CHAPTER VII
JOURNEYS
There is one thing about a lecturer’s experiences which has always been a mystery to me, though it has not been so much so since the advent of the picture palace. It is that one continually finds oneself going to places whose very names have hitherto been hidden from a fairly intelligent, well-travelled man, while great towns with many thousands of inhabitants seem to pass you by in silent disdain. I will not quote the names of those big towns lest I should find that there is a reason uncomplimentary to myself in their neglect of my services, but the fact is as I have stated and is in no wise peculiar to my own experience.
But some of those out-of-the-way places; what a wealth of memories they do recall; nearly all, I am happy to say, of a genial pleasant character, albeit the journey to some of them was a pilgrimage of pain. Indeed I have often wondered how it was that I, one of the frailest of men, with especially weak bronchial apparatus, have never “cracked up” on those wretched journeys. Recollections of them come crowding thick and fast, but I think I must award the palm of discomfort to one that was only difficult to reach by reason of a mistake, not on my part. I was due to lecture at Masham in Yorkshire on a certain evening on the morning of which I was at Huddersfield.
Trusting to information given me by a railway official at Huddersfield instead of to the local time-table (a mistake of mine), I arrived at Leeds to find that I could not make my connection through Ripon to Masham in time. So I wired to the stationmaster at Ripon asking him if he would kindly secure me a conveyance to Masham, distant ten miles. I duly arrived at Ripon to find awaiting me a dog-cart with a huge Yorkshire horse between the shafts and a typical Tyke holding the reins. There was also, the time being December, a bitter blasting north-east gale blowing over the moors, and of course I had left my heavy fur-lined overcoat at Huddersfield. I may say in passing that I dreaded to wear it for many reasons, but chiefly because of the chivying of the small boy.
We started, and before we had gone a mile I was congealed. Cold! Well, I don’t know exactly, but I was past feeling and only conscious of a dull desire that the truly infernal wind would cease blowing for just five minutes. But it never did, and at the end of one of the longest hours I have ever known, much longer than a trick at the wheel off the Horn, and God knows they were long enough (but I was young then), we surged into Masham, arriving at the hall an hour before the lecture was due. I was directed to the most hospitable abode of the local bank manager, who had invited me to stay with him (only I had never received the letter), and given such restoratives as kindness dictated.
He pressed me to stay the night, but I had booked my room at the hotel in Ripon and the trap had to go back, so I, newly warmed and fed, refused. The lecture went off with a bang as usual, and amid a chorus of congratulations and commiseration I mounted the trap again—and so home to the hotel, through a stronger wind and a light snowfall. Arriving at the hotel I had to be lifted out of the trap and carried into the bar parlour, where I was thawed out, while my driver, the burly taciturn giant, drank cold ale and looked pityingly, albeit with wonder, upon the weakling he had brought back.
A bonny fire was kindled in my room and boots and ostler carried me upstairs. Native delicacy, I suppose, prevented them valeting me, so it was with many a groan and much effort I got out of my clothes and between the blankets. And my last thought was that I was booked for a long stay—as to going to Sedbergh on the following day the idea was too ridiculous to entertain. Yet on awaking in the morning I was up and partly dressed before I remembered my parlous condition of the previous night, and it is not one of the least strange things in my strange life that this has ever been the case. Going to bed utterly beaten and apparently in for a long illness and rising next morning able to resume the war-path. I suppose it must be a remanet from the days when I couldn’t give in, like so many men and women in the same toilful walk of life.
Another journey of horror which comes into my mind at this time was one I made to the favourite watering-place of Lytham, but owing to the fact that I was also to speak on Sunday as well as lecture on Monday it was necessary that I should leave London on Saturday. Not being able to ascertain from the intricacies of Bradshaw anything definite as to the time of my arrival, I enquired at Euston and was informed that I could get a train at Preston for Lytham at about 4.30 a.m. (I speak loosely as to time, it being so long ago), arriving at Lytham somewhere about three hours later. Whereupon I booked and left Euston about ten o’clock, arriving at Preston somewhere about 2 a.m. I sought a first-class waiting-room, for in those palmy days I always travelled first class, but I found it full of a foul crowd of men, smoking, swearing, and spitting, and entirely resentful of my intrusion, especially so of my fur coat.
I quietly retired to the farthest corner of the room, wondering much but far too wise to say anything, and with my rug for a covering and my bag for a pillow laid me down upon one side of a big table that stood there. In spite of the devilish uproar I was soon asleep, but I was rudely awakened by being jerked off the table on to the befouled floor, amid a perfect tempest of delight. I picked myself up and silently collected my belongings amid the hoots and jeers of the crowd. And out upon that wind-swept platform I sought a resting-place on a bench (shelter from the wind there was none) and lay there wide awake until 4.30 a.m. I may here interpolate that letters addressed to Euston on the subject of this curious use of first-class waiting-rooms at Preston and Chester never even met with the courtesy of a reply.
Somewhere about 4.30 a train came in, and I, feeling a spasm of hope, made for it, finding a good fellow-porter who told me that it was going to Manchester and furthermore volunteered his opinion that no train for Lytham would go before ten o’clock.
“But,” he said, “I’ll make sure for ye, an’ if I’m right you might go to the Park Hotel an’ be comfortable.” Judging by my fur coat he doubtless thought that the expense didn’t matter. Of course he was right, and I made the pilgrimage along that lengthy bridge to the hotel, suitably rewarding (I hope) my friendly porter with a shilling. Then I said to the night porter of the hotel:
“Please do not call me on any account until 9.30, as my train does not go until 10.30, and I want to get warm. Bring me up a cup of tea and some bread and butter and my bill at 9.30 and all will be well.”
He nodded and left me. I turned in, but sleep was out of the question. I heard five strike and six and seven and then, whatever was that diabolical knocking?
“What is it?” I roared. “Hot water,” was the reply. Then I realised that I had been to sleep and I got out of bed, switched on the light, looked at my watch and behold it was 7.40. I am not a hot-tempered man and should have made an ineffectual despot, but if that night porter had been at my absolute disposal then—I really would not like to say. Of course I got no more sleep, and equally of course I had to pay full charge for bed and breakfast. And I have hated Preston Station with a perfect hatred ever since. I suppose all the fraternity are like that—have their special likes and dislikes among stations as amongst people.
Pocklington is a name branded upon my memory, not because of its school, of which I have heard many excellent reports, but know nothing, but because I have made two visits there to lecture and each time have been filled with wonder and laughter. The secretary and mainstay of the lecture society was (and is for all I know) a genial eccentric doctor, a widower living with his daughter. The lecture hall might be a stable or a barn or a shed of sorts, I only know that when I first entered it the audience was clustered round the stove in the centre and the whole scene was worthy of a picture by Rembrandt. I had a queer feeling that none of my audience had ever heard a lecture before, which was absurd, for I know that many of my colleagues had entertained them, but they looked at me as though they thought I might bite, and I looked at them cheerfully as I would have done at a mob of Australian blackfellows. Me!
Yet the lectures were a success. We had a good time together. By the way, I often wonder what a leviathan of Johnson’s calibre would do with a crowd like that. He would probably antagonise the bulk of them before he had been speaking five minutes, because nothing annoys an audience like that more than what they call “putting the pot on,” and I cannot help feeling much sympathy for them. In fact the more I read Boswell’s Johnson the more murderously I feel towards him, and the more prone I am to regard him as the most wrongly puffed-up bully that ever lived. That, however, is a mere matter of opinion and Johnson would probably have disposed of it in one flatulent breath.
What, however, I could not get over in Pocklington was the hotel. It was one of the old-timers and all its staff were genuinely anxious to make the guest comfortable. But to go downstairs half dressed in the morning, find after long enquiry a key, and then traverse a long wet yard in search of relief, these were matters that left their indelible trace, in England, where a man over forty gets soft and slack and notices such things. Yet people go abroad and endure them and never murmur. How is it, I wonder? I read endless encomia upon foreign ways, foreign cooking, foreign politeness, but never a word about foreign dirt, foreign stenches, foreign absence of sanitary arrangements. What a mystery!
It will be a little relief to get my mind off this business of foreign hotels to recall an experience which if it did not amuse me at the time certainly did both interest and amuse my one fellow-passenger. I booked first class as I usually did in those days from Huddersfield to Manchester, where I was due to lecture at the Athenæum at eight, but where I had no offer of hospitality. The train by which I travelled was timed to arrive in Manchester at about seven, ample time for me to find a hotel, change, get a meal, and arrive at the Athenæum by 7.50. But by some accident or stupidity I got into the wrong part of the train and after a long wait at Stalybridge I became disagreeably aware that something was wrong. Indeed I was past the time I had reckoned on arriving at Manchester before we left Stalybridge, and the train was going very deliberately.
At last I saw plainly that if I was going to get to my lecture in time it was all I should do, and turning to my sole fellow-passenger with whom, after the custom of Englishmen, I had not as yet exchanged a word, I said:
“Excuse me, sir, but do you mind if I change my clothes? I am due to lecture at the Athenæum at eight and I fear that I have made a mistake in the train.”
He replied instantly: “Go ahead, for this train isn’t due in until 7.55. Don’t mind me.”
I thanked him and began, but oh, just then the train began to cut capers and my corresponding movements about that compartment must have been amazing. My fellow-passenger laughed himself ill, especially when, struggling into a “biled” shirt I was hurled, with both my arms prisoned, from one side of the compartment to the other. Indeed his merriment had little cessation, for similar evolutions took place as I got into my trousers, fastened my collar, and made my white bow. When at last I had finished and he lay utterly exhausted on the cushions, he gasped out:
“Well, sir, I’ve never laughed so much in all my life and I’ll come to hear you lecture, for I feel anxious to know how such a preparation will affect you. Besides, I need a sedative and I guess a lecture is the sort of thing to quiet the most edgy nerves.”
I nodded, smiling grimly at his awkward compliment, so typical of the north, and just then the train rolled into the station on time. Giving my bag to a porter and telling him to get me a cab, I bolted to the refreshment room where I got a glass of port and snatched a couple of hard-boiled eggs. The hall couldn’t have been many yards from the station for half the second egg was in my fingers and the other half in my mouth when we arrived there. And I am afraid I was still swallowing when I stood up and faced the audience.
Of course the lecture went off all right, they always did somehow, but my greatest triumph that night was being met by my railway acquaintance, who lugged me off to his favourite hotel and insisted upon footing my bill, because, he said, I’d given him the jolliest half-day’s entertainment he’d ever had in his days, and one that would serve him with experiences to tell at his club, etc., for the rest of his life.
Another experience of a similar kind occurs to me, but the preliminaries were even more painful or wearing than this last. I was booked to lecture at Willenhall, a suburb of Wolverhampton, and came from London to keep my appointment. But my train broke down at Roade and by the time we got to New Street the connection for Willenhall had vanished, of course. However, the courteous stationmaster arranged for the train to be stopped at Willenhall to allow me to alight. So it was, but a howling mob of colliers filled the platform and though my bag got out I couldn’t. Vainly did the guard shout “keep back,” the crowd pressed in and the train moved off. I sprang out at the first opportunity, alighting on my back and rolling over several times, feeling very foolish when at last I remembered where I was, without the remarks of the stationmaster and porters, which tended to rub that fact in.
When I was able to move off I did so without comment, for I felt that any attempt of mine to reply would be entirely unworthy of the occasion. Outside the station I was assailed by a mob of ragged urchins competing for the job of carrying my bag, and selecting one, who was escorted by the rest, I arrived at the hall in about five minutes. I was met by the tired-looking secretary, to whom I commenced to apologise for its being ten minutes past eight, but he cut me short by saying:
“Don’t worry, the lanternist isn’t here yet!” Whereupon I suggested that I would change into platform rig if a corner could be found for me, and I was duly shown by the caretaker into his kitchen-living-room. Whew! I then realised that I was in the land of cheap coal, for I should think there must have been a couple of hundredweights on the fire. The room was so hot that by the time I had finished dressing the beautiful front of my dress shirt was limp as a piece of blotting-paper and I was nearly suffocated.
And still poor Perry hadn’t turned up. If ever he sees these words he’ll remember that awful night. I don’t know what the time was when he arrived, but I know that when at last he was ready for me it was past nine and the audience had been sitting patiently waiting—most of them—since 7.30. I went on and apologised for Perry and myself, putting all the blame where it belonged, on the railway company, for Perry’s failure was due to his lantern and cylinders of gas having been put off at some junction, Handsworth, I think, while he went on sublimely unconscious to Willenhall. And it was all the more reprehensible because, as he said, he was as well known on the lines all around Brum as one of the railway officials themselves. I didn’t suffer much, but it was a terrible experience for him, he being a man of considerable weight and the night stuffy.
A curious reminiscence of mine is concerning a lecture I gave at Hebden Bridge, one of those quaint, most picturesque manufacturing villages in the northern part of the West Riding of Yorkshire. I was not offered hospitality nor had I any previous correspondence with the secretary of the society engaging me, but that was nothing out of the common and after enquiry I made for the only hotel in the place (as far as I know). I was feeling very fit and comfortable after dinner as I sat smoking and awaiting eight o’clock, the hall being just across the road.
Suddenly, to me entered two men, with gloomy looks and an air of embarrassment, who seeing me in evening dress at once concluded that I was the lecturer and introduced themselves as secretary and treasurer respectively of the society engaging me. Then the secretary stammered out:
“We’ve come on rather a curious errand, Mr. Bullen. We’ve come to ask you if you’ll take your fee and go away?”
“Of course, if you wish it,” I replied, with a smile of encouragement; “but surely you don’t mind telling me why, though perhaps I ought not to enquire.” (The treasurer had meanwhile stealthily placed a little pile of gold at my elbow.)
“Well, you see, it’s like this,” grunted the secretary, with a brick-red flush on his face, “there’s nobody there. An’ there’s nobody to come, as far as I can see. The men folk are almost all gone and th’ women don’t care. So the society’s cracked up. Anyhow, I’m done with it from to-night; I don’t like this kind of job at all. However, we’re much obliged t’ye, Mr. Bullen.”
“Oh, not at all,” I chortled gaily, as I absent-mindedly slipped the sovereigns into my breeches pocket. “But if anybody should come between now and half-past nine I’m quite willing to give the lecture, even if there’s only half a dozen present.”
With more muttered thanks they left me, and I sat smiling at my own thoughts, gazing at the fire and feeling very comfortable. At about half-past eight, however, the secretary peeped in again and said very apologetically:
“There’s a few people come, sir, so we thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind——”
“Why, of course,” I cried gaily, and springing up I accompanied him to the platform of the really fine hall (seating capacity about four hundred, I should think) and gave my lecture to less than a dozen people. What did it matter when the lights were turned down? And so we parted on the best of terms with each other, and I to bed feeling very virtuous.
Now this was Saturday night and I was due to lecture at Halifax on the morrow at seven p.m. So I planned to have a comfortable midday meal where I was and get on by a good train in the afternoon. But after breakfast the waitress, a typical Yorkshire lass, enquired, but without a trace of interest:
“When are ye goin’?”
I informed her courteously of my intentions and she replied, again with that air of aloofness:
“Ye’ll have to go afore dinner.”
“But why?” I remonstrated. “I’m very comfortable here. And I don’t want to go before dinner.”
“There’s no dinner served in this house on Sunday,” she responded indifferently.
I looked at her abstractedly for a few moments as she finished clearing the table, and then as she was leaving the room I asked her if she’d be kind enough to ask the landlord or landlady to come and see me. She did not answer, but in about a minute a stout, comely dame appeared with the light of battle in her eye. To her I addressed myself, treating the waitress’s communication as sheer irresponsible froth. But I was suddenly cut short by the dame, who exploded:
“Thirty-five year I’ve kept this house and I’ve never served owt in it of a Sunday except breakfast, an’ I never will.”
I began to feel a little warm myself now, and quietly suggested that by the Innkeepers’ Act she was bound to keep me as long as I behaved myself and showed willingness and ability to pay. It was unfortunate, for she rose to a towering height of rage, avowing her intention of sacrificing all she possessed in the world rather than break her Sabbath rule.
Well, I am a man of peace, and have a certain amount of self-control, so I left the house, caught an earlier train and found most comfortable quarters at Halifax. But wasn’t it funny?