IV

She was probably not the daughter of a hundred earls, but there must

have been some such far-descended fair among the ladies who showed

themselves from time to time in the royal paddock across a little space

from our Grand Stand. The enclosure has no doubt a more technical

name, which I would call it by if I knew it, for I do not wish to be

irreverent; but paddock is very sporty, and it must serve my occasion.

The King never showed himself there at all, though much craned round for

and eagerly expected. But ladies and gentlemen moved about in the close,

and stood and talked together; very tall people, very easily straight

and well set up, very handsome, and very amiable-looking; they may have

been really kind and good, or they may have looked so to please the

King and keep his spirits up. I did not then, but I do now, realize that

these were courtiers, such as one has always read of, and were of very

historical quality in their attendance on the monarch. I trust it will

not take from the dignity of the fact if I note that several of the

courtiers wore derby hats, and one was in a sack coat and a topper. I

am not sure what the fairer reader will think if I tell that one of the

ladies had on a dress with a white body and crimson skirt and sleeves,

and a vast black picture-hat, and wore it with a charming air of

authority.

The weather, in the excitement of the races, had not known whether it

was raining or not, but we feared its absent-mindedness, and at the end

of the third race we went away. It is not well to trust an English day

too far; this had begun with brilliant sunshine, but it dimmed as it

wore on, and we could not know that it was keeping for us the surprise

of a very refined sunset. My memory does not serve as to just how we had

got out to the race-ground; I think, from our being set down at the very

gate, that it was by hansom or by fly; but now we promised ourselves to

walk back to town. We did not actually do so; we went back most of the

way by tram; but we were the firmer about walking at the outset, because

we presently found ourselves in a lane of gypsy tents, where there was

an alluring sight and smell of frying fish and potatoes. In the midst of

the refection, you could have your fortune told, very favorably, for a

very little money. All up and down this happy avenue there went girls of

several dozen sizes and ages, crying a particular kind of taffy, proper

to the day and place, and never to be had on any other day in any other

place.

We had an hour before train-time, and we thought we would go and see

the Parish Church of Doncaster, which we had read was worth seeing.

Our belief was confirmed by a group of disappointed ladies in the

churchyard, who said it was a most beautiful church inside, but that

they had not seen it because it was shut. We proved the fact by trying

the door, and then we came away consoling ourselves with the scoff that

it was probably closed for the races. At the bookseller’s, where we

stopped to buy some photographs of the interior of the church we had not

seen, we lamented our disappointment, and the salesman said, “Perhaps

it was closed for the races.” So our joke seemed to turn earnest, and on

reflection it did not surprise us in that England of close-knit unities

where people and prince are of one texture in their pleasures and

devotions, and the Church is hardly more national than the Turf.

V

At Durham, which was my next excursion from York, I cannot claim,

therefore, that my mission was more serious because it almost solely

concerned the Church, or that it was more frivolous at Doncaster, where

it almost solely concerned the Turf. My train started in a fine mist

that turned to sun, but not before it had shown me with the local color,

which a gray light lends everything, a pack of hounds crossing a field

near the track with two huntsmen at their heels. They were not chasing,

but running leisurely, and with their flower-like, loose spread over the

green, and the pink-coated hunters on their brown mounts, they afforded

a picture as vivid and of as perfect semblance to all my visions of

fox-hunting as I could have asked. I had been hoping that I might see

something of the famous sport, almost as English as the Church or the

Turf, and there, suddenly and all unexpectedly, the sight fully and

satisfyingly was. Now, indeed, I felt that my impression of English

society was complete, and that I might go home and write novels of

English high life, and do something to redeem myself a little from the

disgrace I had fallen into with my fellow-plebeians by always writing

of common Americans, like themselves, and never _grandes dames_ or ideal

persons, or people in the best society.

But I did not want to go home at once, or turn back from going to Durham

through that pleasant landscape, where the mist hung between the trees

which seemed themselves only heavier bulks of mist. The wheat in some

of the fields was still uncut, and in others, where it had been gathered

into sheaves, the rooks by hundreds were noisily gleaning in the track

of the reapers. From this conventionally English keeping, I passed

suddenly to the sight of the gaunt, dry, gravelly bed of a wide river,

such as I had known in Central Italy, or the Middle West at home; and I

realized once again that England is no island of one simple complexion,

but is a condensed continent, with all continental varieties of feature

in it. You must cover thousands and thousands of miles in our tedious

lengths and breadths for the beauties and sublimities of scenery which

you shall gather from fewer hundreds in England; I have no doubt they

have even volcanoes there, but I did not see any, probably because the

English are so reticent, and hate to make a display of any sort.