Three men in a boat (to say nothing of the dog)
of the crowd) held that it was a wedding, and pointed out Harris as
the bridegroom; while the elder and more thoughtful among the populace
inclined to the idea that it was a funeral, and that I was probably the
corpse’s brother.
At last, an empty cab turned up (it is a street where, as a rule,
and when they are not wanted, empty cabs pass at the rate of three a
minute, and hang about, and get in your way), and packing ourselves
and our belongings into it, and shooting out a couple of Montmorency’s
friends, who had evidently sworn never to forsake him, we drove away
amidst the cheers of the crowd, Biggs’s boy shying a carrot after us
for luck.
We got to Waterloo at eleven, and asked where the eleven-five started
from. Of course nobody knew; nobody at Waterloo ever does know where a
train is going to start from, or where a train when it does start is
going to, or anything about it. The porter who took our things thought
it would go from number two platform, while another porter, with whom
he discussed the question, had heard a rumour that it would go from
number one. The station-master, on the other hand, was convinced it
would start from the local.
To put an end to the matter, we went upstairs, and asked the traffic
superintendent, and he told us that he had just met a man, who said he
had seen it at number three platform. We went to number three platform,
but the authorities there said that they rather thought that train was
the Southampton express, or else the Windsor loop. But they were sure
it wasn’t the Kingston train, though why they were sure it wasn’t they
couldn’t say.
Then our porter said he thought that must be it on the high-level
platform; said he thought he knew the train. So we went to the
high-level platform, and saw the engine-driver, and asked him if he
was going to Kingston. He said he couldn’t say for certain of course,
but that he rather thought he was. Anyhow, if he wasn’t the 11.5 for
Kingston, he said he was pretty confident he was the 9.32 for Virginia
Water, or the 10 a.m. express for the Isle of Wight, or somewhere in
that direction, and we should all know when we got there. We slipped
half-a-crown into his hand, and begged him to be the 11.5 for Kingston.
“Nobody will ever know, on this line,” we said, “what you are, or
where you’re going. You know the way, you slip off quietly and go to
Kingston.”
“Well, I don’t know, gents,” replied the noble fellow, “but I suppose
_some_ train’s got to go to Kingston; and I’ll do it. Gimme the
half-crown.”
Thus we got to Kingston by the London and South-Western Railway.
We learnt, afterwards, that the train we had come by was really the
Exeter mail, and that they had spent hours at Waterloo, looking for it,
and nobody knew what had become of it.
Our boat was waiting for us at Kingston just below bridge, and to it
we wended our way, and round it we stored our luggage, and into it we
stepped.
“Are you all right, sir?” said the man.
“Right it is,” we answered; and with Harris at the sculls and I at the
tiller-lines, and Montmorency, unhappy and deeply suspicious, in the
prow, out we shot on to the waters which, for a fortnight, were to be
our home.
CHAPTER VI.
Kingston.—Instructive remarks on early English history.—Instructive
observations on carved oak and life in general.—Sad case of Stivvings,
junior.—Musings on antiquity.—I forget that I am steering.—Interesting
result.—Hampton Court Maze.—Harris as a guide.
It was a glorious morning, late spring or early summer, as you care
to take it, when the dainty sheen of grass and leaf is blushing to a
deeper green; 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’s edge, looked quite picturesque in the flashing sunlight, the
glinting river with its drifting barges, the wooded towpath, the
trim-kept villas on the other side, Harris, in a red and orange blazer,
grunting away at the 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 so peaceful, that, early in the day though it
was, I felt myself being dreamily lulled off into a musing fit.
I mused on Kingston, or “Kyningestun,” as it was once called in the
days when Saxon “kinges” were crowned there. Great Cæsar crossed the
river there, and the Roman legions camped upon its sloping uplands.
Cæsar, like, in later years, Elizabeth, seems to have stopped
everywhere: only he was more respectable than good Queen Bess; he
didn’t put up at the public-houses.
She was nuts on public-houses, was England’s Virgin Queen. There’s
scarcely a pub. of any attractions within ten miles of London that she
does not seem to have looked in at, or stopped at, or slept at, some
time or 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 Scotch cold here in the summer of ’88;” “Harris was chucked from
here in December, 1886.”
No, there would be too many of them! It would be the houses that he had
never entered that would become famous. “Only house in South London
that Harris never had a drink in!” The people would flock to it to see
what could have been the matter with it.
How poor weak-minded King Edwy must have hated Kyningestun! The
coronation feast had been too much for him. Maybe boar’s head stuffed
with 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 noisy
revel to steal a quiet moonlight hour with his beloved Elgiva.
Perhaps, from the casement, standing hand-in-hand, they were watching
the calm moonlight on the river, while from the distant halls the
boisterous revelry 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 back to the loud clamour of the drunken brawl.
Years later, to the crash of battle-music, Saxon kings and Saxon
revelry were buried side by side, and Kingston’s greatness passed away
for a time, to rise once more when Hampton Court became the palace of
the Tudors and the Stuarts, and the royal barges strained at their
moorings on the river’s bank, and bright-cloaked gallants swaggered
down the water-steps to cry: “What Ferry, ho! Gadzooks, gramercy.”
Many of the old houses, round about, speak very plainly of those days
when 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 day with clanking steel and prancing palfreys, and rustling
silks and velvets, and fair faces. The large and spacious houses, with
their oriel, 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 how to build.” The hard red bricks have only grown more firmly
set with time, and their oak stairs do not creak and grunt when you try
to go down them quietly.
Speaking of oak staircases reminds me that there is a magnificent
carved oak staircase in one of the houses in Kingston. It is a shop
now, in the market-place, but it was evidently once the mansion of some
great personage. A friend of mine, who lives at Kingston, went in there
to buy a hat one day, and, in a thoughtless moment, put his hand in his
pocket and paid for it then and there.
The shopman (he knows my friend) was naturally a little staggered at
first; but, quickly recovering himself, and feeling that something
ought to be done to encourage this sort of thing, asked our hero if
he would like to see some fine old carved oak. My friend said he
would, and the shopman, thereupon, took him through the shop, and
up the staircase of the house. The balusters were a superb piece of
workmanship, and the wall all the way up was oak-panelled, with carving
that would have done credit 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
of a blue ground. There was nothing, however, remarkable about the
apartment, and my friend wondered why he had been brought there. The
proprietor went up to the paper, and tapped it. It gave forth a wooden
sound.
“Oak,” he explained. “All carved oak, right up to the ceiling, just the
same as you saw on the staircase.”
“But, great Cæsar! man,” expostulated my friend; “you don’t mean to say
you have covered over carved oak with blue wall-paper?”
“Yes,” was the reply: “it was expensive work. Had to match-board it all
over first, of course. But the room looks cheerful now. It was awful
gloomy before.”
I can’t say I altogether blame the man (which is doubtless a great
relief to his mind). From his point of view, which would be that of the
average householder, desiring to take life as lightly as possible, and
not that of the old-curiosity-shop maniac, there is reason on his side.
Carved oak is very pleasant to look at, and to have a little of, but it
is no doubt somewhat depressing to live in, for those whose fancy does
not lie that 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 care for it have to pay enormous prices to get it. It seems to be
the rule of this world. Each person has what he doesn’t want, and other
people have what he does want.
Married men have wives, and don’t seem to want them; and young single
fellows cry out that they can’t get them. Poor people who can hardly
keep themselves have eight hearty children. Rich old couples, with no
one to leave their money to, die childless.
Then there are girls with lovers. The girls that have lovers never want
them. 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 are plain and elderly, and haven’t got any lovers? They themselves
don’t want 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 ever
came across. I believe he really liked study. He used to get into
awful rows for sitting up in bed and reading Greek; and as for French
irregular verbs there was simply no keeping him away from them. He was
full of weird and unnatural notions about being a credit to his parents
and an honour to the school; and he yearned to win prizes, and grow up
and be a clever man, and had all those sorts of weak-minded ideas. I
never knew such 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
go to school. There never was such a boy to get ill as that Sandford
and Merton. If there was any known disease going within ten miles of
him, he had it, and had it badly. He would take bronchitis in the
dog-days, and have hay-fever at Christmas. After a six weeks’ period of
drought, he would be stricken down with rheumatic fever; and he would
go out in a November fog and come home with a sunstroke.
They put him under laughing-gas one year, poor lad, and drew all his
teeth, and gave him a false set, because he suffered so terribly with
toothache; and then it turned to neuralgia and ear-ache. He was never