England Part 2

In Suss.e.x, when Henry VIII. was king, many "great cannones and shotters were caste for His Majestie's service"; and the county was notable for its iron mines and foundries. From Suss.e.x earlier had come all of the 3000 horseshoes on which an English king's army had galloped to ruin at Bannockburn. Owing to the iron in the soil the Suss.e.x streams sometimes run red, so that "at times the grounde weepes bloud." Now there is an end of iron-working there. The foundry at Ashburnham, the last of the Suss.e.x furnaces, was closed down in 1828. One reason given was that the workers were too drunken, helped as they were to unsober habits by the facilities for smuggling in Holland's gin.

But more probably the Suss.e.x ironworks closed down in the main for the same reason that other southern works did. The past two centuries have seen a gradual transference of the great industries and the great centres of population from the south to the north-west and the Midlands. The northern coal mines are the real magnets. So the Suss.e.x iron-workers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries may not justly be accused of killing an industry with their dissolute love of Holland's gin. Their country is to-day the more picturesque without the iron foundries, though one may give a sigh to Suss.e.x iron, which had the repute of being the toughest in all England.

I have given this little s.p.a.ce to Suss.e.x, by way of proof that everywhere in England there is beauty, for Suss.e.x is not a "scenery" county in the general sense. It will, indeed, prove puzzling to my imaginary pilgrim in search of the highest natural beauty of England to find time within one spring and summer to get an idea of its wide variety of charm. Fortunate he if he resists all temptation to rush (by motor car or otherwise) through a "comprehensive tour" mapped out by hours. I remember encountering--with deep pity on my part--a group of delegates to some great Imperial Conference, who were being "shown England" by some misguided and misguiding official. They were at Oxford for lunch, and were due to "do" Oxford and lunch--or rather lunch and Oxford--within three hours. Motoring up they had already "done" a great deal of country in a morning, including a visit to Banbury. After lunch--and Oxford--they were on their way to Worcester and yet farther that day. It was an unhappy experiment in quick-change scenery, proving conclusively the cleverness of motor cars and the stupidity of human beings.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SUSs.e.x VILLAGE]

May and June in this fancied Pilgrimage of Beauty should be given up wholly to the Thames valley from Greenwich to Oxford, and past. An intelligent lover of the beautiful in Nature and Art will at least learn in those two months that a life-time is not sufficient for due faithful wors.h.i.+p at all the shrines of Beauty he will encounter. My pilgrim has now seen wild coast scenery and river scenery. July should be given to the hills and the lakes, these enchanting lakes which have won new beauties from the poets and wise men who dwelt by them. Then August to the Yorks.h.i.+re Wolds, with their sweeping outlines, clear in the amber air s.h.i.+ning over white roads and blue-green fields.

The attractions of the Yorks.h.i.+re Wolds are proof against the wet sea-mists, the penetrating winds, and the merciless rain which sometimes sweep over them. The very severity of the weather appeals to nature lovers. The Yorks.h.i.+re Wolds terminate on the east with the great Flamborough headland, the chalky cliffs of which have remarkable strength to resist ocean erosion. Owing to this fact Flamborough headland has been for centuries becoming more and more the outstanding feature of the east coast of England, because the sea continues to eat into the low sh.o.r.es of Holderness.

With the end of August comes the end of the English summer (though at times it ends at a very much earlier date, and offers with its brief life poor reason for having appeared at all; "seeing that I was so soon to be done for, why ever was I begun for"). It is then time to go to Kent and see the burnis.h.i.+ng of the woods by Autumn, the ripening of hop and apple. To the New Forest afterwards, and the sands of the south coast. At the end of the year our pilgrim will know how varied is the beauty of the English landscape, and how faithfully it is loved in its different forms by those who live near to it.

CHAPTER IV

THE TRAINING OF YOUNG ENGLAND

All the world and his wife seem to be agreed that there is something in the English system of education which can work miracles. Boys from all over the world come to England, to school and university, to be trained. And further, the English tutor and the English governess are to be found sprinkled over the globe, teaching some of the young of all nations. There is a recent fas.h.i.+on for German training, "because it is so thorough," and the English system of training (which can certainly fail in a very large proportion of cases to show creditable results when tested by examination paper) comes in for some merciless criticism in its own home country.

Nevertheless, it still holds its reputation as the best of systems to make "character."

What exactly character signifies in this connection it would be hard to define in a phrase. But it is that something which makes the young pink English boy fresh from home step, as if by nature born to the job, into the work of administering things, governing inferiors amiably, obeying superiors cheerfully, and keeping up a high tradition of fair play and tolerance. It is that something which made a cute American, after planning out, in theory, the administrative staff of a gigantic enterprise, with experts of all nations in this and that department, to add, "Then I would have an Englishman to run the whole lot of them."

It is an education which trains the character and exercises the mind rather than one which informs--the typical English education. It can turn out, and does turn out, shoals of careless youngsters who know little or nothing of science, mathematics, philosophy, of "the humanities" even, but who give always the impression of having been "well brought up," who have a wise way of doing practical things, and who somehow or other manage to play no mean part in the governance of the world. Observing them, many a foreign parent resolves that his children shall be trained in the same way. But often he is disappointed. The system is English, and it suits the English mind. Not always is it successful with the foreigner.

All over England are spread the inst.i.tutions--preparatory schools, public schools, and universities--which are given over to the making of character, and incidentally to the teaching of a few facts. In the ordinary course a boy goes to a preparatory school with a career already mapped out for him, the Navy, the Army, or the Church, or one of the learned professions. If he is destined for the Navy he has to specialise at a very early age; if for the Army, he betakes himself to a military college at a later time; if for the Church or the Bar, or the public service, he pa.s.ses through the full course of preparatory school, public school, and university.

A great educational inst.i.tution in England will be found, almost invariably, built in a valley or on a marsh. Perhaps this sort of low living is thought to be conducive to high thinking. A more likely explanation is that most of the great educational inst.i.tutions are ancient, and in the time of their building any great concourse of people had to settle close to the banks of a stream. The situation of the schools and universities has had its influence on the course of English education.

Oxford and Cambridge, brooding in their low basins, alternately chill and steamy, are ideal places to dream in, and much more suitable for the encouragement of ethical arguments than of the inclination to "hustle."

What will happen to the English character when a university comes to be founded on top of a Yorks.h.i.+re hill I refuse to speculate; the prospect is too remote. But there are indications of the possible course of events in the results of the Scottish universities.

The various schools and universities of England contribute largely to its list of historic and beautiful buildings. The first great educational centre was York. In Roman times York was a fine city. With the coming of the Saxons it rea.s.serted its importance, and became the chief collegiate town of the kingdom. In the seventh and eighth centuries the chief of England's learned men hailed from Northumbria. It was in 657 A.D. that the School of York was founded by Caedmon, first of English poets, and with the York of the early days are linked the names of the venerable Bede, "father of English learning," John of Beverley, and Wilfrid of York; also of Alcuin, a great doctor of theology, who was one of the first to hold that "chair" at Cambridge. But York suffered many vicissitudes. Wars interfered with the pursuits of the scholars. At the dawn of the twelfth century Henry I. endeavoured to restore the prosperity of the city and its colleges, with some success.

Meanwhile to the south-east, among the marshes and fens of East Anglia, scholars.h.i.+p had found a fitting place to dream and study. Great monastic houses at Ely and Peterborough--some of the most important in England--were the forerunners of Cambridge University. The earliest community at Cambridge was founded by Dame Hugolina in 1092, in grat.i.tude for her recovery from a serious sickness. Cambridge has never forgotten that feminine foundation, and whilst Oxford was cold to the higher education of women movement, the other university gave the girl graduate a welcome, and pupils of two great Cambridge colleges, the "Girton Girl" and the "Newnham Girl," carried Cambridge culture wherever the English tongue was spoken.

Dame Hugolina's little foundation of six canons soon extended, until the house held thirty. In 1135 another canons' house was established, which served not only as a retreat for scholars, but as a hospital and travellers' hospice. The third foundation came in the next century, and now Cambridge University began to take definite shape. A church of the Franciscan Friars was used first for university purposes. The older and more learned friars were the professors, the novices and younger friars the undergraduates. Later, the Franciscans were succeeded by the Dominicans, and still later by the Austin Friars in the control of the nascent University. Then there began a movement to make the University independent of any monastic order, and during the fourteenth century the contest was as bitter as one could wish for. Early in the fifteenth century the University had won ground to the extent that it could act in defiance of the Bishop of Ely, and could, moreover, secure a Papal Bull in its favour.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS, ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE]

Simultaneously with this movement of the University towards independence of the monks, there had been the inevitable contests of all university towns between "gown's-men" and "town's-men." Cambridge had never been a city of any great commercial importance. But it had its "unlearned population"

engaged in connection with the fisheries, farming, and the pastoral industry. Near by, the great Stourbridge Fair--one of the most important in England--brought every year a great concourse of people with little sympathy to spare for the University students, who, in turn, despised them (or affected to) right heartily, though probably among the younger students there was a lurking sympathy for the jollity of the fairs, a good impression of which one may get from a quaint old ballad of 1762:--

While gentlefolks strut in their silver and sattins, We poor folks are tramping in straw hats and pattens; Yet as merrily old English ballads can sing-o, As they at their opperores outlandish ling-o; Calling out, bravo, ankcoro, and caro, Tho'f I will sing nothing but Bartlemew fair-o.

Here was, first of all, crowds against other crowds driving, Like wind and tide meeting, each contrary striving; Shrill fiddling, sharp fighting, and shouting and shrieking, Fifes, trumpets, drums, bagpipes, and barrow girls squeaking, Come my rare round and sound, here's choice of fine ware-o, Though all was not sound sold at Bartlemew fair-o.

There was drolls, hornpipe dancing, and showing of postures, With frying black-puddings; and op'ning of oysters; With salt-boxes solos, and gallery folks squalling; The tap-house guests roaring, and mouth-pieces bawling, Pimps, p.a.w.n-brokers, strollers, fat landladies, sailors, Bawds, bailiffs, jilts, jockies, thieves, tumblers, and taylors.

Here's Punch's whole play of the gun-powder plot, Sir, With beasts all alive, and pease-porridge all hot, Sir; Fine sausages fry'd, and the black on the wire, The whole court of France, and nice pig at the fire.

Here's the up-and-downs; who'll take a seat in the chair-o?

Tho' there's more ups-and-downs than at Bartlemew fair-o.

Here's Whittington's cat, and the tall dromedary, The chaise without horses, and queen of Hungary; Here's the merry-go-rounds, come, who rides, come, who rides, Sir?

Wine, beer, ale, and cakes, fine eating besides, Sir; The fam'd learned dog that can tell all his letters, And some men, as scholars, are not much his betters.

This world's a wide fair, where we ramble 'mong gay things; Our pa.s.sions, like children, are tempted by play-things; By sound and by show, by trash and by trumpery, The fal-lals of fas.h.i.+on and Frenchify'd frumpery.

What is life but a droll, rather wretched than rare-o?

And thus ends the ballad of Bartlemew fair-o.

It is on record that Edward I. in 1254 (whilst still Prince of Wales) visited the town of Cambridge, and acted as arbitrator in quarrels between the townsmen and the students. He decided that thirteen scholars and thirteen burgesses of the town should be chosen to represent both interests on a Board of Control. His son, Edward II., continued his father's interest in Cambridge, and maintained, at his own expense, a group of scholars there. In 1257 Hugh de Balsham, the tenth bishop of the diocese, placed and endowed at St. John's Hospital a group of secular students known as "Ely students." At this time also Walter de Merton, Chancellor of England, a.s.signed his manor of Malden, Surrey, as endowment for "poor scholars in the schools of Cambridge, who were to live according to his directions." In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in this as at other universities, scholars lived each at his own charge. Sometimes three or four clubbed together, but each had his own "founder and benefactor." Some scholars elected their own princ.i.p.al, and paid a fixed rate for board and lodging, and this hostel system developed into the collegiate system which distinguishes English universities from all others. Now Cambridge has seventeen of these colleges.

Among the architectural features of special interest at Cambridge is a chapel built by Matthew Wren, the uncle of Sir Christopher Wren. It is a fine specimen of seventeenth-century work. The various college buildings date from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. The dates are: Michaelhouse 1324, Clare 1338, Peterhouse 1284, King's Hall 1337, Pembroke 1347, Gonville Hall 1348, Trinity Hall 1356, Corpus Christi 1382, King's College 1441, Queens' 1448, St. Catharine's 1473, Jesus 1495, Christ's 1505, St. John's 1509, Magdalene 1542, Trinity 1546, Caius 1557, Emmanuel 1584, Sidney Suss.e.x 1595. Modern colleges are Downing College, Girton College, and Newnham College. Girton College occupies Girton Manor on the Huntingdon Road, an eleventh-century house built by Picot the Norman Sheriff of Cambridge. Earlier it had been the site of a Roman and Anglo-Saxon burial-ground. The college was founded by Madame Bodichon and Miss Emily Davies. Newnham College began in a hired house with five students in 1871. Miss Anne J. Clough was the founder. The present Newnham Hall is composed of several buildings acquired since.

For the historical student a brief roll of some of Cambridge's great men would include: Green, Lyly, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Nash, Fletcher, Sterne, Thackeray, Bacon, Milton, Dryden, Cranmer, the two great Cecils, Walsingham, Cromwell, Walpole, Chesterfield, Pitt, Wilberforce, Castlereagh, Palmerston, Herrick, Hutchinson, Marvell, Jeremy Taylor, Ascham, Erasmus, Spenser, Wren, Hook, Evelyn, More, Newton, and Darwin.

Meanwhile Oxford waits us, with no impatience, secure in her calm sense of dignity. There is a story of an Irishman with a great idea of his own dignity. But he was careless, he professed, as to the place at table a.s.signed to him. "Wherever I am seated," he said, "that is the head of the table." Oxford is sometimes credited with having a feeling of rivalry for Cambridge. A mimic war of wits has been waged over the fancied rivalry, of which one epigram that sticks in my memory is, that "Cambridge breeds philosophers and Oxford burns them" (I have not the exact words, perhaps, but that is the sentiment). In truth, though, Oxford has no sense of rivalry. She knows herself to be peerless, incomparable, the centre of the educational aspiration, not only of England but of the world. In her atmosphere of drowsy ritual she broods serene as Buddha. And she does not burn philosophers nowadays, however heretical may seem to be their ideas.

Indeed the Oxford of to-day shelters beneath its imperturbable calm, behind its moss-grown walls, all the "latest fas.h.i.+ons" in beliefs.

As to the first beginnings of Oxford--the town not the University has just been celebrating its millenary--Anthony a Wood records this tale of its first origin: "When Fredeswyde had bin soe long absent from hence, she came to Binsey (triumphing with her virginity) into the city mounted on a milk-white ox betokening Innocency, and as she rode along the streets she would forsooth be still speaking to her ox, 'Ox, forth'--or (as it is related) 'bos perge,' that is 'Ox, goe on,' or 'Ox, go forth'--and hence they indiscreetly say that our city was from thence called Oxforth or Oxford." It is fairly certain that Didau and the daughter Fredeswide established a nunnery and built a church there in the eighth century. The town was rebuilt by Ethelred in the eleventh century.

Before the Norman Conquest Oxford was a notable city, often visited by the reigning kings, sometimes the meeting-place of Parliaments. This prominence brought with it many troubles. It was often sacked and in part burned.

These incidents despite, it grew to be a prosperous medieval walled city. A Benedictine scholastic house on the site of Worcester College was the beginning of the University.

Early in the thirteenth century William of Durham, with a company of others, shook from off their English shoes the dust of Paris University after a "town and gown row" there, and settled at Oxford, and then the University began to take shape. He gave money to the University to found a "Hall" for students. Many other halls were founded (half of the Oxford Inns are, or were, perversion of old "Halls"). William of Wykeham gave a code of rubrics which became a legacy to the whole University. He built a college for the exclusive use of scholars of the foundation. He built also bell-tower, cloisters, kitchen, brewery, and bakehouse for "New" College.

New College was the first home for scholars at Oxford. Lincoln College was next founded, after that All Souls, then Magdalen. Duke Humphrey of Gloucester gave the nucleus of the famous Bodleian library to the Benedictine monks. Christ Church was built with the revenues of a suppressed monastery.

So every step in English history for ten centuries can be remembered by the stones of Oxford. That fine library building of All Souls, which holds as one of its treasures Wren's original plans for St. Paul's Cathedral, was built out of sugar money from the West Indies, being the gift of a great sugar planter in the early days of the making of the Empire.

During the wars of Cavaliers and Roundheads Oxford suffered some shrewd blows. It was for the King always, and after the Restoration the Court recognised its loyalty. Charles II. with his Queen--and eke another lady or so as a rule--was often a visitor, and spent a great part of the Plague Year there, though "the Merry Monarch" showed no want of pluck or loyalty to his sore-stricken people during that time, and did not abandon London altogether. But all who could got out of London for a while to escape the horrors of which Pepys has given so clear a record in his diary and letters, as in the following to Lady Carteret:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. MAGDALEN, TOWER AND COLLEGE, OXFORD]

The absence of the Court and emptiness of the city takes away all occasion of news, save only such melancholy stories as would rather sadden than find your Ladys.h.i.+p any divertis.e.m.e.nt in the hearing; I have stayed in the city till above 7400 died in one week, and of them above 6000 of the plague, and little noise heard day or night but tolling of bells; till I could walk Lumber-street, and not meet twenty persons from one end to the other, and not 50 upon the Exchange; till whole families, 10 and 12 together, have been swept away; till my very physician, Dr. Burnet, who undertook to secure me against any infection, having survived the month of his own house being shut up, died himself of the plague; till the nights, though much lengthened, are grown too short to conceal the burials of those that died the day before, people being thereby constrained to borrow daylight for that service: lastly, till I could find neither meat nor drink safe, the butcheries being everywhere visited, my brewer's house shut up, and my baker, with his whole family, dead of the plague.

Greenwich begins apace to be sickly; but we are, by the command of the King, taking all the care we can to prevent its growth; and meeting to that purpose yesterday, after sermon, with the town officers, many doleful informations were brought us, and, among others, this, which I shall trouble your Ladys.h.i.+p with the telling:--Complaint was brought us against one in the town for receiving into his house a child newly brought from an infected house in London. Upon inquiry, we found that it was the child of a very able citizen in Gracious Street, who, having lost already all the rest of his children, and himself and wife being shut up and in despair of escaping, implored only the liberty of using the means for the saving of this only babe, which with difficulty was allowed, and they suffered to deliver it, stripped naked out at a window into the arms of a friend, who, s.h.i.+fting into fresh clothes, conveyed it thus to Greenwich, where, upon this information from Alderman Hooker, we suffer it to remain. This I tell your Ladys.h.i.+p as one instance of the miserable straits our poor neighbours are reduced to.

Pepys himself had taken refuge then at Greenwich. All had left who could, even to dour old John Milton, whose plague retreat at Chalfont St. Giles (Bucks) is now preserved as an historical relic, and usually holds the attention of the rus.h.i.+ng tourist, who is "doing" England within a month, for quite seven minutes. That is really s.p.a.ce for a matured consideration to the tourist mind.

"The motor has slowed down from seventy miles an hour to fifty miles an hour. We are pa.s.sing a point of great historic interest." That is sight-seeing in Europe for the American tourist according to one of their own humorists. I have had many opportunities to observe the truth on which that sarcasm is based. Take Milton's Cottage for an instance. I had walked there from Chorley Wood one spring afternoon, and was enjoying idly the blooms in the little garden, when a motor rushed up, disgorged a party of hurried tourists, of which the man member had a guide-book. "Is this Milton's Cottage?" It was: so they entered. "Is this really Milton's chair?

Sure?" It was. So they all sat on it solemnly in turn. Within five minutes their chariot of petrol had wrapped them up again, and they were rus.h.i.+ng over the face of England to see some shrine of the Pilgrim Fathers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BROAD STREET, OXFORD, LOOKING WEST]

But we have rambled from Oxford, which is, by the way, much cursed of the rus.h.i.+ng tourist, who has a plan for "doing" it in an hour, and gallops from the Bodleian to Sh.e.l.ley's Tomb, and Addison's Walk, the Old Wall, the Tower of St. Michael's, and is away in a cloud of dust, without having gained the barest hint of the subtle persuasive charm of Oxford; without a thought of seeing St. Mary's Tower afloat in the moonlight; of hearing the choir of Magdalen; of drowsing an afternoon under the elms; or of seeking, with all due reverence and modesty, to gain an entrance to some of those august companies of Oxford--of undergraduates dreaming their exalted young dreams, of dons musing their deep thoughts.

I own to it that I feel it difficult to write of Oxford, though, alas! I am able to write with facility of many places visited and things experienced.