Since I was a boy and read the story of the two little princes who
were said to have been murdered in the Tower by order of their royal
uncle, I had pictured the Tower as something awful and gloomy. As a
matter of fact the Tower is rather imposing in appearance, and with the
improvements that have been made in recent years is a fairly decent
sort of castle right in the city of London. Built for a fortress by
William the Conqueror soon after his capture of England from the
Saxons, it was added to and used as a royal residence and state prison,
mostly the latter. Kings and queens have been confined within its walls
and nobles have been imprisoned by the hundreds, many of them only
finding it a step toward execution. It is now a government arsenal, and
contains a number of soldiers and a lot of military supplies as well
as a historical museum. The Tower consists of a dozen towers inclosed
by a wall and moat, and covers thirteen acres. It is really very
interesting, and anyone who remembers his English history or who has
read English stories of a few centuries ago can feel delightful thrills
as he goes up and down the dark corridors and stairways, sees the rooms
in which so many of the great men of England, good and bad, spent
the time preliminary to their death, or passed years in confinement.
Kings of England, Scotland and France, princes, archbishops and
ministers of state have carved or scratched their names on the walls
and window-frames while sojourning here at the expense of the state.
As a usual thing the executions were held outside the walls so that
the public could enjoy the amusement, but a few of the noble ladies
and some men who were very popular with the people were decapitated in
the little square in the middle of the inclosure, and the spot is now
marked by an iron tablet. The Tower has not been used as a prison since
1820, and since then it has been cleaned and renovated so that the only
evidence of the dark old days is contained in the placards which the
government has put up for the benefit of the public. Henry VIII., who
was a bad husband but an able monarch, had a fad for the collection
of old armor, and a great part of the White Tower, the largest of
the towers in the Tower, is taken up by a splendid exhibition of the
fighting-clothes and weapons of England and Europe during the Middle
Ages. In another tower, Wakefield Tower, is kept a part of the royal
regalia, including the crown worn by the king when he is formally
inducted into office at Westminster Abbey. This crown contains 2,818
diamonds, 300 pearls and other precious stones “too numerous to
mention.” The government charges a sixpence to get into this exhibit,
which is said by the official guidebook to be worth $15,000,000. You
pay another sixpence to see the rest of the buildings, including the
old armor, the place where the bones of the little princes are said
to have been found, the tower where the Duke of Clarence was drowned
in a large cask of wine, and all the other beautiful horrors that go
with the Tower. I never fail to appreciate the thrift of these European
governments. They always charge admissions to the castles, palaces
and public buildings. What a howl there would be in America if the
Government should exact a fee of 10 cents to visit the White House, or
the State of Kansas should charge admission to the Governor’s residence
at Topeka.
When we went into the Tower the officers at the gate made everybody
leave packages or boxes outside. Mrs. Morgan even had to dispose of her
chatelaine bag, and when she wanted to know the reason why, learned
that it was to prevent her carrying dynamite into the Tower and blowing
it to pieces. The powers of the Old World are always looking for
dynamiters.
[Illustration]
During our stay in London the French fleet has been visiting the
British fleet at Portsmouth, and a large number of the officers and men
have been brought to London and entertained. International politics is
a subject of general interest in Europe. Emperor William of Germany has
most of the rest of Europe so nervous that even the English and French,
foes for centuries, are making up to each other. Just as in Germany I
found a feeling that eventually Germany would have a war with America
and England, I found the same impression here, and as France hates
Germany more than it does England, the French, with the same thing in
mind, would line up with the Anglo-American combine. The London papers
have had numerous articles showing that the combined fleets, armies and
financial powers of the three countries and Japan could lick the rest
of the earth to a standstill. The most ordinary Englishman is posted
on international matters as well as the ordinary American is on local
State affairs. To illustrate the public feeling, at a theatre when the
ballet-girls were carrying banners of the various nations the climax
came with the English representatives and the French representatives
clasping hands and the American dancers waving the stars and stripes
over them. The audience cheered enthusiastically.
[Illustration]
Speaking of theatres reminds me that London has the best in the world.
The English people are great play-goers, and the city has such a large
population that a play often runs here for a year. Prices are higher
for the best seats and cheaper for the cheap seats than in America. A
parquet seat is called a “stall,” and is usually $2.50. The “pit” is
back of the parquet, and is about 50 cents. First balcony is called
the dress circle, and is about $2. Second gallery is about 25 or 50
cents. I think the class distinctions account for the great difference
in prices. An imposition in London theatres is that a charge of 12
cents is made for a program, filled with advertising, and no better
than those given free in America. When the orchestra plays “God Save
the King” the audience rises. Americans get up, too, and as the tune is
the same as “America” the Yankees I know sing “Sweet Land of Liberty”
while the English are saving the king.
[Illustration]
I saw the procession of the local officials when the Frenchmen were
here. The sheriff of the county rode in a beautiful old-style yellow
coach, wore a three-cornered hat and a uniform of 200 years ago, with
powdered wig and sword. The lord mayor of London was dressed the same
way, with his hair down his back in a queue. If the sheriff of Reno
county and the mayor of Hutchinson had any style about them they would
not let these English officials outshine them. I am told it costs the
mayor about a half-million a year to hold the office, as his principal
duty is to entertain the city’s guests at his own expense. The lord
mayor is more ornamental than useful. The local government is more like
our State organization, with one legislative body, consisting of 118
county councillors elected by the boroughs, and another of nineteen
aldermen appointed by the council. As London has about five times as
many people as Kansas and much harder problems of administration to be
solved, the government is a big thing. And London is well governed,
better, I think, than American cities. The only thing that would grate
on us is the great amount of regulation. You can’t build a house or go
into business without permission, and then everything must be just so.
The English people are law-abiding, more patient with regulations and
rules than ours, and public opinion stands for the strict enforcement
not only of laws but of what seem like absurd red-tape rules. Hardly
any stores are open or business commenced until 9 o’clock. Nearly
everybody takes one to two hours for lunch. Stores close at 6 o’clock
and dinner is in the evening. Saturday afternoons all business houses
are shut up, and there are a great number of holidays. An American gets
nervous over the easy-going way of doing business. He is always in
trouble because he has forgotten it is Saturday afternoon or a “bank
holiday,” or because he can’t transact important business between 12
and 2 o’clock. In fact, if he wants to, an American can find a lot
of things in London to make him miserable and cause him to abuse the
country. But if he is patient and learns a little of the English ways
he finds that he may live a little slower but he will live just as
happily, and probably longer if he does as the English do. The American
way of rushing things is well known and generally discountenanced in
England. They think we are fools for working so hard, and resent the
rather offensive criticisms by the Yankees of their slowness. Perhaps
they are right. They tell me that on his first visit an American always
tries to reform English business methods. After that first attempt he
tackles the easier job of sweeping back the ocean with a broom.
IN RURAL ENGLAND.
LONDON, ENGLAND, August 21, 1905.
We have just finished a trip of a couple of hundred miles through
southern England in a motor car. In France and the United States it is
an automobile, but in Great Britain it is a motor car. This is a better
way to see the country than from a railroad train, and not so good as
walking. If you have a motor car or have a friend who has one, that is
the best way to travel. If you have none and no prospect, a motor car
is a delusion and a mistake. I happened to have a friend with a motor
car and am therefore on the side of the motorists.
We left London at 10 o’clock in the morning, and by night had ridden a
hundred miles and taken in Hampton Court, Windsor, Reading, Maidenhead,
Alton, and Winchester, besides a lot of little places and the country
along the way. The English roads are just about perfection. The main
roads are made of stone or gravel with clay on top, rolled until they
are as smooth as asphalt, and kept free from holes and bumps. Every
bridge and culvert is of stone. There is no need to slow up except for
people and other vehicles. I doubt if America ever has such roads.
Perhaps in a thousand years, when our country is about as old as
England, we will have equally as good thoroughfares, but it will be
fully a thousand years. These English roads were good stone roads
before the days of railways. They were constructed as business and
military necessities by the order of the English government. I don’t
think Kansas farmers will ever build graveled roads on which motorists
can make high speed and kill the chickens and dogs that don’t get
out of the way when the horn blows. However, Kansas farmers could,
profitably to themselves, improve their roads so that one horse could
haul a wagon-load in place of two horses, and so that the wagon could
be hauled in muddy times. Such roads would be good enough for Kansas
automobiles, and by that time they will be cheap and every farmer will
have one. The Romans who conquered and held possession of England
from the time of Julius Cæsar to several centuries later, were great
road-builders, and fragments of their old military roads still exist.
Good roads are a sign of civilization. Fortunately, they are not the
only sign, for if they were, parts of Kansas would be uncivilized. We
can beat the Old World on a good many propositions, but when it comes
to roads and highways the old country has us skinned a good many blocks.
[Illustration]
This is August, but the woods and meadows of England are as green and
fresh as with us in May. An English summer as I see it is warm and
moist. It is not near so warm as in the Mississippi valley, and the
rain comes nearly every day. Rain does not often fall in sheets and
inches, but drizzle-drazzles down and soaks in so as to do the most
good. The English people don’t mind the rain at all. It is this moist
climate which covers the walls with ivy and the trees with moss, and
keeps the verdure fresh and green until the fall. Harvest is just
now being finished. There is no corn in England—although they call
barley, wheat and small grain generally, “corn.” The principal crop
is hay and oats and barley, a little wheat, and vegetables in great
quantities. England has 50,000 square miles, so it is over half as
large as Kansas, but it has 30,000,000 people, and therefore much of
the farming is for market truck. As a matter of fact there is very
little actual “rural life.” The villages are so close together that
it is often hard to tell where one town ends and another begins, and
a country road is as nearly well settled as a city suburb in America.
Here and there are vast estates, the beautiful show places and curse of
England. With millions of people wanting work and thousands of tenant
farmers who can get no title to the soil they till, it looks to me like
a howling outrage for a lord, a duke or a brewer to fence up several
thousand acres as a shooting-place, and remove from production a large
per cent. of the land which ought to be doing good and providing some
Englishman a chance to make a living and a home. The English people do
not seem to mind it at all, and I suppose there is no call for me to
get excited, but I can’t help it. We have gone by some beautiful parks,
with great stately trees, deer grazing in herds and pheasants and quail
flying at the side of the road. These belong to somebody who is off
for the summer and who got them from his father, who received them
from the king, who originally stole them from the actual owners. For
quiet beauty the lanes and meadows of England, lined with fine trees
and fenced with hedge or stone wall, cannot be beaten. The Arkansas
valley is just as beautiful in June, but in August the Kansas sun can
be depended on to do business and spoil the freshness of the trees
and grass. When the wayside is not inclosed between high hedgerows,
the fence is stone, but over the stone grow ivy and moss, out of the
cracks come grass and flowers, so the coldness and bleakness of the
rock is concealed. Every English farm seems to have a flock of sheep.
I always heard the national meat of old England was roast beef, but
that is a mistake. It is mutton-chops, and every English family has
them at least once a day if it has the price. Along the main roads are
little inns every mile or so with the peculiar names and signs that are
characteristic. During the day I counted four called “The Red Lion.”
One was “The Headless Woman,” and over the sign-post was the picture of
a woman with her head chopped off below the chin. These inns are hotels
and public-houses, and generally look interesting and clean. I am told
their prices are reasonable to Englishmen, but they charge Americans in
an automobile about all the law would allow.
[Illustration]
To-day we came from Southampton to Brighton, fifty miles along the
southern coast. The beach is fine, and is the summer resort of England.
Years ago royalty and nobility made Brighton their favorite sea-shore
place, but the great plain people have gotten into the habit of
going there in numbers, so the aristocracy has gone farther, to the
continent and to Wales. Nearly every one of these old English towns
has a cathedral and a Roman wall. The Romans were town-builders as
well as road-makers, and they never even camped for the night without
fortifying. The cathedrals were mostly built in the Middle Ages, when
the church was a wealthy business organization with lands and revenues.
They look old and quaint and are generally in good taste. When you read
about a cathedral or castle being a thousand years old you may depend
on it that if it is still in use it has been “restored.” Some of these
very old cathedrals remind me of the boy’s jackknife. The blades wore
out and he got new blades. The handle wore out and he got a new handle.
But he still had the old jackknife. A cathedral built in the year 1000
may have new walls, new roof, new interior and new spire, but it is
still the old cathedral, “restored.”
[Illustration]
In a little old English inn on the bank of the river Thames we ate our
lunch and watched the endless procession of boats that passes up and
down the stream. The ocean reaches up the river as far as London, so
that it is really an inlet, with a tide that rises and falls, and a
deep channel for ships. Ten miles above London the Thames is about the
size of the Little Arkansas, and all the way past Windsor, Henley and
Oxford, historic for the boat-races, it is very little wider than Cow
creek. By a system of dams and locks the Thames above London is really
only a canal. There is a path alongside, and we saw several young men
taking their sisters, or somebody’s sisters, for a boat-ride, the man
walking the bank, pulling the boat with a rope, and the lady sitting in
the boat. In some countries I have been in this summer the woman would
have been pulling on the rope and the man would have been reared back
in the seat, comfortably smoking a long cigar. As a river the Thames
above London is not much, but as a pretty winding stream, carrying
little steamboats and row-boats, filled with gaily dressed people, it
is a success.
[Illustration]
The place we stopped for lunch was at Runnymede, just about the
greatest spot on earth for English and Americans. It was here in 1215
that King John met the rebellious barons and signed the Magna Charta.
Up to that time the king of England had done as he pleased, regardless
of law. King John levied taxes so heavily that the people could not
stand it, and the big nobles suffered worst of all. So the barons
combined, and when the king started out to lick them, his supporters
nearly all went over to the rebels. In order to save his neck and his
kingdom, John met the barons at Runnymede and signed the agreement
which is at the basis of the English and American constitutions. He
agreed not to levy any further unusual taxes except by consent of the
Great Council of the nobles (origin of the English parliament), nor to
deny or sell justice, and confirmed the right of an accused person to a
trial by jury.
It did not make any difference if King John repudiated the Magna Charta
as soon as he could. The principle was established, and while some
English rulers after that tried to evade and escape its provisions,
the English people held to it as their rock of refuge. England has no
written constitution like ours. The English constitution is a growth of
custom, laws, grants and statutes, and the Magna Charta is the basis on
which it rests.
When John met the barons at Runnymede the people had no rights that
king or baron was bound to respect. But John put a provision in the
Magna Charta that the barons must treat their tenants as fairly as the
barons wanted to be treated by the king. I suppose John was trying
to get even with his powerful nobles by thus recognizing the common
people, and deserves no credit for the article. But in a few centuries
the development of this idea and the discovery that a musket in the
hands of an ordinary man could shoot a hole through a knight, broadened
the Magna Charta so that it protects every Englishman.
[Illustration]
One of the things that strike Americans as odd is the rule of the
road, “turn to the left.” This rule is rigidly observed everywhere in
England. But when your motor car, running at 30 or 40 miles an hour,
meets another coming at a like speed, and your driver turns to the
left, the American on the rear seat shuts his eyes so as not to see
the collision, while a cold chill travels down his backbone. Of course
there is no accident, for the other fellow also turns to the left, but
it is hard on the nerves. However, a Kansas man in Europe takes plenty
of nerve with him and he is all right so long as his money lasts.
RAILROADS IN EUROPE.
LIVERPOOL, Aug. 24, 1905.
A railroad is a railroad anywhere in the world, only it is sometimes
different. Every country has its own peculiarity in railroads as
well as in everything else. The first European train we saw was at
Queenstown, Ireland, and we laughed. It looked like a toy, small
engine, small coaches and strange in appearance. I decided to wait
until I had more observations on the subject before putting my ideas
into a letter, and since then have gone from one country to another
in Europe, traveling first, second and third class, on main lines and
branch roads, on through trains and accommodation trains, and gaining
all the knowledge possible for an American traveler who gets his
information from experience. While each country has its peculiarities,
there are certain ways in common.
In the first place the European idea of a passenger car is taken
directly from the old stage-coach. It is composed of from three to
six compartments, like that many stages fastened together. In each
compartment there are two seats running across the car, facing each
other, and holding eight or ten passengers. As a rule there is no
communication between the compartments. You get in the little room, the
door is shut and locked, and there you stay until you get to the next
stop, when the door is opened if anyone wants to come in or go out.
There is no toilet-room, and no way to go to the smoking compartment
unless you are in one, and no way to get out if you are in. I think
all third-class cars are of this pattern. On the main lines, on a
few trains and in some cars, there is a corridor running along the
side, making it possible to go from one compartment to another, and
sometimes there is a toilet-room. This pattern of cars is often called
“American,” and usually there are extra charges. The cars are short
and light, with two wheels under each end like wagon-wheels, and not
the double trucks of our cars. There is very seldom any ventilation
at the top, and as the rule is that the passenger next to the window
can regulate its opening, the other passengers can freeze or roast as
the case may be. In Germany the cars have appliances for steam heat,
but they do not seem to usually have them in England or elsewhere on
the continent. Travelers carry rugs, blankets and footstones in cold
weather.
And right here let me explain a difference in traveling that accounts
for much of the seeming shortcomings of European cars. The people in
Europe hardly ever take long journeys. Sleeping-cars are rarities
and only carried on a few trains. A European who takes a twenty-mile
railroad trip thinks he is a “traveler.” They do not have our
magnificent distances and long journeys, and therefore do not expect
the comforts and luxuries which we consider necessities. Almost the
only people who make what are called “long trips” in Europe, that is,
ten or twelve hours, are American and English tourists, and they are
given a shadow of American comfort on certain first-class trains, for
which they pay right well. For example, Mrs. Morgan and I wanted to
take the night train from Paris to Marseilles, twelve hours’ ride. One
train carried a sleeping-car. It left Paris at 9 o’clock at night and
reached Marseilles at 9 o’clock the next morning. Only passengers with
first-class tickets can ride on it. I bought my first-class tickets
(nearly twice the second-class, which is the usual way), and then asked
how much the sleeper would be. “Twenty dollars!” In America we would
have paid $2.50. And this in a land where we were told everything was
cheap! I have often been heard to rail at the high rates charged by Mr.
Pullman, but I will be slow to do so again. I lifted up my voice to
the French agent on the extortion of charging twenty dollars for one
night, and he shrugged his shoulders and said we could go on the day
train,—that Frenchmen never used the sleeping-cars, and that if the
rich Americans wanted them they could pay the price. We did not buy
that sleeping-car, but a few days later, when it became very important
to hurry to Rome, we gave up eight dollars for a sleeper from Genoa to
the city of the Cæsars. A berth in a European sleeping-car is a little
compartment with two beds, one above the other, about the size of
pantry shelves. Two people cannot comfortably stand in the compartment,
and when one is dressing the other has to stay on his shelf or go out
in the corridor which runs along the side. There is no ventilation, and
the toilet-room, about as big as a barrel, is for both sexes. As some
American said, there is one good thing about a European sleeping-car,
and only one: you do not mind having to get off at an early hour.