The most curious thing is that the persons in the faery dream seem to
believe it as devoutly as the simplest and humblest of the dreamers. The
persons in the dream apparently take themselves as seriously as if there
were or could be in reality kings and lords. They could not, of course,
do so if they were recently dreamed, as they were, say, in the France
of the Third Empire. There, one fancies, these figments must have always
been smiling in each other’s faces when they were by themselves. But
the faery dream holds solidly in England because it is such a very old
dream. Besides, the dream does not interfere with the realities; it even
honors them. If a man does any great thing in England, the chief figure
of the faery dream recognizes his deed, stoops to him, lifts him up
among the other figures, and makes him part of the dream forever. After
that he has standing, such as no man may have with us for more than that
psychological moment, when all the papers cry him up, and then everybody
tries to forget him. But, better than this, the dream has the effect, if
it has not the fact, of securing every man in his place, so long as
he keeps to it. Nowhere else in the world is there so much personal
independence, without aggression, as in England. There is apparently
nothing of it in Germany; in Italy, every one is so courteous and kind
that there is no question of it; in the French Republic and in our own,
it exists in an excess that is molestive and invasive; in England alone
does it strike the observer as being of exactly the just measure.
Very likely the observer is mistaken, and in the present case he will
not insist. After all, even the surface indications in such matters are
slight and few. But what I noted was that, though the simple and humble
have to go to the wall, and for the most part go to it unkicking, in
England they were, on their level, respectfully and patiently entreated.
At a railroad junction one evening, when there was a great hurrying up
stairs and down, and a mad seeking of wrong trains by right people, the
company’s servants who were taking tickets, and directing passengers
this way and that, were patiently kind with futile old men and women,
who came up, in the midst of their torment, and pestered them with
questions as to the time when trains that had not arrived would leave
after they did arrive. I shuddered to think what would have at least
verbally happened to such inquirers with us; but, there, not only their
lives but their feelings were safe, and they could go away with such
self-respect as they had quite intact.
V
In no country less good-hearted than England could anything so
wrong-headed as the English baggage system be suffered. But, there,
passengers of all kinds help the porters to sort their trunks from other
people’s trunks, on arrival at their stations, and apparently think it
no hardship. The porters, who do not seem especially inspired persons,
have a sort of guiding instinct in the matter, and wonderfully seldom
fail to get the things together for the cab, or to get them off the cab,
and, duly labelled, into the luggage-van. Once, at a great junction,
my porter seemed to have missed my train, and after vain but not
unconsidered appeals to the guard, I had to start without it. At
the next station, the company telegraphed back at its own cost the
voluminous message of my anxiety and indignation, and I was assured that
the next train would bring my valise from Crewe to Edinburgh. When I
arrived at Edinburgh, I casually mentioned my trouble to a guard whom I
had not seen before. He asked how the bags were marked, and then he said
they had come with us. My porter had run with them to my train, but in
despair of getting to my car with his burden, had put them into the
last luggage-van, and all I had to do was now to identify them at my
journey’s end.
Why one does not, guiltily or guiltlessly, claim other people’s baggage,
I do not know; but apparently it is not the custom. Perhaps in this, the
deference for any one within his rights, peculiar to the faery dream,
operates the security of the respective owners of baggage that could
otherwise easily be the general prey. While I saw constant regard paid
for personal rights, I saw only one case in which they were offensively
asserted. This was in starting from York for London, when we attempted
to take possession of a compartment we had paid for from the nearest
junction, in order to make certain of it. We found it in the keeping
of a gentleman who had turned it from a non-smoking into a smoking
compartment, and bestrewn it with his cigar ashes. When told by the
porters that we had engaged the compartment, he refused to stir, and
said that he had paid for his seat, and he should not leave it till he
was provided with another. In vain they besought him to consider our
hard case, in being kept out of our own, and promised him another place
as good as the one he held. He said that he would not believe it till he
saw it, and as he would not go to see it, and it could not be brought to
him, there appeared little chance of our getting rid of him. I thought
it best to let him and the porters fight it out among themselves. When
a force of guards appeared, they were equally ineffective against
the intruder, who could not, or did not, say that he did not know the
compartment was engaged. Suddenly, for no reason, except that he had
sufficiently stood, or sat, upon his rights, he rose, and the others
precipitated themselves upon his hand-baggage, mainly composed of
fishing-tackle, such as a gentleman carries who has been asked to
somebody’s fishing, and bore it away to another part of the train. They
left one piece behind, and the porter who came back for it was radiantly
smiling, as if the struggle had been an agreeable exercise, and he spoke
of his antagonist without the least exasperation; evidently, he regarded
him as one who had justly defended himself from corporate aggression;
his sympathies were with him rather than with us, perhaps because we had
not so vigorously asserted ourselves.