The porter who took our things thought
it would go from number two platform, while another porter, with whom he
discussed the question, had heard a rumour that it would go from number
one. The station-master, on the other hand, was convinced it would start
from the local.
To put an end to the matter, we went upstairs, and asked the traffic
superintendent, and he told us that he had just met a man, who said he
had seen it at number three platform. We went to number three platform,
but the authorities there said that they rather thought that train was
the Southampton express, or else the Windsor loop. But they were sure it
wasn't the Kingston train, though why they were sure it wasn't they
couldn't say.
Then our porter said he thought that must be it on the high-level
platform; said he thought he knew the train. So we went to the high-
level platform, and saw the engine-driver, and asked him if he was going
to Kingston. He said he couldn't say for certain of course, but that he
rather thought he was. Anyhow, if he wasn't the 11.5 for Kingston, he
said he was pretty confident he was the 9.32 for Virginia Water, or the
10 a.m. express for the Isle of Wight, or somewhere in that direction,
and we should all know when we got there. We slipped half-a-crown into
his hand, and begged him to be the 11.5 for Kingston.
"Nobody will ever know, on this line," we said, "what you are, or where
you're going. You know the way, you slip off quietly and go to
Kingston."
"Well, I don't know, gents," replied the noble fellow, "but I suppose
SOME train's got to go to Kingston; and I'll do it. Gimme the half-
crown."
Thus we got to Kingston by the London and South-Western Railway.
We learnt, afterwards, that the train we had come by was really the
Exeter mail, and that they had spent hours at Waterloo, looking for it,
and nobody knew what had become of it.
Our boat was waiting for us at Kingston just below bridge, and to it we
wended our way, and round it we stored our luggage, and into it we
stepped.
"Are you all right, sir?" said the man.
"Right it is," we answered; and with Harris at the sculls and I at the
tiller-lines, and Montmorency, unhappy and deeply suspicious, in the
prow, out we shot on to the waters which, for a fortnight, were to be our
home.
CHAPTER VI.
KINGSTON. - INSTRUCTIVE REMARKS ON EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. - INSTRUCTIVE
OBSERVATIONS ON CARVED OAK AND LIFE IN GENERAL. - SAD CASE OF STIVVINGS,
JUNIOR. - MUSINGS ON ANTIQUITY. - I FORGET THAT I AM STEERING. -
INTERESTING RESULT. - HAMPTON COURT MAZE. - HARRIS AS A GUIDE.
IT was a glorious morning, late spring or early summer, as you care to
take it, when the dainty sheen of grass and leaf is blushing to a deeper
green; and the year seems like a fair young maid, trembling with strange,
wakening pulses on the brink of womanhood.
The quaint back streets of Kingston, where they came down to the water's
edge, looked quite picturesque in the flashing sunlight, the glinting
river with its drifting barges, the wooded towpath, the trim-kept villas
on the other side, Harris, in a red and orange blazer, grunting away at
the sculls, the distant glimpses of the grey old palace of the Tudors,
all made a sunny picture, so bright but calm, so full of life, and yet so
peaceful, that, early in the day though it was, I felt myself being
dreamily lulled off into a musing fit.
I mused on Kingston, or "Kyningestun," as it was once called in the days
when Saxon "kinges" were crowned there. Great Caesar crossed the river
there, and the Roman legions camped upon its sloping uplands. Caesar,
like, in later years, Elizabeth, seems to have stopped everywhere: only
he was more respectable than good Queen Bess; he didn't put up at the
public-houses.
She was nuts on public-houses, was England's Virgin Queen. There's
scarcely a pub. of any attractions within ten miles of London that she
does not seem to have looked in at, or stopped at, or slept at, some time
or other. I wonder now, supposing Harris, say, turned over a new leaf,
and became a great and good man, and got to be Prime Minister, and died,
if they would put up signs over the public-houses that he had patronised:
"Harris had a glass of bitter in this house;" "Harris had two of Scotch
cold here in the summer of `88;" "Harris was chucked from here in
December, 1886."
No, there would be too many of them! It would be the houses that he had
never entered that would become famous. "Only house in South London that
Harris never had a drink in!" The people would flock to it to see what
could have been the matter with it.
How poor weak-minded King Edwy must have hated Kyningestun! The
coronation feast had been too much for him. Maybe boar's head stuffed
with sugar-plums did not agree with him (it wouldn't with me, I know),
and he had had enough of sack and mead; so he slipped from the noisy
revel to steal a quiet moonlight hour with his beloved Elgiva.
Perhaps, from the casement, standing hand-in-hand, they were watching the
calm moonlight on the river, while from the distant halls the boisterous
revelry floated in broken bursts of faint-heard din and tumult.
Then brutal Odo and St. Dunstan force their rude way into the quiet room,
and hurl coarse insults at the sweet-faced Queen, and drag poor Edwy back
to the loud clamour of the drunken brawl.
Years later, to the crash of battle-music, Saxon kings and Saxon revelry
were buried side by side, and Kingston's greatness passed away for a
time, to rise once more when Hampton Court became the palace of the
Tudors and the Stuarts, and the royal barges strained at their moorings
on the river's bank, and bright-cloaked gallants swaggered down the
water-steps to cry: "What Ferry, ho! Gadzooks, gramercy."
Many of the old houses, round about, speak very plainly of those days
when Kingston was a royal borough, and nobles and courtiers lived there,
near their King, and the long road to the palace gates was gay all day
with clanking steel and prancing palfreys, and rustling silks and
velvets, and fair faces. The large and spacious houses, with their
oriel, latticed windows, their huge fireplaces, and their gabled roofs,
breathe of the days of hose and doublet, of pearl-embroidered stomachers,
and complicated oaths. They were upraised in the days "when men knew how
to build." The hard red bricks have only grown more firmly set with
time, and their oak stairs do not creak and grunt when you try to go down
them quietly.
Speaking of oak staircases reminds me that there is a magnificent carved
oak staircase in one of the houses in Kingston. It is a shop now, in the
market-place, but it was evidently once the mansion of some great
personage. A friend of mine, who lives at Kingston, went in there to buy
a hat one day, and, in a thoughtless moment, put his hand in his pocket
and paid for it then and there.
The shopman (he knows my friend) was naturally a little staggered at
first; but, quickly recovering himself, and feeling that something ought
to be done to encourage this sort of thing, asked our hero if he would
like to see some fine old carved oak. My friend said he would, and the
shopman, thereupon, took him through the shop, and up the staircase of
the house. The balusters were a superb piece of workmanship, and the
wall all the way up was oak-panelled, with carving that would have done
credit to a palace.
From the stairs, they went into the drawing-room, which was a large,
bright room, decorated with a somewhat startling though cheerful paper of
a blue ground. There was nothing, however, remarkable about the
apartment, and my friend wondered why he had been brought there. The
proprietor went up to the paper, and tapped it. It gave forth a wooden
sound.
"Oak," he explained. "All carved oak, right up to the ceiling, just the
same as you saw on the staircase."
"But, great Caesar! man," expostulated my friend; "you don't mean to say
you have covered over carved oak with blue wall-paper?"
"Yes," was the reply: "it was expensive work. Had to match-board it all
over first, of course. But the room looks cheerful now. It was awful
gloomy before."
I can't say I altogether blame the man (which is doubtless a great relief
to his mind). From his point of view, which would be that of the average
householder, desiring to take life as lightly as possible, and not that
of the old-curiosity-shop maniac, there is reason on his side. Carved
oak is very pleasant to look at, and to have a little of, but it is no
doubt somewhat depressing to live in, for those whose fancy does not lie
that way. It would be like living in a church.
No, what was sad in his case was that he, who didn't care for carved oak,
should have his drawing-room panelled with it, while people who do care
for it have to pay enormous prices to get it. It seems to be the rule of
this world. Each person has what he doesn't want, and other people have
what he does want.
Married men have wives, and don't seem to want them; and young single
fellows cry out that they can't get them. Poor people who can hardly
keep themselves have eight hearty children. Rich old couples, with no
one to leave their money to, die childless.
Then there are girls with lovers. The girls that have lovers never want
them. They say they would rather be without them, that they bother them,
and why don't they go and make love to Miss Smith and Miss Brown, who are
plain and elderly, and haven't got any lovers? They themselves don't
want lovers. They never mean to marry.
It does not do to dwell on these things; it makes one so sad.
There was a boy at our school, we used to call him Sandford and Merton.
His real name was Stivvings. He was the most extraordinary lad I ever
came across. I believe he really liked study. He used to get into awful
rows for sitting up in bed and reading Greek; and as for French irregular
verbs there was simply no keeping him away from them. He was full of
weird and unnatural notions about being a credit to his parents and an
honour to the school; and he yearned to win prizes, and grow up and be a
clever man, and had all those sorts of weak-minded ideas. I never knew
such a strange creature, yet harmless, mind you, as the babe unborn.
Well, that boy used to get ill about twice a week, so that he couldn't go
to school. There never was such a boy to get ill as that Sandford and
Merton. If there was any known disease going within ten miles of him, he
had it, and had it badly. He would take bronchitis in the dog-days, and
have hay-fever at Christmas. After a six weeks' period of drought, he
would be stricken down with rheumatic fever; and he would go out in a
November fog and come home with a sunstroke.
They put him under laughing-gas one year, poor lad, and drew all his
teeth, and gave him a false set, because he suffered so terribly with
toothache; and then it turned to neuralgia and ear-ache. He was never
without a cold, except once for nine weeks while he had scarlet fever;
and he always had chilblains. During the great cholera scare of 1871,
our neighbourhood was singularly free from it. There was only one
reputed case in the whole parish: that case was young Stivvings.
He had to stop in bed when he was ill, and eat chicken and custards and
hot-house grapes; and he would lie there and sob, because they wouldn't
let him do Latin exercises, and took his German grammar away from him.
And we other boys, who would have sacrificed ten terms of our school-life
for the sake of being ill for a day, and had no desire whatever to give
our parents any excuse for being stuck-up about us, couldn't catch so
much as a stiff neck.
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