not know we were coming, for he was away, but a shilling admitted us
through the big gate in the massive stone walls which surround the
castle and inclose probably twenty acres of ground. It was originally
built by a daughter of Alfred, about 915, and has been more or less
knocked down and built up since. It is said to be one of the finest
old castles in England. A regiment of soldiers could easily parade
in the large court within the walls and be quartered in the building
and towers. Many a time such a garrison has occupied the place,
for the earls of Warwick have been fighters from the beginning and
Shakespeare’s Warwick was a regular Cy Leland or a Stubbs in his day,
and was known as the king-maker. The castle is about twice as large
as the Hutchinson Reformatory, and the earl has to keep a good deal
of hired help in these times of peace. Many of the great rooms are
kept just as in the old days of chivalry and are filled with armor and
weapons. The banquet-room is maintained as it was in the great earl’s
time, and much of the castle is really a museum and gallery full of the
pictures, portraits, furniture and tapestries of the long ago.
Kings and queens, earls and earlesses, have walked the halls and had
their brief time upon the stage of life. The noble of to-day does not
have the armor or the power he did then. His band of armed retainers
has changed to a crowd of peaceful laborers. He does not lead his men
to war, but presides at country fairs and acts as dignified as the
spirit of the twentieth century will permit. He no longer fears a
midnight assault from a neighboring baron, but only dreads the ravages
of the American tourists and sensibly compromises by letting them
ravage at a quarter apiece. The times of chivalry are gone.
“Their swords are rust;
The knights are dust;
Their souls are with the saints, we trust.”
Here in Warwick and at Kenilworth we take a long dream backward, and
by working our imagination and our sentiment we see the England of
Shakespeare, of Warwick, of Ivanhoe. It is a good dream, but it is a
past that will never return, a past that is more nearly connected with
the present in Warwick than at any other place. It is old England,
which first learned to rule herself and then began to rule most of
the rest of the world, and with the assistance of the American child
will undoubtedly do the business in the future. We are going to London
and Liverpool, the castles of commerce and industry which now command
the trade of the globe. In the England of to-day the castles of the
business man and the banker rule in the place of the castles of the
baron and the earl, and old England has given place to a new England.
But it will be this old England of Shakespeare, Warwick and Kenilworth
that will live in the hearts of the English people, and will be the
object of pilgrimage for Americans abroad.
THE GREATEST OF CITIES.
LONDON, Aug. 11, 1905.
We are “out of season” in London. “Everybody is out of town.” I suppose
there are only about 7,000,000 people left within the limits of the
city as laid out for police purposes. With only 7,000,000 people in
this district twenty miles square, one naturally feels lonesome. I
suppose it will strike me that way after I get used to it. But if as
many of the inhabitants of London as there are people in the State of
Kansas should go away, it is probable that I would not notice it at
first. It is curious what funny first impressions one gets of things.
My first of London was that it looked like a great big ant-heap with
the ants excited over something and swarming in every direction. The
long processions or streams of people which wind in and out, up and
down, make the individual feel mightily insignificant. In comparison
my memory of Chicago is that it looks like a deserted country town on
Sunday afternoon, and New York a fairly large and busy village.
[Illustration]
The streets of London are laid out with no regard for plan or
regularity. None of them are straight, and in the course of a few
blocks they will be intersected at every angle and possible curve by
other streets, which in turn are cut into by more streets. Every now
and then there is a “square,” or a “circus,” either meaning a place
where different streets meet head-on and usually stop. A “circus” is a
curved square and not a show. A map of London looks like a chicken-yard
in which the hens have been very busy scratching. The stranger loses
all idea of direction. When the sun shines, which is not often, I have
seen it in the north, south, east and west on the same day.
There are no “sky-scrapers.” The height of buildings is regulated,
and I think the limit is usually six stories. This is a rule which
our American cities ought to have but they won’t. The climate has the
effect of making a new house soon look old, and London is neither
bright nor shining in its appearance. But it is the greatest city
in the world, and that fact is impressed on the traveler in every
direction. There are more Irishmen in London than in Dublin, more
Scotchmen than in Edinburgh, more Jews than in Palestine, and in its
population are large colonies of people from every country on the
earth. Name any article you want or have ever heard of, and it is in
London. No business and no trade in any civilized land but has its
representative in this city. No great work is done and no enterprise
attempted but the fact is known to some one in London. In spite of
the great growth and wealth of America, the industry and success of
Germany, the thrift and saving of France, the financial center of the
world is in London, and other bourses and boards of trade follow the
lead or are in fact only branches of the English concern. Every active
financial institution in the United States or elsewhere has its London
connection through which it draws when it engages in international
business or when it goes out of the local sphere of influence. London
is the whirlpool to which all the world contributes and from which all
the world gets something thrown out.
[Illustration]
London is not only the center of business but of literary, artistic
and political activity. Especially is this true for Americans. All of
our history prior to 1776 is English, and in the annals of the world
1776 is only the day before yesterday. Our writers, as soon as they get
their feet on the ground at home, look to London, this clearing-house
of literature as of money. London writers, from the time of Shakespeare
to Dickens, Thackeray and Kipling, are ours just as much as they are
England’s. Not an American but recognizes the names of Piccadilly,
Hyde Park, Westminster, Temple Bar, Ludgate, the Tower, Tooley street,
London Bridge, Charing Cross, Drury Lane, Whitechapel, Billingsgate,
and other streets and places in London as familiarly as he does those
of places in the nearest city to which he lives. A common history
for more than a thousand years, a common literature which cannot be
divided, and a common trend of religious and political thought make
Great Britain and the United States one people although divided by
an ocean and by arbitrary political lines. I think that up to a few
years ago there was much prejudice in each country against the other.
That has now practically disappeared. Englishmen on the continent and
at home have fraternized with us Americans at every opportunity, and
no place in London that I have gone but I have been received with
unmistakable heartfelt kindness.
[Illustration]
After getting comfortably settled the question comes to the tourist,
“What first?” And there is so much in London we want to see, that it
was a question. I suppose we answered it as every American would,
Westminster Abbey. There we spent our first afternoon. I had been
afraid of disappointment. I may say I am getting used to finding
things which sounded and seemed big when viewed from Kansas, actually
getting small and ordinary when right before us. But it was not so
with Westminster. The present building was put up by Henry III., in
the thirteenth century to take the place of the structure on the same
spot erected by the Saxons soon after the year 1000. A few towers and
façades were added a century later, but for practically 400 years this
grand church has been the national memorial hall of the English people.
Although tombs and monuments are on every side, the spacious church is
used for service every day, and it is an agreeable memory now that we
joined in the afternoon service that day in the hall where kings are
crowned and where they are buried, and where men greater than kings
have been laid away after their work was done.
The church is very large, the form of a Latin cross, beautifully
proportioned, rather gloomily lighted, but impressive in appearance.
Of course it was originally Catholic, but being the state church it
went Protestant when Henry VIII. turned against the pope, partly
because the pope would not recognize his divorce machine. There are
not many statues of saints, but up one side and down the other of the
double aisles and the little chapels are monuments, usually statues, of
the men whose names are England’s greatness. I do not mean the kings
and queens, for most of them would not by their own merit deserve
the honor, but such as these: The Pitts, father and son, who ruled
in England a hundred years ago; Fox, Peel, Cobden, statesmen of the
world; Beaconsfield and Gladstone, not far apart now; Wilberforce,
the philanthropist; Darwin, Newton and Herschel, the scientists;
Livingstone, the African explorer, and Gordon, the general; André, who
was shot as a spy in America; John and Charles Wesley, the Methodists;
Watts, the hymn-writer; Händel, the composer, and Jenny Lind, the
sweet singer of a generation ago; Addison, Macaulay, Thackeray, and
Dickens; Chaucer, Ben Jonson, and Tennyson, poets laureate; Booth and
Garrick, the actors; Spenser and Dryden, and many other poets;—a great
aristocracy of learning, and now in the democratic, barrier-razing
grave. Then there are nearly all the great English generals of
the last four centuries, with heroes whose names are familiar to
American school-boys as to English. And in the chapels are the tombs
of England’s rulers from Edward the Confessor, some great kings and
some little kings, some good and some bad, surrounded by the graves
of queens and lords and ladies with the familiar names of English
nobility. Near the tomb of the great Queen Elizabeth is that of her
rival whom she executed, Mary Queen of Scots, the remains of the
latter placed there by her son, King James, who by the irony of fate
succeeded his mother’s enemy. I could go on with the list, but it would
be with the reader as with the visitor, only the general effect, with
here and there some great name singled out from the rest because of
special interest or connection with some great event. And a fact which
impressed me was that many men and women were executed by one monarch
and their remains brought to Westminster and monuments erected to them
by the next.
In Westminster Abbey the kings and queens of England have been crowned
since the time of its building. A sovereign may inherit or receive
from the representatives of the people the royal power, but he is not
fully authorized and empowered to perform the duties of the job, or, to
paraphrase a slang expression, his crown is not on straight until he
receives it here. There are times when the great church is brilliant
with light and resonant with music, when gay uniforms and gowns fill
the galleries and aisles, when bells peal merrily and the banners wave
from choir and column, concealing for the day the monuments and tombs
of the past with their lesson of the end to earthly greatness and the
fate of human pomp and grandeur.
[Illustration]
The way to see London is from the top of an omnibus. There are
no electric or cable lines or any other above-ground means of
transportation in London except cabs and ’buses. The underground
railroad, called “the tube,” is useful for quick traveling from
one part of the city to the other, but the ’bus is the ordinary
conveyance. It has regular seats on top, and they are always occupied
except when the rain comes in torrents. An ordinary drizzle rain does
not bother a Londoner. The sight of the long line of omnibuses with
people filling the tops of every one of them is in itself a show. I
am told there is not an hour in the day when there are not 100,000
people on top of the London ’buses. We have found that we can learn
and see more of London sitting next to the driver of a ’bus in an hour
than we could in a day with a carriage and guide. The driver is always
glad to trade you all the news about the street for a sixpence, and a
London ’bus-driver is a man of intelligence and learning; he has to
be in order to drive through the jam of traffic and not get lost in
the crooked streets. It was like reading a story when we rode down the
Strand past St. Paul’s and the Bank of England to the Whitechapel, as
the driver pointed out the house where Peter the Great lived when in
England; William Penn’s old home; Somerset House, where queens have
lived; the theatre in which the great actors of to-day appear, Covent
Garden; Garrick’s house; the rooms which Dickens described as David
Copperfield’s at Miss Trotwood’s; the Temple, England’s great lawyer
factory; the grave of Goldsmith; the inn where Johnson and congenial
sports dined and drank; and all kinds of places mentioned or described
by Dickens and Thackeray, or connected with the history of England. I
am not writing a guidebook, but I can make affidavit that a ride on a
London omnibus is the quickest and easiest way I know to fill one’s
head with a jumble of literature and history, as well as to test the
elastic qualities of the neck. If I were to advise a tourist coming to
Europe I would not only tell him to read in advance and bring plenty of
money, but he should have all the rubber possible between his head and
his body.
AT KING EDWARD’S HOUSE.
LONDON, Aug. 14, 1905.
We have spent the day at Windsor Castle, the favorite home of Queen
Victoria, and indeed of British monarchs for several centuries. King
Edward and Queen Alexandra were not at home. We had not advised them
in advance of our intention to visit them, and Edward had gone off
to a hot-springs resort to recuperate from the festivities of last
week, when he was entertaining the French navy. The queen is visiting
her folks in Copenhagen, and none of the royal family were at the
depot. However, we went direct to the castle, and, opening it with the
usual key (a shilling), we wandered around in the big and beautiful
rooms, tramped through the stables and saw the horses, and enjoyed the
beautiful view of the valley of the Thames from the terrace on which
Queen Elizabeth used to stand and shoot deer which her gamekeeper
drove in front of her. King Edward and Queen Alexandra have a right
pretty place at Windsor, but it takes a lot of help to keep it up.
There are fifty men employed in the stables alone. The queen is a good
housekeeper, as can be told from the well-polished floors, the shining
brass and the absence of dirt and dust from the walls and furniture.
Windsor Castle is about three times as big as the Reformatory. Part
of it was built over 800 years ago by William the Conqueror, and it
has been added to by nearly every sovereign. It was a favorite place
with Henry VIII., and one of his wives, Anne Boleyn, was confined and
executed in Windsor. At the time, Henry was over in the next county
waiting until Anne was dead so he could marry another, which he did
within forty-eight hours. The kings and queens in those days were often
tough bats and acted scandalous. They couldn’t do it now, at least in
England. A few years ago the people of England were worked up over a
gambling scandal in which the present king, then Prince of Wales, was
implicated. But King Edward has shown himself to be a model monarch,
and he and the queen are both popular.
A king does not have an easy job. He has to attend state banquets,
preside at the laying of corner-stones, and ride in state on great
occasions, always look pleasant when he is in public, and eternally
be entertaining somebody from somewhere that he does not care about.
This does not sound so bad, but when you read, as you do in the English
papers, just what the king does every day and realize what a grind it
must be after the novelty is worn off, you begin to feel sorry for
Edward. No wonder he has to go to the hot springs for his health. I
don’t suppose that since he has been king he has had a whole week off,
and he is getting old. Kings and queens have to do everything, from
marrying to visiting, because it is best for their countries and not
because they want to. Even an independent American citizen knows how
tiresome it is to do “what is best” rather than what you really like,
and poor Edward never gets a rest. Of course, if the king really had
power there would be some recompense to a man. But the king of England
has little or no power. He is not allowed to have any views on public
questions. When the Conservative party is in power it speaks for the
king and when the Liberal party is in power it voices the sentiment
of the king. This fiction is a part of the British constitution, with
the further inconsistent proposition that the king can do no wrong.
If the people disapprove of the public policy they blame the dominant
ministry, and properly so, for the king has no more to say on political
questions in England than a Republican has in Texas. Edward would no
more dare to take a decided position or make a stand on a government
policy than he would get out in the street with nothing on but his
crown. The people run the government in Great Britain nearly as much
as they do in the United States, and the monarchical customs and the
restrictions and regulations which seem absurd to us would be dumped
out in the next session of parliament if the people wished it. But they
don’t, for they are English and they cling to the old ways. They want
the king and nobles and are willing to pay the bills.
[Illustration]
But I am getting away from Windsor. It is the biggest and best castle
I have seen in Europe. There are towers and turrets and moats enough
to remind you that once upon a time a castle was a fort, and there are
gardens and terraces and beautiful pictures which show that the kings
have spent their money, or the people’s money, with good taste. There
are several other royal residences in England, but Windsor is conceded
to be the best. It is in a beautiful country, and yet it is close to
London, so that the king could spend a quiet night and in the morning
hop on the train and in thirty minutes be at his office in the city.
And the king has a train of special cars nearly as handsome as those of
a division superintendent on the Santa Fe.
Our guide pointed out to us a neighboring estate which belonged to
William Penn, the first owner of Pennsylvania, long before Quay’s time.
Penn got the English sovereign to let him have all of Pennsylvania at a
nominal rent. He then settled with the Indians on a friendly basis, and
the result was his Quaker colony prospered from the start. The contract
was that he and his successors and assigns should pay to the king of
England so many beaver-skins annually. There have been no payments, so
the guide said, since July 4, 1776.
[Illustration]
On our way to Windsor we stopped at Stoke Poges, or rather at the
church near there, in the graveyard of which Gray wrote his great
“Elegy.” The little church stands just as it did when Gray was there
about 150 years ago. The yew tree, to which he refers, is a veritable
monarch, and the woman who shows strangers around said it was 900 years
old. In the church are the graves of Gray and his mother, to whom he
owed his intelligence and his opportunity. The ivy-covered tower looks
down over the crumbling gravestones of those—
“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool, sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.”
Gray wrote a great poem. He never wrote another in the same class.
His reputation is based on the Elegy, and that is enough. It made him
famous, and he was offered the position of poet laureate to the king
and declined it. A man who will decline a good job like that is almost
as rare as a great poet.
We read the poem aloud out in the graveyard underneath the yew tree.
It fitted exactly. Gray had touched the springs of sublimity by seeing
through nature and telling just what he saw, no more.
[Illustration]
In a field near Windsor I saw a mowing-machine, the first I have
noticed in Europe. Everywhere else the hay and grass has been cut by
hand. I mentioned this fact to the driver, and he was very bitter over
the introduction of machinery because it kept men out of an opportunity
to work. He told me he was going to America just as soon as he could
“raise the funds.” The women do not work in the field in England, at
least not much. But they are busy in the dairy, at the stores and
behind the bar in the saloons. In every way I found England ahead of
the continent in its ways of doing things, but there is still enough
difference from our ways to make them seem queer. I also have a kick
coming on another matter. A great many English people do not speak the
English language. They think they do, but they not only drop their h’s
when they should be on and put them on where they do not belong, but
they pronounce the vowels and some of the consonants in a manner that
would make a dictionary turn pale. It is often very difficult for me
to understand them, and they are all at sea over my Kansas brogue. Of
course this does not apply to the educated English people, who only
speak differently from us in using a broad and pleasant accent.
Coming down the street on the way home I saw in a grocery-store window
these signs: “Breakfast eggs, ten for a shilling;” “Recommended eggs,
twelve for a shilling;” “Select eggs, fourteen for a shilling;”
“Cooking-eggs, sixteen for a shilling.” The frankness of the signs
surprised me. I suppose we have the same varieties of eggs in Kansas,
but we don’t describe them so exactly and they all go at the same
price. As eggs are a staple item on the bill of fare, I am wondering
to-night whether my landlord buys “breakfast eggs” or “cooking-eggs,”
or just plain “eggs.”
[Illustration]
The English money is the hardest to understand in Europe. It is based
on the shilling, worth about a quarter in our money. Four farthings
make a penny, 12 pennies make a shilling, and 20 shillings make a
pound ($4.80). The usual coins are the ½ penny, pronounced “ha-penny,”
penny, “tuppence,” the 3-penny, pronounced “trippence,” the sixpence,
the shilling, the 10-shilling, the pound, called a sovereign; the
5-shilling piece, called a crown, and the half-crown. You add 8 pence
to 10 pence and it doesn’t make 18, it makes “one and six.” Add one and
six to one and eight and it makes three and two—yes, it does! Figuring
with English money for an American beginner is like turning handsprings.
The paper currency is issued by the Bank of England, and is made of
white-fiber paper. In some way I got possession of a ten-pound note
and took it into a bank to have it changed. The cashier had me sign my
name on the back. I demurred at first, but as I wanted the change I
finally did it, remarking to him that I was pleased to know that the
bank considered my indorsement necessary to a bank note of the Bank of
England. The cashier did not see the joke, for he took pains to tell me
that it was not to make the note better and that a Bank of England note
was worth its face in gold anywhere. I have had a hard time with my
alleged jokes. I had a letter of introduction to a London banker from
a New York banker, and presented it in order to get the opportunity of
looking through an English bank. Wanting to be pleasant and friendly,
I remarked as he finished reading the letter that I had gotten it so
that if I had trouble with the police I might call on him for help. He
gravely assured me that he did not think I would have any difficulty
with the police. He did not see my little joke. Perhaps he has seen it
by this time, for that was two days ago.
THE TOWER AND OTHER THINGS.
LONDON, ENGLAND, Aug. 17, 1905.