England Part 4

It is because the luxury of upper-cla.s.s life in England is so suave and so refined that it does not challenge antagonism as does the arrogant wealth of other lands. An English manor house, such as Stoke Court--once upon a time the house of the poet Grey--is, from its beautiful surroundings to the last detail of a curtain, as fine a product as civilisation can show. And the Englishman's home is for himself, his friends, and, in so far as it can claim to be of any public interest, for the enjoyment also of the ma.s.s of his fellow-countrymen.

The casual traveller through London may, on several days of the year, see a great crowd of omnibuses and drags outside Buckingham Palace, and learn that the grounds of the King's palace had been that day thrown open to the public. To a large extent the royal palaces thus welcome the people as guests; and the great houses of the n.o.bility, which have fine collections of paintings, are in very many cases treated as semi-public inst.i.tutions.

This shows a fine public spirit and feeling of common patriotism between cla.s.ses.

The middle cla.s.s fas.h.i.+ons itself, as closely as it can, on the upper cla.s.s.

Its home is often as admirably managed, though on a smaller scale. Its observance of etiquette is more rigid, especially in the "lower middle cla.s.s." Smooth home-management is the Englishman's (or the Englishwoman's) gift. The domestic economy of the country cottager seems generally good, but the city worker often makes the mistake of trying to ape the standards of richer people, sacrificing a good deal of material comfort to have, for instance, his "drawing-room" or parlour.

But on the whole the Englishman's home proves as high a standard of taste and good feeling as the twentieth century can offer. It is a fine reward for the work-doer, a fine fortress from which to issue forth to work. Let us now see England at play.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FOOTBALL AT RUGBY SCHOOL]

CHAPTER VI

ENGLAND AT PLAY

"These English take their pleasures sadly," said a French wit. It was a misunderstanding of the national expression. The Englishman takes his pleasures not sadly but resolutely. It is a holiday. He is out to enjoy himself. He _will_ enjoy himself whatever the obstacles. There is a grim resolve in his mind. But he is not sad: he is resolutely merry. That look on his face is not agony; it is stern determination.

I have seen Hampstead Heath on the midsummer Bank Holiday. A frowning sky, a bleak wind, and occasional gusty showers of rain declared the day to be not of midsummer and not suitable to open-air holiday. But the East End was not to be deterred from merriment. "London's playground" was like a huge ant-hill with swarming holiday-makers, and all had made up their dogged English minds to rejoice and be merry. That was apparent from the first.

In the "Tube" railways girls of from sixteen to sixty--all girly--giggled hilariously at everything and anything and nothing. "It's from the other side" announced one on the train platform; and this fact about the train's going was greeted with shouting laughter, and the "joke" went round a widening circle of rippling merriment. On the road, the coster's cart, loaded with Mr. and Mrs. Coster and a group of Costerlings--the numerousness of which said "no race suicide here"--scattered abroad song, vociferous if not tuneful. When a shower came the song grew louder, as though to smother the weather.

Commerce helped the people's resolve to be gay. You could buy a bag of confetti for a halfpenny; for the same sum a stick adorned with bright paper streamers, or a tuft of gorgeously-dyed flax. A penny provided a tartan cap in paper, wearing which one might be quite ridiculously gay. The oceans had been dredged and the earth rifled for the people's holiday.

Sh.e.l.lfish of all sorts, bananas from the West Indies, plums from Spain, roses from Kent and Surrey, pine-apple tinned at Singapore, bright nacre sh.e.l.ls from Australian beaches, little love-birds from Papua trained as "fortune-tellers" to pick out a paper telling you of the happiness in store for you--all these were at your service; and the standard price was one penny. A few coppers opened up for the holiday Englishman the resources of a whole Empire.

Over all lowered a grey sky. But what mattered that! The factory girls danced on the gravel paths to the music of barrel organs (sometimes, indeed, of the humble mouth organ), danced often with verve, and always with hilarity. The Australian larrikin and his "donah" dance at "down the harbor" picnics with a fixed solemnity of face, as if performing some weird corybantic rite. The London coster and his girl are determinedly merry. The merriment may be in some cases forced, but it is forced with grit. A dance on the road is broken up to allow a cart to slowly creep past. It is resumed with perfect good humour, and with the same gay whoops.

Yet there is nothing orgiastic in the merriment. Among the many many thousands you may notice here and there a man and--far worse sight--occasionally a girl the worse for drink, prompting the thought that if public opinion won't keep women out of the bars the licensing law should; but the great ma.s.s of the crowd is quite sober: the merriment is not vinous.

If dancing, shouting, or "spooning"--discouraged neither by the gaze of the public nor the dampness of the weather--did not amuse, there were more intellectual amus.e.m.e.nts. You might have your head read for a penny, your character diagnosed by your eye for the same sum; or you might see an old man making a fairly good pretence of hanging himself, and he left it to your honesty to subscribe the penny.

The Englishman take his pleasures sadly? Not a bit of it. That roar from the Old Bull and Bush, the crackling laughter around all the booths and from all the crowded paths, tell that the Englishman can become very gay on quite slight encouragement.

A day at Southend, another great "popular place of amus.e.m.e.nt," gives the same impression of resolute gaiety. A good-humoured crowd packs the cheap-trip trains. There are more pa.s.sengers than seats; and young fellows take it amiably in turn to stand, leaving the elders and the womenfolk to sit throughout. At Southend there is no beach, as one understands the term elsewhere--a scimitar curve of gleaming sand on which blue waves break, showing their white teeth in smiles. The "beach" is just a flat, which at high tide the sea covers, to leave it at low tide a wide muddy expanse of marshy soil. But the seaside trippers make the best of it. The cliffs are thronged with happy picnickers. The beach is dotted with waders, who go out many hundreds of yards along the wet flat, and in some mysterious way enjoy themselves. Where at last the water starts there are bathers disporting from boats. A pier which stretches out its long straightness and suggests a task rather than a pleasure, is filled with happy promenaders, who sniff up the smell of the seaweed and recognise it as ozone. They mostly wear yachting caps, or some other costume sign of the seaside, and an air of nautical adventure.

Yes, the Englishman has a great faculty of enjoying himself. I am indeed struck, in many aspects of life, at the Englishman's faculty of being cheerful under what one would consider depressing conditions. The Englishman does not hesitate to take his girl to the cemetery to court her.

A London friend asked me, with real enthusiasm, to look at the "fine view"

from his flat, and it looked out on an old Plague Cemetery, where the victims of the London plague nourish the green of the trees. The Englishman take his pleasures sadly? Rather he takes his sadnesses pleasurably.

It is the Englishman of the industrial cla.s.ses I have pictured amusing himself. As to the richer folk, is there anything fresh to be said? Does not every one at least think that he knows? Have not "society" novelists innumerable, from "Ouida" downwards, given us studies of English "society"

people at play, making the home life of the duke open for inspection by the meanest intelligence? Are there not numberless penny and halfpenny papers carrying on the good work to this day?

If one can contrive to put out of one's mind all that nonsense and observe with intelligence, one will find that the middle-cla.s.s Englishman and the rich Englishman amuse themselves after very much the same manner as do the people of the poorer cla.s.ses. They refine on the methods, but the spirit is the same. At heart, the Englishman of all cla.s.ses loves feasting and boisterous jollity. Education and breeding may modify his tastes, but they are still there. _Au fond_, the typical Englishman likes best a joke that has a savour of the "practical" in it. Give him his natural rein, and duke's son, cook's son--if there are any English cooks left to have sons--will lightly incline his thoughts to horseplay when he wishes to be genuinely amused.

Yet perhaps this, too, pa.s.ses. I remember thinking so, Lord Mayor's Day 1909, when the procession through the city proved to be not a "show," but a display of the defence guards of the nation. Perhaps this may be taken as a hint of a growing earnestness in English life, of a recognition of stern struggles to come and only to be met with resolved and steady vigour. It had, of a surety, some significance--the sudden casting off on the city's great festival day of an old habit of childish play and the putting in its place of a display of soldiers and sailors, and boys who will one day be soldiers and sailors. Of some significance, too, was the ready, popular acquiescence in the change. Crowds that had been for years regaled on such occasions with broad pantomime, all fun and levity, were faced of a sudden with serious drama--soldiers in glittering mail, still more impressive soldiers in uniforms of the colour of earth; Boy Scouts playing at being soldiers and enjoying the most wholesome game; war paraphernalia of wagons and field telegraphs and field hospitals, and guns of all kinds, from the great mastiff siege-guns drawn by eight horses, which the Navy taught the Army to make mobile, down to the vicious little terrier pom-poms. And the people cheered the change. There was no hint at a protest against the departure from the stage of the old vanities. After a quieter method than that which came of Savonarola's teaching, but none the less surely, they had gone to destruction, and in their place was a dutiful parade of citizens armed for the defence of their homes: and the people approved. The Balaclava veterans and the Boy Scouts shared the honours of the day. Gog and Magog were not; but the crowd would have its symbolism, and cheered the ideal of tried valour, the ideal of aspiring youth, as they saw them seriously personified.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CRICKET AT LORD'S]

In 1910 and 1911 there was the same "sober-minded" Lord Mayor's Day; and the old pantomime procession clearly will never be revived. Perhaps now the English nation is at last "growing up" to be too old for such elemental humours. If so, does the fact speak for good augury or evil augury? I wonder. A well-known Scottish artist of the day, who lives in Paris "because it is the place for all rebels and all ideas," and sells his pictures in London and America, told me once very solemnly, "When the English people get artistic and witty they are going to go down. It is the Philistinism of England that proves her national strength and sanity." I rea.s.sured him by telling him that most of the statues erected in England nowadays were those of men in trousers, and we were comforted to think that there was still enough of Philistinism in England to keep her safe and sound. But it does look as though the Englishman were losing his enjoyment of primitive humour when he vetoes Gog and Magog on Lord Mayor's Day. Also he begins to live in hotels and to dine at restaurants when he is not travelling. Yes, on the surface all peoples grow sadly alike, and that charm of travel which comes from the stimulating contact of the mind with the more obvious differences between lands and peoples threatens to vanish in a generation or two, through the fas.h.i.+on of admiring all countries but one's own spreading, and through each country learning to imitate some other. Still, the threat has been often made before without justifying itself. In Shakespeare's time it was Italy

Whose manners still our tardy apish nation Limps after in base imitation.

But we did not in the end become Italians. In spite of surface imitations the deeper differences which come from the tap-roots of nations remain.

The Lord Mayor's Day of the old style of buffoonery is dead. But there is, on the other hand, a movement in England nowadays--a happy and wholesome movement--to revive the festivities of May Day, which once was the great festival of the country-side. The old chronicles in their descriptions of May Day rejoicings provide a very delectable picture. This from Bourne:--

On the calends or first of May, commonly called May Day, the Juvenile part of both s.e.xes were wont to rise a little after midnight and walk to some neighbouring wood accompanied with music and blowing of horns, where they break down branches of trees and adorn them with nosegays and crowns of flowers; when this is done they return homewards about the rising of the sun and make their doors and windows to triumph with their flowery spoils and the after part of the day is chiefly spent in dancing round a tall pole, called a May-pole and being placed in a convenient part of the village stands there, as it were consecrated to the G.o.ddess of Flowers without the least violation being offered to it in the whole circle of the year.

Stubbes, writing in 1595, describes closely the bringing home of the May-pole:--

Against May Day ... every parish, towne or village a.s.semble themselves, both men, women and children and either all together or dividing themselves into companies, they goe some to the woods and groves some to the hills and mountains where they spend all the night in pleasant pastime and in the morning return bringing with them birch boughs and branches of trees to deck their a.s.semblies withal. But their chiefest jewel they bring thence is the Maie pole which they bring home with great veneration as thus--they have twentie to fortie yoake of oxen, every oxe having a sweet nosegaie of flowers tied to the top of his horns, and these oxen draw home the Maypoale which they covered all over with flowers and herbes bound round with strings from the top to the bottome and sometimes it was painted with colours, having two or three hundred men, women and children following in great devotion.... Then fall they to banquetting and feasting, to leaping and dancing about it, as heathen people did at the dedication of their idols.

Hall, in his _Chronicle_ of the time of Henry VIII., tells how the feast of May Day was sometimes accompanied by a kind of historical pageant. This is from his description of a May Day in the seventh year of the reign of Henry VIII.:--

The King and Queen accompanied with many lordes and ladies rode in the high ground of Shooter's Hill to take the open air and as they pa.s.sed by the way they espied a company of tall yeomen clothed all in green with green whodes and bows and arrowes to the number of two hundred. Then one of them which called himself Robin Hood came to the King, desiring him to see his men shoot, and the King was content. Then he whistled and all the two hundred archers shot and losed at once and then he whistled again and they likewise shot again, their arrows whistled by craft of the head, so that the noise was strange and great and much pleased the company. All these archers were of the King's guard and had thus apparelled themselves to make solace to the King. Then Robin Hood desired the King and Queen to come into the green wood and to see how the outlaws live. The King demanded of the Queen and her ladies if they durst venture to go into the wood with so many outlawes. Then the Queen said that if it pleased him she was content, then the horns blew till they came to the wood under Shooter's Hill, and there was an arbour made of bows with a hall and a great chamber and an inner chamber very well made and covered with flowers and herbes which the King much praised. Then said Robin Hood, Sir, outlaw's breakfast is venison and therefore you must be content with such fare as we use. Then the King and Queen sat down and were served with venison and wine by Robin Hood and his men. Then the King departed and his company and Robin Hood and his men them conducted.

I have spoken, so far, of "amus.e.m.e.nt" only. There are other forms of play.

There is "sport." Now sport must not be considered an amus.e.m.e.nt merely in England. It is a vital absorbing affair of life, a "bemus.e.m.e.nt" rather.

Some serious-minded folk in London still tell, with deprecation, of incidents of the time of the South African War, when the evening newspaper contents bills showed that there was a keener attraction for coppers in news of the cricket matches than in news of the campaign. But even these serious-minded people themselves probably have often bought a paper which recorded a century in a Test Match in preference to one which gave some news of national importance; and have murmured to themselves in excuse something that the dour old Duke of Wellington probably never said, about the Battle of Waterloo having been won on the playing fields of Eton.

"Sport," indeed, is so much a part of English life that it could never be uprooted without making some vital change in the national character--and, perhaps, not a change for the better.

One thing the pa.s.sion for sport does give to the Englishman, and that is a pa.s.sion for fair play. There is not in any other nation of the world such a nice sense of manly honour. "Give him a sporting chance" means that you must take no unfair advantage of an enemy. "Take it like a sport" means that you must not be merely a cheerful winner, but must be ready to face losses and set-backs with equanimity.

When the small English boy goes to school the question is solemnly asked as to what sports he will take up. This is of at least equal importance with the other question as to what professional or business career he will follow in the future. Often it is counted of greater moment. Will the youngster be good at cricket, or football, or rowing? On that hinges the degree of his greatness in his world's estimation for quite a number of years. Cricket is, on the whole, the most important. To be a cla.s.sic bat, to be a deadly slow bowler, or a still more deadly fast bowler--that is greatness for the young man. The cricket matches between the great public schools, the universities, the counties, are the chief pre-occupation of a large proportion of England during the summer months. Football grips more among the industrial cla.s.ses, cricket more among the professional and administrative cla.s.ses. Between them they keep a great part of England excited from one year's end to the other.

There are, of course, other sports of the schools--running, jumping, lawn tennis, hockey and the like. But they usually are just allowed to fill in gaps between cricket and football. Manhood, however, adds to the list of sports largely. There is golf. "If you find that golf interferes with your business, give up your business," runs a popular gibe. It accentuates, without misrepresenting acutely, the att.i.tude taken up by very many Englishmen and Englishwomen on the subject of golf. They live in a district because of its golf facilities, shape their holiday resorts by the golf they offer, reckon their days by the chances they offer for golf.

Horse-racing is another great English sport, in which few take an active part, but in which a vast mult.i.tude has a share of interest either as spectators or as speculators. It claims such a huge share of English attention that one definition of the English is, "a horse-racing nation"; and wherever an English town is built in any part of the world it will have a race-course almost as soon as it has a church and a school. The various race-meetings throughout the year in England vary in their social character. The Derby is a great popular event, to see which the East End of London pours itself out on the Surrey roads. Goodwood, on the other hand, is very much a "society" meeting.

The tale is not yet complete. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Englishmen find it necessary to life to disport on water during the summer--yachting, skiff-rowing, punting, or canoeing. Hunting is mostly the sport of the well-to-do, though an otter-hunt calls a whole country-side to its excitement, demanding of no one either that he should be mounted or that he should be rich.

Fox-hunting is of the very marrow of the English character. "The unspeakable pursuing the uneatable," said Wilde savagely of the English squire pursuing the fox; and thereby proved his utter un-Englishness. To sneer at fox-hunting! It is a step towards atheism. Once upon a time I remember going out into the yard of a little village public-house on the Monaro (Australia) and seeing chained up in the yard a fox. I stopped to ask why, and the groom told me of an English tourist who had also inquired as to the fox, and who had learned incidentally that poison was laid for foxes on the Monaro because they had become a pest; and, so learning, had set his face at once away from a land where such barbarities were possible.

He did not reckon his own life safe, I suppose, in a country where foxes were poisoned.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TROUT-FIs.h.i.+NG ON THE ITCHEN, HAMPs.h.i.+RE]

The pheasant _battues_, which are one of the autumn games of the rich in England, I would hardly dignify as "sport." They are the growth of the recent times of great fortunes, and scarcely a wholesome sign, I think.

Grouse-shooting _en battue_ is more tolerable as a sport, for at least the birds are wild-bred.

But one may not even catalogue all the sports of England in a chapter. I find that fis.h.i.+ng--in all its phases: salmon, trout, deep-sea, and the rest--asks attention, and may not have it. One final note: the Englishman, for all his present sports, is hospitable to welcome others, and often takes them up to excel in them. In flying, for instance, the Englishman is beginning now to take a place after the French. And I can recollect, as late as the end of 1909, a Flying Meeting at Doncaster at which not a single Englishman took the air. Within a little more than two years what a change!

That Doncaster Flying Meeting was the first ever held in England, and I was one of those who travelled up to see the strange fowl in the air, birds of the growth of the fabled roc winging steady flights around the field once sacred to the horse. Badly treated by the weather, the "First Flying Meeting in England" faced an outlook which was not too cheerful. Over a sodden ground a grey sky lowered threateningly, and gusty winds, blowing hither and thither, threatened storms. The great "birds" nestled within their sheds, and a nervous committee went round lifting questioning hands to the sky. If this day were a fiasco the meeting was ruined, and the horses of Doncaster would have the laugh over their strange rivals.

Then the sun came out. The wind dropped to a zephyr's lightness. There seemed no reason why the men should not fly, and they could fly. Whispers went round hinting at delays which were condemnable because avoidable if they were real. An official suggested that aviators had all the tricks and uncertainties of the indispensable _prima donna a.s.soluta_; that they had to be humoured to take the stage when the call-bell rang. Devout prayers were muttered for the day when aviation would be as common in England as trick-cycling and stout, bejewelled promoters of flying meetings would lounge haughtily in front of a long _queue_ of humble applicants for a chance to appear, and country hotel-keepers would, with most particular care, exact payment in advance from poor "artists" in flying who, in the event of a bad season, had such inconvenient facilities for escaping without footing the score. That time has almost come in England to-day. But then in 1909 public and managers had to wait patiently on the gentlemen who had improved on Prometheus and, harnessing the fire that he stole from above, dared the a.s.sault of the very heavens.