Chapter VII: Part 7

We visited the castle of the earl of Warwick. The earl evidently did 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

After Westminster Abbey I went to looking for the Tower of London. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.