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Part III
On Britain's Roads

Chapter I
The Bath Road

The Bath Road is in many ways the most famed main road out of London. Visions as varied as those of highwaymen on Hounslow Heath, boating at Maidenhead, the days of the "dandies" at Bath, and of John Cabot at Bristol flashed through our minds whenever we heard the Bath road mentioned, so we set out with a good-will on the hundred and eighteen mile journey to Bath.

To-day the road's designation is the same as of yore, though Palmer's coaches, that in 1784 left London at eight in the morning and arrived at Bristol at eleven at night, have given way to automobiles which make the trip in three hours. You can be three hours or thirty, as you please. We figured it out for thirty-six and lunched, dined, slept, and breakfasted en route, and felt the better for it.

The real popularity of the Bath road and its supremacy in coaching circles a century and a quarter ago – a legacy which has been handed down to automobilists of to-day – was due to the initiative of one John Palmer, a gentleman of property, who had opened a theatre at Bath, and was sorely annoyed at the delays he had to submit to in obtaining star actors from London to appear on particular nights. Palmer was a man with a grievance, but he was also a man with ability and purpose. He travelled about, and made notes and observations, and organized a scheme by which coaching might be brought into a complete system; he memorialized the government, was opposed by the post-office authorities, abused, sneered at, laughed at, but not beaten; finally he gained the ear of William Pitt, who saw that there was more in the proposed plan than a mere experiment. On the 8th of August, 1784, Palmer ran his first mail-coach from London to Bristol, and made the journey in fifteen hours. That was the turning-point. The old lumbering coaches, the abominable roads, the irresponsible drivers, the wretched delay, misery, and uncertainty rapidly gave place to lighter, stronger, and more commodious vehicles, better horses, more experienced drivers, careful guards, regular stages, marked by decent inns and comfortable hostelries, and improved roads. The post-office made a contract with the coaching speculator – a very safe contract indeed – by which he was to have two and one-half per cent of the money saved in the conveyance of letters. This would have yielded twenty thousand pounds a year; so the government broke its agreement, refused to vote the payment, and compromised with Mr. Palmer and its own conscience, after the fashion of politicians of all time, by a grant of fifty thousand pounds.

The Bath road traverses a section of England that is hardly as varied as would be a longer route from north to south, but, on the whole, it is characteristically English throughout, and is as good an itinerary as any by which to make one's first acquaintance with English days and English ways.

Via Hammersmith, Kew Bridge, Brentford, and Hounslow was our way out of town, and a more awful, brain-racking, and discouraging start it would have been impossible to make. London streets are ever difficult to thread with an automobile, and when the operation is undertaken on a misty, moisty morning with what the Londoner knows as grease thick under foot and wheel, the process is fraught with the possibility of adventure.

Out through Piccadilly and Knightsbridge was bad enough, but, by the time Hammersmith Broadway, its trams and tram-lines and its butchers' and bakers' and milk carts, was reached and passed, it was as if one had been trying to claw off a lee shore in a gale, and driver and passengers alike felt exceeding limp and sticky. The Londoner who drives an automobile thinks nothing of it, and covers the intervening miles with a cool clear-headedness that is marvellous. We were new to automobiling in England, but we were fast becoming acclimated.

On through Chiswick there were still the awful tram-lines, but the roadway improved and was wider and free from abrupt turns and twists. We congratulated ourselves that at last we had got clear of town, but we had reckoned beyond our better judgment, for we had forgotten that we had been told that Brentford was the most awful death-trap that the world has known for automobilists, cyclists, and indeed foot-passers as well. We should have kept a little of our nerve by us, for we needed it when we got shut in between a brewer's dray, an omnibus, and an electric tram-car in Brentford's sixteen-foot "main road." It was like an interminable canyon, gloomy, damp, and dangerous for all living things which passed its portals, this main street of Brentford. For some miles, apparently, this same congestion of traffic continued, a tram-car ahead and behind you, drays, trucks, and carts all around you, and fool butchers' cart and milk cart drivers turning unexpected corners to the likely death of you and themselves. Here is an automobile reform which might well attract the attention of the authorities in England. The automobile has as much right to be a road user as any other form of traffic, and, if the automobile is to be regulated as to its speed and progress, it is about time that the same regulations were applied also to other classes of traffic.

We finally got out of Brentford and came to Low, where suburban improvement has gone to widen the roadway and put the two lines of tramway in the middle, allowing a free passage on either side. The wood pavement, which we had followed almost constantly since leaving London, soon disappeared, and, finally, so did the tramway. After perhaps fifteen miles we were at last approaching open country; at least Suburbia and perambulators had been left behind; and truck-gardens and market-wagons, often with sleepy drivers, had entered on the scene. Here was a new danger, but not so terrible as those we had left behind, and the poor, docile horse usually had sense enough to draw aside and let us pass, even if the beer-drowsy driver had not.

We soon reached the top of Hounslow Heath, but there was scarcely a suggestion of the former romantic aspect which we had always connected with it.

We made inquiries and learned that there was one old neighbouring inn, the "Green Man," lying between the Bath and Exeter roads, which was a true relic of the past, and musty with the traditions of turnpike travellers and highwaymen of old. We found the "Green Man" readily enough, with a country yokel to point the way, for which he expected the price of a beer. In the palmy days of the robbing and murdering traffic of Hounslow Heath it was a convenient refuge for the Duvals and Turpins, and they made for it with a rush on occasion, secreting themselves in a hiding-place which can still be seen.

This is in a little room on the left of the front door, and the entrance lies at the back of an old-fashioned fireplace. A hole leads to a passage which opens into a cavernous recess beneath, to which there is ample room for anybody to descend. The local wiseacres declare that there is, or was, a communication between this secret chamber and another famous highwayman's inn, the old "Magpie" directly on the Bath road, and that those who preyed on travellers used to bolt from one house to the other like hunted rabbits. No one seemingly has himself ever explored this mysterious subterranean passage. Beyond Hounslow, on the Bath road, one passes through Slough, leaving Windsor, Runnymede, and Datchet on the left, as properly belonging to the routine tours which one makes from London and calls simply excursions.

The Thames is reached at Maidenhead, where up-river society plays a part which reminds one of the stage melodramas, except that there is real water and real boat-races. It is a pretty enough aspect up and down the river from the bridge at Maidenhead, but it is stagey and artificial.

The hotels and restaurants of Maidenhead make some pretence of catering to automobilists, and do it fairly well, after a suburban fashion, but there is nothing of the flavour or sentiment of the old inn-keeping days, neither are any of the establishments at all what the touring automobilist (as distinct from the promenading, or half-day excursion variety) expects and demands.

The Bath road runs straight on through Twyford to Reading, but we made a detour via Great Marlow and Henley, merely for the satisfaction of lunching at the "Red Lion Inn" at the latter place. The great social and sporting attractions of the Thames, the annual Henley regatta, had drawn us thither years ago, and we had enjoyed ourselves in the conventional manner, shouting ourselves hoarse over rival crews, lunching, picnic fashion, from baskets under the trees, and making our way back to town by the railway, amid a terrifying crush late at night. It was all very enjoyable, but once in a lifetime was quite enough. Now we were taking things easier.

The traditions hanging around the old "Red Lion Inn," beside the bridge, probably account for its popularity, for certainly its present-day accommodations and catering are nothing remarkable, and the automobilist is looked upon with disfavour. Why? This is hard to state. He is a good spender, the automobilist, and he comes frequently. All the same, the "Red Lion Inn" at Henley is one of those establishments marked down in the guide-books as "comfortable," and if its luncheon is a bit slow and stodgy, it is wholesome enough, and automobilists are generally blessed with good appetites.

The Shenstone legend and the window-pane verses about finding "one's warmest welcome at an inn" were originally supposed to apply to this inn at Henley. Later authorities say that they referred to an inn at Henley-in-Arden. Perhaps an automobilist, even, would find the latter more to his liking. The writer does not know.

To Reading from Henley is perhaps a dozen miles, by a pretty river road which shows all the characteristic loveliness of the Thames valley about which poets have raved. By Shiplake Mill, Sonning, and Caversham Bridge one finally enters Reading. Reading is famous for the remains of an old abbey and for its biscuits, but neither at the time had any attractions for us.

We made another detour from our path and followed the river-road to Abingdon. Pangborne (better described as Villadom) was passed, as was also Mapledurham, which Dick of William Morris's "Utopia" thought "a very pretty place." In fine it is a very pretty place, and the river hereabouts is quite at its prettiest.

Since we had actually left towns and trams behind us we found the roadways good, but abominably circuitous and narrow, not to say dangerous because of it.

Soon Streatley Hill rose up before us. Streatley is one of those villages which have been pictured times innumerable. One often sees its winding streets, its picturesque cottages, its one shop, its old mill, "The Bull Inn," or its notorious bridge over the river to Goring.

To cross this bridge costs six pence per wheel, be your conveyance a cart, carriage, bicycle, or motor-car, so that if an automobile requires any slight attention from the machinist, who quarters himself at Goring boat-house, it is appreciably cheaper to bargain with him to come to Streatley. Thus one may defeat the object of the grasping institution which, the lady toll-taker tells you, is responsible for the outrage, and not she herself. You may well believe her; she hardly looks as though she approved of the means which serve to keep her in her modest position.

Streatley Hill, or rather the view from it, like the village itself, is famed alike by poet and painter. The following quatrain should be eulogy enough to warrant one's taking a rather stiff climb in the hope of experiencing, to a greater or a lesser degree, the same emotions:

 
"When you're here, I'm told that you
Should mount the Hill and see the view;
And gaze and wonder, if you'd do
Its merits most completely."
 

The poetry is bad, but the sentiment is sound.

Goring is more of a metropolis than Streatley, but we did not visit the former town because of the atrocious toll-bridge charge. We were willing enough to make martyrs of ourselves in the good cause of the suppression of all such excessive charges to automobilists.

On through Abingdon, and still following the valley of the Thames, we kept to Faringdon and Lechlade, where, at the latter place, at the subtly named "Trout Inn," we proposed passing the night.

We did pass the night at the "Trout Inn," which has no accommodation for automobiles, except a populated hen-house, the general sleeping-place of most of the live stock of the landlord, dogs, cats, ducks, and geese; to say nothing of the original occupants – the hens. How much better they do things in France!

At any rate there is no pretence about the "Trout Inn" at Lechlade. We slept in a stuffy, diamond-paned little room with chintz curtains to windows, bed, and mantelpiece. We dined off of trout, beefsteak, and cauliflower, and drank bitter beer until midnight in the bar-parlour with a half-dozen old residents who told strange tales of fish and fishing. Here at least was the real thing, though the appointments of the inn were in no sense picturesque, and the landlord, instead of being a rotund, red-faced person, was a tall, thin reed of a man with a white beard who, in spite of his eighty odd years, is about as lively a proposition as one will find in the business in England.

Mine host of "The Trout," silvered as the aspen, but straight as the pine, bears his eighty-two years lightly, and will tell you that he is still able to protect his fishing rights, which he owns in absolute fee on four miles of river-bank, against trespassers – and they are many. He sleeps, he says, with one eye open, and his gun by his side, and thinks nothing of a sally forth in the dark hours of night and exploding a charge in the direction of a marauder. He and his cronies of the tap-room, of an evening, before a glowing fire of logs, above which is the significant gun-rack (quite in old picture-book fashion), will give a deal of copy to an able writer who seeks atmosphere and local colour.

Kelmscott, so identified with William Morris, is even less of the world of to-day than is its neighbour, Lechlade, and was one of the reasons for our coming here at all.

The topographical surveys and books of reference will tell on that it is a "chapelry, in the parish of Broadwell, Union of Faringdon, hundred of Bampton, county of Oxford;" that it is "two miles east of Lechlade and contains 179 inhabitants;" and that "by measurement it contains 1,020 acres, of which 876 are arable and 153 meadow and pasture." It is unlikely that the population has increased since the above description; the best authority claims that it has actually decreased, like so many of the small towns and villages of the countryside in England.

Kelmscott Manor House was advertised for sale in 1871, a fact which Morris discovered quite by accident. Writing to his friend Faulkner he says:

"I have been looking about for a house… my eye is turned now to Kelmscott, a little village two miles above Radcott Bridge – a Heaven on earth."

The house is thirty miles or more from Oxford, by water, approached by a lane which leads from Lechlade just over St. John's Bridge, by the "Trout Inn." The railway now reaches Lechlade but this was not the case when Morris first found this "Heaven." Most likely he reached it by carriage from Faringdon, "by the grand approach over the hills of Berkshire."

We regained the Bath road at Marlborough, after our excursion into the realms of Utopia, intending to reach Bath for lunch. The best laid plans of mice and mere motor-men ofttimes go awry, and we did not get to Bath until well on into the night. There was really no reason for this except an obstinate bougie (beg pardon, sparking-plug in English) which sparked beautyfully in the open air, but which refused positively to give a glimmer when put in its proper place. We did not know this, or even suspect it at first, but this was what delayed us four hours, just before we reached Chippenham, where we stopped and lunched, through no choice of our own, for it was a bad lunch in every particular, and cost three shillings and sixpence a head. To add to the indignity, the local policemen came along and said we were making an obstruction, and insisted that we push the machine into the stable-yard, as if we were committing a breach of the law, when really it was only an opportunity for a "bobby" to show his authority. Happy England!

All the morning we had been running over typical English roads and running well. There is absolutely no question but that the countryside of England is unequalled for that unique variety of picturesqueness which is characteristic of the land, but it lacks the grandeur that one finds in France, or indeed in most countries of Continental Europe.

Crossing England thus, one gets the full force of Rider Haggard's remarks about the small farmer; how, because he cannot get a small holding, that can be farmed profitably, for his very own, he becomes a tenant, or remains always a labourer, never rising in the social scale.

The peasant of Continental Europe may be poor and impoverished, may eat largely of bread instead of meat, and be forced to drink "thin wine" instead of body-building beer, – as the economists in England put it, – but he has much to be thankful for, nevertheless.

We stopped just before Beckhampton, at a puzzling crossroads, and asked a labourer of the fields if we were "right" for Chippenham. He stared blankly, doffed his hat with humility, but for a time answered never a word. He knew Calne, a town half a dozen miles away, for he occasionally, walked in there for a drinking-bout on a heavier brand of beer than he could buy locally, but, though he had always heard of Chippenham, he did not know whether it lay north, east, south, or west. This is deplorable, of course, for it was within a twenty-mile radius, but it is astonishing the frequency with which one meets this blankness in England when looking for information. There are tens of thousands like this poor fellow, and one may well defy Rider Haggard to make a "landed proprietor" out of such poor stuff.

You do not always get what you ask for in France, but the peasant at least knows enough to tell you, "Oh! that's down in the Eure" or "Plus loin, par là," and at any rate, you feel that he is a broad-gauge Frenchman through and through, whereas the English labourer of the fields is a very "little Englander" indeed.

It is hard to believe on a bright May morning that here, in this blossoming, picturesque little village of Chippenham, on one bitterly cold morning in the month of April, 1812, when the Bath coach reached its posting-house (the same, perhaps, Mr. Up-to-Date Automobilist, at which you have slept the night – worse luck), two of its outside passengers were found frozen to death, and a third all but dead. The old lithographs which pictured the "Royal Mail" stuck in a snow-drift, and the unhappy passengers helping to dig it out, are no longer apocryphal in your mind after you have heard this bit of "real history," which happened, too, in one of England's southern counties. The romance of other days was often stern and uncomfortable reality of a most bitter kind.

We left Chippenham, finally, very late in the day, lost our way at unsign-boarded and puzzling crossroads, had two punctures in a half a dozen miles, and ultimately reached the centre of Bath, over the North Parade Bridge – for which privilege we paid three pence, another imposition, which, however, we could have avoided had we known the devious turnings of the main road into town.

In two days we had covered something like two hundred and fifty miles in and out of highways and byways, had followed the Thames for its entire boatable length, and had crossed England, – not a very great undertaking as automobile tours go, but a varied and enjoyable one in spite of the restrictions put upon the free passage of automobiles by the various governing bodies and the indifferent hotel-keepers.

Bath and its attractions for visitors are quite the best things of their kind in all England, in spite of the fact that the attractions, the teas, the concerts, and the lectures – to say nothing of drinking and bathing in the waters – lack individuality.

We stayed the round of the clock at Bath, two rounds and a half, in fact, in that we did not leave until the second morning after our arrival, and absorbed as much of the spirit and association of the place as was possible, including sundry gallons of the bubbling spring-water.

Bath has pleased many critical souls, James McNeill Whistler for one, who had no patience with other English resorts. It pleased us, too. It was so different.

From Bath to Bristol is a dozen miles only, and the topographical characteristics change entirely, following the banks of the little river Avon. Bristol was a great seaport in days gone by, but today only coasters and colliers make use of its wharves. The town is charmingly situated, but it is unlovely, and, for the tourist, is only a stepping-stone to somewhere else. The Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland directs one to the suburb of Clifton, or rather to Clifton Down, for hotel accommodation, but you can do much better than that by stopping at the Half Moon Hotel in the main street, a frankly commercial house, but with ample garage accommodation and good plain fare, of which roast little pig, boiled mutton, cauliflower, and mashed potatoes, with the ever recurring apple tart, form the principal items.