An excursion of fifty miles and back “to pass the day” at a
place—setting off after breakfast, and getting home “before tea”—used
to be done on a witch’s broom exclusively. People who are neither
bewitched nor _bewitching_ can do it now! Railroads have disenchanted
the world. The secluded Vicarage of S——, is half way from London to
BATH, in a village lying upon the route of the Great Western Railroad. I
had never seen the Saratoga of England, and, chatting with my kind
relatives, over the things that were to be seen in the neighborhood, I
was rather startled to hear of the possibility of “passing the day at
Bath.” Beau Nash and the Pumproom, rose up, of course, vividly and
instantly. The scene of the loves and gayeties of the gayest age of
England, was close at my elbow—near enough, at least, to visit without
a carpet-bag. The opportunity was not to be lost.
By the “Express” train we might “do” the fifty miles in _an hour_, but
we preferred the _slow_ train to do it in _two_. We in-_car_-cerated
ourselves, at 10 o’clock of the first fair day I have seen in a month,
and were presently getting, (_very literally indeed_,) a bird’s eye view
of the carpet-like scenery of Berkshire.
At the second or third station, we took in, for passengers, four idiots,
under the care of an hospital-keeper. When taken out of the carriage in
which they were brought, two of them _collapsed_ to the ground, not
having mind enough to stand on their legs, though apparently in perfect
health. One minute thus and the next minute going at the rate of thirty
miles an hour, is a contrast!
At Swindon, the junction between the Gloucester Railway and this, the
station buildings are really unnecessarily splendid. The reception room,
with its immense mirrors, velvet sofas, bronzes and waiting women in
full dress, is as sumptuous as a royal palace. The windows are as large
as doors, and of one pane of pier-glass. The room itself is as large and
high as the gentlemen’s dining room at the Astor, and yet a room exactly
corresponding is on the other side of the track—one to accommodate the
“up train,” and the other the “down train.” The rustic inhabitants of
the little village of Swindon must live in surprise at the magnificent
wants of travellers—the curls and chemisettes of the waiting-girls
behind the counter included!
At the little village of “Box,” (a snug name for a village, by the bye)
commences the two mile tunnel under the chalk hills, and so suddenly do
the cars dive into the darkness, that one’s eyes are at a loss to know
what to do with the light left in the eyeballs. If a man ever threatens
to “knock the daylight out of me” again, I shall have a glimmer of its
having been done before—(at Box.) But I predict an awful smash in this
tunnel, yet. Chalk and flint-stones are very friable neighbors, and
hills are heavy, and the concussion of air, with a train going under
ground at the rate of a mile a minute, is enough to sift away particles
very speedily. A train might come out with a load of stone it never went
in with, and there is gloomy time enough to anticipate it, while one is
whizzing and thundering onwards toward the black dark of the Box tunnel.
The villages thicken, and the hills grow steeper as we approach Bath,
and at last you are suddenly shot into a bowl of palaces and
verdure—the bottom covered with gardens, and the sides with terraced
crescents of architecture. I had just time to exclaim with wonder at the
unexpected splendor of the hill-sides rounding us in, when the station
roof slid over us like an extinguisher, and the conductor’s voice
announced that we were at Bath.