Chapter VI: The Great North Road

I had supposed we should go north at once, instead of which the driver headed west through Regent Park, thus avoiding the narrow and crowded thoroughfares of East London, which stretch far to the north. Then, by by-ways which a stranger could never have found, we came to Hatfield, where I had planned to spend the night, and there the chauffeur left me. I confess that when I parted with him I felt as I have heard the sick say they felt when the nurse departed--both weak and lonely!

The inn at Hatfield is called the "Purple Cow," or by the name of some other zoological curiosity, but was comfortable enough except that its proximity to the tracks of the Great Northern Railway makes it as conducive to sleep as a room on the "L" at home!

There is no garage connected with the inn of uncertain name, but there are vast stables, now, alas, well-nigh empty. The ancient ostler looks with no kindly eye on motors, but he was, I think, more favorably disposed toward me when I showed an interest in his tales of former days, when, so he said, as many as a hundred horses had found bed and fodder at one time under his care. This, of course, was in the good old coaching days, which he could remember as a boy, before railroads had changed the face of England. Indeed this continued, he said, for a long time after that, while gentlemen still travelled in their carriages. But the motor-car had given the _coup de grace_, and in his mind's eye the old man could now see "Ichabod" inscribed across the long, low front of the building which had once echoed to the songs of postboys and the neighing of many steeds. So, when he declined to wash the car, saying he "knew nothing of such things," I could not find it in my heart either to protest or to lessen his tip when I departed. Rather I felt the same sort of sympathy with him which I, a stanch Protestant, felt when I saw in France or Italy, old monks wandering through the aisles of some deserted abbey. From both the glory had departed, and utility can never have the charm of beauty.

I was the only guest at the inn, and instead of ordering a chop, as any one but an American would have done, I foolishly said I should like "dinner." Therefore I was served with soup--enough for a bath--a large fish, and a roast chicken, followed by a huge tart! When I saw the bill I remembered Ruth's prophecy that we should save money by stopping at small inns! There was enough left to feed the inn-keeper's family for a week. Perhaps it did!

After dinner I strolled to the gates of "Hatfield House" and looked up the long avenue, but catching only a glimpse of the hall. There came to my mind certain articles by Godkin, in the _Nation_, in which he had spoken with biting sarcasm of Lord Salisbury, and then I recalled what A.V.G. Allen used to say, that "Salisbury was the typical Englishman." You know what a radical Allen was in theology; yet he was a Tory in English politics. From Salisbury the mind naturally rebounded to Gladstone, the political Liberal but the ecclesiastical reactionary. Such musings led me to ask myself if nature did not arrange our temperaments as a clock-maker does the pendulum of a grandfather clock, of metals with different expansive qualities, lest a man be radical or conservative _à outrance_? Turning such thoughts over in my mind in that dreamy fashion which is so delightful because it calls for no action, I turned back to the inn, "and so to bed."

Next morning the weather was apparently "set fair," and I drove out of the stable-yard in good spirits. Mile after mile I drove sedately on, gaining confidence with each hour. When I had inquired of the dreary ostler what road to take to Yorkshire, he had replied, in surprise, "The north road. There ben't no other, so you can't miss it." Little he knew what I am capable of!

The roads are all so good that it is not as easy as one would suppose to keep to the great highway. There are no "mud roads" branching from the pike, as in Pennsylvania, where the difference is evident at a glance. So, when I had overcome the first nervousness and begun to take notice of the country, glancing first to the right to watch the cattle feeding in the deep meadow, and then to the left where the wheat was almost ready for the harvest, and speculating on the yield as compared with the new land at home, it is not strange that I should have diverged from the right way. Indeed it was not alone "the things which are seen" which caused me to err, there was also the "unseen" which filled the mind's eye. For this was not the first time by any means that I had travelled the Great North Road! I had trod it on foot with dear Jeanie Deans, thankful for an occasional "cast in a cart," and by coach with Mr. Squeers, and in the pleasant company of Mr. Pickwick also, if I am not mistaken. Well, the result of all this contemplation of things, "visible and invisible," was that when I finally inquired the way, I found I was more than twenty miles too far to the eastward--not far, indeed, from Cambridge. I found, moreover, that human nature is the same on the country roads of England as at home! For the laborer to whom I spoke showed the same superiority that one notices in those foolish people who get up early in the morning as they greet the late riser! He told me I must retrace my road for some miles to get again on the North road. But as this is a thing I detest, I insisted that by keeping on I should ultimately regain the road I had lost. He reluctantly admitted this might be done, if I kept on as far as Royston. As all places were now the same to me, this is what I decided to do, much to his disappointment I am sure, for he would have liked to see me pay the penalty of my folly.

As you have no doubt mentioned in more than one of your sermons, "Disappointments are often blessings in disguise." This proved to be one of them, for it led me back into an England older than that of Scott or Dickens--even to the England of Fielding!