How Dick and Molly saw England ... With illustrations

Introduction

LTHOUGH I am more or less familiar with most of the places described in this story, I have, again, to thank many friends, naval and military, Oxford and Cambridge, yachting and stay-at-home, for the help they have given me with those tiresome things, exact details ! In the way of books, I wish especially to acknowledge my in debtedness to Mrs. De Crespigny and Mr. Hutchinson's New Forest for that district ; Mr. Hissey's Across England in a Dogcart, for portions of South Wales ; Hall Caine's little work on the Isle of Man, for some old customs of the island ; G. C. Davies's Guide to the Rivers and Broads of Norfolk ; and Murray's excellent Handbooks to the English Counties. With every care, it is all but impossible that a book like this should be quite free from inaccuracies. I hope that any errors which may have crept in will be pointed out to me, that I may correct them in a future edition.

M. H. C. L CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. A NEW TOUR PROPOSED ....... I II. A SCRAPE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES . . . . . , 1 7 HI. DOWN THE THAMES . . . . . . . 34 IV. UP THE THAMES ........ 41 V. AN ADVENTURE ON THE RIVER . . . . . . 51 VI. A DAY AT OXFORD ........ 63 VII. THE EASTWOODS SET OUT ON THEIR TOUR ..... 74 VIII, DICK CONDUCTS HIS PARTY OVER A CATHEDRAL .... 83 IX. ABOUT WINCHESTER ........ 91 X. AN OLD TOWN AND AN OLD ABBEY ...... 97 XI. IN THE NEW FOREST ........ 102 XII. YACHTING ......... 121 XIII. A JOURNEY THROUGH DEVON. ....... 139 XIV. ANOTHER BAD SCRAPE . . . . . . . 1 56 XV. DOWN A TIN MINE ........ 165 XVI. THE END OF THE LAND . . . . . . . 1 86 XVII. PHILIP INSTEAD OF DICK ....... 194 XVIII. DICK IN MAN AND MOLLY IN WALES ..... 206 XIX. UP SNOWDON ......... 219 XX. CHESHIRE AND REMINISCENCES OF THE MIDLANDS .... 236 XXI.

SOME MANUFACTURING TOWNS ...... 254 XXII. TO THE LAKES ......... 264 XXIII. TO THE RESCUE ........ 279 XXIV. THE JOURNEY HOME ........ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS launching the lifeboat ....... Frontispiece st. Paul's cathedral ....... To face page io THE TOWER BRIDGE . . . . . . . . ,_, 34 BOATING ON THE THAMES AT WINDSOR . . . . . ,. 44 THE TROPHY GATES, HAMPTON COURT .....,, 56 THE SOUTH FRONT, HAMPTON COURT . . . . . fj 56 WINCHESTER COLLEGE ....... 8^ WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL ....... 83 GIPSIES IN THE NEW FOREST ...... \\a A SCENE IN THE NEW FOREST ...... H4 BEACHY HEAD ........ j,g THE ARMADA MEMORIAL ON PLYMOUTH HOE .... I C4 THE DEVIL'S FRYING-PAN ....... 170 LAND'S END AND THE LOGAN ROCK .... jCO BOSCASTLE HARBOUR ....... Iqg SNOWDON ........ 22g MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL ..... ,(o LEEDS — SHEFFIELD ....... 2g2 GREAT GRIMSBY •••.... qno HERRING FISHING ....... qoo HOW DICK AND MOLLY SAW ENGLAND

Chapter I

A NEW TOUR PROPOSED Aunt Jemima says " Preposterous ! " — Father rises to the occasion — A letter to Dick — In the train for London — Railway embankments and what grow on them — Where the fruit and vegetables come from — London growing — An alarming foreigner — " Made in Germany " — What one saw from the train — Arrival — Over Waterloo Bridge — Father remembers some facts — Uncle Joseph, Aunt Jemima, and Philip — Philip's views on his relatives and on " improving " sights — He promises Molly a cruise with "Charley." REALLY do think," said Aunt Jemima, " that it is preposterous Dick and Molly should be able to give you a description of Tokyo and have no idea what Chester is like, and know all about the Rocky Mountains and never have been up Snowdon." Molly pricked up her ears and wondered what " preposterous " meant.

She had been sent for into the drawing-room to see Aunt Jemima, and escaped thereby from an intensely tiresome sum about how many trains another train would meet going from London to Exeter. As if anybody cared, or if they did care would not travel by that train and count ! But the grave face of Miss Bodington when she showed her answer, which was 513,823 instead of 21, had hardly been as alarming as Aunt Jemima's when she made this remark and looked through her very large spectacles at her great-niece. " Can you tell me," she asked, " the exact position of the Chiltern Hills ? " " We haven't got to that yet," answered Molly. " Miss Bodington made me begin a new geography when she came, and it took such a long time to get through all that first stupid part about tropics and globes and things, that we only began England this term."

" Hmph ! " said Aunt Jemima. Then she turned suddenly to Mr. Eastwood and said, " Richard, you ought to take those children for a tour through their own country. There is plenty to be seen within the British Isles, and I should be ashamed to say I had travelled round the world while I was ignorant of what lies close at our doors." Father, who never was frightened, even of Aunt Jemima, answered that he hoped it did not make his children's ignorance of the moun tain system of England blacker their knowing something about the Himalayas, but — and at this, Molly forgot all about the presence of Aunt Jemima and everything else except the wonderful cat that leapt out of a bag with her father's next words — he had been thinking that, if he could afford it, there was nothing he would like better than to take the children for a trip round England.

" I thought of a caravan," he added, " as a nice, new and cheap way of doing it, but as it would take about two years to get round England in a caravan, I am afraid we shall be bound to make our tour in the prosaic way everyone else does, by trains and steamers. And," he could not help saying, for he liked shocking Aunt Jemima as much as Dick did, though mother said it was unkind and foolish of him, " we think of taking a concertina and a banjo with us, to make music in the train, and pass round the hat afterwards. That would help to pay for our tickets." Aunt Jemima looked so very horrified that Mrs. Eastwood A NEW TOUR PLANNED 3 hastened to say, " What I really think is that Richard might write a little account of the places we see, and send it to one of the papers, and so help to pay our way.

You know the Morning Express gave him a good deal for his account of our trip round the world. And people are getting to know the ' grand tour,' as you say, almost better than they do their own country." How the matter of expense was settled Molly never learnt, the way things are paid for being a point which seldom enters children's heads ; but as, next morning, Mrs. Eastwood said at breakfast, " We really must never laugh at Aunt Jemima any more, she is so very kind," perhaps she had some hand in the accomplishing of the East woods' second day-dream. Anyhow, so it was, that within a week Molly was writing the following letter to her brother, now at school : — " Dearest Dick, — Isn't it awefully jolly," — Molly always took advantage of her letters to Dick, which were not seen by Miss Bodington, to spell her words in a natural, unconstrained way, — " father and mother are going to take us for a toor through England in the hollidays.

We are going to see such a lot of places, I can't remember them all, and Miss Bodington says I must keep a dairy, but you'll write it for me, won't you ? And perhaps Major Fortaskew will pick us up somewhere in the yot and take us part of the way. There is only one rather horrid thing, and that is Aunt Jemima wants mother to let me come and stay with her after the holidays. She and Uncle Joseph are going to take me all about London and show me things, and I know there is a horrid lot of English history mixed up with London, and Miss Bodington says so too, and Uncle Joseph and Aunt Jemima will be always asking me dates. But that's ever such a long time off, and won't the holidays be jolley ? — Your affecte. sister, " Molly." " P.S.—YexWdc^s we shall go part of the way on a coach." Molly was to have a little taste of her visit with her uncle and aunt before the tour in England began, for her father had various things to arrange before they set out, and mother had to prepare their house for some friends to whom they were going to let it, so Aunt Jemima suggested " the child " should be sent to them a few days before Mr. and Mrs. Eastwood came.

Dick was to join her there, which was a consolation, and then father and mother had promised to come for a few days themselves. " And I daresay you will see something of Philip," said Mr. East wood, when Molly's face grew long at the news that she was to be at Uncle Joseph's alone ; to which Mrs. Eastwood added, " But take care that Philip doesn't get you into any mischief!" " Bread first, and jam afterwards," said Mr. Eastwood, as he and Molly got into the train that was to take them to London. " Now, Molly dear," mother said, looking very reprovingly at father, " it is very kind indeed of Uncle Joseph and Aunt Jemima to take the trouble to have a little girl staying with them and take her about to places, and I hope you won't be a silly little goose, but will try and understand what you are told, and be able to tell Dick all about it when you see him.

I am sure he would envy you your chance." " And Miss Bodington would give her eyes for it," added father. " You ought to be like Miss Peabody and take notes in a little black book wherever you go. That would please Uncle Joseph." The good-byes were said, and the train was soon shooting along through a tunnel and between two uninteresting green banks, which shut out the view on either side. " Why do railways have high banks on each side of them so often ? " remarked Molly. " It is so stupid ; one can't see anything." " A train doesn't like running up and down hill more than it can help," said father. " It takes more work than going on the flat, and that means more steam ; and to make more steam the fires have to be RAILWAY CUTTINGS AS GARDENS 5 hotter and burn up more coals. So the railways are hollowed out of the high places and built up above the low ones, that there may be an even track for the rails to be laid on.

But these ugly banks are very useful in one way. All sorts of rare wild flowers grow on them, safe from being picked, because people are not allowed to walk on the railway line." " That is nice ! " said Molly. " I suppose all their brothers and sisters have been grubbed up by those horrid men who bring round roots of poor dear little primroses that won't grow, to sell, so they come and live in this dull place." And Molly began to make up a story about them ; for though she could not bear lessons, or writing letters to anybody but Dick, she was rather fond of weaving stories in her head. Father's mind was more practical ; and Molly, in the intervals of her romance-weaving, heard him talking to a fellow-passenger about an idea, suggested by somebody, that the railway cuttings should be utilised as orchards.

" But the question would be," said father, laughing, " who was to have the apples — the directors of the railway companies, or the station masters, or the porters." The fellow-passenger thought they would prove a temptation to guards and engine-drivers, who might, in collusion, stop the trains and help themselves to the fruit. Another passenger joined in the conversation at this point, and said he had noticed beds of strawberry plants on the banks beside the railway line, if he remembered right, in Hampshire. The first passenger spoke of the great strawberry gardens there were about Southampton, and the second passenger thought there were equally important ones in Kent, till Molly's mouth watered dreadfully. After they had been travelling for about an hour the villages became grander and uglier, and the distances between them less.

Then each village threw out long arms of rows of houses just alike, with new gravel roads in front of them, till at last they were all arm, and the village part had turned into a street of gay shops, and the country was all sucked in and swallowed up. The only thing approaching to it was large flat fields full of vegetables. Father told Molly these were called market gardens, and that in them the vegetables were grown for great hungry London, and taken to a market called Covent Garden, where everybody came to buy and sell again. " The carts of vegetables come in to the great market very early in the morning," said Mr. Eastwood. " And the people who keep green grocers' shops go and make their purchases. The flowers go to Covent Garden, too, some from a long way off, by train. In winter, anemones and violets are sent from the south of France, and in the early spring they come from the Scilly Islands, which perhaps we shall see when we go down to Cornwall."

Father was so nice : he never asked questions about things one ought to know and didn't ! " And the fruit ? " asked Molly, hastening from the Scilly Isles " A good deal of that comes from abroad, as you know. Don't you remember what Minnie Bennett told you about the quantity sent from Australia, and Mr. Ogilvie about the Canadian apples, and even about the Florida oranges ? By the way, the Figgises were coming to England this summer. I wonder if we shall meet them in our travels." The villages now had lost every bit of oldness and quaintness, and become very grand and stiff in the rich parts, and very mean and poor and miserable in the poor ones ; and the arms they each stretched out met the others' arms all round, and there were rows of gas-lamps everywhere, and pavements for foot-passengers besides the streets, and little red letter-boxes, with postmen taking the letters out of them.

And the places, though they kept their old names of Mortlake, and Barnes, and Putney, were all melted down into London. GROWING LONDON 7 The train passed through a great many miles of London district, and stopped at several stations before it came into Wandsworth. " How this neighbourhood has altered since I was young," remarked an old lady in the carriage. " Why, all these places we have been passing through were country then. It is so all about London. Take Hammersmith, now : when I stayed there forty years ago, it was just a sweet little village on the river, and when I went there the other day there was nothing but a mass of shops and houses the whole way from the City out to Hammersmith Station." " Down by the river itself you see a bit of the old village," remarked a young man belonging to her, who looked like an artist.

" The whole way along the river has kept old - fashioned and picturesque, down nearly as far as to Chelsea ; but it is simply abominable to see how all the interesting and beautiful buildings in London are being pulled down, and hideous new houses put up." " And how London keeps stretching out farther and farther every year," added a third member of the party. " And every one of our large towns is the same, growing bigger every year." " All the people who used to live quietly and happily in the country when I was young," went on the old lady, " keep thronging into the cities and crowding each other there. They won't be con tented with the simple life their fathers led." " It hardly pays to cultivate the land in England," said the second young man, " now that all our food supplies are raised so cheaply abroad.

Think of the wheatfields of Canada, now." Molly remembered the miles and miles of standing corn they had passed through in their journey across Canada, and did not find the conversation quite so dull as she would otherwise have done. " I don't know how it is," answered the old lady, who evidently wanted to say what she thought herself, not to have things explained to her. " But it is dreadful how the towns are getting crowded, and the country is getting deserted ; and as if we had not enough people of our own in the cities, foreigners keep crowding in too." At this remark, a gentleman who was sitting in one corner of the carriage holding up a paper, dropped it suddenly. He had very bright black eyes, and very black hair, and a pointed moustache ; and he looked so fierce that Molly shrank up to her father's side.

It was not at her he was looking, however, but at the old lady. " Madam," he said in a way that made her start, " why do the foreigner come here to your so rich country and procure to himself the work that your own people cannot find ? It is because he work so hard, he work for one small wage. Your Englishman, he is too lazy ; he want to work eight hours a day only : we work more hours, we take less money. If we foreigners not come to England to work, you English send to buy from us that we make in our own countries. Look only at the doll of that little meess," he went on, turning his eyes on Molly, and frightening her so much that she hid away Angelina hurriedly under her cloak. " See to its back. Was it not ' Made in Germany ' ? Ha ! " At this he laughed, and looked so very much like an ogre that Molly felt sure he would have liked to eat up Angelina.

" I do not know what foreign nations would do if they had not England to buy their goods and give employment to their people, who come over here because they cannot get enough to do at home," said the old lady's young man good-humouredly. At this the foreign ogre scowled again, and said something about the people who came over from Flanders in the Middle Ages and taught the English to weave, and the Huguenots who took refuge in our country in the last century and brought the art of making silk with them. " If now we foreigners teach you to work much and eat little, then you shall thank us as England does now thank the Flemish," he ended. WATERLOO STATION 9 By this time the train had steamed into a station called Clapham Junction, and the ogre got out, lifting his hat to everybody, including Molly, as he wished them " Good day."

Angelina came out from beneath her mother's cloak, smiling over her foreign origin. " You will have to learn German to talk to her," suggested father. " We know now why she never answers one's questions." The old lady began again to talk of the country walks she used to have about Clapham, and how pretty the Common was when she was young. But Molly was more taken up with London as it was now, and the things father pointed out to her. These were peeps at the Thames between the tall houses, and the great pottery manufactory decorated with coloured tiles, and Lambeth Palace, which father said had belonged to the Archbishops of Canterbury for seven hundred years. " Why don't they live at Canterbury, if that is their place ? " asked Molly. " The Archbishop of Canterbury has charge over the whole southern half of England, and all the bishops in it are under him.

Then there is another Archbishop — of York, who has charge over the northern counties," father had just time to explain before the train steamed into a big, dark, dirty, crowded station, which was Waterloo. Mr. Eastwood and Molly were soon in a hansom cab, driving quickly out between many omnibuses and trucks down a short steep hill, and away towards Cadogan Gardens, where Uncle Joseph and Aunt Jemima lived. Very soon they were crossing over Waterloo Bridge, from which there was so much to be seen that, though it was a very long bridge, Molly had hardly time to look at everything before they had reached the other side. First, there was the river Thames, which they were passing over, with its great heavy barges moored lazily by the shore, and little fussy steamers running up and down. " Oh, I should like to go in one of those !

" said Molly. And father promised to take her and Dick, when he came up to London, in one, before they set out on their tour. Then there was St. Paul's Cathedral in the distance on the right hand, and a group of buildings that all looked like churches on the left. " These are the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey," said father. " We should have gone over Westminster Bridge if I had not had this parcel to leave for Mr. Benson. Then we should have seen the buildings nearer. Uncle Joseph is sure to take you there." At the mention of Uncle Joseph and the sights he was sure to take her to, Molly grew grave. " I wish Dick were going to be here too," she said plaintively. " I daresay you will see a good deal of Philip," father answered. " But he doesn't know any dates," sighed Molly. " And I know he will get out of going to see churches and improving places if he can.

However, I hope he will be there." Just across the bridge a Punch and Judy show was finishing its performance. To Molly's great disappointment, Toby jumped down from the stage just as they got up to it. " I daresay Toby is glad enough ! " said father. " Now, do you see that tall square column with a pointed top? That is one of the seven wonders of the world, Cleopatra's Needle. It was brought over from Egypt and put up here the year mother and I were married." " How did they get it to England ? " " It was packed in a great wooden cylinder that would float, and dragged through the sea by a steamer." St. Paul's Cathedral. THE LORD MAYOR'S SHOW 11 "Why did they want to bring it?" asked Molly. That father could not tell her. " From the big building you see on the left," said father, " Dick and I watched the Lord Mayor's Show.

A new Mayor of London is appointed every year, and on the day he comes into office he goes in state through the London streets, with his sword and mace, in a very grand coach, with a lot of other grand people belonging to the City, in splendid coaches, and ' beef-eaters ' dressed as they used to be in Henry VIII.'s reign. The coachmen wear wigs and cocked hats, and the whole procession looks as if it had started hundreds of years ago, and gone to sleep somewhere, like Rip Van Winkle in the fairy story, and then woke up and gone on again." There was a block in the street, some great brewers' drays having filled up the way, and then been obliged to stop themselves because of the rush of cabs, carriages, omnibuses, and every sort of convey ance in a busy street called the Strand, into which they had to turn.

So there was time to go on looking at the Thames and its banks. For a long way on this side of the river there were strong stone walls going down to the water, and above them roads planted with trees and gardens. Father said that was called the Thames Embankment, and that when he was a boy there were only muddy banks here, which were not at all nice at low tide. " I didn't know rivers had tides," said Molly. " I thought it was only the sea." " The sea tide runs up the mouths of rivers," explained Mr. Eastwood. " And it reaches a good many miles up the Thames beyond London. Perhaps we will go up to the end of it some day in one of these steamers." But now the block had come to an end, the big drays had made their way into the Strand, and the little hansom was soon tearing past them, along that crowded street.

" Once there was a little stream here," said father, " with a pleasant walk beside it." " When you were a boy ? " asked Molly. But father said it was longer ago even than that. At the end of the Strand was another big station, and, in front of it, a monument, which, Mr. Eastwood said, was a copy of a cross that used to be there in old days — one of those which Edward I. had put up on the spots where Queen Eleanor's body rested on its way for burial at Westminster. But the mention of Edward I. had such a depressing effect on Molly that she only said, " If it isn't the real one, we needn't mind about it, need we, father ? " And Mr. Eastwood did not tell her any thing more about the historical interests of the places they passed ; though he pointed out the fountains and the great stone lions in Trafalgar Square, at the foot of Nelson's Column.

In fact, he was not quite sure himself whose all the statues which stood there were, though he had seen them many hundreds of times. One, however, he did recognise, and pointed out to Molly. It was of Charles I. " When I was a little boy," said Mr. Eastwood, " I remember Uncle Joseph showing me that, and telling me that the statue was cast in Charles I.'s lifetime but not put up, and Parliament ordered it to be destroyed. However, somehow this was not done. So there it stands on the very spot where some of the people who condemned him to death were punished afterwards. You remember all about Charles I., don't you ? " " A little, from what mother taught me," said Molly. " But I haven't got to Charles I. with Miss Bodington yet. Not even to William the Conqueror. Miss Bodington makes English history begin hundreds of years before that," she went on, in a very aggrieved voice, " when there were heaps and heaps of miserable little kings one after another, with odd names one can't remember ; and she does not do it GREEN PARK AND HYDE PARK 13 by kings, either.

One can learn dates if one tries awfully hard, but there's no use trying when it is all about the people, and the country, and the laws." " Well, London is full of the old-fashioned history about kings," answered father, " and I think you will find Aunt Jemima perfectly contented with them. She was brought up on the old-fashioned plan." " Now, don't let's talk about horrid things any more," said Molly coaxingly. " This is the last little bit I shall have of you for a fortnight. What a nice field that is ! I hope Aunt Jemima will take me to walk there." " That is called the Green Park," replied Mr. Eastwood. " And the shady road over there is Constitution Hill," — a name to which Molly listened doubtfully, as it recalled Miss Bodington's lessons. " Uncle Hubert and I stood under the trees there on Jubilee Day, and saw the Queen pass by, with the procession of all the Royal Family and a troop of Indian princes, gorgeously dressed and hung with jewels, as we used to see them in Calcutta.

The Park was crowded enough that day." " And the seat you were standing on gave way, and Uncle Hubert fell down and hurt himself, and had to be carried away on an — amputated stretcher, wasn't it, father ? He was telling us all about it the other day." "Ambulance, not amputated," Mr. Eastwood said, smiling. " And the park on our right hand, with all the smart people walk ing about under the trees, and that long string of carriages crowding each other, is Hyde Park," father went on. " And there are some people riding ! " exclaimed Molly. " Oh, how nice ! There is a little girl just about as old as I am. I wish I was on that pony ! " " The part where they are riding is called Rotten Row." " What an ugly name ! " " Yes, but it means the King's Way — Route du Roi. You haven't forgotten all Mademoiselle taught you, have you ?