I had said that I would return that night, and there was, very wisely,
no ’phone at the school. However, it was arranged that the motor should
run me down to the station, where, if I found the time-table to be
still out of action, I was to ’phone home and return.
But when I arrived there I found the night beautifully clear, and an
official emphatically assured me that the 9.33 to Waterloo would run
on time, so I dismissed the car, and in due time, punctual to the
minute, caught my train. In hallowed phrase all went well until we
reached Woking, where a large number of passengers joined the train
for Waterloo. But it did not leave, and to all questions the officials
replied that they knew no more than their questioners the reason for
the delay. Suddenly the fatal cry resounded from end to end of the
train, “All change.” That packed train-load of people crowded the
platform again, and the train we had left was shunted into the middle
line of rails, where it remained to tantalise us by its ineptitude.
In cold and misery and apprehension we all waited on that platform
until at last a train came in which landed us at Waterloo at 11.45.
The tube served me well, but I was nearly exhausted after changing
at Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, and there I found the
Highgate Tube in an awful muddle. Platform and trains were alike jammed
with people, and the train men could not work. We were pulled out of
the trouble by the energy of the driver, who came to the rescue of
the guards, until at Mornington Crescent our load lightened a bit.
Eventually I arrived at Highgate at 12.25, in one of the densest fogs
of my recollection. All traffic was stopped, I was two miles from home,
all uphill, and hardly able to stand from pain and racking cough. And
it was bitterly cold. I battered at the door and rang the bell of the
Archway Tavern, but it had only recently closed, and my summons was
reasonably treated as that of some drunken wanderer.
I was very near collapse, and began to think of the immediate
possibility of this being my end, for every breath I painfully drew was
laden with death. Then a policeman hove in sight, to whom I addressed
an appeal to get me in somewhere, weighted with half a crown. But he
said there was nothing nearer than Finsbury Park, well over a mile
away, except a doss-house, to which he dared not send me. And then he
suddenly remembered having seen not far away a hansom cab with a poor
old driver who had made practically nothing all the week. So he left
me, and went in search of the cab, and in a very few minutes I had
offered that poor old cabman half a sovereign to get me home. To say
that we were both overjoyed is to put it very mildly. After seeing
me safe inside, and the front let down, he started his old horse on a
walk through the dense hedge of fog, but there was nothing in the way,
and between us we found my home in half an hour. And when I sank upon
a chair exhausted in my own room it was 2.20 a.m. But I was saved. I
am thus prolix only to show how all my experience and local knowledge
could not help me in these circumstances from having one of the very
worst times of my life, and it was a wonder that I was not found dead
upon the Highgate pavement.
A delightful recollection of mine is of an experience at the faithful
city of Londonderry, an experience which I can afford to laugh at and
enjoy now, but which at one time certainly began to look sinister.
I arrived at the Great Northern Hotel in excellent time, for my
lecture was not until eight, as usual, and my train was in about six.
The secretary being very hard driven did not meet me, there was no
need, for all was plain and straightforward. I had a chop, and while
consuming it enquired of the waiter the way to the Y.M.C.A. Hall, where
the lecture was given on my previous visit, but the way to which I
did not remember because I had been taken there by the secretary. The
waiter pointed to the old wall opposite to the hotel, showed me how to
get to the top of it, and assured me that if I followed it round for
about ten minutes I should arrive at my destination, for it was on the
wall.
So I set out, not without some misgivings, for the night was very dark,
and there was a high wind with driving rain. My breathing made the
going in that exposed position very difficult, and I did not meet a
single person of whom I could enquire, though I was certainly following
my instructions. At last, after I had walked for twenty minutes, I felt
sure I must be wrong, and looking over the wall into the street below,
I spied a man, of whom I enquired if I was going right for the Y.M.C.A.
Hall. He looked round him with that vacant air that in a citizen so
annoys the strange enquirer of his way, and was about to direct me
downhill or back again whence I had come. So I hastily said:
“All right, if you don’t know, never mind; but don’t you direct me back
down that hill, for I won’t go. If I do I can’t climb it again.”
“All right, sir,” he replied cheerfully. “I was only getting my
bearings. Ye’ll go this way.” And he pointed up a side street, giving
me a mass of intricate instructions, during which I noticed that he
was comfortably drunk. However, I had got halfway down the steps
towards him by this time, and I felt disinclined to ascend, so I
thanked him and followed the first part of his directions up the side
street. It led me to an open space--a kind of market-place, I think,
where I found two of those splendid fellows, the R.I.C., who speedily
directed me right. But even then I made a mistake, for of two large
buildings opposite each other I chose the one that was lit up, and into
which many people were going. As I mounted the steps I was assailed
by a host of ragged children, crying, “Taksinwiye, Taksinwiye,” so
loudly as almost to deafen me. I passed steadily on, saying, “I don’t
understand,” although it was gradually borne in upon my consciousness
that they meant, “Take us in with you.”
And then I found that it was not the hall at all, and that a concert
was about to commence! So I went, dubiously enough, to the dark,
unlighted building opposite, and entered the open door, to find it
deserted. And the clock struck eight! Utterly bewildered I stood in the
flagged corridor and consulted my form of instructions, but here, at
any rate, I could find no fault. Yet something was woefully wrong. As I
stood wondering a young man came in, who, though a member, knew nothing
about the lecture, and with that innate courtesy which is so pleasant a
trait of Irish character, immediately devoted himself to my service. He
bounded upstairs to the hall, to find it in darkness, and then offered
to take me to the secretary’s house, that being the only thing he could
think of doing.
By this time I was resigned to the thought that I had come from London
to the extreme north-west coast of Ireland to lecture, and by some
fiendish complication had missed it, so I walked down the street by his
side and said nothing. Suddenly a small boy, in a very smart scout
uniform, rushed up to me out of the darkness, saluted and asked:
“Please, sir, are you Mr. Bullen?”
“I am, my lad,” I replied wearily, almost too much spent to wonder at
this strange thing. Again he saluted and said:
“Please, sir, the lecture’s in the Town Hall, and I’ve been sent to
find you and show you the way there.”
“All right,” I answered. “Kindly hurry back and tell the
Deputy-Lieutenant (my chairman) that I have been lost, but am now on my
way, and will arrive shortly.”
And it was so. The lecture was the first to be held in the magnificent
new building which the good citizens of Derry have erected, but when
I arrived at its noble portals and found that it was practically
next door to the hotel whence I had issued three-quarters of an hour
before I felt confused in my mind. Fortunately, a most enthusiastic
scout-master had offered the services of his troop to act as stewards,
and when the lecturer did not turn up at the appointed time they were
delighted to go in search of him, with the result as described. And
we started the lecture only twenty-five minutes late after all. The
secretary had done his part; he had written to the agency to warn them
of the change of hall, but their letter had missed me, he had also
mentioned it at the hotel, but it was an Irish hotel, and that is
enough said upon the subject.
Apropos of Irish hotels, I am pleasantly reminded of an experience
at Cork. My dear old friend, Mr. Lane, wanted to put me up at Vernon
Mount, but I had to leave Cork for Belfast by a train at something like
6 a.m., and so he took a room for me at the Station Hotel. Then he
interviewed the boots or sub-deputy-boots, I should think, a wild kerne
who looked as if he had never got over the shock of being born. To him
Mr. Lane said, with tremendous mock severity:
“Now, look here, ye omadhaun, this gentleman _must_ be called with a
cup of tea at a quarter-past five to-morrow morning in order to catch
his train at six. If you let him lose that train I’ll kill ye as dead
as meat. D’ye mind me now?”
Trembling in every limb, and with his eyes fixed upon Mr. Lane’s
benevolent countenance till they seemed as if they would start from
their sockets, the poor wretch repeated several times:
“Yis, sorr, yis, sorr!”
Mr. Lane and I said farewell, and I turned in. Now I have always been
able to wake at will, at least since I left the sea, and I have only
to remember on going to bed at what hour I wish to rise and that time
I wake. So I had no fear. And I awoke at five, rising and making a
leisurely toilet. At 5.30, feeling that I should like that cup of tea
very much, I opened my bedroom door to go in search of it, when at
the first step I took in the dark corridor I fell headlong over the
prostrate form of the sub-deputy-boots, who was solidly asleep upon
the mat at my door. He had nothing to say that was intelligible, but
listened, as I thought, to my request for a cup of tea. Then he fled,
and I saw him no more, but happily I had only to cross the platform to
my train which had a breakfast car attached, so all was well.
Yet another Irish experience. I was staying with some very dear friends
at a delightful little town on the County Down Railway, and on a
certain evening was due in Belfast to lecture at eight o’clock. My
friend and his wife accompanied me, and very jolly we were. Suddenly
the train drew up at a large station, and I said cheerily, “Here we
are, then.”
“Oh, no,” chirruped my host, looking out of the window. “This is
Holywood. Next stop’s Belfast.” So as I had not seen the name-board,
and as my friend used that section of line twice nearly every day of
his life, I did not bother, but resumed the pleasant conversation.
After what I thought was a rather long wait, we began to move out of
the station, _but in the wrong direction_! Upon my remarking the fact,
my friend said airily:
“Oh, they’re only shunting. They often do that at Holywood, to get the
train on to its right platform at Belfast.”
But the rate of the train accelerated until suddenly we rushed through
Holywood, and my friend smote his knee forcibly, crying to his wife:
“That _was_ Belfast, and this is the fast to Bangor! We’ll not stop
till we get to Bangor!”
My thoughts flew to that great audience in the Grosvenor Hall awaiting
me, but I realised that I was in Ireland, where things have a way of
adjusting themselves, and nobody seems to mind. A great deal of the
personal element was to the fore during the next hour, and eventually
I turned up on the platform only half an hour late, to be uproariously
welcomed by two thousand people, who took the whole affair as a huge
joke.
With hardly an exception a lecturer is treated in this country with
every kindness and consideration, and if there are occasionally some
thorns in his lot, he has usually himself to blame. But, in spite
of Grish Chunder’s saying that there are no exceptions to no rules,
I do believe orthodoxly that every rule has its exception, and once
in this country I had the misfortune to meet with such an exception.
In accordance with my usual procedure I shall endeavour to veil the
identity of the place, and I hope to succeed, but I think any unbiased
person will agree with me that the treatment I experienced was most
cruel and inexcusable.
I came to this lecture from across the Irish Sea, and put up at a town
near, where there was a large hotel, capable of accommodating several
hundred guests, but at the time of my visit quite empty. The weather
was very bad, for it was blowing a gale of wind, with snow squalls,
and I did not stir out of doors until it was time for me to go to my
lecture. Of course I dressed first, I mean I got into evening dress
with a fine warm overcoat over all, and paying my bill, I took my
baggage with me, because places such as the one I was going to had
invariably put me up--it was the rule. I boarded the electric car, and
in due time was dropped, apparently, in the open country, everything
being hidden under a foot of snow. But the conductor directed me which
way I should go, and after a painful pilgrimage of a quarter of an
hour, during which I got wet to the knees, I found the buildings of
which I was in search. Even then I could not find my way in for some
time, and when at last I did, it was time for me to begin my lecture.
The gentleman who received me offered me dinner, but the audience was
waiting, and I declined, except for a hot whisky and water, for my feet
and legs were saturated with snow water. But I was buoyed up during the
lecture with the thought of a comfortable meal and a warm bed awaiting
me, so I hardly heeded the wretched state of my feet. When, then, the
lecture was over, and more refreshment was offered me, I replied gaily
that I would go to my room and change first, if they didn’t mind. Then
I was told that no provision had been made for me, and that I was
expected to retrace my way through that wretched night to the hotel
I had left several miles away. I was horror-struck. I protested that
it was surely impossible that in an institution of that enormous
size, where hundreds of people lived, room could not be found for one
stranger on a night like that. But my interlocutor was obdurate, and I
had to lug that great bag of mine back to the cross-roads through the
snow, and there await the electric car.
I reached the hotel after eleven o’clock, pitifully cold, but not
hungry. I was past that. And was shown at once to my room, where,
for the first time in my life, I was unable to sleep in a fairly
comfortable bedroom, on account of the cold. Indeed, after I had been
in bed some time, I got up, and, walking briskly up and down, tried
to restore my circulation. Yet I suffered no ill effects from the
treatment I had received, except that I felt, and still feel, what I
believe to be a righteous glow of indignation against the authorities
of such a place who could treat any fellow-creature who was their guest
in the way they treated me. But it was my first and last experience of
the kind.
A delightful yet almost disconcerting experience befell me once in
the early days of my lecturing, before I had learned not to be so
lavish in _giving_ my services, because of the harm I was doing those
whose living it was to lecture. I was invited to give a lecture
free to the members of the Pupil Teachers’ Association at Toynbee
Hall, and asked to choose my own subject. I accepted, and chose the
subject of “How Poetry has helped Me.” Now, being impressed by what I
considered the educational importance of the occasion, I did what I
have never done before or since--wrote out my lecture to the extent
of twelve close-packed foolscap sheets. When I came to the time and
place of meeting I was aghast to find that I was the only male person
present, my audience consisting, with the exception of several High
School mistresses, of blooming maidens between the ages of fifteen
and twenty--some hundreds of them. My chairwoman was that excellent
lady Mrs. Barnett, wife of the lamented Canon Barnett, then warden of
Toynbee Hall.
Well, what with my unusual audience and the unusual experience of
having a written lecture and no slides, I was rather ill at ease,
the only time that I can ever recollect feeling so upon a public
platform. After a few graceful words from Mrs. Barnett, I rose, amid
gentle hand-clapping, and plunged into my subject, reading steadily
down nearly to the bottom of the first page of my MS., and then a new
thought struck me. I looked up from my MS. and went on, forgetting all
about my written matter, until suddenly remembering it I was about to
resume where I had left off, when I noticed that my time was up! So I
wound up with a few sentences, in which I alluded pathetically to my
poor MS., and sat down amid really loud applause.
Then my chairwoman, during an interval of tea and cake, informed
me that my audience would now entertain me with a selection of old
English dances, if I cared to witness them, and naturally I said I
would be delighted. So after signing a few dozen autograph books, an
arm-chair was placed upon the dais for me, and there I lolled at my
ease, like any Eastern Khalif, watching those Houris threading the mazy
convolutions of the dance. I have a keen sense of the incongruous, and
I confess that never in my life have I felt it more strongly than then,
for, in the first place, dancing has never appealed to me, especially
ballet dancing, and in the next, I seemed to myself to be more
utterly out of place than I ever imagined I could be. Yet I can have
nothing but praise for the kindness, courtesy, and assiduity of all
present--who could none of them have known how utterly awkward I felt.
Indeed I was glad when the evening was over.
Only once more in my life have I had the same feeling, and that was
at the splendid Girls’ School at Cheltenham. My hostess, who was an
enthusiastic alumna of the school, told me that I must on no account
miss the wonderful sight of Miss Beale reading prayers in the morning
and the trooping in of the 1000 scholars more or less. By some means
that I do not remember I was got into the school, and given a seat upon
a small dais close to a reading desk, facing the great bare hall. At a
given signal the huge crowd of young ladies trooped in, filling every
available seat, and when they had all subsided, Miss Beale, a short,
stout lady in black, with a dreadfully bruised face and a black eye,
came in and stood at the desk.
She read the prayers and a chapter in a splendidly sonorous voice,
during which the silence and attention was quite painful in its
perfection. She ceased reading, and, turning sharply to me, whom to
all appearance she had not noticed before, said, in a voice that rang
deeply through that profound silence:
“You must go now.”
Ah, me! was ever worm so crushed. My face and neck burned. I wonder my
clothes didn’t catch fire, as, muttering something unintelligible, but
meant to be apologetic, I stumbled off the dais, and, pierced by those
two thousand merry eyes, found my way out. Then the revulsion set in,
and I felt hideously angry, because I felt sure I had been led into
that false position for a joke, and that I had no business there at
all. But I learned that the true reason was that the wonderful old lady
had just sustained a bad fall from her tricycle. She had recovered with
marvellous celerity, considering her age, but there could be no doubt
that the occurrence had affected her temper, and who could wonder if it
did? Still, I wished most sincerely that some other lightning-conductor
might have been found than myself, or that one other man might have
been there to lend me a little moral support. I felt just as if I
had been caught in some prohibited meeting and was being led off to
execution.