CHAPTER VI.
Kingston.--Instructive remarks on early English history.--Instructiveobservations on carved oak and life in general.--Sad case of Stivvings,junior.--Musings on antiquity.--I forget that I am steering.--Interestingresult.--Hampton Court Maze.--Harris as a guide.
It was a glorious morning, late spring or early summer, as you care totake it, when the dainty sheen of grass and leaf is blushing to a deepergreen; and the year seems like a fair young maid, trembling with strange,wakening pulses on the brink of womanhood.
The quaint back streets of Kingston, where they came down to the water'sedge, looked quite picturesque in the flashing sunlight, the glintingriver with its drifting barges, the wooded towpath, the trim-kept villason the other side, Harris, in a red and orange blazer, grunting away atthe sculls, the distant glimpses of the grey old palace of the Tudors,all made a sunny picture, so bright but calm, so full of life, and yet sopeaceful, that, early in the day though it was, I felt myself beingdreamily lulled off into a musing fit.
I mused on Kingston, or "Kyningestun," as it was once called in the dayswhen Saxon "kinges" were crowned there. Great Caesar crossed the riverthere, and the Roman legions camped upon its sloping uplands. Caesar,like, in later years, Elizabeth, seems to have stopped everywhere: onlyhe was more respectable than good Queen Bess; he didn't put up at thepublic-houses.
She was nuts on public-houses, was England's Virgin Queen. There'sscarcely a pub. of any attractions within ten miles of London that shedoes not seem to have looked in at, or stopped at, or slept at, some timeor other. I wonder now, supposing Harris, say, turned over a new leaf,and became a great and good man, and got to be Prime Minister, and died,if they would put up signs over the public-houses that he had patronised:"Harris had a glass of bitter in this house;" "Harris had two of Scotchcold here in the summer of '88;" "Harris was chucked from here inDecember, 1886."
No, there would be too many of them! It would be the houses that he hadnever entered that would become famous. "Only house in South London thatHarris never had a drink in!" The people would flock to it to see whatcould have been the matter with it.
How poor weak-minded King Edwy must have hated Kyningestun! Thecoronation feast had been too much for him. Maybe boar's head stuffedwith sugar-plums did not agree with him (it wouldn't with me, I know),and he had had enough of sack and mead; so he slipped from the noisyrevel to steal a quiet moonlight hour with his beloved Elgiva.
Perhaps, from the casement, standing hand-in-hand, they were watching thecalm moonlight on the river, while from the distant halls the boisterousrevelry floated in broken bursts of faint-heard din and tumult.
Then brutal Odo and St. Dunstan force their rude way into the quiet room,and hurl coarse insults at the sweet-faced Queen, and drag poor Edwy backto the loud clamour of the drunken brawl.
Years later, to the crash of battle-music, Saxon kings and Saxon revelrywere buried side by side, and Kingston's greatness passed away for atime, to rise once more when Hampton Court became the palace of theTudors and the Stuarts, and the royal barges strained at their mooringson the river's bank, and bright-cloaked gallants swaggered down thewater-steps to cry: "What Ferry, ho! Gadzooks, gramercy."
Many of the old houses, round about, speak very plainly of those dayswhen Kingston was a royal borough, and nobles and courtiers lived there,near their King, and the long road to the palace gates was gay all daywith clanking steel and prancing palfreys, and rustling silks andvelvets, and fair faces. The large and spacious houses, with theiroriel, latticed windows, their huge fireplaces, and their gabled roofs,breathe of the days of hose and doublet, of pearl-embroidered stomachers,and complicated oaths. They were upraised in the days "when men knew howto build." The hard red bricks have only grown more firmly set withtime, and their oak stairs do not creak and grunt when you try to go downthem quietly.
Speaking of oak staircases reminds me that there is a magnificent carvedoak staircase in one of the houses in Kingston. It is a shop now, in themarket-place, but it was evidently once the mansion of some greatpersonage. A friend of mine, who lives at Kingston, went in there to buya hat one day, and, in a thoughtless moment, put his hand in his pocketand paid for it then and there.
The shopman (he knows my friend) was naturally a little staggered atfirst; but, quickly recovering himself, and feeling that something oughtto be done to encourage this sort of thing, asked our hero if he wouldlike to see some fine old carved oak. My friend said he would, and theshopman, thereupon, took him through the shop, and up the staircase ofthe house. The balusters were a superb piece of workmanship, and thewall all the way up was oak-panelled, with carving that would have donecredit to a palace.
From the stairs, they went into the drawing-room, which was a large,bright room, decorated with a somewhat startling though cheerful paper ofa blue ground. There was nothing, however, remarkable about theapartment, and my friend wondered why he had been brought there. Theproprietor went up to the paper, and tapped it. It gave forth a woodensound.
"Oak," he explained. "All carved oak, right up to the ceiling, just thesame as you saw on the staircase."
"But, great Caesar! man," expostulated my friend; "you don't mean to sayyou have covered over carved oak with blue wall-paper?"
"Yes," was the reply: "it was expensive work. Had to match-board it allover first, of course. But the room looks cheerful now. It was awfulgloomy before."
I can't say I altogether blame the man (which is doubtless a great reliefto his mind). From his point of view, which would be that of the averagehouseholder, desiring to take life as lightly as possible, and not thatof the old-curiosity-shop maniac, there is reason on his side. Carvedoak is very pleasant to look at, and to have a little of, but it is nodoubt somewhat depressing to live in, for those whose fancy does not liethat way. It would be like living in a church.
No, what was sad in his case was that he, who didn't care for carved oak,should have his drawing-room panelled with it, while people who do carefor it have to pay enormous prices to get it. It seems to be the rule ofthis world. Each person has what he doesn't want, and other people havewhat he does want.
Married men have wives, and don't seem to want them; and young singlefellows cry out that they can't get them. Poor people who can hardlykeep themselves have eight hearty children. Rich old couples, with noone to leave their money to, die childless.
Then there are girls with lovers. The girls that have lovers never wantthem. They say they would rather be without them, that they bother them,and why don't they go and make love to Miss Smith and Miss Brown, who areplain and elderly, and haven't got any lovers? They themselves don'twant lovers. They never mean to marry.
It does not do to dwell on these things; it makes one so sad.
There was a boy at our school, we used to call him Sandford and Merton.His real name was Stivvings. He was the most extraordinary lad I evercame across. I believe he really liked study. He used to get into awfulrows for sitting up in bed and reading Greek; and as for French irregularverbs there was simply no keeping him away from them. He was full ofweird and unnatural notions about being a credit to his parents and anhonour to the school; and he yearned to win prizes, and grow up and be aclever man, and had all those sorts of weak-minded ideas. I never knewsuch a strange creature, yet harmless, mind you, as the babe unborn.
Well, that boy used to get ill about twice a week, so that he couldn't goto school. There never was such a boy to get ill as that Sandford andMerton. If there was any known disease going within ten miles of him, hehad it, and had it badly. He would take bronchitis in the dog-days, andhave hay-fever at Christmas. After a six weeks' period of drought, hewould be stricken down with rheumatic fever; and he would go out in aNovember fog and come home with a sunstroke.
They put him under laughing-gas one year, poor lad, and drew all histeeth, and gave him a false set, because he suffered so terribly withtoothache; and then it turned to neuralgia and ear-ache. He was neverwitho
ut a cold, except once for nine weeks while he had scarlet fever;and he always had chilblains. During the great cholera scare of 1871,our neighbourhood was singularly free from it. There was only onereputed case in the whole parish: that case was young Stivvings.
He had to stop in bed when he was ill, and eat chicken and custards andhot-house grapes; and he would lie there and sob, because they wouldn'tlet him do Latin exercises, and took his German grammar away from him.
And we other boys, who would have sacrificed ten terms of our school-lifefor the sake of being ill for a day, and had no desire whatever to giveour parents any excuse for being stuck-up about us, couldn't catch somuch as a stiff neck. We fooled about in draughts, and it did us good,and freshened us up; and we took things to make us sick, and they made usfat, and gave us an appetite. Nothing we could think of seemed to makeus ill until the holidays began. Then, on the breaking-up day, we caughtcolds, and whooping cough, and all kinds of disorders, which lasted tillthe term recommenced; when, in spite of everything we could manoeuvre tothe contrary, we would get suddenly well again, and be better than ever.
Such is life; and we are but as grass that is cut down, and put into theoven and baked.
To go back to the carved-oak question, they must have had very fairnotions of the artistic and the beautiful, our great-great-grandfathers.Why, all our art treasures of to-day are only the dug-up commonplaces ofthree or four hundred years ago. I wonder if there is real intrinsicbeauty in the old soup-plates, beer-mugs, and candle-snuffers that weprize so now, or if it is only the halo of age glowing around them thatgives them their charms in our eyes. The "old blue" that we hang aboutour walls as ornaments were the common every-day household utensils of afew centuries ago; and the pink shepherds and the yellow shepherdessesthat we hand round now for all our friends to gush over, and pretend theyunderstand, were the unvalued mantel-ornaments that the mother of theeighteenth century would have given the baby to suck when he cried.
Will it be the same in the future? Will the prized treasures of to-dayalways be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of ourwillow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of thegreat in the years 2000 and odd? Will the white cups with the gold rimand the beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our SarahJanes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefullymended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of thehouse?
[Picture: China dog] That china dog that ornaments the bedroom of myfurnished lodgings. It is a white dog. Its eyes blue. Its nose is adelicate red, with spots. Its head is painfully erect, its expression isamiability carried to verge of imbecility. I do not admire it myself.Considered as a work of art, I may say it irritates me. Thoughtlessfriends jeer at it, and even my landlady herself has no admiration forit, and excuses its presence by the circumstance that her aunt gave it toher.
But in 200 years' time it is more than probable that that dog will be dugup from somewhere or other, minus its legs, and with its tail broken, andwill be sold for old china, and put in a glass cabinet. And people willpass it round, and admire it. They will be struck by the wonderful depthof the colour on the nose, and speculate as to how beautiful the bit ofthe tail that is lost no doubt was.
We, in this age, do not see the beauty of that dog. We are too familiarwith it. It is like the sunset and the stars: we are not awed by theirloveliness because they are common to our eyes. So it is with that chinadog. In 2288 people will gush over it. The making of such dogs willhave become a lost art. Our descendants will wonder how we did it, andsay how clever we were. We shall be referred to lovingly as "those grandold artists that flourished in the nineteenth century, and produced thosechina dogs."
The "sampler" that the eldest daughter did at school will be spoken of as"tapestry of the Victorian era," and be almost priceless. Theblue-and-white mugs of the present-day roadside inn will be hunted up,all cracked and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold, and richpeople will use them for claret cups; and travellers from Japan will buyup all the "Presents from Ramsgate," and "Souvenirs of Margate," that mayhave escaped destruction, and take them back to Jedo as ancient Englishcurios.
At this point Harris threw away the sculls, got up and left his seat, andsat on his back, and stuck his legs in the air. Montmorency howled, andturned a somersault, and the top hamper jumped up, and all the thingscame out.
I was somewhat surprised, but I did not lose my temper. I said,pleasantly enough:
"Hulloa! what's that for?"
"What's that for? Why--"
No, on second thoughts, I will not repeat what Harris said. I may havebeen to blame, I admit it; but nothing excuses violence of language andcoarseness of expression, especially in a man who has been carefullybrought up, as I know Harris has been. I was thinking of other things,and forgot, as any one might easily understand, that I was steering, andthe consequence was that we had got mixed up a good deal with thetow-path. It was difficult to say, for the moment, which was us andwhich was the Middlesex bank of the river; but we found out after awhile, and separated ourselves.
Harris, however, said he had done enough for a bit, and proposed that Ishould take a turn; so, as we were in, I got out and took the tow-line,and ran the boat on past Hampton Court. What a dear old wall that isthat runs along by the river there! I never pass it without feelingbetter for the sight of it. Such a mellow, bright, sweet old wall; whata charming picture it would make, with the lichen creeping here, and themoss growing there, a shy young vine peeping over the top at this spot,to see what is going on upon the busy river, and the sober old ivyclustering a little farther down! There are fifty shades and tints andhues in every ten yards of that old wall. If I could only draw, and knewhow to paint, I could make a lovely sketch of that old wall, I'm sure.I've often thought I should like to live at Hampton Court. It looks sopeaceful and so quiet, and it is such a dear old place to ramble round inthe early morning before many people are about.
But, there, I don't suppose I should really care for it when it came toactual practice. It would be so ghastly dull and depressing in theevening, when your lamp cast uncanny shadows on the panelled walls, andthe echo of distant feet rang through the cold stone corridors, and nowdrew nearer, and now died away, and all was death-like silence, save thebeating of one's own heart.
We are creatures of the sun, we men and women. We love light and life.That is why we crowd into the towns and cities, and the country growsmore and more deserted every year. In the sunlight--in the daytime, whenNature is alive and busy all around us, we like the open hill-sides andthe deep woods well enough: but in the night, when our Mother Earth hasgone to sleep, and left us waking, oh! the world seems so lonesome, andwe get frightened, like children in a silent house. Then we sit and sob,and long for the gas-lit streets, and the sound of human voices, and theanswering throb of human life. We feel so helpless and so little in thegreat stillness, when the dark trees rustle in the night-wind. There areso many ghosts about, and their silent sighs make us feel so sad. Let usgather together in the great cities, and light huge bonfires of a milliongas-jets, and shout and sing together, and feel brave.
[Picture: People at Hampton Maze] Harris asked me if I'd ever been in themaze at Hampton Court. He said he went in once to show somebody else theway. He had studied it up in a map, and it was so simple that it seemedfoolish--hardly worth the twopence charged for admission. Harris said hethought that map must have been got up as a practical joke, because itwasn't a bit like the real thing, and only misleading. It was a countrycousin that Harris took in. He said:
"We'll just go in here, so that you can say you've been, but it's verysimple. It's absurd to call it a maze. You keep on taking the firstturning to the right. We'll just walk round for ten minutes, and then goand get some lunch."
They met some people soon after they had got inside, who said they hadbeen there for three-quarters of an hour, and had had about enough of it.Harris told them they could follow him, if t
hey liked; he was just goingin, and then should turn round and come out again. They said it was verykind of him, and fell behind, and followed.
They picked up various other people who wanted to get it over, as theywent along, until they had absorbed all the persons in the maze. Peoplewho had given up all hopes of ever getting either in or out, or of everseeing their home and friends again, plucked up courage at the sight ofHarris and his party, and joined the procession, blessing him. Harrissaid he should judge there must have been twenty people, following him,in all; and one woman with a baby, who had been there all the morning,insisted on taking his arm, for fear of losing him.
Harris kept on turning to the right, but it seemed a long way, and hiscousin said he supposed it was a very big maze.
"Oh, one of the largest in Europe," said Harris.
"Yes, it must be," replied the cousin, "because we've walked a good twomiles already."
Harris began to think it rather strange himself, but he held on until, atlast, they passed the half of a penny bun on the ground that Harris'scousin swore he had noticed there seven minutes ago. Harris said: "Oh,impossible!" but the woman with the baby said, "Not at all," as sheherself had taken it from the child, and thrown it down there, justbefore she met Harris. She also added that she wished she never had metHarris, and expressed an opinion that he was an impostor. That madeHarris mad, and he produced his map, and explained his theory.
"The map may be all right enough," said one of the party, "if you knowwhereabouts in it we are now."
Harris didn't know, and suggested that the best thing to do would be togo back to the entrance, and begin again. For the beginning again partof it there was not much enthusiasm; but with regard to the advisabilityof going back to the entrance there was complete unanimity, and so theyturned, and trailed after Harris again, in the opposite direction. Aboutten minutes more passed, and then they found themselves in the centre.
Harris thought at first of pretending that that was what he had beenaiming at; but the crowd looked dangerous, and he decided to treat it asan accident.
Anyhow, they had got something to start from then. They did know wherethey were, and the map was once more consulted, and the thing seemedsimpler than ever, and off they started for the third time.
And three minutes later they were back in the centre again.
After that, they simply couldn't get anywhere else. Whatever way theyturned brought them back to the middle. It became so regular at length,that some of the people stopped there, and waited for the others to takea walk round, and come back to them. Harris drew out his map again,after a while, but the sight of it only infuriated the mob, and they toldhim to go and curl his hair with it. Harris said that he couldn't helpfeeling that, to a certain extent, he had become unpopular.
They all got crazy at last, and sang out for the keeper, and the man cameand climbed up the ladder outside, and shouted out directions to them.But all their heads were, by this time, in such a confused whirl thatthey were incapable of grasping anything, and so the man told them tostop where they were, and he would come to them. They huddled together,and waited; and he climbed down, and came in.
He was a young keeper, as luck would have it, and new to the business;and when he got in, he couldn't find them, and he wandered about, tryingto get to them, and then _he_ got lost. They caught sight of him, everynow and then, rushing about the other side of the hedge, and he would seethem, and rush to get to them, and they would wait there for about fiveminutes, and then he would reappear again in exactly the same spot, andask them where they had been.
They had to wait till one of the old keepers came back from his dinnerbefore they got out.
Harris said he thought it was a very fine maze, so far as he was a judge;and we agreed that we would try to get George to go into it, on our wayback.