RECOLLECTIONS

LIST OF WORKS
BY
FRANK T. BULLEN

• THE CRUISE OF THE “CACHALOT”
• IDYLLS OF THE SEA
• THE LOG OF A SEA WAIF
• WITH CHRIST AT SEA
• THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE
• A SACK OF SHAKINGS
• A WHALEMAN’S WIFE
• DEEP-SEA PLUNDERINGS
• THE APOSTLES OF THE SOUTH-EAST
• SEA WRACK
• SEA PURITANS
• SEA SPRAY
• CREATURES OF THE SEA
• BACK TO SUNNY SEAS
• A SON OF THE SEA
• ADVANCE AUSTRALASIA
• FRANK BROWN, SEA APPRENTICE
• A BOUNTY BOY
• THE CALL OF THE DEEP
• THE PIRATE HUNTERS
• TOLD IN THE DOG WATCHES
• THE BITTER SOUTH
• BEYOND
• CUT OFF FROM THE WORLD
• THE SEED OF THE RIGHTEOUS
• FIGHTING THE ICEBERGS
• A COMPLEAT SEA COOK
• FROM WHEEL AND LOOK-OUT
• THE SALVAGE OF A SAILOR
• THE CONFESSIONS OF A TRADESMAN
  &c. &c.

RECOLLECTIONS

THE REMINISCENCES OF THE BUSY LIFE OF ONE WHO HAS PLAYED THE VARIED PARTS OF SAILOR, AUTHOR & LECTURER

BY

FRANK T. BULLEN

AUTHOR OF “THE CRUISE OF THE ‘CACHALOT,’” &c.

WITH PORTRAIT

LONDON
SEELEY, SERVICE & CO. LIMITED
38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET
1915

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

It may very well be that I am doing something now which is totally unnecessary, indeed that is a foregone conclusion as far as many omnivorous readers are concerned, for they never by any chance read a Preface or an Introduction. But only the other day I was reading an interesting volume of reminiscences, and the writer said that after the publisher had received the manuscript he wrote sternly demanding the reason why there was no Introduction. More, he said that one must be written forthwith, and it was so.

Now I cannot honestly say that I, like that writer whom I have quoted, am a novice at book writing, or have much to learn concerning the ways of publishers, since this book will make about the thirty-sixth that has been perpetrated by me during the last seventeen years. Too many, far too many, I know (this to forestall the obvious remark), but what I want to say is that in no case have I ever been asked for an Introduction, or questioned why I had written one. Follows inevitably the remark, “Why this one, then? Can’t you let your book tell its own tale?”

And yet I feel very strongly that an Introduction to this book is needed, if ever a book needed such a thing. For I really believe that it may be my last; I dare not be more definite than that, though I would dearly love to emulate those giants of literature who can calmly announce that they have written their last page for publication, that for good or ill their message has been delivered and they will say no more. Ah no, fate has not dealt kindly enough with me for that, and because the snarl of the proverbial wolf is never out of my ears and the spoor of his stealthy footfall is but too clearly traceable near my door, I must still be ready to take up my pen. This Introduction may serve as my valedictory, if, as it is most reasonable to expect, this book happens to be my last.

And now for the Introduction. For a good many years I have been telling the stories that I have gathered here. It may very well be, of course, that, as Kipling says, all that seemed so definite and amusing in the spoken word has escaped when committed to paper. But I hope not, because I have often been asked why I did not write my reminiscences of the lecture platform, and I have always made some excuse, so that now when I have done it at last, it would be a great pity for it to be a failure.

Of course, the thing has been done before; it would be strange if it hadn’t; but I have not had the pleasure of reading even the very entertaining book written on the subject by the late Paul Blouet (Max O’Rell), a veritable prince of humorists. I am inclined to think that in one sense at any rate this is an advantage in that I cannot consciously or unconsciously have copied any of their sayings, or told of any of their doings, however interesting or funny. For the same reason there cannot be any “chestnuts” in this book. Everything told in it, except where the contrary has been expressly stated, is an experience of my own. I am rather pleased about this, for I have recently been more than a little disgusted to find how many oft-told stories have been repeated in costly books of memoirs, the names of whose writers should have been guarantee enough that they had sufficient good stories of their own to tell without drawing upon antiquities.

I hope I shall be given due credit for the fact that many really good stories (as I think) have been omitted by me simply because the point of them demanded that the actors should be known, and I would not give those good people pain. Other stories I have had to leave out because I was not looking for trouble and because I was somewhat doubtful of the far-reaching operations of the law of libel. And that, I think, is all I can say by way of Introduction to my book.

FRANK T. BULLEN.

Bournemouth,
Dec. 17, 1914.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Since these pages were printed Mr. Bullen has passed away. He had been in a precarious state of health for some years, and he himself was well aware that the end might come at any time.

He died at Madeira on February 26th, 1915, in his fifty-seventh year.

March 4, 1915.

CHAPTER I
MY EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS

A few years ago I was in the breakfast-room of the beautiful Hotel Frontenac at Quebec awaiting my meal at a sunny table, when I caught sight of the head waiter. He was so strikingly like the comedian W. H. Berry, to whom I can never be sufficiently grateful for his mirth-compelling performances, that I sent a waiter to request his attendance. He came on the instant, and I immediately asked him if he were any relation to Mr. Berry, although as I could not then recall that gentleman’s name, it took me some time to explain whom I meant. Smilingly the head waiter disclaimed the relationship, saying:

“There was never an actor in our family that I know of. I come from a suburb of London called Paddington.” (“So do I,” I interjected.) “I was born in a little turning off Jonson Place, Harrow Road, called Alfred Road.” (“So was I,” I interrupted again.) “At number —.” “Ah,” I said, “my number was next door.”

Why this chronicling of the smallest of small beer? Because I have never seen anybody more delighted than that bright and able man at meeting some one who was born in the same street as himself. We have no choice in the matter, but I doubt very much whether any tie draws men tighter when they meet abroad than that their place of birth was near each other—even in the same town is often enough to set up a friendship almost masonic in its intensity. Wherefore I recall the fact that I first saw the light in that poor street off Jonson Place, but have no recollection of its amenities. For before even I, precocious as I undoubtedly was, grew old enough to know intelligently, or say at eighteen months old, my father and mother quarrelled, the weaker vessel was thrown out, and myself, as well as an elder sister of whom I know nothing except that she did exist, were consigned to the care of a maiden aunt by my father, with a promise, never redeemed, to pay something towards the expense of keeping us.

That shadowy sister very wisely took the earliest opportunity of becoming a shade, so I remember nothing of her but what I have been told. I may say here that I have often, in the terrible years since, had occasion to wish that I too might then have saved myself all further trouble; but alas! a tenaciousness of purpose and a stock of vitality which has not yet all gone have so far hindered me that, although I am physically a very wreck and was twelve years ago given at the outside three years to live, I am still topside. Well, as a cynical American friend once told me, “That’s only one more mistake you’ve made, I guess.” I cannot contradict him.

Thus it came about that my earliest recollections centre on a quaint little house, No. 15 Desboro’ Terrace, now called Marlborough Street. By careful comparison and enquiry I have no doubt that I do remember as far back as 1859-60, when I would be 2½ years old. At the end of Desboro’ Terrace, remote from the Harrow Road, ran the main line of the Great Western Railway, and turning sharply to the right when you had reached the blank wall that closed the terrace, you came into a row of little houses called Desboro’ Place which fronted the line and were only divided therefrom by a narrow roadway and a line of tall rails. My aunt kept a maid—not, God knows, because she had any pride of that sort, but because she was a dressmaker and could not do the housework and attend to her business too, and also, I am ashamed to say, because she usually had some of her brothers sponging upon her. How well I remember once saying to her:

“Auntie, you used to have quite a lot of people to dinner. I can remember Grandfather, Uncle John, Uncle George, Uncle Tom, Uncle Ted, and Aunt Kitty.”

“Ah,” she replied, “yes, but you never knew that my poor fingers were working for them all, except Aunt Kitty—she always worked hard enough for her keep.”

So I said no more. And now I must return to one of my earliest recollections. The maid, her work done, was permitted to take me out, and she used to take me down Desboro’ Place and stand me on the coping clutching the rails and looking down at the puff-puffs. There I saw the wonderful engines of that day, the “Charles Dickens,” the “Robin Hood,” and once the Queen’s special engine, the stately “Lord of the Isles,” with the big gilt crown on the front. I knew the names of many engines and never wanted to go and see the shops, the puff-puffs supplied all my needs, until one day, in an evil moment for her, she took me over the little wooden foot-bridge that still spans the line there. And a passing engine sent a cloud of steam up through the crevices of the planks of the bridge floor, passing up my little bare legs even unto my waist under my frock. The sensation was a novel one, and thenceforward I clamoured to be led thither. I did not know nor did I care if she, my guardian, approved of it. I have since felt that I might have been exacting, but peace be unto her whoever she was, she never made complaint that I heard of.

Up till last year I often made journeys from Paddington, but never without glancing up at the railings as we passed Desboro’ Place (if that is what it is called now) and at once recalling those dim days. They seem to belong to another life, but they had a quiet charm all their own, entirely due to the good influence of my poor aunt, who, amidst all her worries, always kept a cosy corner for me. My education was her chief care, and happily for me we lived next door to a dame-school kept by three maiden ladies. Of my experiences there I have told at length elsewhere, so I will only say here that my principal recollection of next door is of the ladies’ father, a nasty old man whose chief delight seemed to be to get me on his knee in the summer-house and puff strong tobacco smoke in my face. It was of no use struggling or screaming, though I did both, he seemed to have no mercy. I was taught by those gentle ladies that it was a deadly sin to hate anybody, but I came as near hating that old man as made very little odds.

Another curious fact emerges about this time when I would be between four and five years old. I could read—indeed I do not know when I learned, so easy did reading always seem—and from the kind of books to the reading of which I was confined, I had a large and extensive vocabulary, the use of which at inopportune moments often made some of my uncles very angry and brought down upon my head many sarcastic comments. But having no one to whom I could talk or play, I used to march in stately fashion round the small garden, holding the grand old Tom cat’s tail, as he paced majestically before me, and declaim as if to gaping congregations my addresses upon—ah, I don’t remember what! Of course, the themes were religious, could hardly be otherwise remembering my reading, but I would like to know what I used to say aloud then, and the neighbours’ opinions thereupon. As I never heard the latter I must assume that I did not make much noise, not even when, as it were, smitten by sudden madness, I varied my sermons with yells of Murder! Fire! Thieves! No, it could not have been noisy, because I remember that it never scared old Dick, the faithful cat. He was my constant companion, so by that I know that I can never have been cruel.

Indeed the whole environment was as pure and cloistered as could be imagined. A worse preparation for a rough-and-tumble with the world could hardly be imagined, but my poor auntie did her best, the best she knew for me, and kept me, as far as in her lay, unspotted from the world. Of course there were, there always must be, occasions when the primitive man comes to the surface, and I was no exception to the rule. As, for instance, we once had visitors and I was ousted from my aunt’s bed where I had always slept and put with a Mrs. Rawlins, a large lady whom I had taken a vivid dislike to, for no reason, very early in her visit. To please this person the sheets were taken off and my tender skin was excoriated by the coarse blankets. And she wasn’t a nice person. She took up most of the bed; she snored astoundingly, and—well, it doesn’t matter now—but I did not sleep a wink all night, and at the earliest opportunity besought my auntie not to let me sleep with that old woman any more. I don’t know what was done, but I do know that I was restored to my auntie’s bed the next night and said my prayers twice through in sheer gratitude for the relief.

There was a wedding at our house; my Aunt Kitty was married and my prospective uncle endeavoured to ingratiate himself with me. To no purpose. I didn’t like him, and I wouldn’t be cajoled by him. I was not a bit surprised to find in later years that all my childish aversions were justified. But of that great upheaval one fact stands saliently forward: I had a new muslin Garibaldi with bishops’ sleeves and round pearl buttons, a bright plaid skirt, strap shoes and white socks. I was then nearly six years old, but nobody so much as dreamed of a masculine dress for me, and certainly I thought nothing of the matter. But shortly after the wedding at Holy Trinity Church, Paddington, the child of one of my uncles needed baptism, and my wedding garments being fresh, it was deemed a good opportunity for me to be baptised too. Some doubt existed as to whether I had ever been baptised at all, but my poor mother was a Catholic, and I have since learned that, however low she may have sunk, the priest would have insisted upon her child being baptised in the Faith.

Auntie did not know that; she belonged, as she put it, to the “Angelical” Church of England, and so I was baptised at Holy Trinity Church with my infant cousin, and very well do I remember the whole scene. The great empty echoing church and the little group of godfathers and godmothers, the nervous young curate whose cool hand shook so as he placed it on my head and made the sign on my forehead, the clumsy, blundering way in which everybody seemed to behave, except the baby who squalled lustily in the curate’s arms and made him go crimson—ah yes—it is all so vividly present to me now. As is also the astounding thought in my small brain that I could do the whole thing so much better than any of them, conscious, mind you, that I was the most self-possessed person in the little crowd. And that night, when as usual I mounted to the top of the house and went to bed alone, for auntie did not come till one a.m. sometimes, I felt singularly defiant as I knelt to say my prayers. The hole in the palliasses made by their being turned end for end, as sailors say, and the corners cut out for the bedposts coming together, quite lost their power to frighten me by the possibility of some evil thing coming out and doing me some mysterious harm; nor did I any longer fear old Joe, Miss Moore’s great macaw, with which she used to threaten us when we were naughty, though he had hitherto always seemed to be lurking under the bed every night.

No; like the ’Badian and Jamaican nigger who considers that going to church on the occasion of his marriage (though there is often a long family by that time) gives him a clean bill of spiritual health for all past and future soul-sicknesses, I had some dim idea that from henceforth I was immune from the terror that walketh by night. I did not put it that way, of course, but that certainly was the immediate effect of my baptism. But it was a clean little soul, after all. Lack of opportunity had prevented sin, and I did not even know the joy of an occasional theft of jam or sugar. Then came an episode which I am sure most people will find difficult of belief, and no one more so than myself, for a reason presently to be given.

One of my uncles was a gentleman’s groom, and through lying in a damp bed he had contracted some disease of the throat which made him an invalid for five long years. All that time he lived with auntie, but I believe his sweetheart, who was lady’s maid at the big house where he had been employed, remained faithful to him and paid auntie for his keep. He attended Dr. Sieveking at St. Mary’s Hospital, and always took me with him on the days when he went. My recollections of those days are all grey. He never joked, never even talked to me, and as for giving me a penn’orth of sweets—I doubt if the idea ever occurred to him. At last he died, and I, who did not know anything about death, of course was banished from all the discussions which took place. Of course, being a secretive and very quiet child, I asked no questions; but I bided my time. It came. He was laid in his coffin in the next room to ours—the bedroom which auntie and I occupied.

They sent me up to bed as usual and I went through all the usual formulæ of retiring. And then I got up, crept out upon the landing, listened intently, and, hearing nothing, fled into the death room. There lay the coffin on its trestles covered with a sheet. The moon shone through the white blinds as if they had not been there. I drew the sheet back and looked upon that face. I do not believe I should have been terrified at all, but a handkerchief was tied under his jaw and over his head and it gave him an appearance that I cannot describe. And one of his eyes was half open. I drew the sheet rapidly back, I slid to the door, passed through it, closed it behind me, listened again—no sound—crept into bed and covered my head with the bedclothes. I lay for over an hour with thumping heart and panting breath, but I slept at last. And I have never been able to look upon the dead without terrible sensations since—indeed, I have not seen a dead face since I lost my youngest boy fifteen years ago.

But I notice that I am lingering too long over those earliest days. Yet I must just pause a moment over the change from my much-loved and comfortable petticoats to trousers. My poor old grandfather had died and been buried by my auntie, and from a pair of his best trousers she made me my initial pair. Poor lady, she knew rather less than most people of the make of masculine garments, but she did her best, and presently, in the midst of a little group of giggling work-girls I was endued with the tubes. That’s what they were, just tubes, and my little legs felt as forlorn and distant in them as if they had no connection with me. I draw a veil over other details as not being seemly, but as I forlornly surveyed myself standing there, with those tubes nearly reaching to my shoulders, the giggling of the girls burst into unquenchable laughter and I nearly died with shame. No child likes to be an object of laughter, but that I certainly was then, and all my aunt’s well-meant efforts to stay the yells of laughter were fruitless.

They were taken off me then, but I wore them; oh yes, I wore them, and what I endured from the street urchins who saw me in them I can never tell—the trouble was too great. But as all those troubles were soon to be merged in a much greater trouble, I must pass them over and get on. Once and once only I had seen my mother. A heap of old clothing like a pile of autumn leaves was shown me, and I was told that that was my mother who had come to see me but had been taken ill. I was frightened, and ran to hide myself. And I never saw her again. It was not long after this that my poor auntie died, and I having no one, for my father being a British workman with a strong desire to back horses and play billiards, could not be expected to want me, I was flung upon the streets.

I have told the story of that time fairly fully in different books, but I may perhaps just pause here to point out that the position was not common. For I had been brought up in a sheltered home without even the faintest knowledge of evil, brought up more like a tender little girl than a boy, and then suddenly, at the age of nine, I was flung into a veritable maelstrom of vice. I don’t comment upon this; I just state the fact that this happened in 1866, when I was barely nine years old.

CHAPTER II
RANDOM MEMORIES

So very minutely have I detailed in four different books the various happenings in my life that I am confined to two periods for recollections, but those two embrace what to me at any rate were full of interest. The first of these was my officer time at sea, and the second the period since my emancipation from the desk until now. It is true that I have touched upon events in the first period in With Christ at Sea, but very lightly, and there are many reminiscences unconnected with that book which rush to the mind now.

For instance, there is a little matter connected with my visit to Noumea, New Caledonia, when I was mate of a colonial barque, that for some queer reason has been persistent in my memory lately. I’m sure I wonder that I haven’t used it before, for it has all the elements of a good story in it. It must be remembered that Noumea is a French convict settlement, and while I say nothing about the treatment of the convicts, I need not labour the point that any attempt to escape means the shortest possible shrift to the escapee if caught in the act. Now at the time of which I write there were five warships in the harbour, a few schooners, my own barque and a French convict ship. I had been ashore and found on coming down to the beach that I had, as we say, “lost my passage,” i.e. my boat had gone without me.

Now I had a great dread of staying ashore at night in a foreign port (oh, yes, I know that proves me to have been any opprobrious sort of thing you like, but we’ll take that as read), and so it never even occurred to me to go back to the hotel—at least that’s what they called it. Nor did I dare to shout, for though the night was still we were a long way out, and I was afraid of bringing the gendarmes down upon me. But in the clear darkness I saw about a dozen boats moored some hundred feet or so off the beach, and without thinking I waded in and swam off to the nearest one. She was fastened at the bows by a chain passing through a ring in the stern inside, and I started to unreeve that chain. How many fathoms of it I hauled up I can’t imagine, or why the rattle of it didn’t rouse all Noumea; but I came to the end at last, and it wouldn’t pass the ring.

Obviously I had hauled in the wrong end and the whole dreary, noisy process had to be reversed; but after hours of labour I got that big boat adrift, and aroused nobody. She was down by the head with the weight of chain, and there was much water in her, but the chief fact evident to me when I got fairly adrift was that there were no oars! I hadn’t thought of that before. So I got a bottom board and did the best I could with that in the direction I supposed my ship to lie. Presently a shadowy hulk loomed up ahead and a hoarse Qui va là? greeted me. Need I say that I did not reply. But I sweated hugely, expecting every moment to be shot. Three ships I passed, the sentry hailing me like that, and never an answer from me. And then, with the nyctalopic eyesight of the sailor, I saw my ship ahead. I forgot the feeble tides of the South Seas, and worked like a beaver to gain the gangway. I did, and (I have grieved over the act ever since, but what was I to do?) sent the boat adrift as I triumphantly climbed the side ladder and sought my bunk. I have only to add that no echo of that night’s exploit ever reached me, and I had to come to the conclusion that the occasional escapes of convicts was comparatively easy when the escapees were prepared to risk their lives in the operation.

Another adventure which was good to laugh at afterwards but very unpleasant at the time befell me on the beach at Tamatave, Madagascar. I was mate of a pretty little brig and went ashore one night to fetch the captain, who was dining with somebody. It was a glorious night with a full moon, but very late, and I do not know what prompted me to go with the two good fellows who rowed. We were soon ashore and, the time hanging heavily, we all decided on a bathe. A most enjoyable swim and wallow in the tepid water followed, and we emerged to dress in our two garments which lay on the beach near by. But as we came ashore a troop of huge ferocious dogs such as then infested Tamatave suddenly rushed at us, and we made for the first place of refuge that presented itself, a huge pyramid of beef bones which lay near the sea, white under the moon-rays. We fled up that pyramid, shedding blood and bad words at every stumbling stride, but we gained the summit without a dog bite, and from that eminence turned on our foes and bombarded them with bones.

It was very cold to our naked bodies, and the dogs looked horribly fierce down there, but every now and then we rejoiced to hear a well-aimed shin bone go bang against some mangy hide, and the following yells were music to our ears. Our shying redoubled, and after a few minutes we were able to descend from our captivity and chase the brutes away. We had suffered many things to our bare feet and legs from the jagged bones, but we took those bones on board for cargo, and I often shuddered afterwards to think what our feelings would have been had we then known that every hollow contained a centipede, a scorpion, or a tarantula. Ugh! they furnished our ship for us, those beastly bones, with these lethal vermin, and we had spent nearly a quarter of an hour among that magazine of venom, naked.

Since, while I was mate of that vessel, the fever smote down every member of the ship’s company except the bos’un and myself, and we carried on the work of the ship in Zanzibar with slaves, there would reasonably seem to be many opportunities for adventure. And that was certainly the case; but the whole life was so strange and exotic, so full of differences from the ordered life of our civilisation, that I feel it impossible to select from it any salient incidents. Especially as these are recollections, not inventions, and I don’t recall any scenes of bloodshed on board. Only I once had the temerity to go ashore on a Sunday at Zanzibar, when a wild mêlée was raging and crowds of naked blacks were yelling at the pitch of their voices while slashing furiously about them with their long butcher knives whose edges were keen as razors.

I afterwards commented upon what I had seen to Ali, our Suahili cook, who immediately waxed enthusiastic upon the joys of the English Sunday, when, as he put it:—

“All mans plenty get dlunk, plenty fight, plenty play knife.” Yes, he called it play: with a smile like a huge white gash across his ebony face, he showed me his scars; my conscience, the fellow must have been cut to ribbons in his time. One particularly ghastly scar he had on his right thigh. It was a whitish knotted lump almost as big as a shut fist. I enquired about it, and he nonchalantly informed me that it was got one Sunday morning when the boys were playing.

“And what did you do to the man who gave it you?”

“Oh, I cut ’im belly orf,” with the most careless air.

“What happened to you then?” I enquired.

“Two year prison; s’pose kill man, Sultan make work in gaol two year.”

That was all, but it will be no matter for surprise that I sequestrated the knives of both Sa’adi and Ali, our cook and steward, as well as a particularly fine dagger belonging to the former. But one of those Sunday morning “plays” must be seen to be believed possible.

And now I must make a long “fleet,” as we call it, to a time more understandable by my readers, a time when I began to realise that money might be earned by writing, not, that is, in the service of the Government, but for myself. It was a wonderful discovery, for I made it at a time when I sorely needed a little extra money. Not that I might belong to two or three West End clubs, rent an expensive flat, and entertain folks at restaurants where the bills were of fabulous amounts, but for sheer necessities. That this is no figure of speech may be understood from the fact that I wrote my first stories on my shop counter while waiting for customers. Now I’m not going to ape the usual conventional lie and say, “Ah, but they were happy days!” They weren’t. They were very wretched days, full of trouble and apprehension of trouble, even worse. It may be that the full story of that time will never be told, but I have given as much of it to the world as I could in the Confessions of a Tradesman, a book better reviewed than any I have written; a book about which I have received double the number of eulogistic letters evoked by any other of my books, but which has sold, so my publishers tell me, less than 400 copies, and has now gone out of print.

But I look back to that time with gratitude and joy because of the new kind world to which it gave me entrance. Not all at once, that could hardly be expected, but with far less preliminary than might have been expected. And in spite of all that has been said about the poor rewards of literature as a profession, most of which is, I believe, quite true, I make bold to say that I do not believe there is any other profession where the rewards are so immensely greater than the merit in the majority of cases. There are dozens of writers now eating the fat and drinking the sweet, lying soft and riding swift, who as far as any merit in themselves is concerned, are worth exactly 0. They have caught the public ear, that is all. True there are some, thank God, who have attained a grand income by sheer gigantic merit, but they are few and, alas! when they have made a fortune it is the most difficult thing in the world to keep it from the clutch of the dishonest company promoter.

But to return. I am grateful to literature because it did for me what no other form of money-getting could do save Charity, which, always hateful, is usually utterly inadequate to the needs. But most of all, it saved me from the Office. Here I must refrain, because otherwise I could fall a-cursing like a very drab when I remember that place and all that I endured there. I was forty-two years of age; I had four children, and I had not a penny at my back; yet such was my horror of the Office and all its works that as soon as I received an offer from a London newspaper of a year’s engagement at £2 per week with six months’ notice on either side, I joyfully accepted it, and at once resigned the situation I had endured so long. If this be not a measure of my hatred of that place I do not know what is, and yet I am sure that many such employments, though the salary be small, are as pleasant to the workers as any occupation can be in this world. It entirely rests with the superiors (sic).

But this is not anecdote, although it certainly is recollection. Now and from henceforth my two avocations ran concurrently, lecturing and writing, and I suppose I worked very hard. Looking back at those years I am inclined to think so; most people who knew me and what I was doing seemed to think so too; but I, accustomed to the most strenuous physical life and breasting a stormy sea of worry at the same time, felt that it was all play. I think I should have been entirely happy but for the sad fact that I had no home. I was essentially a home-lover, yet I had no home in the true sense of the word. More than that I cannot say, except that one day I awoke to the fact that at last and at great cost I had achieved a home and was about to enjoy life as I had never done before. It is true that I was rapidly nearing my jubilee, and that my health was permanently impaired, but—and oh! what a huge but it is—I had emerged into the sunshine and, though that I could not know, ten years of placid joy lay before me.

I had taken a house in the country about fifty miles from London, an ideal place as I thought, the rent being low, £40 a year, for which I had a good eight-roomed house and nearly two acres of land well laid out as orchard, kitchen garden, flower garden, lawn, and plenty of outbuildings. Oh, it was altogether charming, although I afterwards found that the soil was cold and hungry. But that did not matter to me; I was not farming, and I am not going to say a word in dispraise of the place where I spent ten happy years. I must say, however, that they would not have been so happy but that I gave explicit instructions that none of the village talk was to be told me, nor did I do any visiting whatever. You will say that I must have lived like a hermit. Oh no, I had plenty of visitors from town; I often had to go away myself, so that I did not feel at all isolated, and in any case I could never have endured the venomous, slanderous small talk which is the mental pabulum of most English village folk. Poor people, I can hardly blame them. Talk is their only recreation, and it has been very wisely told us that a “multitude of words wanteth not sin.”

However, before I had more than sampled the beauties of the place, and when I had only tasted, as it were, the joys of the “harvest bugs” of summer which made the place almost unbearable, I received an invitation from the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company to be their guest, bringing with me a secretary if I wished, for their West Indian and Central American trip. At first I demurred, for a sea trip has long lost its charms for me; but the offer was enhanced by the promise of a large sum of money if I would write an account of my trip, so I immediately set about finding a secretary. A young lady who did my typing agreed to come, the facilities being so royal, a four-berth cabin each and another cabin for an office, and we sailed from Southampton on what I must always regard as the pleasantest voyage of my life. It is a very long time since I have had any communication with the Royal Mail, and I am never likely to meet Sir Owen Phillips again, therefore I am the more free to say that in the Company’s treatment of me and my secretary the adjective I have used above is the only adequate one.

We went all over the loyal island of Barbados, up to the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, up to the capital of Costa Rica, where the climate is of heaven and the death rate was then the highest in the world, for reasons that I may not dwell upon; all along the line of the Panama Canal from Colon to Panama and back, from La Guayra to Caracas, President Castro’s stronghold, and to the pearl fisheries of Margharita Porlomar. Yes, you may say, but surely you must have had many adventures during such a trip as that. True, we did; and I have recorded them all in a book now out of print, I believe, called Back to Sunny Seas. The fine flavour of it all is there, but sitting here in the sunny evenings I often think of those halcyon days and smile, a pleasant happy smile, there was so little that called for anything but happiness.

And yet, in pursuance of Pope’s profound maxim that “Man never is, but always to be, blest,” I often yearned for home and wondered, wondered how things were going there. And when at last, after nearly four months’ joy, we sighted Plymouth one morning at dawn, I could only point and use my handkerchief, for the dear land ahead took away from me the power of speech. It was so when I was a child on my first return to England—see The Log of a Sea Waif (passim)—and it has grown with the years. It was so good to get home again. It had been very good to visit those strange exotic countries en prince, very good to give much simple pleasure to another; but I have always felt and always shall feel, I suppose, that the chief, the choicest charm of a holiday is returning. I think that is how it ought to be. It may be necessary to go, but it should be most delightful to return.

And, as should be the case, all had been well during my absence. Nothing untoward had happened. So that I could sit down now to the finishing of the book with a light heart, with the lecturing season still some months ahead. Happy! happiness had only just come to me, and I felt full of it. I had realised before that such fullness of life as was vouchsafed to other men, though they did not seem to appreciate it as I thought they should, was not for me, and upon the principle of the Spanish proverb, “The best thing to do when it is raining, is to let it rain!” I had “let on” to be content. But my word, the true test of contentment, I am sure, is that the contentee won’t change his condition. And I had never been in such a position. Now, however, I felt that all was so well with me that it could never be better. That I was blest above, far, far above my deserts. All that had ever gone before was just drivel compared with the large joy that was now mine.

And thinking of those happy days, coming as they did after so much storm and stress, I still hold the same opinion. I know that many wise folk with their flats in town and their nightly symposia at the club will sneer at me, but let them. I was getting closely on for fifty and I had never known joy; now it lay all about me, and though my income was never very much, I had the priceless reputation in the village of “the gen’l’man as allus pays everybody soon’s they asks him.” My heavenly Father, I would rather that were engraved upon my tomb than that I had commanded troops that conquered half the world.

My friends knew where to come, and they always found open house, they never wore out their welcome. How could they? I had known the want of welcome, they never should. And I know to-day that none of them that are alive will refuse me the meed of being a hospitable fellow, nor did I do my hospitality at any poor tradesman’s expense.

I have said that the soil was a cold and hungry one. Well, so it was, and my old gardener toiled over it in vain very often; but it did produce many things, and especially did it bring forth the two things I liked best in the way of eatables—green peas and new potatoes. Food as a rule is to me an appalling nuisance. I don’t know which is worse, taking it in or the process of assimilation, but I must make an exception in favour of green peas and new potatoes and mint. And these we had at Millfield in such profusion as I have never seen before or since. True, I paid top price for seed, true, I spared nothing in their production, but here in Bournemouth to-day I must needs pay more directly, and never, no never get anything like the satisfaction that I did then. Oh ye fat and greasy citizens, know ye the joy of gathering green peas that ye have watched from the germination? Know ye the delight of shelling them and of passing them into the kitchen (with appropriate comments anent the cooking), and then the supreme joy of digging the spoon down deep in the piled-up dish and ladling them out to your chums with much dish gravy—not hot water? Then you know nothing at all of the joy of the table; and as for the Frenchman and his petits pois and butter, etc., bah! I’ve no patience, he doesn’t know anything about it. I speak an alien tongue to him.

But the garden was a perennial delight. I could not do any gardening, I couldn’t stoop, though of the thinnest, because my constitutional ailment of the lungs wouldn’t let me, but I was death on superintending; also I loved to patrol the garden and the hedges before breakfast in the morning and watch the birds at their work, as well as the little things growing. Oh yes, I have no pretensions to scholarship; I cannot express myself like the late R.L.S., but I did enjoy that most blessed time. And when I come to die I hope I shall remember it just as well, for indeed we should all think gratefully of the happiest time in our lives. If I wanted to fill many pages I could easily do so with happenings down there that have never been noted before—how could they? I dare say the village annals contain them, but they are not published, thank God—none of my friends have written them down—they were too happy to do more than enjoy. And if they ever missed me, and they sometimes did when an article was due, one of them would say, “Oh, he’s gone to write another novel, don’t disturb him. Let’s have another.” And so the happy hours wore on.

But now I come to the point when I must confine myself more strictly to the lecture reminiscences and leave my beloved Millfield for a while. Though I would have you remember that every return was but a renewal of ancient delights.

CHAPTER III
MY FIRST LECTURES

Perhaps this heading is not strictly accurate, and I should go back another dozen years to the time when in response to an irresistible call I first opened my mouth to speak in public. It was a memorable occasion too. I lived in one basement room in Hazlewood Crescent, Kensal New Town—I beg its pardon, Upper Westbourne Park—and sitting one evening by my first baby’s cradle reading, my wife being absent on an errand, a large piece of granite crashed through the window and fell in the cradle. I was full of energy in those days, and although I had no boots on I rushed out and up the area steps into the street in time to see the young miscreant who had flung the stone scampering off. Of course I caught him, I went like the wind, and equally of course I landed one soul-satisfying clout on his head which sent him sprawling across the road and into the kennel opposite.

It was enough, and I returned, panting but quite happy, to forget the incident. The next evening at the corner of the Crescent I made my debut as a member of an open-air band of preachers and was duly called upon to testify. My knees knocked together, my mouth seemed filled with dust, and when I did get a word or two out I did not know my own voice. But I had a kindly tolerant audience, such as I am grateful to say I have ever found, and I was beginning to gain confidence when a grimy urchin, squeezing through the ring of listeners, gave one searching glance at me and yelled to some unseen comrade:

“D’yer, Bill, that’s the bloke wot clouted my ear lars’ night.”

A great burst of laughter went up and I retired, feeling as if sudden annihilation would be a great boon. I wonder now why I was not entirely discouraged, but I only know that from that time forward my appetite for open-air speaking grew until it was a passion with me, and, had I known, became a splendid preparation for the lecture platform. Common gratitude compels me to say here that this practice of speaking in the open air speedily became to me a great and perfect compensation for the sorrows and drawbacks of my daily life. The more so perhaps because I stuck to it in spite of the most effective opposition of all, an opposition which never weakened or failed and embittered the whole of my home life. Yet I never—as far as I know—consciously preached or uttered platitudes in an unctuous voice such as I have often heard and sickened at. I gave my auditors the best I had, the results of extensive and varied reading, common-sense outlook upon life, and a totally unorthodox Christianity. I had a good though untrained singing voice and an excellent memory, so I sang to my audiences, never using a book; I recited chapters of Scripture without the Bible, and had the untellable gratification of seeing masses of men and women, often running into the thousands, swayed by my voice as the wind affects the corn.

Is there any pleasure akin to this? I think not. At any rate, though the above lines may seem somewhat vainglorious, I know that they tell no more than the truth. Had I any doubts about that, the remembrance of the hatred with which I was regarded by many old members of the various open-air bands where I was invited to speak while they stood aside, would reassure me. But I have no doubts. I knew that I was in my proper element and my hearers knew it also.

This brings me naturally to my first lecture. I was associated with a very humble little gathering of Christians at Peckham, a part of whose activities was the providing of free teas periodically during the winter. And it came about that winter befell and there was no money wherewith to purchase any materials for these feeble banquets.

None of the members could help, for we were all living on the edge, and we began to say to ourselves that this year the children must go without. But a new convert was added unto us, filled with the big desire of doing something, and he was mightily distressed at the thought of such a backward stride as we were contemplating. So one evening during a prolonged discussion of ways and means at our little mission hall the thought suddenly occurred to me that if I could get some slides made and we could hire a hall—our own little place not being suitable, I might give a lecture on my experiences in the South Sea Whale Fishery, which ought to bring in something for the Tea Fund. Our new brother seized the notion at once and offered to advance £5 from his savings for the expenses. It was there and then decided to take the Peckham Public Hall for the occasion and when the affair was over, whatever the result, the slides were to be mine to use as I thought fit afterwards.

Everybody worked with a will, and I remember that somebody wrote to Sir John Blundell Maple, because they said as member for the division he was good for a guinea, and he was. I must not forget either that the proprietor of the hall let it to us at half-price and that a lantern enthusiast, Mr. R. Sprules, operated free. Well, the great night came and the hall was crowded. Unhappily here the only hitch occurred at the outset. A highly respected local minister was asked to take the chair, and he, spying a prominent member of his congregation in the audience, said after a few preliminaries:

“Our brother Jones will now lead us in prayer!”

Remember it was a Public Lecture, composed of all sorts and conditions of men and women, yet that old ass thumped his chair and roared out what would have been blasphemous nonsense if he had known it, for fifteen minutes. Oh dear good patient people, you stood it, or sat it stolidly, but I tremble to think what you might legitimately have done. At last I got started and I can freely confess that my relief at the escape from disaster on that terrible opening was so great as to overcome any stage fright that I might otherwise have felt. The audience was splendid and I grew more and more at my ease with them until I noticed that my slides were nearly finished. Then I had a small panic. Had I given my listeners enough? Impossible, for I did not seem to have been talking for forty-five minutes. So I leaned forward and asked the time, in a stage whisper, of a friend whom I knew had a watch. He said—his voice wouldn’t modulate and filled the hall, “Five past ten, Tom!”

There was a sudden upheaval, lights were turned up by some wise watcher and half the audience fled to catch trains, for they came from all parts of London. And my superintendent, a genial little chimney-sweep, coming to the front of the platform to “render thanks” cried sobbingly:

“I never knew we ’ad such a bruvver!”

A few of us adjourned to the local stewed-eel shop for refreshment and mutual congratulations upon the wonderful success of the evening, most wonderful of all in that the net proceeds, after all expenses were paid, came to thirteen pounds, enough to provide, with tea at 1s. a pound, milk at 4d. a tin, and cake at 3d. a pound, refreshment for a noble army of children. Also the fragments were no mean consideration to the parents, as we found later.

But before closing this description of my first lecture I must include one out of the many startling coincidences of my life. Remember this was in Rye Lane in 1896. After the lecture was over a man came up to me and said:

“Mister, I was in one of them whalers you talk about, and I know you have told the truth.” And he there and then gave me the most irrefragable proofs of his statement, mentioning names and dates and places which were utterly convincing. But chiefly I was delighted because of the corroboration of my statements, not that I felt they needed such buttressing, but you know what people are. It also established a fact which has since become a commonplace with me, that no matter how remote or unlikely the spot may be, a man who addresses an audience from a public platform is always most liable to have among his hearers some one who can testify to the truth (or falsehood) of his statements from actual personal experience, which should make all lecturers exceedingly careful not to give rein to their imaginative faculties.

This experience, though it launched me as a lecturer, was only profitable in so far as it provided me with slides and a certain understanding of a lecture audience. For although there was thenceforward a considerable demand for my services as a lecturer in the neighbourhood, there was never any pay attached to the business. In fact my good friends all seemed to think that they did me great honour by inviting me and they often carried this idea so far as to resent the mild suggestion, made by my friend the enthusiastic lanternist, that they should pay for the gas which he provided. But he, like myself, was of a cheerful as well as humble disposition and we went on with the work until we found that no effort was ever made to get an audience for us, and so we often addressed ourselves to a mere handful of people in a large chapel. In this connection I may say that one night when I was to lecture at a certain big chapel in Peckham, a stout roughish-looking man strolled in and asked my friend who was getting the lantern ready what was on.

“A lecture on Whales and Whale Fishing,” replied my friend.

“Ar,” said the enquirer, turning on his heel to go, “s’rimps is more in my line.”

It is only true to confess that I was getting seriously discouraged, for it seemed obvious that nobody wanted to hear me even for nothing, while my evangelical oratory was always appreciated. But on the advice of a friend I wrote to Mr. Christy asking if he would put me on his list on the strength of the entertainment I had to offer. Very wisely he demurred as not knowing anything about me, but he promised to see if he could get me any engagements and the result of them would guide his future conduct towards me. Meanwhile Mr. Reginald Smith of Smith, Elder & Co. invited me to give my lecture in his spacious drawing-room, and paid me a good fee. Probably all my hearers on that occasion had read the Cruise of the Cachalot, just published by my host, at any rate they were immensely appreciative and I immediately secured two engagements at what I then considered good fees.

This led me directly to the discovery of an old truth that what costs people nothing they do not value. For I found that as my fees rose so did the appreciation I met with increase until I found myself becoming quite a popular lecturer and compelled to raise my fees considerably in order to keep the engagements from overwhelming me. But this did not come for some time, two or three years, in fact. Yet I can honestly say that my efforts, which were a pure delight to me, were received with wonderful enthusiasm and appreciation, and I was always treated as if I were conferring favours instead of receiving them. Perhaps this was due in a great measure to the fact that I loved the business, that as soon as I opened my mouth upon the platform I felt as if the audience and I had known one another for years and I could just tell them confidentially all I knew about the matter in hand without taxing any of them unduly either to hear or to understand me. At any rate I did enjoy myself and I know, without any boasting, that I gave joy to others. And I am sure that the foundation of it all was those long years of open-air speaking and singing, when listeners had to be held by their interest in the speaker or not at all.

CHAPTER IV
THE LECTURE TOUR

May I very humbly intimate that in what follows I speak for myself alone, I have no experience whatever of my fellow-lecturers, many of whom I know and admire and love, but am entirely ignorant of their experiences on the platform or on the tour. So that I must beg the reader to remember that what I say may be and very probably is peculiar to myself alone and that other lecturers may have experiences of an entirely different nature.

In what I believe to have been my first public engagement at Glenalmond College, in Perthshire, I was notably handicapped in several ways. I was eager and excited at the honour, as I naturally felt it, but I was very poor both in money and time, so I booked from King’s Cross by the midnight train, third class, of course. Our compartment contained five, but one man, who had arrived early, had made himself comfortable with rug and pillow stretched full length upon the seat, and my share of that side was quite cramped. Yet I did not protest or claim that he was taking much more than his share, for I was diffident, inexperienced in railway travelling, and, moreover, of a peaceable disposition. But I spent a miserable night, sleepless, cold and painfully stiff, so that the cup of coffee at Newcastle which I obtained at the refreshment room came as a veritable elixir of life to me.

My seat companion had not wakened, nor did he until arrival in Edinburgh, and I am afraid I looked upon his prostrate form with bitter envy. Oh the bleakness of that dawn along the east coast of Northumberland! It struck a chill into my very soul, and the entry to Edinburgh seemed to sweat that coldness down. For as you all know, in common with most picturesque places, the railway approach to the Athens of the North is as if you were Dante being led by Virgil towards the hopeless Gate. And Waverley Station was in a state of chaos. They were building it and the pitiless sleet poured down upon a vast raffle of rafters and wreckage of every sort. Nevertheless I managed to get some more coffee and a Bap, then got me unto my carriage as a place of refuge from the all-pervading wretchedness of that morning.

We crossed the Forth Bridge in a sleet storm so thick that much as I longed to make the acquaintance of that mighty structure I was only able to catch passing glimpses of the great tubes as we flitted between them. Opening the window was out of the question. So I settled down again until arrival at Perth, where the weather and the general outlook were as bad as ever. I was momentarily cheered by a sign which offered hot baths, for the prospect of one sent a glow all through me. Alas, the price was half a crown and I turned sadly away, wondering mightily why such elementary comforts should be available only for the rich. I owe that bathroom a grudge still, for I am sure that the charge was an abominably extortionate one.

Unfortunately I had arranged with the College authorities to send a conveyance for me to Methven Station in the afternoon, so I had the day before me. And such a day! You ladies and gentlemen who only know Perth in its summer garb can hardly imagine its bleakness to a poor stranger landing in it at 9 a.m. on a December day with only a few shillings and a return ticket to London in his pocket, and obliged to wait somewhere until the afternoon. I draw a veil over the misery of that morning although my experiences were quaint enough, involving as they did, the absorption of a “gless” of hot whisky at a coffee tavern, and the overhearing of some of the strangest sounds from customers who came into the room where I sat, and drank neat whisky with a mouthful of water after it, a fashion I had only seen before in America.

At last I could stand Perth and the sleet no longer and I fled to the station for Methven, arriving there to find, as I thought, a station only in the midst of a wide solitude. But there was Erchie, the old porter factotum, and he was a host in himself. I think he took pity upon the puir Southron bodie, certainly he took interest, for his questions were many and searching. The end of them was that I found myself in a “masheen,” in this case a dog-cart, trundling along the road towards Glenalmond, utterly weary and cold and wretched, but buoyed up by the feeling that I was near my journey’s end.

It was a long drive in the open, but the sleet had ceased and only the bitter wind searched my none too well clad form. But when we arrived at the College my amazement at the magnificent pile—it must be remembered that I had never seen a great Public School before—was so great that I almost forgot my physical discomfort in admiration. Then my hostess enwrapped me in her gentle hospitality, and having heard my brief account of the recent happenings she first gave me hot tea, then ordered me a hot bath, a warm bed, and laid upon me strict injunction not to appear until dinner-time. Now it is true that I had never been so received in my life before and that perhaps would account for the vivid impression it made upon my memory, but the thoughtful care of it all coming as and when it did would suffice to have made that first visit to Mrs. Skrine’s hospitable roof memorable.

I emerged at dinner-time from that luxurious bed a new man, feeling fit for any fate, and the rest of my visit there—I stayed the week-end—was sheer delight, for it was like a first glimpse of a new world. So that when my “masheen” came at 7.30 on Monday morning to take me to the station I faced the long bitter drive with the greatest equanimity and a feeling that fate could not harm me now. Erchie was waiting to shepherd me, and asked me many curious questions about my visit. Strangely enough he did not appear to be inquisitive, nor did I feel inclined to resent his curiosity, but I was not in the least surprised to learn, many years afterwards, that the old man was one of Ian Maclaren’s characters. There was undoubtedly much good “copy” in him.

Now although I never again made so long a journey for one lecture, and the expenses made a parlous hole in the fee, I could not help feeling that I was fairly launched, and that since my lecture had been well received by the assembled masters and uproariously hailed by the boys, I need no longer have any misgivings as to its reception anywhere. One resolution I then made which I have rigidly adhered to, and I am glad to know that through it many hundreds of schoolboys have blessed me. It was to avoid all appearance even of the pedagogue, of swot under the cloak of entertainment. I felt that since the boys had to come and had to pay to come, out of school hours too, the least I could do was to try and make my story as full of interest and fun as in me lay, and nothing has given me greater pleasure than to hear from old Public School boys all over the world when I have met them that I have succeeded.

When I reached home again I was much cheered to learn that the agency had secured me two engagements on consecutive days, one at Newcastle and the other at South Shields. This could only be looked upon by me as an opening into the larger lecture field, and I, who have always been the most diffident and self-distrustful of men, could not help feeling that I should be able to do full justice to my selection. My long experience in open-air preaching came to my recollection, those Sunday evenings on Peckham Rye, when thousands hung upon my words and I never had an angry voice raised against me, and I felt confident that as I knew all there was to be known about my subject, I could make it attractive to my audience. So that I never had the slightest mental trouble or foreboding about the result of these public lectures, while the fees marked against them struck me as being lavish gifts for what was going to be a most delightful holiday.

It must be remembered that up till this time I had belonged to that large stratum of society to whom the expenditure of a shilling for anything but the sternest necessaries of life is unthinkable—I gave up as hopeless the attempt to understand, for instance, how people could carelessly pay railway fares of pounds each when I could not have spared pennies for trams, often walking miles instead. As to those plutocrats who bought bicycles, watches, or hired cabs—well I realised that they moved in sublime regions far beyond my possible ken and dismissed them from my mind. But lecturing pushed me, without giving me time to think, into nearly all these things. I found myself buying a dress-suit, garments I had always associated with the idle rich, or waiters whom I had seen through the open doors of restaurants. I paid huge railway fares of nearly two sovereigns shudderingly, as if I were committing a crime, yet somehow remembering that these were part of the expenses which would be returnable. In fact, the whole of my outlook upon life was being changed.

Especially so in regard to what I may call the mainstay of my employment, the office. No one can ever know but myself how I loathed the place, how deeply sincere were the prayers I put up for deliverance from it. Yet I never could hope, for well I knew that the pay, though it remained at the same old two guineas a week for seventeen years and would, I knew, never be increased, was better than I could expect anywhere else as a clerk, and did I lose it, what prospect had I at between forty and fifty years of age of getting anything else? It is very likely that I was not worth more, indeed I dare say I was not, but then I knew the same of many others. That was not the trouble. It was the abominable system of petty persecution practised, the miserable tyranny exercised by those who were no higher in the social scale, had no reason to be ugly, except that they did no office work themselves and had perforce to make their juniors fill up the gap.

This it was that made me, when the first gleam of light came through the pall of cloud above me with the acceptance of the Cruise of the Cachalot, vow that at the very first opportunity given me I would take my courage in both hands and resign that magnificent appointment. Now all unknown to me that triumphant hour drew near. As usual several things combined to bring it about, but I believe the pre-eminent cause was this. My chief, before we were thus associated, had told me that he did not consider the writing of a private letter in office hours a wrong done to our employer the State. He might have added on his own behalf that the transaction of private business involving hours was venial, but he did not go as far as that. It happened, however, that one day when my correspondence was becoming heavier and more urgent than I could deal with at home that I was writing a private letter in office hours. My chief sternly invited me to put that private “work” away, refusing to look at it and see that it was a letter. I tried to explain and quoted his previous utterance on the subject. No use. He refused to discuss the matter, so I put the letter away and finished it in my luncheon three-quarters of an hour. It happened that it was an answer to a letter from the editor of a London newspaper offering me a salary exactly equivalent to my office pay for certain regular contributions. I made it an acceptance, and the next day I resigned.

Then I committed an unpardonable offence. For firstly, I had taken nobody into my confidence; and, secondly, I had dared to do that which others with treble my earnings had longed to do but dared not. And to-day I am in certain quarters more bitterly hated than any man alive for this wickedness. However it did not matter to me, what did matter was my freedom and such a difference in treatment as I could not have believed possible. In fact I always feel a certain pride in the fact that I did manage to suppress the sense of being, and the appearance of having been, a drudge afraid to call my soul my own for all those years, and that I took my place in Society as naturally as if I had been born thereto.

Yes, amidst all that has befallen me since and in my present worn-out condition I can still feel grateful for the spirit that prompted me to shake the dust of that place off my feet and to tell those who had combined to make my life a burden to me while there, as they now fawned upon me, that for decency’s sake they had better have kept silence, since nothing that they could say would ever efface the bitter impression of their utterly uncalled-for tyranny. Had I then known it, Nemesis was lying in wait for them, but I cared nothing for their future, having won clear of them and all their works I was content to ignore and as far as possible to forget them.

CHAPTER V
THE REAL BEGINNING

And now behold me at the age of forty-two on the threshold of a new life. Already I could count four separate stages of an objectless career hopelessly leading nowhere, for even my sea-life, though I did manage to pass for chief mate at twenty-two, offered me no prospects save that of a drudge, a servant of servants at wretchedly inadequate pay. For it was a very dark hour for ships’ officers. We walked the docks and thronged the shipping offices looking for berths and as often as not were driven to sea before the mast because we could not get berths as officers. And when we did the pay was such as seems incredible to-day. I have been offered (this was in 1881) £5 per month as chief mate of a 3000-ton tramp bound to the Baltic, and would have gladly accepted it but that a gentleman by the name of Gustave Shlum forestalled me. Eventually I did get a berth as chief officer of a brig sailing for the east coast of Africa at £5 15s. per month, but then I had to sign an agreement to be responsible for all cargo short delivered. And I worked harder than anybody else on board except the splendid bos’un—carpenter—second mate, who was a Russian Finn and was priceless—I have never seen so good a man except once and he was filling a similar position and hailed from the same place, Helsingfors.

Still, as a dear friend, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, once told me, it was all experience, and now I was to enjoy the ripened fruit of it, although the marvel was that these soul-withering years that the locust had eaten had not destroyed all memory of those exciting days. It had not in the least, and I looked forward calmly and confidently, without the least doubt of my ability to “make good,” even though I was beginning at the very beginning and that too at a time of life when most men are fixed for life. My new appointment was on the staff of the Morning Leader, and my duty was to write three one-column articles a week on nautical topics, my salary being £104 per annum. True I had an empty home and a wife and four children dependent upon me, but I was used to the burden, and, moreover, I could earn my salary by about two hours’ work three times a week, never having the slightest difficulty in finding topics, and able to work anywhere.

But best of all, I could fulfil lecture engagements without asking leave of anybody, which I felt might be a great boon in the near future when such engagements began to pour in. And another thing, I found work at very remunerative rates flowing in upon me, so that I was soon able to ask and receive better prices. Also, accumulating a little store of money I was able to repay debts that my creditors had long before wiped off their books as hopeless. So that, taking it by and large, as we used to say, I commenced my lecturing career under the fairest auspices and set off for the north to fulfil my first two engagements under the Lecture Agency without any but the most pleasurable anticipations.

A couple of days before starting I received a very stiff and formal invitation to accept the hospitality of a member of the Society for which I was to lecture. It was simply signed “Wm. Lowrie,” and gave me not the slightest intimation as to who the writer might be. But I was in a most responsive mood, open to every kindly influence, and I wrote accepting gratefully. And it was with a sense of real grateful surprise that I found my host, a grave dignified man about twenty years my senior, with shipmaster writ large all over him, awaiting my arrival with a carriage. How we knew each other I cannot tell, that has always been one of the mysteries to me, the numbers of times I have been met by entire strangers who have picked me out from among a crowd of passengers—but I know that in five minutes we were close friends.

I found to my amazement that I was the guest of one of the classic figures of the old sailing-ship days. A man who had served his time in the Arctic whalers out of Peterhead, had been officer in such historic clippers as the Marco Polo, the Schomberg, James Baines and Redjacket and also in the ship about which Dickens turned the vials of his just wrath on the War Office authorities of the day for the callous way in which they destroyed the lives of time-expired soldiers from India on the passage home and on landing. She will remain evermore infamous in history as the Great Tasmania, though Dickens expressly exempts from his censure her crew.

Only an old sailor could understand my delight at meeting such a man, who was withal so modest and kind. The only drawback I felt was in what I considered the over-emphasis of his praise for what I had written about the sea. But then seamen are all prone to overrate the value of matter written about the life they know by men who have lived that life. Their appreciation is in just proportion to their scorn of the many modern writers who on the strength of a broken apprenticeship or a homeward passage round Cape Horn thenceforth pose as nautical experts and complacently allow themselves to be called Captain This or That when they do not know enough seamanship to cross a royal yard.

I spent a most enjoyable three days in Newcastle for the lectures were a great success, and my life in my host’s delightful company full of such a pleasure as I have never experienced before. For in addition to his great eminence in the world I knew so well, he was kindness and considerateness itself and never once forgot to make my welfare his first thought. I regret to cease talking about him, but must remember the claims of others, so I will only add here that our friendship lasted as long as he lived, about ten years. He left between £30,000 and £40,000, practically the whole of which has gone to the benefit of seamen.

Now I have no knowledge of the means used by the Lecture Agency to spread the fame of a lecturer and get him engagements, I only know that after my performances at Newcastle and Shields engagements began to pour in, some to my amazement and secret pride from the great classic Public Schools. These engagements did not come singly either. For instance, I received in one bunch bookings for eight different institutes around Birmingham, all of which were within a short distance, under half an hour’s journey from the centre of the City. I afterwards learned that it was the highly commendable practice of the secretaries of these institutes to meet and arrange their lecture dates so that a lecturer could go from one to the other on successive nights, thus giving him the minimum of travel and expense and enabling him to take lower fees with no monetary disadvantage to himself. Unhappily that good practice has come to an end for nearly all the institutes are no more, at least so I was told by the secretary of one who claimed to be the last survivor.

Speaking of Birmingham, an experience befell me there which is one of the most salient memories of that interesting time. It also shows how little I yet knew of what I may call the intricacies of railway travel in my own country. I was booked to lecture at the Birmingham Town Hall (I had never yet been to the City) at 7 p.m. one Sunday, and chose the L. and N.W. I did not trouble to look at the G.W. time-tables or I might have found, as I did recently, an incomparably better and quicker train with a luncheon car attached. However, I joined the train at Willesden at about 10 a.m. and giving a porter my bag asked him to put me in the Birmingham portion of the train, although I did not then know that any part of the train went anywhere else.

I found a comfortable seat, and when the train stopped at Rugby I went to the refreshment room and bought a penny loaf, bread having been omitted from the nose-bag I carried as suspecting no food arrangements. I rejoined the train, lunched comfortably, and went to sleep afterwards, waking up to find the train passing through Rugeley. Now my scanty geographical knowledge of England told me that something was wrong, an idea which was confirmed when the train drew up at Stafford. Alighting in great trepidation, I sought an official who told me that the next train back to Birmingham was due to arrive there at 8 p.m.—it was then 2 p.m.—but he added abstractedly, “It generally don’t get there much afore half-past.” And my lecture was at 7!

I am fairly well able to keep my head under any circumstances, but I confess that I was really daunted now. Thirty miles from Birmingham on a Sunday afternoon. I thought of a bike, madness! Taxis had not been thought of yet, and a special train was out of the question. So I sat down and allowed my mind to rest awhile—that is I didn’t think of anything for a few minutes. But a genial porter came along who must have seen a certain woe-begone look in my face, for he accosted me with a cheery “What’s up, governor?”

I immediately poured my sad story into his ears as plainly as possible. When I had finished he smiled brightly and said:

“You see our stationmaster, governor; he’ll put you right, you see if he don’t. Fine old cock our stationmaster is.”

I confess that I did not feel hopeful, but the man’s manner was infectious and, moreover, I was ready, like a drowning man, to catch at any straw. So I begged him to lead me to the stationmaster. That worthy was one of the jolliest-looking old men I have ever seen, and his very appearance was comforting. He heard me tell my tale, then said cheerfully:

“You’re all right, young man; Sunday is the very best day for getting anywhere, although the time-table knows nothing about that. I’ve got no less than four theatrical specials coming through this afternoon, any one of which would drop you at Brum. I’ll stop the first one for you and you’ll get to New Street about 3.30. How will that suit you?”

Well, I’ll leave it to you. I am glad to say that I tipped that good porter a florin in my gratitude, and according to promise found myself going up Corporation Street at half-past three. But when at about 6.40 I made my way to Chamberlain Square and saw it black with people all making their way to the magnificent classical building in the centre, I fell a-trembling to think that I might have disappointed that vast crowd. In fact I had hardly recovered myself when the time came for me to go on the platform. But the sight I then saw steadied me. The vast building was crowded to its utmost capacity and I looked upon a veritable sea of heads. The platform and orchestra were also crowded, only leaving a small oblong for me.

After the singing of a hymn and the reading of some notices I was introduced and the volume of cheering that greeted me brought a big lump into my throat, for I was totally unprepared for it as well as unused to such a greeting. My subject was “Romance and Reality at Sea,” and I can say without boasting that not even the great Birmingham orator could have held that audience better. I had been told to cease at the hour, and obedient to instructions I did so, telling the audience why. A mighty shout went up of “Go on, go on,” so I went on for another half-hour, receiving such an ovation as I closed that I was fairly stupefied. Many hundreds of lectures have I enjoyed since then and have received as much appreciation as any man ought to have, but that night in Brum overtops them all. And I was within an ace of missing it altogether!

While I am on this topic I will say that in the fairly long time, about fifteen years, that I have been lecturing I cannot say that I have ever lost an appointment by the fault of the railway. I have been late certainly, but on the one occasion when I missed my engagement altogether it was entirely my own fault. No, many are the grievances that lecturers have, and hold legitimately, against the railway companies, but losing engagements by reason of railway unpunctuality is not one of them. I may as well say here that it always has seemed to me little short of an outrage that lecturers, who yearly spend enormous sums in railway travelling, should have no concession whatever made to them, while golfers and commercial travellers are allowed to travel at such greatly reduced rates. Perhaps the most galling thing of all is to take a ticket on Saturday for some distant place for which the ordinary fare is high and because you must return the same night be compelled to pay the full ordinary fare, while an ordinary week-end ticket will be less than half the money. Or to book at the same time as a golfer, pay nearly double the fare he does and go and return in the same compartment. Not only so, but the train will stop at an unscheduled station for him while the lecturer may plead for the same privilege in vain.

In order to have my growl upon a particular instance, I should like to state that once having a lecture at New Barnet and the time of its close not allowing me to catch the 9.50 at Finsbury Park, I, holding a first-class season ticket between London and Melbourn, Cambs, where I lived, applied to the High Gods at King’s Cross for permission to have that particular train stopped at New Barnet to allow me to get home that night. I felt the more emboldened to ask this concession because express trains were being continually stopped at Knebworth for golfers and at Foxton for one gentleman who lived near the station. My application was curtly refused without reason assigned. Yet only three days afterwards I received from King’s Cross a touting letter stating that as they had noticed that I was billed to lecture in Sheffield on a certain date, they begged to call my attention to the advantages of travelling by their line and would gladly book me a third- or first-class seat, whichever I preferred.

I hope I did justice to the matter in my reply to that letter, but as I had no reply from them I am not sure. One more anecdote of a similar nature and I leave the subject for the time. I once booked on a Monday two first-class return tickets to the Hague and round Belgium and Holland for the following Saturday. Ultra-honest, I enclosed a cheque for the full amount post-dated for Friday. I received the usual post-card acknowledgment and dismissed the matter from my mind. On arriving at Liverpool Street, fifteen minutes before the departure of the train at 8 p.m., and applying for my tickets I was told that they could not be issued without present payment and that my post-dated cheque had been returned. It had not, and I have never since seen it, but the salient fact was that I had not sufficient cash with me to meet this large item and I had to give up my journey.

Since then I have never sent any money upon booking seats in a train and I rejoice to say that the mutual confidence has never been abused, the results have always been entirely satisfactory, which is in startling contrast to continental practice, where no seat will be booked for you unless you pay your fare at the time. But a truce to railway matters for a time, although as they form so large a portion of a lecturer’s experiences I make no apology for alluding to them at such length.

CHAPTER VI
SCOTLAND

My second season was a very full one, but what I think gave me more pleasure than anything connected with it was the fact that I had about three weeks in Scotland. For I had only made one flying visit to Scotland before except as a sailor and then very briefly, seeing only the seamy sides of Glasgow and Dundee. But I had delightful remembrances of Scotsmen the world over, and especially in New Zealand; some of my most dearly loved shipmates had been Scotsmen and I flattered myself that I could pass as a Scotsman anywhere in any northern dialect except that of Glasgow, which I confess always bothered me.

Now, not having had the advantage of conferring with any of my fellow-lecturers I was just a little anxious to know whether my countrymen’s notion had any ground for it, viz. that a Scotsman, or an assembly of them, could not see a joke and were very chary of showing any sign of appreciation. I had a fairly wide range for testing, for my engagements ranged from Dumfries to Oban, Perth to Hawick. I do not now remember which town or city I began in, but I think it was Oban. My host was a local schoolmaster, of quite straitened means I should judge, but a kindly gentleman if ever there was one. The lecture hall was a drill shed and a very rough one at that, but it seemed exactly suited to my audience, who struck me as being one and all working folk. But the gravity of their demeanour, the intelligence they displayed in taking up every point, and the whole-hearted enjoyment with which they greeted even my feeblest jokes made me love them. Indeed I was so carried away by their interest that I committed that well-nigh unpardonable crime in a lecturer—I went on for two hours instead of ending at one hour and a half, beyond which time it is wicked to expect any person to be attentive.

When at last the lecture was over I was met in the stable-like ante-room by a grave committee of poorly dressed men who quietly thanked me for the pleasure I had given them, and one (who really looked as if he did not earn so much in six months) produced a dingy bag and counted out my heavy fee in gold upon the rough table, producing at the same time a form of receipt. It was the first time I had ever been paid for a lecture like that, and it made me feel rather strange, the amount seemed so large compared with the surroundings and its source. But I consoled myself with the thought that the committee did not appear the sort of men who would purchase an article unless they knew they were getting their money’s worth.

My next engagement was at Dundee, and as it was midwinter I was confronted with a rough journey across Scotland of great length in point of time. But I consoled myself with the knowledge that there was to be a long wait at Dunblane, where I could rest in a warm room and have a good hot meal, for the excellence of Scotch hotels had long been known to me by repute. Also, but I do not know why, “Jessie, the flower o’ Dunblane,” kept running through my mind, making the prospect of visiting the place quite alluring.

The train arrived there in a blizzard of snow, and I lost no time in transferring myself, making sure of the time of departure of my Dundee train and securing information from the porter as to the whereabouts of the principal hotel. I was chilled to the marrow when I got there, for Dunblane seemed dead beyond resurrection and buried under snow. And when I entered the hotel I saw no one, but following painted instructions went upstairs, where I found a splendid room with a long table laid for a banquet. I rang the bell and seated myself, rejoicing in the thought of what was to come.

Alas, a veritable draggle-tailed Sally Slap-cabbage answered my call, and her first words to me were:

“Ye maun c’way oot o’ that, it’s privaat.”

Law-abiding ever, I rose with alacrity, only asking where I could go to be comfortable. She showed me into a dark, fireless, dirty cell, and said nonchalantly:

“D’ye wish tea?”

I replied briskly, “No, I want dinner, and as quick as possible. Also a fire or another room, this is as cold as the open air.”

“We’ve nae denner,” was the reply, “an’ I dinna ken if ther any cauld meat, but ye can hae some tea, an’ I’ll see if ther’s ony meat.”

She departed and after twenty minutes’ absence returned with a dish whereon were a few dirty scraps of cold mutton, obviously scraped from the bone. Some tea and bread and butter of a parsimonious and poverty-stricken sort completed the banquet, which, however it disgusted me, was so certainly all there was obtainable that I made no further protest but ate and shivered in silence. When I came to pay I was charged two shillings, which the taciturn Moll accepted in silence and I departed colder than when I arrived and extremely anxious never to renew my acquaintance with Dunblane any more.

But all my discontent vanished upon arrival at Dundee. Though it was snowing heavily my kind and thoughtful host, Bailie Robertson, was at the station to meet me and I very soon found myself in his beautiful house seated before a noble hot meal which was ready and waiting for me, and at which that splendid old lady his sister presided with a motherly grace that I can never forget. As both these grand old people are dead I can speak of them with greater freedom than they would have liked during their lifetime, for they were essentially of the kind who “do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.”

Here again my lecture effort gave me the greatest possible gratification. Not only was the fine Kinnaird Hall packed with listeners, but a large portion of them were intimately connected with the whale fishery and were therefore intensely interested in my subject, although I spoke mainly upon the Southern Whale Fishery, a totally different business. I cannot remember how many old whaling skippers were introduced to me after the lecture, but I do remember and shall always be grateful for their very warm appreciation and the outspoken manner in which they gave it utterance. But I hope and believe that I realised then, and always have done, that their tribute was paid, not to any eloquence or oratory, but to practical acquaintance with the great business with which I dealt, and that I think will always be found to be the case with every subject. That it should be so seems eminently reasonable.

Now lest it should appear that my lecture path was roses, roses all the way, I must just interpose an experience in Scotland of a very different character. I was booked to lecture at Borrowstounness (Bo’ness) at a very low fee because it “fitted in” as we say; that is because I had other lectures in Scotland round about that time, obviating the necessity for making a long journey from London specially. Now I had to come from Hull, leaving there at 6 a.m., and in consequence when I arrived in Edinburgh, where I had to spend three or four hours, I was very tired. Common prudence would suggest that I should have a quiet meal and a rest, but I was not prudent, and, having ascertained the time of a convenient train from Waverley to Bo’ness, I used up my spare time in visiting friends in Edinburgh.

Therefore when I joined my train I settled down and went fast asleep, so fast, that I did not awake to change at Manuel Junction. I did awake at Falkirk, the next station, and there found that the next train back to Bo’ness would not get me there much before nine o’clock, my lecture being fixed for eight. Knowing that Falkirk was not far from Bo’ness by road, I then begged the stationmaster to tell me where I could get a “masheen,” as a wheeled vehicle is called up here, to take me the nine miles, and how much the charge was likely to be. For all reply he waved his hand in a lordly manner towards a row of cabs ranged outside the station, and I, as it was then 6.30 o’clock and I felt that I had no time to lose, immediately interviewed a cabman. But no inducement that I could offer up to £2 had any effect upon the frozen stolidity of those men, I could get nothing out of them but a surly “No.”

So at last I had to wire to the secretary, informing him of the state of affairs, and saying that I could not hope to reach him before nine o’clock. Of course I got no answer and when I arrived the little platform was crowded with what would have been my audience, reinforced by all the loafers and bad boys in the town. For the only time in my life I was booed and hissed, but I feel grateful that nobody threw anything or I should certainly have been pelted also. This, though unpleasant, did not hurt me so much as the attitude of the secretary. He did not actually call me a liar, but he said that though several lecturers, notably Mary Kingsley, had missed that Manuel connection before, none had ever experienced any difficulty in getting a masheen to bring them from Falkirk. Drivers were always eager to take the job, besides, there was a posting-house opposite the station, and the fare was 10s. In vain I told him my experience, his only reply was, “It’s verra strange.” And his look said quite plainly, “You are telling me lies.” In the end I was compelled to make a journey from London some months later to give that lecture, the expenses of which left me with a slight balance on the wrong side when I had received my fee.

As a set off to this decidedly unpleasant experience I shortly afterwards paid a visit to Penicuik, and became the guest of Mr. S. R. Crockett. The whole of that visit is like a blissful dream, for verily I never enjoyed myself more. The big genial novelist, then in the heyday of his prosperity, was an ideal host and even outdid his countrymen in his efforts to make his guest happy. But of all the delights of that happy three days one experience stands out, salient, from the rest. It was Mr. Crockett’s prayer at family worship on the night of my arrival. As a general rule I dread to hear extempore prayer, having often suffered many things from men who either maundered or preached or raved and foamed and pounded for long periods of time and assumed that they were praying! But that prayer was in my mind all that a prayer ought to be and as a proof of this it is the only one, out of the many thousands I have heard and mostly writhed under, that I joyfully and gratefully remember. Only a few days ago I heard that my good friend and host of that occasion had passed away from us in the fullness of his powers and manhood. And though I only forgathered with him once I have an aching sense of irreplaceable loss.

Following hard upon the heels of that came another delightful experience, a lecture at Fettes College, when I had the privilege of making the acquaintance of Dr. Heard, the headmaster, whose guest I was. That acquaintance deepened into friendship, second of the many headmasters whom it has been my fortunate lot to know and love and about whom I hope to fill many pages. But on the very threshold of the subject I must pause to note my astonishment, not that some headmasters relegate the duty of showing hospitality to some person other than themselves, but that any headmaster dares to invite such strangers as lecturers and entertainers must be, to stay with him at all.

For I have heard such stories, not told in malice, but sadly, and with an obvious effort to gloss over the worst features, as have made me redden with shame, stories that have fully explained to me the aloofness with which I have sometimes been regarded where I was not known. Stories of hospitality abused, of persistent and vehement begging, of equally persistent touting for employment, backed by assurances that without that particular engagement the wheels would come right off the applicant’s carriage—how can men, expecting to be received and treated as gentlemen, and never expecting in vain, be guilty of such behaviour? But then I have known tradesmen who, upon receiving an order upon the fulfilment of which they have been promptly paid, immediately proffer a request for a substantial loan. This, I suppose, would be on the ground that a man who would pay lawful demands like that must have more money than he knew what to do with, and must also be somewhat easy in his hold upon that money.

Now the gentry whom I have hinted at as abusing the confidence of headmaster hosts would undoubtedly be indignant at being classed with tradesmen, but if there be any truth in the grand old adage, noblesse oblige, they are far more culpable. But I hold that the average tradesman’s standard is higher than theirs and with less reason.

My visit to Fettes, following as it did upon the beautiful experience of Penicuik, went far to confirm me in my opinion that the lecturer’s life was a charming one, the people were all so pleasant, so eager to make one happy and comfortable. Moreover, it was a delight to address the lads. Of course it was impossible to tell how they would have received the lecture had they been perfectly free agents, but that is one of those things about which it is well never to show too much curiosity. All one could do, and that was certainly obligatory in the highest sense, was to give them one’s best and make it as interesting as possible; as I have before hinted, that is, to allow no suspicion of “swot” to creep in under the disguise of an entertainment.

But undoubtedly it is a little difficult sometimes to hold the attention of the very youngest boys, whose minds are often incapable of sustained effort. Occasionally this is manifested to the lecturer in a startling manner, as the following experience of mine at a preparatory school at West Drayton will show. I was speaking upon “Romance and Reality at Sea,” amid an ominous quiet on the part of my very juvenile audience which gave me the uneasy consciousness that I was often outside their depth. A lecturer can always tell whether his audience be with him or not, whatever be their ages or conditions. Suddenly there broke from the boys a spontaneous peal of laughter, so ringing, so universal that I almost fancied hysteria had seized upon them, and wondered whether I was to blame. I could not imagine anything I had said causing such an outburst. I stood facing the roaring lads waiting for the merriment to subside and puzzled beyond belief, until I suddenly turned and looked at the screen and the mystery was at once cleared up.

A full-rigged sailing ship was being shown, and walking across her maintopmast stay was a fly magnified to the size of an eagle. It had evidently got into the condenser somehow, and finding it warm moved about pretty briskly, but, of course, never out of the picture. It had obviously come as a sweet boon, a heavenly relief from boredom, and the children had welcomed it thus uproariously in consequence. And I regret to say that neither my eloquence nor the commands of the masters availed to restore the youngsters’ attention. So we presently gave it up as a bad job, at which announcement the laughter burst forth again as if irrepressible.

I leave any moral that may be drawn from this episode to those whose interest it is to seek it, I have no concern with the matter now beyond relating facts and uttering the platitude that it is unwise to expect too much from young boys.

CHAPTER VII
JOURNEYS

There is one thing about a lecturer’s experiences which has always been a mystery to me, though it has not been so much so since the advent of the picture palace. It is that one continually finds oneself going to places whose very names have hitherto been hidden from a fairly intelligent, well-travelled man, while great towns with many thousands of inhabitants seem to pass you by in silent disdain. I will not quote the names of those big towns lest I should find that there is a reason uncomplimentary to myself in their neglect of my services, but the fact is as I have stated and is in no wise peculiar to my own experience.

But some of those out-of-the-way places; what a wealth of memories they do recall; nearly all, I am happy to say, of a genial pleasant character, albeit the journey to some of them was a pilgrimage of pain. Indeed I have often wondered how it was that I, one of the frailest of men, with especially weak bronchial apparatus, have never “cracked up” on those wretched journeys. Recollections of them come crowding thick and fast, but I think I must award the palm of discomfort to one that was only difficult to reach by reason of a mistake, not on my part. I was due to lecture at Masham in Yorkshire on a certain evening on the morning of which I was at Huddersfield.

Trusting to information given me by a railway official at Huddersfield instead of to the local time-table (a mistake of mine), I arrived at Leeds to find that I could not make my connection through Ripon to Masham in time. So I wired to the stationmaster at Ripon asking him if he would kindly secure me a conveyance to Masham, distant ten miles. I duly arrived at Ripon to find awaiting me a dog-cart with a huge Yorkshire horse between the shafts and a typical Tyke holding the reins. There was also, the time being December, a bitter blasting north-east gale blowing over the moors, and of course I had left my heavy fur-lined overcoat at Huddersfield. I may say in passing that I dreaded to wear it for many reasons, but chiefly because of the chivying of the small boy.

We started, and before we had gone a mile I was congealed. Cold! Well, I don’t know exactly, but I was past feeling and only conscious of a dull desire that the truly infernal wind would cease blowing for just five minutes. But it never did, and at the end of one of the longest hours I have ever known, much longer than a trick at the wheel off the Horn, and God knows they were long enough (but I was young then), we surged into Masham, arriving at the hall an hour before the lecture was due. I was directed to the most hospitable abode of the local bank manager, who had invited me to stay with him (only I had never received the letter), and given such restoratives as kindness dictated.

He pressed me to stay the night, but I had booked my room at the hotel in Ripon and the trap had to go back, so I, newly warmed and fed, refused. The lecture went off with a bang as usual, and amid a chorus of congratulations and commiseration I mounted the trap again—and so home to the hotel, through a stronger wind and a light snowfall. Arriving at the hotel I had to be lifted out of the trap and carried into the bar parlour, where I was thawed out, while my driver, the burly taciturn giant, drank cold ale and looked pityingly, albeit with wonder, upon the weakling he had brought back.

A bonny fire was kindled in my room and boots and ostler carried me upstairs. Native delicacy, I suppose, prevented them valeting me, so it was with many a groan and much effort I got out of my clothes and between the blankets. And my last thought was that I was booked for a long stay—as to going to Sedbergh on the following day the idea was too ridiculous to entertain. Yet on awaking in the morning I was up and partly dressed before I remembered my parlous condition of the previous night, and it is not one of the least strange things in my strange life that this has ever been the case. Going to bed utterly beaten and apparently in for a long illness and rising next morning able to resume the war-path. I suppose it must be a remanet from the days when I couldn’t give in, like so many men and women in the same toilful walk of life.

Another journey of horror which comes into my mind at this time was one I made to the favourite watering-place of Lytham, but owing to the fact that I was also to speak on Sunday as well as lecture on Monday it was necessary that I should leave London on Saturday. Not being able to ascertain from the intricacies of Bradshaw anything definite as to the time of my arrival, I enquired at Euston and was informed that I could get a train at Preston for Lytham at about 4.30 a.m. (I speak loosely as to time, it being so long ago), arriving at Lytham somewhere about three hours later. Whereupon I booked and left Euston about ten o’clock, arriving at Preston somewhere about 2 a.m. I sought a first-class waiting-room, for in those palmy days I always travelled first class, but I found it full of a foul crowd of men, smoking, swearing, and spitting, and entirely resentful of my intrusion, especially so of my fur coat.

I quietly retired to the farthest corner of the room, wondering much but far too wise to say anything, and with my rug for a covering and my bag for a pillow laid me down upon one side of a big table that stood there. In spite of the devilish uproar I was soon asleep, but I was rudely awakened by being jerked off the table on to the befouled floor, amid a perfect tempest of delight. I picked myself up and silently collected my belongings amid the hoots and jeers of the crowd. And out upon that wind-swept platform I sought a resting-place on a bench (shelter from the wind there was none) and lay there wide awake until 4.30 a.m. I may here interpolate that letters addressed to Euston on the subject of this curious use of first-class waiting-rooms at Preston and Chester never even met with the courtesy of a reply.

Somewhere about 4.30 a train came in, and I, feeling a spasm of hope, made for it, finding a good fellow-porter who told me that it was going to Manchester and furthermore volunteered his opinion that no train for Lytham would go before ten o’clock.

“But,” he said, “I’ll make sure for ye, an’ if I’m right you might go to the Park Hotel an’ be comfortable.” Judging by my fur coat he doubtless thought that the expense didn’t matter. Of course he was right, and I made the pilgrimage along that lengthy bridge to the hotel, suitably rewarding (I hope) my friendly porter with a shilling. Then I said to the night porter of the hotel:

“Please do not call me on any account until 9.30, as my train does not go until 10.30, and I want to get warm. Bring me up a cup of tea and some bread and butter and my bill at 9.30 and all will be well.”

He nodded and left me. I turned in, but sleep was out of the question. I heard five strike and six and seven and then, whatever was that diabolical knocking?

“What is it?” I roared. “Hot water,” was the reply. Then I realised that I had been to sleep and I got out of bed, switched on the light, looked at my watch and behold it was 7.40. I am not a hot-tempered man and should have made an ineffectual despot, but if that night porter had been at my absolute disposal then—I really would not like to say. Of course I got no more sleep, and equally of course I had to pay full charge for bed and breakfast. And I have hated Preston Station with a perfect hatred ever since. I suppose all the fraternity are like that—have their special likes and dislikes among stations as amongst people.

Pocklington is a name branded upon my memory, not because of its school, of which I have heard many excellent reports, but know nothing, but because I have made two visits there to lecture and each time have been filled with wonder and laughter. The secretary and mainstay of the lecture society was (and is for all I know) a genial eccentric doctor, a widower living with his daughter. The lecture hall might be a stable or a barn or a shed of sorts, I only know that when I first entered it the audience was clustered round the stove in the centre and the whole scene was worthy of a picture by Rembrandt. I had a queer feeling that none of my audience had ever heard a lecture before, which was absurd, for I know that many of my colleagues had entertained them, but they looked at me as though they thought I might bite, and I looked at them cheerfully as I would have done at a mob of Australian blackfellows. Me!

Yet the lectures were a success. We had a good time together. By the way, I often wonder what a leviathan of Johnson’s calibre would do with a crowd like that. He would probably antagonise the bulk of them before he had been speaking five minutes, because nothing annoys an audience like that more than what they call “putting the pot on,” and I cannot help feeling much sympathy for them. In fact the more I read Boswell’s Johnson the more murderously I feel towards him, and the more prone I am to regard him as the most wrongly puffed-up bully that ever lived. That, however, is a mere matter of opinion and Johnson would probably have disposed of it in one flatulent breath.

What, however, I could not get over in Pocklington was the hotel. It was one of the old-timers and all its staff were genuinely anxious to make the guest comfortable. But to go downstairs half dressed in the morning, find after long enquiry a key, and then traverse a long wet yard in search of relief, these were matters that left their indelible trace, in England, where a man over forty gets soft and slack and notices such things. Yet people go abroad and endure them and never murmur. How is it, I wonder? I read endless encomia upon foreign ways, foreign cooking, foreign politeness, but never a word about foreign dirt, foreign stenches, foreign absence of sanitary arrangements. What a mystery!

It will be a little relief to get my mind off this business of foreign hotels to recall an experience which if it did not amuse me at the time certainly did both interest and amuse my one fellow-passenger. I booked first class as I usually did in those days from Huddersfield to Manchester, where I was due to lecture at the Athenæum at eight, but where I had no offer of hospitality. The train by which I travelled was timed to arrive in Manchester at about seven, ample time for me to find a hotel, change, get a meal, and arrive at the Athenæum by 7.50. But by some accident or stupidity I got into the wrong part of the train and after a long wait at Stalybridge I became disagreeably aware that something was wrong. Indeed I was past the time I had reckoned on arriving at Manchester before we left Stalybridge, and the train was going very deliberately.

At last I saw plainly that if I was going to get to my lecture in time it was all I should do, and turning to my sole fellow-passenger with whom, after the custom of Englishmen, I had not as yet exchanged a word, I said:

“Excuse me, sir, but do you mind if I change my clothes? I am due to lecture at the Athenæum at eight and I fear that I have made a mistake in the train.”

He replied instantly: “Go ahead, for this train isn’t due in until 7.55. Don’t mind me.”

I thanked him and began, but oh, just then the train began to cut capers and my corresponding movements about that compartment must have been amazing. My fellow-passenger laughed himself ill, especially when, struggling into a “biled” shirt I was hurled, with both my arms prisoned, from one side of the compartment to the other. Indeed his merriment had little cessation, for similar evolutions took place as I got into my trousers, fastened my collar, and made my white bow. When at last I had finished and he lay utterly exhausted on the cushions, he gasped out:

“Well, sir, I’ve never laughed so much in all my life and I’ll come to hear you lecture, for I feel anxious to know how such a preparation will affect you. Besides, I need a sedative and I guess a lecture is the sort of thing to quiet the most edgy nerves.”

I nodded, smiling grimly at his awkward compliment, so typical of the north, and just then the train rolled into the station on time. Giving my bag to a porter and telling him to get me a cab, I bolted to the refreshment room where I got a glass of port and snatched a couple of hard-boiled eggs. The hall couldn’t have been many yards from the station for half the second egg was in my fingers and the other half in my mouth when we arrived there. And I am afraid I was still swallowing when I stood up and faced the audience.

Of course the lecture went off all right, they always did somehow, but my greatest triumph that night was being met by my railway acquaintance, who lugged me off to his favourite hotel and insisted upon footing my bill, because, he said, I’d given him the jolliest half-day’s entertainment he’d ever had in his days, and one that would serve him with experiences to tell at his club, etc., for the rest of his life.

Another experience of a similar kind occurs to me, but the preliminaries were even more painful or wearing than this last. I was booked to lecture at Willenhall, a suburb of Wolverhampton, and came from London to keep my appointment. But my train broke down at Roade and by the time we got to New Street the connection for Willenhall had vanished, of course. However, the courteous stationmaster arranged for the train to be stopped at Willenhall to allow me to alight. So it was, but a howling mob of colliers filled the platform and though my bag got out I couldn’t. Vainly did the guard shout “keep back,” the crowd pressed in and the train moved off. I sprang out at the first opportunity, alighting on my back and rolling over several times, feeling very foolish when at last I remembered where I was, without the remarks of the stationmaster and porters, which tended to rub that fact in.

When I was able to move off I did so without comment, for I felt that any attempt of mine to reply would be entirely unworthy of the occasion. Outside the station I was assailed by a mob of ragged urchins competing for the job of carrying my bag, and selecting one, who was escorted by the rest, I arrived at the hall in about five minutes. I was met by the tired-looking secretary, to whom I commenced to apologise for its being ten minutes past eight, but he cut me short by saying:

“Don’t worry, the lanternist isn’t here yet!” Whereupon I suggested that I would change into platform rig if a corner could be found for me, and I was duly shown by the caretaker into his kitchen-living-room. Whew! I then realised that I was in the land of cheap coal, for I should think there must have been a couple of hundredweights on the fire. The room was so hot that by the time I had finished dressing the beautiful front of my dress shirt was limp as a piece of blotting-paper and I was nearly suffocated.

And still poor Perry hadn’t turned up. If ever he sees these words he’ll remember that awful night. I don’t know what the time was when he arrived, but I know that when at last he was ready for me it was past nine and the audience had been sitting patiently waiting—most of them—since 7.30. I went on and apologised for Perry and myself, putting all the blame where it belonged, on the railway company, for Perry’s failure was due to his lantern and cylinders of gas having been put off at some junction, Handsworth, I think, while he went on sublimely unconscious to Willenhall. And it was all the more reprehensible because, as he said, he was as well known on the lines all around Brum as one of the railway officials themselves. I didn’t suffer much, but it was a terrible experience for him, he being a man of considerable weight and the night stuffy.

A curious reminiscence of mine is concerning a lecture I gave at Hebden Bridge, one of those quaint, most picturesque manufacturing villages in the northern part of the West Riding of Yorkshire. I was not offered hospitality nor had I any previous correspondence with the secretary of the society engaging me, but that was nothing out of the common and after enquiry I made for the only hotel in the place (as far as I know). I was feeling very fit and comfortable after dinner as I sat smoking and awaiting eight o’clock, the hall being just across the road.

Suddenly, to me entered two men, with gloomy looks and an air of embarrassment, who seeing me in evening dress at once concluded that I was the lecturer and introduced themselves as secretary and treasurer respectively of the society engaging me. Then the secretary stammered out:

“We’ve come on rather a curious errand, Mr. Bullen. We’ve come to ask you if you’ll take your fee and go away?”

“Of course, if you wish it,” I replied, with a smile of encouragement; “but surely you don’t mind telling me why, though perhaps I ought not to enquire.” (The treasurer had meanwhile stealthily placed a little pile of gold at my elbow.)

“Well, you see, it’s like this,” grunted the secretary, with a brick-red flush on his face, “there’s nobody there. An’ there’s nobody to come, as far as I can see. The men folk are almost all gone and th’ women don’t care. So the society’s cracked up. Anyhow, I’m done with it from to-night; I don’t like this kind of job at all. However, we’re much obliged t’ye, Mr. Bullen.”

“Oh, not at all,” I chortled gaily, as I absent-mindedly slipped the sovereigns into my breeches pocket. “But if anybody should come between now and half-past nine I’m quite willing to give the lecture, even if there’s only half a dozen present.”

With more muttered thanks they left me, and I sat smiling at my own thoughts, gazing at the fire and feeling very comfortable. At about half-past eight, however, the secretary peeped in again and said very apologetically:

“There’s a few people come, sir, so we thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind——”

“Why, of course,” I cried gaily, and springing up I accompanied him to the platform of the really fine hall (seating capacity about four hundred, I should think) and gave my lecture to less than a dozen people. What did it matter when the lights were turned down? And so we parted on the best of terms with each other, and I to bed feeling very virtuous.

Now this was Saturday night and I was due to lecture at Halifax on the morrow at seven p.m. So I planned to have a comfortable midday meal where I was and get on by a good train in the afternoon. But after breakfast the waitress, a typical Yorkshire lass, enquired, but without a trace of interest:

“When are ye goin’?”

I informed her courteously of my intentions and she replied, again with that air of aloofness:

“Ye’ll have to go afore dinner.”

“But why?” I remonstrated. “I’m very comfortable here. And I don’t want to go before dinner.”

“There’s no dinner served in this house on Sunday,” she responded indifferently.

I looked at her abstractedly for a few moments as she finished clearing the table, and then as she was leaving the room I asked her if she’d be kind enough to ask the landlord or landlady to come and see me. She did not answer, but in about a minute a stout, comely dame appeared with the light of battle in her eye. To her I addressed myself, treating the waitress’s communication as sheer irresponsible froth. But I was suddenly cut short by the dame, who exploded:

“Thirty-five year I’ve kept this house and I’ve never served owt in it of a Sunday except breakfast, an’ I never will.”

I began to feel a little warm myself now, and quietly suggested that by the Innkeepers’ Act she was bound to keep me as long as I behaved myself and showed willingness and ability to pay. It was unfortunate, for she rose to a towering height of rage, avowing her intention of sacrificing all she possessed in the world rather than break her Sabbath rule.

Well, I am a man of peace, and have a certain amount of self-control, so I left the house, caught an earlier train and found most comfortable quarters at Halifax. But wasn’t it funny?

CHAPTER VIII
HOSPITALITY

Hospitality, as generally practised in the three kingdoms, is a very delightful thing, but to the lecturer it is apt to be deadly, unless indeed he is churlish and refuses to reciprocate at all to the kindness shown him. Occasionally, of course, one meets with that most objectionable person whose only reason for giving you an invitation is that you may amuse his or her guests and incidentally shed lustre upon your host as being able to catch such a lion and induce him to roar to order. Happily such folks are rare and are becoming rarer, yet still many lecturers have a well-founded fear of being “entertained within an inch of their lives,” and make it a rule to refuse all invitations, preferring to go to an hotel where they can have what they like to eat, go to bed when they like, and get up ditto without fear of putting anybody out or appearing faddish.

I cannot help feeling glad though that I never reached that stage, for I cherish the most delightful memories of all my hosts and hostesses, save two or three, and those only during the South African War, when some of the best and most truthful of men seemed to lose their heads and forget what the truth was, deeming any falsehood believable if it would blacken the character of men who were giving their lives for their country. I certainly did have some bad times with those people, and have had to leave the company to avoid speaking my mind, but I hope that will soon all be forgotten now.

What I chiefly prize about the hospitality which I received is the numbers of good friends, not ephemera, but real friends that I made. I have gone into a house one day and left it the next, having in the meantime made friends whom I can never cease to love while I live and who I feel humbly grateful to think will never cease to love me until they can love no longer. But of all the hospitality I ever enjoyed the quaintest was at Rishton, a suburb of Blackburn, and the manner of it was as follows. I was lecturing at Blackburn in the Town Hall, and on arrival went to the principal hotel with the secretary of the society who met me at the station. There, however, I could only get a bathroom to change in, for they were full, and my friend sent a man round with my bag to another hotel, assuring me that I should be all right there.

After the lecture the secretary invited me to spend an hour at the club, and as I felt fresh I readily consented. There I was introduced to a number of genial clubmen, and the time flew rapidly by until one of those present said:

“I don’t want to break up this happy gathering, but I understand Mr. Bullen’s staying at the ——, and if he doesn’t go now he’ll get shut out. It’s eleven o’clock, and they’re mighty particular.”

I rose at once and began to shake hands, when one of the members said nonchalantly:

“Mr. Bullen isn’t stopping at the ——, he’s stopping with me. George, go over to the —— and ask for Mr. Bullen’s bag; tell ’em I sent you.”

There was some little, very little, palaver over this, but I laughed and said I was quite happy whichever way it was, and so we settled down again. It was something past two and only a few of the members remained when my host said cheerily:

“Now, Mr. Bullen, if you’re quite ready, don’t let me hurry you, I think we’ll be getting home.”

I rose with haste and professed my perfect readiness to go, indeed I had been wondering slightly how much longer this club séance was going to last. My host then shouted:

“George, call a hansom! An’ see what sort of a night it is, won’t ye?”

Anon George returned, having got a hansom, and the information that it was raining in torrents. Bah, what did that matter? It was dry inside the cab, and although I did feel some qualms about the driver being out in that downpour through four dark miles, I was not in a pessimistic mood, neither was my friend. So we bumped along, chatting gaily, until suddenly my friend smote his knee and uttered a resounding exclamation. Naturally I enquired what had bitten him. After anxiously feeling in all his pockets he replied:

“I’ve left my key in my office in Manchester, my family are at Bournemouth, and the old woman who does for me goes home at nine o’clock. Funny thing, won’t it be, if I can’t get into my own house?”

I made some banal reply, but even this was not sufficient to disturb my optimistic humour, and soon we were both laughing heartily at the episode. Meanwhile the horse plugged steadily on, and at last drew up outside the gate of a fine house. The rain was, if anything, worse, but out jumped my friend, bidding me stay where I was in the dry. I think I should have stayed there anyhow, for with all my good feelings I did not see how I could help matters by getting wet. After quite a long absence my friend returned to report that he had tried every possible door and window within reach only to find them all securely fastened. And the only thing to do now was to drive a mile further to the village where the old caretaker lived, rouse her up, get the key from her, and come back.

I acquiesced cheerfully, making no comment on my friend’s saturated condition but thinking ruefully of the poor cabman from whom we had not yet heard. When we arrived at the old lady’s house and while my friend was battering at her door to the consternation of the neighbourhood, I looked at my watch and found that it was 3.15. And I softly chuckled to myself until I thought of the poor fellow in the dickey. However, my friend got his key—I heard it fall from an upper window on to the pavement—returned to the cab, and we again started for home. The only reference to his condition made by my friend was that he felt as if he’d been in swimming, but he didn’t care, he rather enjoyed the adventure.

At last we reached his door and gained access without further trouble, he giving the cabby a big drink of whisky and I hope paying him well. He then made some coffee on the gas-stove and after we had drunk it we scurried to bed just as the clock struck four. Yet, in spite of that, he was up at seven, got breakfast ready, and we caught the Manchester train at about 8.30, none the worse, as far as I was concerned.

As a contrast to this, let me set off an amazing experience I had in the brave West Country. I was booked to lecture at Plymouth on a certain date, and as I was visiting a relative at Crewkerne some days previously, I was taking my father down with me. A lady wrote to me—and a most charming letter it was—offering the hospitality of her house during my stay in Plymouth, but as I was to have my father’s company I regretfully refused, telling her why. A few posts later a letter arrived from her saying that her husband had been suddenly ordered off to Egypt by his doctor and in consequence she would be unable to receive me. But she placed her house and servants and carriage at my disposal, begging me to bring my father and not only to treat the place as if it were my own as regarded us two, but to give entertainment to as many friends as I liked. Indeed she stipulated that I should give at least one dinner-party!

Well, what could I say to such a princely offer as this? Only accept it gratefully, and in due course father and I arrived at the Great Western Station to find a beautiful carriage and pair awaiting us. We were driven to a stately house on the Hoe and received by the housekeeper with the assurance that in accordance with her instructions she would spare no pains to keep us comfortable. Nor did she. Never can I forget the splendour of that dinner-party, all the guests being friends of my hostess, or the agony of my father who having against my advice loaded up with sandwiches and cake at the five o’clock tea was unable to touch a slice of the noble turkey he carved so well at the head of the table.

I need hardly say that our stay of two days there was all too brief for me, but business called me away, and I had to go. But now that I feel elated when I have eaten one egg and two small slices of toast for my breakfast, I often think of that board spread for us two the morning we left. A noble uncut ham, an untouched glazed tongue, cooked on the premises, and innocent of any tin or glass, half a dozen eggs, a huge brawn, a great jar of Devonshire cream—it was a banquet for a boarding school, and the sight of it almost satisfied our healthy hunger. That was an episode to be remembered, yea, to carry with me, as Kipling says, “to the hungry grave.”

It has often given me much food for wondering thought, this practice of hospitality which is carried to a length of which I had never before dreamed. For instance, I have known of quite fierce competition between two families for the honour (?) of putting me up for one night only, and in some cases the matter has only been settled by my consenting to dine in one house and sleep in another. It was always my practice on revisiting a place to stay with the same hosts, if it were convenient for them to have me; indeed, I always had a standing invitation to do so, but on several occasions I have received letters from other parties, informing me that they had been in negotiation with my former hosts, and had succeeded in inducing them to allow the writers to entertain me this time! And, do what I would, the thought would assert itself, How pleasant it is to be thus sought after, but why? I have never found any definite answer.

But several times I have heard rumours to the effect that some lions are not at all easy to cater for. Apropos of that, I remember reading in an American skit upon William Elbert Hubbard, the eccentric genius who founded the Roycroft Brotherhood of Aurora, New York, that upon being offered a sandwich by his trembling hostess, he threw back his mane and said loftily, “It is ten dollars extra if I eat.”

Then, without another word, he stalked from the room, and presently there was heard a crash, he had flung a chambermaid downstairs. Humbly asked why, he replied in effect, “It is my humour; let no one question me.” Now this is obviously only a caricature, yet I have heard tales which I could not refuse to credit of public men retiring to bed after luncheon with a bottle of whisky; this in a temperance family too! And of a man who is an exceedingly prominent Nonconformist minister who treated his host and hostess with far less courtesy than was due to any hotel-keeper, refusing to eat with them or associate with anybody during his stay, save his secretary, who was accommodated in the same house.

It hardly seems credible that such practices should, not to say endear a man to his hosts, but admit of his being ever entertained again, yet so strangely are people constituted, that behaviour of that kind is condoned and excused as being the hall-mark of genius. On the same principle I suppose as the being possessed of the poetical faculty is held by some to excuse a man from behaving with either cleanliness, decency, sobriety or honesty. Perhaps then it was because I always felt grateful to my hosts and endeavoured to give them as little trouble as possible, while making myself as agreeable as I knew how to be, that I have so many happy recollections of hospitality received.

Once, indeed, my host failed me through no fault of his own, I am sure, although the letter he wrote telling me of his sudden forced departure for London did not reach me until some time after the trouble. The lecture was at Abergwynfi, South Wales, and I arrived there in the gloom of a winter evening, amid a drizzling rain. A less inviting place I have never seen, for the station seemed to end in a black wall of rock, and nothing could be seen around but the grimy cañon along which we had come. Enquiry at the station whether anyone was waiting for anybody only elicited a stare and a curt “no.” Further enquiries presently as to whether I could find a hotel and where, brought the stationmaster, who told me of two, and directed me to them.

So I climbed the steep, muddy stairs into the black, foul road, and after a tiring drag, with my heavy bag, of a few hundred yards, I reached a public-house, crammed with drunken miners, who were making a tremendous noise. This surprised me, for I had always thought of the Welsh miner as a quiet man, except in religious fervour, and certainly given to temperance. However, I pushed through the reeking crowd, and enquired at the bar if I could have a room. No! they had no rooms to let, used to have two, but there was no call for them now. Disheartened, I begged the landlord to let me know where the nearest place was that I could get a room, and he directed me still farther up that hopeless thoroughfare to another place, where they did have rooms.

I trudged up there, very wearily, noting as I went the fine Workmen’s Institute, where I was to lecture, because of the posters displayed outside and bearing my name. Alas, when I reached the hostelry, which was even more dreary and deplorable looking than the first, but had not so many drunken men in it, I was told that their two spare beds were occupied by two young women with the smallpox, a daughter of the landlord’s and a sewing-maid. Of course I lost no time in retreating, and being thus driven, took refuge in the Institute, where I was received by the caretaker with open arms.

I felt at once as if I had accidentally touched the right spring, for my new friend summoned a myrmidon from below, giving him some orders in fluent Welsh, which resulted in the appearance in a very few minutes of a robust man whom I took to be a superior workman or foreman of sorts, but who could not do enough for me. He took me to his home, apologising volubly all the way, and in a very short time his good wife had loaded the little kitchen table with tea, toast, cake, jam and sardines, to all of which I did as much justice, I hope, as was reasonable.

At my suggestion of changing into dress clothes he turned a puzzled, appealing look upon his wife, and a brief colloquy in Welsh passed between them. Then he said that he hoped I would not trouble to change, for as it was the first time they had ventured upon a lecture or address in English, nobody would expect it. And would I please come along to the Institute and meet the committee? I rose with alacrity, and together we marched up the muddy street towards that building.

The strains of a brass band in the distance saluting my ears, I made some trivial remark about it, to which he replied:

“Oh, yes. I quite forgot to ask you, do you mind the band playing for a few minutes before you begin—by way of introduction like? You see, they’ve offered, and they’re very keen—they do it all for love, and we don’t like to discourage them.”

Well, what could I do but acquiesce with as much appearance of heartiness as I could muster, though I did begin to wonder whither this affair was tending. But we now met the committee, all working men, who greeted me with enthusiasm, and did their best to make me feel welcome, although the English that some of them spoke was quaint; and we chatted on until that band played itself in and stopped all conversation. The leader ranged his merry men on the stage behind the sheet, and as the clock struck eight the band burst into a triumphal march. Merciful powers, may I never have such an experience again! Every executant, especially big drum, was determined that his instrument should be heard, no matter what happened, and there were thirty of them! I felt as if the drums of my ears would burst, but feared to offend by going out.

Still, I hoped that the uproar would be brief, indeed, I had been told of ten minutes as the limit. Alas, no! Though their faces were crimson and streamed with sweat, they felt no fatigue, and they clashed, blared and banged on until a quarter to nine, forty-five minutes. There was a hubbub of Welsh congratulations, after which I bowed to the leader of the band (his instrument was the bombardon), and said without emphasis, “Thank you so much.” Then I went before the sheet, there being no chairman.

The hall was packed, 600 I should think being present, and of them at least 590 were miners. Not a sound was heard, every face was filled with blank amazement. Not being used to such a reception, I was a bit daunted, but plunged in and talked my best for an hour and a quarter. Still not a sound nor a movement, until one of the committee went before the screen and said something in Welsh, upon which the hall emptied, noisily, it is true, but in most orderly fashion. On joining the committee I expressed a fear that I had not pleased my audience, but my host of teatime hastened to assure me that my efforts were beyond praise.

“Only,” he said, “you must remember that very few of the chaps understand English!”

And then, indeed, I was filled with admiration for their good behaviour. To sit and listen to unintelligible explanations of pictures representing something they had never even dreamed of before,—sit for seventy-five minutes and make no protest, then go out in such orderly fashion,—well, it spoke volumes for their characters in the direction of self-restraint.

“Now, sir,” broke in my kind guardian again, “if you will come along with us to Blaengwynfi, we have found you a hotel there. This village has no public accommodation at all.”

Of course I signified my delighted acquiescence. What else could I do? But I hoped it was not very far, and I was at once assured that it was less than a mile. So we strolled, about eight of us, my bag being carried by one of the party, and soon arrived at the hotel, where I was solicitously attended to in the matter of food, and given quite a decent room. My meal over, I was invited to join my committee, who were evidently out for the evening. Well, what a gay crowd it was, to be sure. They sang and they drank and they smoked—the eleven o’clock rule having been suspended for their benefit apparently, until at about midnight I begged off, and retired to my bedroom. But as it was next to the room in which were the revellers, it was long before I got to sleep, though I have no idea when the merry party broke up.

Next day, however, I found that my bill had been paid, and that everybody was delighted with my behaviour and with the evening generally. Also I found a good train from a station almost opposite to the hotel, and passed away from the district never to visit it again, but to bear it in memory all my life.

CHAPTER IX
HOSPITALITY—continued

While I am upon this subject of hospitality, I may as well say what I really believe, that as far as my experience goes—and I am fully aware that it does not go very far—I give the palm for knowing how to be really hospitable to my own countrymen, with a slight reservation in favour of the Scotch. But first of all it is necessary to define exactly what I mean by hospitality. Let me say that I am considering it entirely from the point of view of the lecturer. Of the man or woman who has made a long journey, involving very likely all sorts of trying inconveniences, in order to fulfil an engagement to entertain some hundreds of people for a couple of hours or less, and whose first duty is to those people, his employers for the time being.

When a local magnate invites a lecturer to accept his hospitality during the lecturer’s stay, he should remember what the lecturer’s business is, and that he has very likely to deliver another lecture the following night at some town a long distance away. Most hosts and hostesses do remember this, and act accordingly; some few, a very few, act as if the lecturer simply came to entertain them and their guests, and had no other business in life. They are not hospitable in the present sense, if, indeed, they are in any other. No one has a right to ask a lecturer to stay with him unless he has the means to make such a public servant comfortable; no one should act as if the lecturer would be homeless for the night if they do not give him a shelter, unless indeed there be no place of public entertainment in the town, or means of getting out of the town after the lecture.

For it should always be remembered that while lecturers are prepared to put up with a good deal of inconvenience and fatigue in the course of their business, it is not hospitable to add to their burdens in those directions. But perhaps I shall better explain by giving an example of what I mean by an ideal host, an actual experience of course, since fiction finds no place in these pages.

I was booked to lecture in a quiet town not far from Edinburgh, and a gentleman wrote to me some time before, offering me hospitality during my stay, and asking me from what direction I should be coming, and at what time I proposed to arrive. I replied that I should be coming from Glasgow, where I had been staying for a few days with a friend, and that I could come when it would be most convenient for him. He appointed a time to meet him at his club in Glasgow, where I changed and dined with him, then we drove to the station. I made to get my ticket, but he stopped me, saying:

“We have a system of ‘guest’ tickets in Scotland, Mr. Bullen, and here is yours,” putting the piece of pasteboard into my hand. Of course we travelled first-class, and at our arrival were met by my host’s carriage and pair. A happier time I never spent than with him and his amiable family, but I was never entertained, I was one of themselves without duties. On the day I was to leave my host took me into his den, and said gravely:

“Mr. Bullen, I pay my servants well on the understanding that none of my guests are to be taxed in tips. You will greatly oblige me, then, if you will refrain from giving any money to anyone in my service. I ask this as a personal favour.”

And having ascertained that my next visit was to be to Hawick, my “guest” ticket was made available to that place, I was driven to the station, accompanied by my hostess, and sent upon my way feeling particularly happy. Now I must hasten to say that such treatment is not, could not be, expected everywhere by me or anybody else. But what a contrast to the behaviour of the man who invites you over an undecipherable signature to be his guest at the Laurels, Edgbaston, say, and leaves you to find your way there at the cost of an expensive cab fare, has nobody to greet you when you arrive, invites ten or a dozen people to dinner, at which you are expected to entertain his guests, and after your return, fagged, from your lecture, expects you to entertain a roomful of people until midnight! I needn’t go on. For, as I say, such people are very rare, but I am sure they are the cause of many lecturers declining all offers of hospitality whatever.

Not quite so bad as the gentleman I have just sketched was a preparatory schoolmaster for whom I lectured once. The time of the lecture and the distance from London both made it possible for me to catch a train from home which gave me an opportunity not to be missed, for at that time my nights at home during the winter were very few, and therefore precious. So upon hiring my cab at the station I made arrangements for it to call for me after the lecture, and thus satisfactorily fixed for my return I went on gaily through a very jolly lecture. When I had finished the headmaster advanced upon me, and taking my arm, said:

“Come on, Mr. Bullen, dinner is all ready, and I am sure you must want it, I do.”

“I’m sorry to say that meals are to me only a necessary evil,” I replied, “but, apart from that, I have ordered my cab to catch the London train, and I see I must be off at once if I am to do so.”

“Oh, nonsense,” he snapped. “It’s absurd for you to talk about returning to London to-night. You mustn’t do it.”

“Very sorry,” I persisted, “but my plans are all made, and my people are expecting me. Had you intimated to me beforehand that you would expect me to stay the night, I should then have told you that I could not under the circumstances.”

“Well, all I can say is, that if I had known I certainly would not have engaged you. I don’t care twopence for the lecture; it was the yarn afterwards that I was looking forward to, and I am extremely disappointed.”

Now there was a nice state of affairs! I did the only thing I felt possible—bade him good night, and got into my cab, feeling very angry at what I thought was the perversity of the situation, and leaving my would-be host doubtless very angry at what he considered to be my perversity. It is perhaps unnecessary to add that I never got another engagement at that particular school.

Speaking of cabs being retained for the homeward journey reminds me of a wretched experience I had once in Surrey. I was engaged to lecture at a preparatory school, the headmaster of which was a most kindly, courteous gentleman. He warned me some time before I came that the school was six miles from the nearest station, that I must engage a cab to wait and bring me back, the lecture being arranged so that I should have ample time to dine and return to catch a train somewhere about 10.50. But when I was all ready to depart the cabman could not be found—and by the time he did turn up, it was obvious that things were being cut rather fine. And so I told him, but he only replied nonchalantly that there was “plenty of time,” and did not hasten one bit. Two or three times on the way I tried to liven him up, but he took no notice, and we arrived at the station to find the train gone. A belated porter came up and gave me the information that the next train was about midnight, due at Waterloo about 1 a.m., and then my cabman said, “How long’s she ben gone?”

I am glad to say that I do not remember what I said then. I know it was copious and bitter, but it was utterly lost on the cabman, who simply turned and drove off, leaving me to wait about on a bitter January night in a fireless waiting-room or on a windswept platform until the coming of the last train. I arrived at my hotel in London chilled to the marrow at 1.30 a.m., and owe it to my extraordinary immunity from chills and colds that I did not have a bad bout of illness.

But to return to this matter of hospitality. Taking it all round, I am convinced that there is none so perfectly acceptable to a lecturer at any rate as that in England and Scotland. Irish hospitality is warm, effusive and well meant, but it is too casual, there are too many discrepancies. These can be made fun of, and indeed enjoyed by the young and vigorous, but to the middle-aged, who are none too strong, they are apt to be trying. Such as, for instance, a peat fire in your bedroom on a bitter winter night, which only smoulders and smokes, and gives not the slightest heat. And then to find your pyjamas in the bed wrapped round a leaking hot-water bottle, which has made it necessary to perch precariously upon one edge of the bed, in order to keep dry, but, of course, entailing the destruction of sleep.

But I am in honour bound to say that although I have enjoyed the hospitality of several hundreds of families in this United (as yet) Kingdom of ours, I could count my experiences that were unpleasant on the fingers of one hand, so well is the virtue understood and carried out. In the United States, where I once had a lecture tour, I was never offered hospitality, beyond a meal, but once. And if that once was a fair sample of the custom of the country in that direction, I am very glad. For both my host and hostess regarded me as their property, bound to go through certain performances as a sort of return for my entertainment; and when I jibbed they were immensely surprised. They seemed to think that addressing Boards of Trade, attending Clam Bakes, and speaking pieces from my books to a drawing-room packed with guests invited for the purpose, ought to please me beyond measure, and that all arrangements of the kind might be made without any reference to me or my personal affairs. I am quite willing to believe, however, that such hospitality may be exceptional. Anyhow, I do not want, as Martin Ross has it, to be “entertained within an inch of my life.”

Only once in Australia and New Zealand was I given hospitality—I beg pardon, twice; but as both cases were exceptional, and the pleasure they gave me of the deepest and most lasting kind, I will say no more about them here. As far as I am concerned, hospitality in Australasia and America has been non-existent for me, for the exceptions which I have quoted only go to prove this rule. And now I must close this chapter, not, indeed, that my matter on the subject is exhausted, but because—well, because I want to get on to the burning topic of hotels. And this is a discursive yarn at best, its only virtue, as far as I can see, being its absolute truthfulness. So we will get on, if you please, to a subject that is of the deepest interest to all travellers, but especially to those who travel to earn a living, and to whom hotel charges are a most serious item.

CHAPTER X
HOTELS

My first experience of hotels goes back to 1879, when I arrived in Belfast as a seaman before the mast, and was invited by my good friend, George Hunter, a gentleman who for motives of economy had worked his way home with us before the mast, to dine with him at the Eglinton and Winton Hotel. I was staying at the Sailors’ Home at the time, the best, by the way, that I ever did stay in, but as we had not yet been paid off, my wardrobe was not strictly according to shore ideas. I had a good coat and waistcoat, but I had to wear a pair of moleskin trousers. They were milk-white with energetic washing, but they must have looked funny, for I remember a hilarious commercial after dinner asking me if I was one of the Welsh miner-heroes (there had been a terrific colliery accident in North Wales not long before, attended by the usual heroic endeavours to save life).

I also remember that the food seemed to me the finest of which I had ever dreamed, but then I was fresh from five months of forecastle grub. That, however, was no excuse for my lifting the last cauliflower out of the dish proffered me, even if it was no bigger than a duck egg. To a seaman fresh from five months’ utter privation of vegetables, it was but a mouthful, but something of the enormity of my offence was borne in upon me when the waiter (he was an Irishman) proffered the empty dish to my neighbour.

“Get me some cauliflower,” said that gentleman promptly, not without a stern glance at my plate.

“There’s no more,” replied the waiter, and the silence that ensued was thick enough to cut. For four persons had not been served with cauliflower. Yet, British fashion, no man complained, and the dinner proceeded in grim silence. And I felt bewildered, for my senses told me that I had not been greedy, and yet I could not help feeling also that I had annexed the cauliflower of four diners.

Two years afterwards I arrived at Dundee, and remembering my former experiences, went to a hotel for the one night I was to stay there. And when I sat down to the laden table and the waitress placed a 20-lb. joint of cold roast beef before me to help myself, the hungry months behind me faded away, and I fed blissfully. They only charged me 2s. for my meal, but I am sure they were heavy losers, for I must have eaten over a pound of meat, to say nothing of bread, butter, jam and cake. But I feel that they could have few such appetites as mine then was to cater for.

It was many years before I was a guest at a hotel again, and then, alas! my appetite had gone. Gone so completely that I did not want any breakfast at any time, and for my principal meal in the middle of the day the smallest quantity of the plainest food. And if that food were tough or badly cooked or unpleasant, I wanted nothing but a piece of bread. This made me fiercely critical of hotel charges. I could not remember that to keep up a great establishment it was necessary to charge a fairly high price, and to cater for people with appetites, not abnormalities like myself, satisfied with a cup of coffee and a slice of bread and butter for breakfast, and fiercely resentful at having to pay 2s. for it.

Nevertheless, it is possible to recognise facts that you cannot alter, and I speedily became passive under the infliction of comfortless splendour and high charges for meals that I couldn’t eat. I need hardly say that I never by any chance took a table d’hôte dinner so cheap at 5s., or ditto luncheon at 3s. 6d., fulfilling the requirements of the hotel, which threatened a fine of 2s. if I did not take meals in the house, by paying 2s. for a cup of coffee and a slice of bread and butter at breakfast-time. But in Scotland I found attached to every large hotel a restaurant where the food was really excellent; quality, quantity, variety and price being all that one could desire. There I could dine or lunch for about 1s. 6d. as well as I desired, one plate always serving me, always being sufficient. I know that some people on reading this will esteem me mean, but I am really not so, only I do hate having to pay for a succession of dishes whereof I can only eat one.

I always found, too, that the better the hotel the more moderate were the charges as compared with second- and third-rate places, with the vile old system of charging for attendance, which benefits nobody but the proprietor, and means that you have to pay twice or the attendants get no tips. It is not a bit too emphatic to call the system vile, for these places hire their servants for a few shillings a month, on the distinct understanding that they, the servants, make up for their scanty wages by tips, which the customer has already paid in the bill. Nothing could well be more paltry, dishonest and irritating than such a system, for even the seaside lodging-house keepers’ extras are not nearly so annoying. Fortunately the better class of hotels have abolished the system altogether. You know what you have to pay, and even if you feel that the old extras are added in, that is not half so irritating as the old system.

One of the strangest things that I have noted in my hotel experience is the inferiority of the Temperance Hotel. There must be some exceptions, of course, or how can the popularity of the huge Cranston Hotels be explained; but, speaking generally, so far as my experience goes, in a temperance hotel, food, attendance, accommodation, and civility are all far below what is obtainable in licensed hotels. I do not pretend to explain it, but I have known many men who were total abstainers who shuddered at the thought even of going to a temperance hotel. Is it, I wonder, anything to do with the fact that all temperance drinks are vile, thirst-provokers and stomach-destroyers. Except perhaps water, and even water in satisfying quantity is not good for the middle-aged. It is a puzzle which I leave to wiser heads than mine.

Then there is the Commercial Hotel. If you are a commercial, nothing can well be better. The food is of the best, the charges are reasonable, and the tips exceedingly modest. But if you are not one of the knights of the road, you are in parlous case. The worst room in the house, the almost undisguised scorn of the attendants, the quite undisguised dislike of the guests are yours without asking. The very last hotel I stayed in was a Temperance Commercial Hotel, which outside looked like a large and charming family villa—but my room was positively filthy, with black rotten paper hanging off the walls, a bed apparently made of dumplings, no fire-place, and for light a feeble gas-jet in a remote corner, where it only served to show what a den the room was. I asked for a fire to be made in my room, for the night was bitterly cold, and the two public rooms downstairs were full of tobacco smoke, which I cannot breathe for coughing, but I was told that it was impossible, as there was no fire-place—I had not then seen the room. Why did I go there? Well, the room was taken for me by the secretary of the society I was to lecture for—I attach no blame to him—and when I found out it was too late, in my weak condition, to go anywhere else. But this was in a town of 200,000 inhabitants in the North of England.

Let it be understood once for all that I dislike hotels as necessary evils, but that my sense of justice compels me to admit that one may be made comfortable in a gigantic caravanserai where it would seem impossible for the personal element to have any chance to express itself, and, conversely, that one may be made abjectly miserable in a very small hotel where it might naturally be thought that the proprietor would make it his sole business to see that his guests were comfortable. Management is the keynote of it all, but even that is powerless against other advantages such as position, want of competition, etc. Most gratefully do I bear tribute to one splendid characteristic of all the great hotels owned by the Midland Railway Company—the quality and get-up of their bed-linen. It must be an education in comfort to some people, wealthy folks, too, who stay in them; for I can honestly say that in no private house, however costly in its appointments, have I ever enjoyed contact with such sheets and pillow-slips as in any Midland hotel that I have ever stayed in, and I think I have sampled them all.

For sheer magnificence, which does not always mean comfort by any means, the Great Scottish Railway Hotels are easily first of all the hotels I know, which, of course, does not mean anything of the “Carlton” or “Ritz” type. Why is it, I wonder, that Edinburgh and Glasgow can and do so easily excel our great metropolis in railway stations and hotels? The finest terminus in London is a mere undistinguished siding compared with Waverley, Princes Street or Central Stations; nor, although St. Pancras Hotel is architecturally very fine, does it compare with the castellated splendour of the North British Hotel at Waverley.

But if only they could be found now I would infinitely prefer the old English inns, with their plain roast and boiled, chops and steaks and simple vegetables. Even now may be found in some of them, daily, alas! growing fewer, the same high quality of meat and vegetables, and the same almost reverent care in their simple preparation, a preparation that did not depend upon some mysterious sauce to give flavour to the meat, but brought out all the delicious qualities that the unsophisticated food itself possessed. Unfortunately, even a wayside inn will now give you a menu written in amazing French, and dishes more amazing still, concocted by people who doubtless would have been good at plain boiled or roast, but who make an awful mess of a ragout, an entrée, or a fricassee. Still, as they would very justly retort, these unholy mix-ups are asked for and expected by their patrons, who having eaten heartily of them, go away and growl that it is only in France that you can get food decently cooked.

But I am reminded that tastes differ. I only wish that folks would practise toleration in food matters as well as religion. To the latter we are all coming—even the Catholics will, I understand, allow you to do and believe anything you like, so long as you say you are a Catholic, go to your duty once in a while and pay up—sure that’s all easy. Then why shouldn’t men admit that what is one man’s meat is another man’s poison, and let it go at that? They don’t, though. One of the most frequent remarks made to me during my lecturing days by hostesses was:

“Now, Mr. Bullen, tell me just what you would like before you lecture and what afterwards. I only want to know, because I am aware how necessary it is that a lecturer should have just what food agrees with him and at the time he needs it.”

My invariable reply that whatever the family were taking for dinner would suit me admirably, and that I wanted nothing after a lecture, was always received with polite astonishment—I will not say incredulity, but certainly there was conveyed to me an idea that I could not be sincere, or, if so, that I must be a totally different subject from the majority of lecturers and other public men. As far as lecturers go, I hasten to say that I do not think that any with whom I am acquainted are difficult to please or at all tête montée. Still, you never know. But public men! Ah, there you have me. They may be a fearful sort of wild-fowl to entertain, especially if they have only recently arrived.

Alas, I am wandering far away from my chapter heading, which is hotels. And no hotel in which I ever stayed was at all concerned about anything but what I chose to order and pay for. And if that was served as I wanted it, well, glory! all was as happy as could be. But of all the infernal places on earth to stay at, defend me from a hotel whose iron-bound rules forbid any guest to have anything in the nature of food or drink except at certain stipulated hours. These dens, I can call them nothing else, flourish in the United States, where the democracy submit to more tyranny than any place outside of Turkey. Shall I ever forget an occasion when I lay groaning with acute indigestion in a hotel in Chatauqua Lake summer resort? I was parched with thirst, knotted up with pain, empty as a drum, but knew I dared not eat. At last (it was Sunday morning about ten o’clock), at something like the thirteenth ring, a youth came and slammed my door open.

“Waal!” he said. “Waat ye want?”

I looked, at him with glazed eyes, and said faintly:

“A little milk and soda, please, as soon as you can.”

“Ye cain’t have nothin’ till dinner-time!” with an air of finality perfectly Rhadamantine.

That did me good. I sat up in bed, the excruciating pain temporarily forgotten, and enquired:

“In heaven’s name, why can’t I have a milk and soda?”

His answer was concise, and closed the discussion in one direction.

“Bekase th’ manager’s gone out, an’ he has th’ key of the kitchen, an’ nothin’ k’n be served till he comes back at one o’clock.”

Then I recognised, as they say, what I was up against, and I pleaded hard. But it was of no avail, I had to wait until one o’clock, and then—while milk could be had in plenty, there was no soda! So I was as badly off as ever, for milk alone in the state I was enduring was so much poison to me. I could not understand it, nor can I now. So difficult is it to understand that I never expect to be believed when I tell the following story. The next evening I was to lecture in the auditorium, a huge, umbrella-shaped building set apart for the purpose, and before the lecture I sought the janitor, and endeavoured to enlist his sympathies in the matter of soda and milk, at any rate. I assumed that he would be as surprised as I was that soda was not to be got in so highly civilised a place, and apparently I was right, for he responded at once with a snort of contempt for the fools, as he called them, and assured me that he would get me my milk and soda in two ticks. I gave him a dollar, and in less than ten minutes he returned with a jug of milk and a pound of washing soda! I know I can never be believed, but I declare that this is true.

But I can honestly say that I never but once had as good a meal anywhere in America, and I always stayed at the best hotels I could find (private houses I only know of two), as any workman can get in London for eightpence. The exception was at President Roosevelt’s table at Oyster Bay. We had lamb cutlets, potatoes and cauliflower, with rice pudding to follow, and it was all delicious. It made me feel quite homesick. But it was unique. I never got it again. In Canada it is practically the same, though I will gladly admit of an exception in the case of the Château Frontenac at Quebec, and, oh, yes, there is the “Empress” at Victoria, Vancouver Island. The “Prince George” at Toronto was better than any United States Hotel I ever stayed in, and quite equal to any English hotel I know, but that is not saying a great deal.

As to the food in the trains, it makes me shudder to think of it. I really cannot say all I know to be true about it, for fear of being thought extravagantly biased, but in very truth I nearly starved on the C.P.R. I have had lamb (so called) black and tough as leather, lake trout that was positively putrid, and—but there, it is useless to make a list. When I say that I was reduced to eating baked beans and bread at every meal, and that I lost a stone in weight in one month, I best convey the straits to which I was reduced. To my mind the strangest thing about the whole business was that when we got on board the boat to go from Vancouver to Victoria, although presumably the catering arrangements were the same, the food was excellent. I could not wish for anything better, but I tried in vain to discover any reason for the difference.

As a matter of actual experience I never realised how good and comfortable a place a hotel could be until I went to Australia seven years ago. During my previous visits as a lad and a young man I had learned to love and admire Australasia, because of its lavish distribution of food at low prices. It will hardly be believed, but it is a fact that when I went to Lyttelton in 1878 a carpenter could earn 15s. per day, and could get board and lodging for 15s. per week, the board meaning three huge meals with meat, vegetables, bread, and pastry, also tea, and coffee and beer. Sixpence was the ordinary workman’s price for a meal in an eating-house at all the ports in Australasia, and better, more copious meals it would be hard to find. But then Australasia had not, and never has, as far as I know, handed over her food supply to a meat trust, and thereby bound her people, no matter what their station in life may be, to eat whatever garbage Chicago chooses to dole out to them.

Still, those early experiences of mine were only of eating-houses; I never stayed in a hotel, of course. But on this last visit, after I had become thoroughly well acquainted with hotels in Great Britain, America and the Continent, I stayed in hotels all over Australasia, and I firmly believe as a result of that experience that they can safely, or that they could safely, be spoken of generally as the best hotels in the world. But here arises a small difficulty. Every little pub, no matter how small, ordinary or low class, calls itself a hotel, and strangers are apt to be misled by the title. Still, titles are always misleading people everywhere, so the hotel business in Australasia cannot claim any monopoly in misnaming.

What I wish to point out from actual experience, and as entirely unbiased as any opinion can ever be, is that in Australasia, as in no other country that I have ever visited, may be found, in the great cities as in remote country places, hotels which will give the traveller an abundance of excellent food well and plainly cooked, with a great variety of beautiful vegetables also in plentiful quantities, such as a man would expect in his own comfortable home. Not only so, but the tariffs charged were extremely reasonable, affording the strongest possible contrast to Canada, where I believe the hotel charges are the highest, and the treatment generally the worst, in the world. But these were not the only matters I saw to admire in Australasian hotels. In all my experience of them I was never charged anything beyond the agreed daily tariff—there were no extras. And I was always served with early morning tea and afternoon tea, while for those who liked to eat between meals there was food at 11 a.m., no table laid, and again at about 10 p.m. And baths were looked upon as a necessary of life, and never charged for. Nor were there any tips.

Now I am perfectly well aware that hotel keepers everywhere else, especially in my own beloved country, will, if they believe these statements (a very large “if,” by the way), declare that such a procedure on their part would only spell bankruptcy. Well, of course, I do not know their business, but I may be permitted to disbelieve such a statement entirely. In Australasia wages are higher, rent is higher, food is certainly no cheaper, and hotel keepers certainly not philanthropists, yet the thing is done, and done as I have said.