ONE of the things which dawned upon me in moving about England, and particularly as I was leaving it, was the reason for the inestimable charm of Dickens. I do not know that anywhere in London or England I encountered any characters which spoke very forcefully of those he described. It is probable that they were all somewhat exaggerated. But of the charm of his setting there can be no doubt. He appeared at a time when the old order was giving way, and the new—the new as we have known it in the last sixty years—was manifesting itself very sharply. Railroads were just coming in and coaches being dispensed with; the modern hotel was not yet even thought of, but it was impending.
Dickens, born and raised in London, was among the first to perceive the wonder of the change and to contrast it graphically with what had been and still was. In such places as St. Alban’s, Marlowe, Canterbury, Oxford, and others, I could see what the old life must have been like when the stage-coach ruled and made the principal highways lively with traffic. Here in Canterbury and elsewhere there were inns sacred to the characters of Dickens; and you could see how charming that world must have appeared to a man who felt that it was passing. He saw it in its heyday, and he recorded it as it could not have been recorded before and can never be again. He saw also the charm of simple English life—the native love of cleanly pots and pans and ordered dooryards; and that, fortunately, has not changed. I cannot think of any one doing England as Dickens did it until there is something new to be done—the old spirit manifested in a new way. From Shakespeare to Dickens the cry is long; from Dickens to his successors it may be longer still.
I was a bit perturbed on leaving Canterbury to realize that on the morrow at this same time I should catch my first glimpse of Paris. The clerk at the station who kept my bags for me noted that I came from New York and told me he had a brother in Wisconsin, and that he liked it very much out there.
I said, “I suppose you will be coming to America yourself, one of these days?”
“Oh, yes,” he said; “the big chances are out there. I’ll either go to Canada or Wisconsin.”
“Well, there are plenty of states to choose from,” I said.
“A lot of people have gone from this place,” he replied.
It rained hard on the way to Dover; but when I reached there it had ceased, and I even went so far as to leave my umbrella in the train. When I early discovered my loss I reported it at once to the porter who was carrying my belongings.
“Don’t let that worry you,” he replied, in the calmest and most assuring of English tones. “They always look through the trains. You’ll find it in the parcel-room.”
Sure enough, when I returned there it was behind the clerk’s desk; and it was handed to me promptly. If I had not had everything which I had lost, barring one stick, promptly returned to me since I had been in England, I should not have thought so much of this; but it confirmed my impression that I was among a people who are temperamentally honest.
My guide led me to the Lord Warden Hotel, where I arranged myself comfortably in a good room for the night. It pleased me, on throwing open my windows, to see that this hotel fronted a bay or arm of the sea and that I was in the realm of great ships and sea traffic instead of the noisy heart of a city. Because of a slight haze, not strong enough to shut out the lights entirely, fog-horns and fog-bells were going; and I could hear the smash of waves on the shore. I decided that after dinner I would reconnoiter Dover. There was a review of warships in the harbor at the time; and the principal streets were crowded with marines in red jackets and white belts and the comic little tambourine caps cocked jauntily over one ear. Such a swarm of red-jackets I never saw in my life. They were walking up and down in pairs and trios, talking briskly and flirting with the girls. I fancy that representatives of the underworld of women who prey on this type of youth were here in force.
Much to my astonishment, in this Snargate Street I found a south-of-England replica of the “Fish, Chip, and Pea” institution of the Manchester district. I concluded from this that it must be an all-English institution, and wherever there was much drunkenness there would be these restaurants. In such a port as Dover, where sailors freely congregate, it would be apt to be common; and so it proved.
Farther up High Street, in its uttermost reaches in fact, I saw a sign which read: “Thomas Davidge, Bone-setter and Tooth-surgeon”—whatever that may be. Its only rival was another I had seen in Boulton which ran: “Temperance Bar and Herbal Stores.”
The next morning I was up early and sought the famous castle on the hill, but could not gain admission and could not see it for the fog. I returned to the beach when the fog had lifted and I could see not only the castle on the hill, but the wonderful harbor besides. It was refreshing to see the towering cliff of chalk, the pearl-blue water, the foaming surf along the interesting sea walk, and the lines of summer—or perhaps they are winter—residences facing the sea on this one best street. Dover, outside of this one street, was not—to me—handsome, but here all was placid, comfortable, socially interesting. I wondered what type of Englishman it was that came to summer or winter at Dover—so conveniently located between London and Paris.
At ten-thirty this morning the last train from London making the boat for Calais was to arrive and with it Barfleur and all his paraphernalia bound for Paris.
It seems to me that I have sung the praises of Barfleur as a directing manager quite sufficiently for one book; but I shall have to begin anew. He arrived as usual very brisk, a porter carrying four or five pieces of luggage, his fur coat over his arm, his monocle gleaming as though it had been freshly polished, a cane and an umbrella in hand, and inquiring crisply whether I had secured the particular position on deck which he had requested me to secure and hold. If it were raining, according to a slip of paper on which he had written instructions days before I left London, I was to enter the cabin of the vessel which crossed the channel; preëmpt a section of seat along the side wall by putting all my luggage there; and bribe a porter to place two chairs in a comfortable windless position on deck to which we could repair in case it should clear up on the way over. All of this I faithfully did. The chairs had the best possible position behind the deck-house and one of my pieces of luggage was left there as a guarantee that they belonged to me. It looked like rain when the train arrived, and we went below for a sandwich and a cup of coffee; but before the boat left it faired up somewhat and we sat on deck studying the harbor and the interesting company which was to cross with us. Some twenty English school-girls in charge of several severe-looking chaperones were crossing to Paris, either for a holiday, or, as Barfleur suggested, to renew their studies in a Paris school. A duller lot of maidens it would be hard to conceive, and yet some of them were not at all bad-looking. Conservatism and proper conduct were written all over them. Their clothing was severely plain, and their manners were most circumspect. None of that vivacity which characterizes the average American girl would have been tolerated under the circumstances. There was no undue giggling and little, if any, jesting. They interested me, because I instantly imagined twenty American girls of the same age in their place. They would have manifested twenty times the interest and enthusiasm, only in England that would have been the height of bad manners. As it was these English maidens sat in a quaint row all the way over, and disappeared quite conservatively into the train at Calais.
This English steamer crossing the channel to France was a disappointment to me in one way. I had heard for some time past that the old uncomfortable channel boats had been dispensed with and new commodious steamers put in their place. As a matter of fact, these boats were not nearly so large as those that run from New York to Coney Island, nor so commodious, though much cleaner and brighter. If it had rained, as Barfleur anticipated, the cabin below would have been intolerably overcrowded and stuffy. As it was, all the passengers were on the upper deck, sitting in camp chairs and preparing stoically to be sick. It was impossible to conceive that a distance so short, not more than twenty-three or four miles, should be so disagreeable as Barfleur said it was at times. The boat did not pitch to any extent on this trip over. On my return, some three months later, I had a different experience. But now the wind blew fiercely and it was cold. The channel was as gray as a rabbit and offensively bleak. I did not imagine the sea could be so dull-looking, and France, when it appeared in the distance, was equally bleak in appearance. As we drew near Calais it was no better—a shore-line beset with gas tanks and iron foundries. But when we actually reached the dock and I saw a line of sparkling French facteurs looking down on the boat from the platform above—presto! England was gone. Gone all the solemnity and the politeness of the porters who had brought our luggage aboard, gone the quiet civility of ship officers and train-men, gone the solid doughlike quiescence of the whole English race. It seemed to me on the instant as if the sky had changed and instead of the gray misty pathos of English life—albeit sweet and romantic—had come the lively slap-dash of another world. These men who looked down on us with their snappy birdlike eyes were no more like the English than a sparrow is like a great auk. They were black-haired, black-eyed, lean, brown, active. They had on blue aprons and blue jumpers and a kind of military cap. There was a touch of scarlet somewhere, either in their caps or their jackets, I forget which; and somewhere near by I saw a French soldier—his scarlet woolen trousers and lead-blue coat contrasting poorly, so far as éclat goes, with the splendid trimness of the British. Nevertheless he did not look inefficient, but raw and forceful, as one imagines the soldiers of Napoleon should be. The vividness of the coloring made up for much, and I said at once that I would not give France for fifty million Englands. I felt, although I did not speak the language, as though I had returned to America.
It is curious how one feels about France, or at least how I feel about it. For all of six weeks I had been rejoicing in the charms and the virtues of the English. London is a great city—splendid—the intellectual capital of the world. Manchester and the north represent as forceful a manufacturing realm as the world holds, there is no doubt of that. The quaintness and sweetness of English country life is not to be surpassed for charm and beauty. But France has fifty times the spirit and enthusiasm of England. After London and the English country it seems strangely young and vital. France is often spoken of as decadent—but I said to myself, “Good Lord, let us get some of this decadence, and take it home with us. It is such a cheerful thing to have around.” I would commend it to the English particularly.
On the way over Barfleur had been giving me additional instructions. I was to stay on board when the boat arrived and signal a facteur who would then come and get my luggage. I was to say to him, “Sept colis,” whereupon he would gather up the bundles and lead the way to the dock. I was to be sure and get his number, for all French facteurs were scoundrels, and likely to rob you. I did exactly as I was told, while Barfleur went forward to engage a section, first class, and to see that we secured places in the dining-car for the first service. Then he returned and found me on the dock, doing my best to keep track of the various pieces of luggage, while the facteur did his best to secure the attention of a customs inspector.
It was certainly interesting to see the difference between the arrival of this boat at Calais and the similar boat which took us off the Mauretania at Fishguard. There, although the crowd which had arrived was equally large, all was peaceful and rather still. The porters went about their work in such a matter-of-fact manner. All was in apple-pie order. There was no shouting to speak of. Here all was hubbub and confusion, apparently, although it was little more than French enthusiasm. You would have fancied that the French guards and facteurs were doing their best to liberate their pent-up feelings. They bustled restlessly to and fro; they grimaced; they reassured you frequently by look and sign that all would be well, must be so. Inside of five minutes,—during which time I examined the French news-stand and saw how marvelously English conservatism had disappeared in this distance of twenty miles,—the luggage had been passed on and we were ready to enter the train. Barfleur had purchased a number of papers, Figaro, Gil Blas, and others in order to indicate the difference between the national lives of the two countries which I was now to contrast. I never saw a man so eager to see what effect a new country would have on another. He wanted me to see the difference between the English and the French papers at once; and although I was thoroughly familiar with it already, I carefully examined these latest productions of the French presses. The same delicious nudities that have been flourishing in the French papers for years were there, the same subtle Gallic penchant for the absurd and the ridiculous. I marveled anew at the sprightliness of these figures, which never cross the Atlantic into American papers. We do not know how to draw them because we are not accustomed to them in our lives. As a matter of fact the American papers and magazines adhere rigorously to the English standard. We have varied some in presentation, but have not broadened the least in treatment. As a matter of fact I believe that the American weekly and monthly are even more conservative than the British paper of the same standard. We think we are different, but we are not. We have not even anything in common with the Germans, from whom we are supposed to have drawn so much of our national personality.
However,—the train started after a few moments and soon we were speeding through that low flat country which lies between Calais and Paris. It was a five-hour run direct, but we were going to stop off at Amiens to see the great cathedral there. I was struck at once by the difference between the English and the French landscape. Here the trees were far fewer, and what there were of them were not tinged with that rich green mold which is characteristic of every tree in England. The towns, too, as they flashed past—for this was an express—were radically different in their appearance. I noted the superabundance of conical red roofs swimming in a silvery light, and hard white walls that you could see for miles. No trees intervened to break the view, and now and then a silvery thread of a river appeared.
It was on this trip that I gathered my first impressions of a French railway as contrasted with those of England and America. The French rails were laid to the standard gage, I noticed, and the cars were after the American not the English style: large, clean, commodious, with this improvement over the American car that they were of the corridor and compartment style as contrasted with our one room, open-space style. After my taste of the compartment car in England I was fairly satisfied to part forever with the American plan of one long open room in which every one can see every one else, interesting as that spectacle may be to some. The idea of some privacy appealed to me more. The American Pullman has always seemed a criminal arrangement to me, anyhow, and at Manchester I had met a charming society woman who in passing had told me that the first time she was compelled to undress in an American sleeping car she cried. Her personal sense of privacy was so outrageously invaded. Our large magnates having their own private cars or being able to charter a whole train on occasion need not worry about this small matter of delicacy in others (it would probably never concern them personally anyhow) and so the mass and the unsuspecting stranger is made to endure what he bitterly resents and what they never feel. I trust time and a growing sense of chivalry in the men at the top as well as a sense of privilege and necessity in the mass at the bottom will alter all this. America is a changing country. In due time, after all the hogs are fed or otherwise disposed of, a sense of government of the people for the people will probably appear. It has made only the barest beginning as yet. There are some things that the rank and file are entitled to, however—even the rank and file—and these they will eventually get.
I was charmed with the very medieval air of Amiens, when we reached there, a bare, gray, cobble-stony city which, however, appeared to be solid and prosperous. Here, as in the rest of France, I found that the conical-roofed tower, the high-peaked roof, the solid gray or white wall, and the thick red tile, fluted or flat, combined to produce what may be looked upon as the national touch. The houses here varied considerably from the English standard in being in many cases very narrow and quite high for their width—four and five stories. They are crowded together, too, in a seemingly defensive way, and seem to lack light and air. The solid white or gray shutters, the thick fluted rain-pipe, and the severe, simple thickness of the walls produced an atmosphere which I came to look upon after a time as supremely Gallic, lingering on from a time when France was a very different country from what it is to-day.
Amiens was all of this. It would have seemed hard and cold and bare and dry except for these little quirks of roofs, and the lightness of the spirit of the people. We wandered through high-walled, cobble-paved streets until suddenly we came on the cathedral, soaring upward out of a welter of the dreary and commonplace. I had thought Canterbury was wonderful—but now I knew that I had never seen anything in my life before so imposing as Amiens. Pure Gothic, like Canterbury, it was so much larger; a perfect maze of pinnacles, towers, arches, buttresses and flying buttresses; it soared into the sky—carven saint above carven saint, and gargoyles leering from every cranny. I could scarcely believe that the faith of man had ever reared so lovely a thing. What a power religion must have been in those days! Or what a grip this form of art must have taken on the imagination of some! To what perfection the art of architecture had attained! The loving care that has been exercised in designing, shaping and placing these stones is enough to stagger the brain. I did not wonder when I saw it that Ruskin and Morris had attained to a sort of frenzy over the Gothic. It is a thing for sighs and tears. Both Barfleur and I walked around it in reverent silence, and I knew that he was rejoicing to know that I was feeling what I ought to feel.
We went inside after a time because it was threatening dusk and we had to make our train for Paris. I shall never forget the vast space within those wondrous doors—the world of purple and gold and blue in the windows, the blaze of a hundred and more candles upon the great altar, the shrines with their votive offerings of flaming tapers, the fat waddling mothers in bunchy skirts, the heavy priests with shovel hats and pig-like faces, the order of attendant sisters in blue collars and flaring linen headgear, the worshipful figures scattered here and there upon the hard stone floor on their knees. The vast space was full of a delicious incense; faint shadows were already pooling themselves in the arches above to blend into a great darkness. Up rose the columns, giant redwoods of stone, supporting the far-off roof; the glory of pointed windows, the richness of foliated decorations, the worshipfulness of graven saints set in shrines whose details seemed the tendrils of spring. Whatever the flower, the fruit, the leaf, the branch, could contribute in the way of artistic suggestion had here been seized upon. Only the highest order of inspiration could have conceived or planned or executed this delicious dream in stone.
A guide, for a franc or two, took us high up into the organ-loft and out upon a narrow balustrade leading about the roof. Below, all France was spread out; the city of Amiens, its contour, was defined accurately. You could see some little stream, the Somme, coming into the city and leaving it. Wonderful figures of saints and devils were on every hand. We were shown a high tower in which a treaty between France and Spain had been signed. I looked down into the great well of the nave inside and saw the candles glowing like gold and the people moving like small bugs across the floor. It was a splendid confirmation of the majesty of man, the power of his ideals, the richness and extent of his imagination, the sheer ability of his hands. I would not give up my fleeting impression of Amiens for anything that I know.
* * * * *
As we came away from the cathedral in the dusk we walked along some branch or canal of the Somme, and I saw for the first time the peculiar kind of boat or punt used on French streams—a long affair, stub-pointed at either end. It was black and had somewhat the effect of a gondola. A Frenchman in baggy corduroy trousers and soft wool cap pulled over one ear was poling it along. It contained hay piled in a rude mass. It was warm here, in spite of the fact that it was the middle of January, and there was a feeling of spring in the air. Barfleur informed me that the worst of winter in Paris appeared between January fifteenth and the middle of March, that the spring did not really show itself until the first of April or a little later.
“You will be coming back by then,” he said, “and you will see it in all its glory. We will go to Fontainebleau and ride.” That sounded very promising to me.
I could not believe that these dull cobble-stone streets through which we were passing were part of a city of over ninety thousand, and that there was much manufacturing here. There were so few people in sight. It had a gray, shut-up appearance—none of the flow and spirit of the towns of the American Middle West. It occurred to me at once that, though I might like to travel here, I should never like to live here. Then we reached the railway station again.