Chapter XXIX (2)

An orderly, stooping low, splashed along the trench to them. ‘The wire’s through again, sir,’ he said, ‘and Brigade wishes to speak to you if you can spare a minute.’ He said nothing of how the wire had been got through, or of how its repairing had cost another good half-dozen casualties—which in itself is another tale well worth the telling. The Captain went to the telephone dug-out and crawled into the shallow, wet-dripping cave and called the Brigade and spoke with them there for five minutes. The Adjutant who was at the other end was an old personal friend of the Captain’s, but chiefly because neither knew the instant the wire might be cut again they first talked strict business and left personal affairs out of it.

‘Brigadier says to ask what chance have you,’ asked the Adjutant abruptly. ‘How much longer can you hold on?’

‘Ten minutes after they attack in force,’ said the Captain with equal brevity; ‘fifteen with luck; twenty at the outside. Trenches across the road are gone, you know, and we’re getting cut up badly with enfilade fire now. There’s nothing to stop them getting round behind us, so I expect to be attacked front, rear, and flank. We can’t stand that off long.’

‘They’ve managed to spare us a few companies of supports,’ said the Adjutant quickly. ‘They’re occupying the line behind you now, and the moment they’re ready they’ll be pushed up to help hold your trenches and retake the ones on your flank.’

‘If they don’t hurry,’ said the Captain, ‘they’ll have the job of retaking both lots. By the sound of the firing I fancy the attack is coming now. I must get along and see.’

‘All right. Good luck, Jacky.’

‘Good-bye,’ said the Captain. ‘You know the messages I’d like sent if.... And tell the General we held on to the end. Good-bye.’

He was gone, and at the other end the Adjutant sat for some minutes listening to the empty singing of the wire. That cut off suddenly to the flat deadness that means a broken connection, and the Adjutant dropped the useless instrument and hurried out to try to catch a glimpse of the last act. It was little enough he could see, for a driving misty rain obscured the view again; but from that little and from the fragments that he gathered after from the handful of wounded brought in, it was easy enough to piece out the finish.

The attack developed, as the Captain had predicted, on front, rear, and flank. Under cover of a storm of frontal and enfilade fire the Germans swarmed up along the rear of the battalion’s trenches. A score or two of men were faced about to try to beat back this rear attack, but their bullets were as powerless to stop it as pebbles flung in the face of a breaking wave. The rear attack secured a footing in the trenches and began to spread slowly along them. Their progress was disputed furiously, but in the end the remnants of the battalion were beaten back to a point where a couple of shallow communication trenches ran back to the supporting trench on the one side, and another branched off forward to the ruins of the front-line trench. Even then a few score men might have saved themselves by taking the road to the rear. None did, but to the last man turned frontward and joined the handful of their fellows. In the end the remains of the battalion clung together to a few yards of battered trench that twisted about the telephone dug-out, and finished out the fight there.

Few as they were, it took some minutes to come at them, and before the last hand-to-hand scrimmage had finished there came from the mist to rearward a clatter of rifle fire, the rush of a charging line. The Germans had been so occupied with their task of clearing out the last of the defence that the fresh attack took them by surprise. The rescuing companies were in on them before they could face about to meet the charge, so that the charge went crashing home, swept the trenches clear in a wild five minutes’ work, pushed the Germans across the road, and drove into the trenches there after them. At this critical moment another two companies charged in from the rear—companies in those days, remember, were given, and cheerfully accepted, the work of battalions, just as platoons took and did the work of companies; and the Germans, taken in flank and rear, were accounted for to the last man in killed, wounded, and prisoners.

The Captain was picked up in that last patch of trenches the battalion had held. He carried wounds enough to have killed a dozen, and his last word again was, ‘I’m glad we were able to hold on—till we were relieved.’

They found Sergeant Billy Ruff, too, with no more than a few flesh wounds and a smashed leg. The Adjutant, in the piecing out of the end of the story, sat by him and asked questions while the sergeant’s wounds were being dressed and he sucked hard on a damp cigarette. ‘At all costs, the orders was,’ said the sergeant at the finish. ‘An’ that patch o’ duck-pond trenches has just cost me seven-an’-six that was owed me by my corporal that’s killed, a cock-eyed leg, an’ a carcase full o’ rheumatics for the rest o’ my days; an’ it’s cost the army the finest set of officers that ever stepped, an’ the best battalion o’ fightin’ men it owned.’

‘Amen to all of that,’ said the Adjutant. ‘But—you held on.’

‘Course we held on,’ said Sergeant Billy Ruff, his voice showing just a shade of surprise at the comment. ‘Y’see we was ordered to hold on.’

PRESS BUREAU: PASSED FOR PUBLICATION.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Slang Hindustani—‘pigs.’

[2] ‘Talked.’

[3] ‘Come on.’

[4] ‘Quick.’

[5] ‘See.’

_CHILDREN’S CHILDREN._

BY MAJOR-GENERAL G. F. MACMUNN, C.B., D.S.O.

Old Schwartz rode over the _bult_ on his lean _veldt_ pony, his corduroys flapping in the wind and his _veldt schoen_ barely resting in the stirrups. And the prospect pleased him. Not a roof-tree could he see except his own. The blue sheen on the scrub and the shimmer on the vlei grass gave an air of peace on a road untold that men have searched the world for since time was. Away on the slopes were some of his own cattle, and a herd of his own horses; several generations of mares, each with their foals, were galloping down to the pan for the evening. The prospect was such as every old _voortrekker_ dreamed of and looked for.

Gabriel Jacobus Schwartzberg was a _voortrekker_ in the sense that, a baby in arms, he had rumbled up in the great oxwain, with his father, old Gabriel Hermanus (he being long known as young Garvie, pronounced ‘Harvie’), had seen the republic grow and wane and come again. He had brought a secret commando across from the Free State to help Piet Cronje crush the _roineks_ at Potchefstroom, and as a young man had fired his father’s old _roei_ into Harry Smith’s force at Boomplaatz—and perhaps shot the ensign who lies in his tombstoned grave there. Therefore an old implacable he was, ‘a stout ould Pratestant’ like the Ulster man, if ever there was one.

The Great Boer War had seen him too old save to ride transport, but ridden he had and then hidden in the Gnaadeberg till the republics had gone down in sorrow, and he for the time had cursed the God of David for forsaking His chosen; till one day a slim _predikant_ had explained that the Lord worked in wondrous ways, and that they had already got the country back from the _verdomde roineks_. It was easy enough so to describe what everyone in England, since party politics are dead, has recognised as an act of statesmanship; and the _predikant_ wanted fifty sheep as a contribution to his new manse.

So old Schwartz took heart of grace, and, finding that no _roineks_ came his way, sat in the _stoep_ in the sun, smoking away the remaining years that God gave him, his sun-dried old eyes peering out across the shimmer of the veldt, his rifle by his side, and the volume of the Sacred Law on a table, for it is so the old Dutch wait their end, rich in years and in inheritance, as the Lord has promised. And in the year of grace 1915 it was far, far past the threescore years and ten. Yet had it not turned to sorrow and tears. Daily did old Schwartz ride round his estate by the _vlei_, where the springbok dwelt, and over the _bult_ to Bessie’s Dam, where his son lived hidden from view, and back by _Saltpan_, past his own oxen to his own old house at _Sweetfontein_, the sweet spring that old Hermanus had found and built beside, with Marie, his wife, and little Garvie, his son, far back in the ages, as time is counted in South Africa.

But now in his old, old age great trouble had come on old Schwartz, and he sat long o’ days in the _stoep_ peering out into the shimmer. The Great War in Europe was nothing to him. At ninety-two, be one never so hale, kings may rise and fall, and wars may come and go, and leave ninety-two sitting in the _stoep_.

The rising of De Wet had stirred him not. That was a foolishness. Had not the _predikant_ explained that Dutch slimness had given them the country back these eight years past. Louis Botha had very properly settled _his_ goose, and the _trek_ into German South-west Africa and Namaqualand was right. The German had no business there at all, _Oud_ Brand had always said so. He knew what Germans were, he had known the old Legion men whom the English had settled on the land after that Crimean War of theirs—pretty settlers they were. Look at that Colonel Schermbrücker, bah! _Verdomde Kerbs_ every one. But now—a dreadful story had come up from Philippolis. Folk said that Afrikanders were going to Europe to help the English in this mad war of theirs.

So old Schwartz was sore perplexed, as well he might be, and Julie, his wife, was away to town to _Nachtmaal_, the monthly Communion; an old body too, as years went, near thirty years his junior, and his third wife forby; and wise withal.

In the _Zit-kammer_ hung a huge gold frame, and in the frame an illuminated border, and within the border a big black coffin, and round the coffin the names of the wives and the children who had died. The names were many, for the Boers bear more than they rear; the little cemetery above the dam had many little graves. Beneath the golden frame stood a table, and on it an old faded wool-worked cloth, and on the table stood the great family Bible in Dutch, the volume of the Sacred Law in all its glory, and therein were written the names of all the wives and all the children of Gabriel Schwartzberg and his wives, and the names were more numerous than those of the golden frame. Eleven sons and three daughters still survived. And the last were the entries of Julie Armand Duplessis, his last wife, and her sons, of whom two survived.

In the sacred volume also stood the names of Gabriel Hermanus Schwartzberg, born 1798, and Marie Duplooy, his wife, born 1802 and married in 1820, and of _his_ father, Gabriel Petrus Schwartzberg, born 1760, and of his wife, Flavie Terblanche, married in 1782.

The record read like the record of the Patriarchs, and one might notice how the wives were always French, as indeed he who looks below the surface has always noticed, that the Dutch are more French than Dutch, Huguenots all. There are more Delareys, and Fouchées, and Terblanches, and Duplooys, and Duplessis, and Duprés, and Oliviers, and Villiers, and Dutoits, and Mathias, and Krugers, and Cronjes, and Bothas than ever there be Vandermerwes, or Forsters, or Rensbergs, or Vanzyls; which folk forget, or that they who strive most to preserve the _Taal_ stamped out the French with a bitter fury. It is further to be remembered by those who care for such varieties that when the Emperor Napoleon would restore the old nobility, he found that Madame Guillotine had left the heirdom of the _Ducs_ de Richelieu, the family of du Plessis and the great cardinal, in the Boer Huguenot family of Duplessis, and further that the heir, a placid, contented farmer, settled on the land a hundred years and more, and married to Helena Duplooy, refused the offer of land and estates in France. And so the rightful heir remained where he was, to trek later to the Krapzak Rivier in the Free State and speak the _Taal_ for all time. Little there remains of the old France, save in those natural manners and courtesy and more that surprise those who really know the old Cape Dutch. Some of the old legends remain in some of the old families, cherished by the women more than the men, as such things are the world over.

Thinking nothing of such things, old Schwartz had grown as the other Dutch, and his own _veldt_ was all the world to him, so that as he came back from Bessie’s Dam to talk of the outer world, his own solitary farm, with the poplars of Lombardy growing on the dam where Julie had planted them, her first communion after they married, peace for a while came over his vexed mind. At ninety-two perhaps even the thought of khaki hardly vexes for long.

But it was true; not only had the Dutch quelled their rebellions alongside the English, and had taken the German State, but they were actually fitting out troops to help the English overseas.

Now the English are a curious folk. The world understands them not, which is not to be marvelled at, since they certainly do not understand themselves—but as the lamented Price Collier wrote, they—the folks of a tiny island, own and rule a sixth of the world. The writers tell you that they are antiquated and unbusinesslike, _but they govern a sixth of the world_! Their navy is known to be bad and their army absurd, ‘_but they govern a sixth of the world!_’ Their finance, folk say, is archaic, and their politics a folly, ‘but,’ reiterates Price Collier, ‘_they govern a sixth of the world_.’

And so goes on the incomprehensible, with the persistent result, and still the world, and especially the poor Teutonic world, understands them not. Their allies the French have tried very hard, until some glimmer of light on island minds has come to them, and with that light, faith—faith to believe that, however dull, and queer, and gruff, and awkward the English might be, there is something to be liked and trusted in the queer methods that so successfully and so illogically govern one-sixth of the world.

Old Schwartz’s horse lolloped over the crisp red grass of the _vlei_, and a brace of _Kuoorhaan_, the scolding hens, rose with a whirr and a clatter that roused the old man from his dreams, and he pulled himself together to cross the slope to his farm. The sun was low over the _veldt_, and the light of fairyland was falling on the countryside, as he rode into the yards—past the sheep-kraals. There were geese under the willows picking at the water-cress in the fountain cut, and the boys were driving in the cows. Strangers had arrived, and Schwartz could see old Tanta Fouché, his half-sister, a woman of seventy, out in the _stoep_, and there were strange horses in the kraal.

Four figures in khaki sat in the _stoep_ drinking coffee, and old Schwartz climbed down from his horse and stiffly mounted the steps, while the new-comers rose to greet him. It was his son Hermanus from Slipklip Oost, and with him a man he knew, Commandant Jacobus Delarey of Witkopjie, but in khaki, with rifle and bandolier. Why in khaki?

Old Schwartz shook hands in silence, and peered under his shaggy eyebrows at the other two, also in khaki, with rifles and bandoliers. They were his grandsons, Willie and Munik, his two favourites, ‘the children’s children that are an old man’s crown.’

The old man passed his hand over his brow in perplexity. ‘What are you all doing in khaki? I don’t understand, Hermanus.’

‘The boys are going with the commando, father!’

‘What commando?’

‘The new commando that is going to help the English in Egypt, and the French.’

‘Going to help the English, my grandsons—going to wear khaki? I will never allow that.’

‘But, father, they are all doing it; all the young men are going. General Smuts is raising many commandos, English and Dutch. The English are fighting to protect the world against Germany. I have read it out to you, and mother has told you of the war.’

‘Your mother never told me that the farmers were going to wear khaki and be English soldiers. Cursed be any of mine who join the English.’

And the old man drew himself up and glared, and his old eyes blazed under his eyebrows.

‘Man and boy have I hated them and fought them, and never trusted them, and now, cursed be you, Hermanus, if you let them go—cursed be you, Willie! cursed be you, Munik!...’

The boys had shrunk back into the doorway, and Commandant Delarey was biting his beard, when a Cape cart came clattering up the courtyard to the _stoep_.

‘Here is mother,’ called Hermanus, and an old lady descended with many parcels and called out to them to help her, and came up the steps like a woman of forty rather than one of seventy. Small and dark and shrivelled and active, the black grapes on her head shaking and dancing, and her bead cape quivering.

‘Why, grandsons! come along and get my parcels, or you’ll get no fresh coffee. Why, what’s the matter, Hermanus! What’s wrong with grandfather?’

The old man stood erect with his hand still half raised on high.

‘What are you doing, Gabriel?’

‘Father curses Willie and Munik for joining the English to help the French.’

‘Oh, does he? then let him wait till he has heard me. I’ll have none of his Dopper ways now. What is the trouble, Gabriel?’

The old man raised his hand: ‘Cursed are the Dutch who join the English commandos! Cursed....’

‘Now, listen to me, Gabriel Schwartzberg. Am I faithful wife of yours?’

‘That have you ever been, Julie.’

‘Then will you listen to me, and keep your cursing to the end, old man!’

The old man bowed his head and lowered his hand, and sank to a chair that Hermanus brought him.

‘Listen, then, Gabriel Jacobus Schwartzberg. The English are helping the French to fight those German brutes who would make slaves of all. You remember all I read you that the Germans did to the Belgian girls at Louvain. Did ever the English behave like that here? You know they did not. Did I love the English? You know I did not. But they were fair and honest and kindly. The _Mori Kaptan_ who took me away to the _laager_ treated me as if I had been his mother. Did they not give us back our Government? Oh yes, I know the _Predikant_, told you it was Boer slimness got it back, but he wanted money from you for his manse. It was English slimness who knew how to manage free people, not like your dirty Germans. Besides they are helping the French, whom you Germans attacked. I am French. I am a Duplessis, and I have not forgotten it, nor my mother, nor my mother’s mother, for all we married you fusty old _veldt_ Dutch. And your mother told me the same, and she was a Duplooy, and her mother was a Terblanche. Look in the old Bible and see! You men are so busy shooting bucks and smoking, you don’t think of such things, but we women do. So, Mr. Dutchman, my grandsons shall wear khaki and go and help the English and the French and those poor Belgian girls, and you shall give them your blessing, Gabriel, or I will go right away to my brother Armande Duplessis, who is _vriede reckter_[6] at Fauriesberg, and _Tanta_ will make your coffee. You know how you will like that.’

Julie was a very voluble person when stirred, and when she had finished the others murmured ‘_Ja! Ja!_’ while Commandant Delarey brought his rifle-butt with a ring on to the stones and said:

‘The Vrouw is right, _mynheer_, and the boys must come.’

The fire had gone out of the old man’s eye. Fire at ninety-two is not constant, and old _Tanta_ coming to say supper was ready clinched the situation.

After supper Hermanus read the word of God from the Second Book of Kings out of the great Bible, and poor old Schwartz was taken to bed to hear more for his pains.

Julie was a strategist and an advocate. Next morning early, before dawn, after the simple wont of the simple Dutch, the songs of David in simple point swelled in the morning air, and the quavering voice of old Schwartz led the chaunt.

It was the glorious words of the _Dominus Regnavit_, and it suited the donning of khaki and the old man’s surrender.

‘The Lord is King, and hath put on glorious apparel and girded
Himself with strength....

‘The waves of the sea are mighty, and rage horribly, but yet
the Lord who dwelleth on high is mightier.’

As the sun glinted under the _stoep_, old Schwartz was being shown the glories of a Mark VII rifle, and the merits of the pointed bullet, while the horses were saddling in the _kraal_. Later, as Commandant Delarey marched off his commando, rifles on hip in due and ancient form, it was Julie who waved a Union flag and a tricolour, while old Schwartz stood on the _stoep_ and gave his blessing from the Book:

‘In courage keep your heart
In strength lift up your hand.’

FOOTNOTES

[6] Justice of the Peace.

_COINCIDENCES._

BY SIR LAURENCE GOMME.

A few weeks ago some remarkable examples of coincidences were recorded in the newspapers. They were the actual experiences of the writers, or the guaranteed experiences of relatives or intimate friends. Their genuineness cannot be called in question. But they are all isolated examples, each of them being communicated by different correspondents. Even as such they were sufficiently remarkable to make it worth while to ask whether coincidences in the order of things human play a definite part in life’s drama, in the science of life perhaps one ought to say, or whether they are so accidental and non-influential as to have no bearing upon the problems of life.

If they have a bearing on the unexplored meanings of human action, they seem to me to belong to individual, and not to social, man. They might explain the individual action of Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and the great ones of the world; they might be one of the influences which have apparently made individual men rulers of human destiny for a time. But to prove any such theory as this, even if it be a possible theory at all, one must deal, not with single examples of coincidences which occur to different people, but with a series of examples which have happened to one individual. The comparative study of coincidences in separate lives would, it occurs to me, be not only scientifically valuable, but of intense interest to all who are fond of reading the lives of men who have made a mark in the world.

So much for the psychological aspect of what may be expected from the study of coincidences. In my small life as a student and public servant it happens that I have had two or three remarkable examples of coincidences. They principally belong to my literary life, and have always been of special interest to me; they have remained in my recollection as a sort of indication that the line I was taking was, on the whole, the right line. Upon my pledged assurance that they are all true, I propose to relate them for the amusement of my readers, and with a hope that more important cases may be related in due course. They are merely anecdotal and have no other interest beyond, perhaps, supplying a new chapter of the ‘Curiosities of Literature.’ I propose as far as possible to treat them chronologically in groups, as they have no possible relationship one with another. They will be related quite simply, and with many circumstantial details omitted.

The first incident which I have to relate is connected with my friendship with Henry Charles Coote, lawyer and historian. I had lent to me a copy of his little book, ‘A Neglected Fact in English History’ (London, 1864), and arranged to begin reading it one Sunday morning in 1876, while I walked through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens on my way to luncheon at Shepherd’s Bush. The brilliant little preface fascinated me. The still more brilliant pages in which his thesis of a Roman origin for the people of Britain was developed carried me right away, and I did not put the book down until I had finished it. As I read the last page, I remember saying to myself ‘I must know this man and I believe I shall know him.’ I met Mr. Coote at the first meeting of what was afterwards the Council of the Folklore Society on December 19, 1877. He sat next to me, and to my delight, after the meeting had concluded, he proposed to walk with me as far as Waterloo Place, with the result that we stood opposite the Athenæum Club for over an hour talking of things that interested both of us. He promised me a copy of his ‘Neglected Fact,’ and I have the volume before me, as I write, with his inscription to me written on the title-page. From that day we became fast friends. He never ceased to do kindnesses to me, and I never ceased to think of him with gratitude and affection. We used to discuss his special view of British history, and I gradually fell away from accepting this view. This made no difference to our intercourse until the end came. It impressed me with extraordinary force. Mr. and Mrs. Coote always spent their summer holiday in Italy, the Italy he loved so well, and returning in October, I generally met him for the first time after their journey at the November meeting of the Society of Antiquaries. In 1884 I went to this meeting as usual, but all during the evening I had been feeling strangely uneasy. I did not expect to see Mr. Coote there. And he was not there. On the next day I called upon him with every foreboding of evil, and I found him stricken down with paralysis, the seizure having taken place the night before just at the time when I was feeling so strangely anxious about him. Perhaps this may be a mere case of telepathy between two people with kindred ideas, but the coincidences are too close for this hypothesis. They are indeed too close to be described in anecdotal form, but I like the recollection to open the story of coincidences which I have to narrate.

I have one other coincidence to record, which belongs to the same sort of experience. After my father died, my mother and sisters came to stop with me for a short time while their affairs were being settled. Some pieces of family furniture, portraits, etc. were brought to my house. Among these was a library chair belonging to my father, and it was placed in my own library.

About this time I was being pressed by an official friend to attend a meeting at his house, for the purpose of taking part in a spirit rapping ceremony, but had always declined, because I did not believe in the phenomenon. However he particularly pressed me to come on account of my father’s recent death, saying I should be certain to learn something. Perhaps my nerves had been worn by recent events. In any case I consented to come, and I remember wearing my father’s watch chain and seal for the first time, to attune me to the atmosphere. I told no one at my house that I was going for this particular purpose. They thought I was simply going out to dinner in the ordinary way. My object in this silence was obvious. It was not to disturb the minds of those at home.

On arrival at my friend’s house we had dinner and then adjourned to the drawing-room. The whole company sat round a largish table holding hands. Several members of the company described certain experiences and conducted conversations with spirit manifestations. But I was absolutely unmoved and looked upon the whole thing as unreal and made up. I left the house angry with myself for giving way to such nonsense.

Reaching home, not very late, I let myself in with my latch-key, and was immediately met by my wife, my mother and sisters having retired, who was strongly agitated and troubled. The explanation was that about ten o’clock she was working in the library as usual, and looking up from her seat she saw the form of my father seated in his usual way in his old chair. And ten o’clock was the time when I, an unbeliever in spirit manifestations, had been seated at the round table gathering of spirit believers. The coincidence is remarkable, and I have ever since been deeply impressed by it, but it has not made me a believer in spirit manifestations.

My remaining coincidences are of a much more ordinary character. The first case occurred in 1882, when I was reading Elton’s ‘Origins of English History.’ On page 194 he describes from a printed collection the manorial customs of Taunton Deane in his own county of Somersetshire. For my own studies I wanted to examine these customs. I sought for the book in vain at the British Museum, at the Law Society’s Library, and at other libraries to which I had access. And at last I determined to appeal to Mr. Elton himself. At that time I did not know him well. He replied, pointing out the great value of the book, owing to it being printed locally for the use of the tenants of the manor and not for publication, and stated the probability of his copy being the only one in existence. Eventually he lent me the book on condition that I returned it within a week. It reached me one Monday morning, and in the evening I commenced to copy the entire book. It consisted of 132 and xxix pages of a small octavo, and its title was ‘The Ancient Customs of the Manor of Taunton Deane; collected from the records of the Manor presented by the Jury at the Law Day Court, the twenty-fourth of April 1817, and published under their sanction. By H. B. Shillibeer, Land surveyor etc. Taunton, 1821.’ I finished my copying for the night, a dozen pages or so, skipping the introduction of twenty-five pages. Among my letters on Tuesday morning was a catalogue from Hindley, the bookseller in the old Booksellers’ Row in the Strand, and the first entry which caught my eye was Shillibeer’s ‘Customs of Taunton Deane’ marked in the catalogue for three shillings and sixpence. Breakfast had no longer any interest for me, and I posted up to London and secured the copy, which still holds its place in my library. I have a note of one other copy in a Manchester catalogue at fifteen shillings, but have never met with another copy in a catalogue or in a library.

Always having been a student of manorial customs, I had sought for a copy of Elton’s ‘Tenures of Kent,’ 1867, which had gone out of print, and I remember the joy with which I at last secured a copy in Chancery Lane, and was assured it was the last copy in the market. But another manorial experience is more curious. The London County Council had succeeded to the rights of the Lord of Manor of Tooting Bec in connection with the purchase of Tooting Bec Common as an open space for London by the Metropolitan Board of Works. The Court Rolls of the Manor and documents relating thereto passed into possession of the Council, and in 1900 the Council decided to commence the publication of its records with that portion of these manor rolls which terminated with the reign of Henry V. Examination of the rolls showed two gaps, one a portion of the reign of Edward IV., and a second the period between the years 1443 and 1447. While editing the first volume for the Council, published in 1909, I had the good fortune to discover, in a second-hand catalogue, the missing rolls from 1443 and 1447, and the Council purchased them to include in the fine collection. My luck in coincidences had served me well in this instance. One other example comes from my collection of manorial books. ‘Extracts from the Court Rolls of the Manor of Wimbledon extending from 1 Edward IV. to A.D. 1864’ was published in 1866, and I picked up a second-hand copy. But there was a second volume published in 1869, consisting of ‘extracts from miscellaneous MSS., some of them purporting to be custumals and terriers,’ and I sought for a copy of this volume for many years in vain. At last one of my coincidences occurred. I was on my way to visit friends at Wimbledon one Saturday afternoon, and in the Waterloo Road I secured a copy of this second volume, picked out of a ‘twopenny box’ of pamphlets and small books.

Coincidences from the library do not, however, limit themselves to one subject. Some years ago I was due to dine with a folklore friend at Twickenham, and at luncheon time, on the same day, I sauntered up Whitcomb Street to look at a second-hand book-stall, from which I had occasionally secured some bargains. On this occasion my luck did not desert me, for I purchased, for, I think, the modest twopence so dear to book hunters, four volumes of ‘Times Telescope.’ This was a sort of calendar published annually, from 1801 to 1821, describing itself as ‘a complete guide to the almanack, containing an explanation of Saints’ days and holidays, with illustrations of British history and antiquities, notices of obsolete rites and customs,’ etc. This last feature was, of course, the centre of attraction to folklorists, and the information collected in these volumes is certainly curious and interesting, forming as they do forerunners to Hone’s ‘Year Book’ and ‘Every Day Book’ and Chambers’ ‘Book of Days.’ I did not feel equal to taking all four volumes with me to Twickenham and back again home, so I left three of the volumes at my office, and proceeded with my remaining treasure to my dinner appointment.

After dinner we were taking our coffee in my friend’s library, and of course talking of the books on the shelves, and I incidentally mentioned that I had that very morning secured a find. Upon informing my friend that the find consisted of some volumes of ‘Times Telescope,’ one of which I had brought with me, he eagerly asked to see it, and we proceeded to the hall where my coat was hanging. My friend took the volume from my hands, very hastily I remember, looked at the cover very narrowly, and then at the title-page, and proceeded with the volume in his possession, back to the library, where he promptly mounted the library steps and placed my volume in a vacant space on his shelves. It was the one volume he wanted to complete the series. The explanation was curious. He had collected all the volumes, but could not find a copy of this particular one. It had a curious misprint. The title-page showed the year to be 1812, but on the cover the figures had been transposed to 1821, and hence collectors had made mistakes over this volume time out of mind. The coincidence in this case was a double one. There was my purchase in the morning, and then my accidental selection of this volume to carry down to my friend’s house in the evening. Of course I left the volume there.

Another such coincidence occurred on a visit to my old friend Edward Solly at Sutton, where he had built himself a library, which was full of rarities dear only to an enthusiastic bibliophile. Mr. Solly never came home from a journey to London without bringing a book with him as an addition to his treasures, and I well remember the joy of browsing in his magnificent library. Among other treasures, he had a great collection of Swift’s works, first editions and the best of all the later editions. On the occasion of one of my visits to him, he showed me a copy of the first edition of ‘Gulliver’s Travels,’ and then interested me by drawing attention to the book-plate and arms of a previous owner, ‘James Gomme.’ I told him of my relationship to this member of my family, my great-grandfather, and then he informed me that he only possessed two volumes of the three as published, and that he despaired of ever getting the third. I possessed that third volume, and had always mourned its lost fellows. Next day I sent my volume to Mr. Solly, thus adding a quite unusual example to my list of coincidences.

My next examples of coincidences, three in number, relate to the curiosities of research, and they are all three of a remarkable character. In writing my book on the ‘Governance of London’ (1907) I described the mode of land settlement outside London as compared with the mode inside London, and wrote as follows (pp. 162-163): ‘One has only to consult old London maps to discover easily in various parts the acre strips of ancient arable lands which distinguished London before the building of the houses and, which determine the position and site of houses to this day.’ I instanced the houses at Putney facing the river, for information as to which I was indebted to my friend Mr. Walter Rye, and then my discovery of a parallel case furnished by Park Lane, the line of frontage of which is so splendidly irregular. I had examined this irregularity very closely, and incurred the watchful attention of the police in so doing, and I concluded that it was due to the separate ownership of acre strips upon which owners built their modern property in succession to the ancient cultivating methods of Teutonic settlements. But I could find no proof of this conclusion, and my book was printed with the mere surmise. Almost immediately afterwards I discovered the needed proof from a map of the Ebury estate in the Crace collection, a ‘mapp or plot of the Lordship of Eburie being situated in the parish of St. Martins in the Fields Mary Dammison being proprietess by Henry Morgan 1675.’ This map showed the eastern side of Park Lane before it was built upon, and running parallel to Piccadilly, and therefore at right angles to Park Lane, are depicted the separate acre strips, with the names of the different owners marked on each strip. Proof of my unconfirmed conclusion was thus completed, and this coincidence of research was gleefully added to my memory of the other instances which have now been related in this paper.

The second example of a coincidence in research work is almost uncanny. I was at work upon my ‘Making of London’ (1912) and was behindhand with my proofs. On a Friday morning I received a special request from the publishers to send off the revised proof of a sheet not returned in its proper order. A difficulty had arisen. This part of the proof dealt with the relationship of the Tower of London to the city, and my story was incomplete without the evidence of the Tudor period. I could find nothing, and my morning’s work of research ended fruitlessly. We expected a distinguished visitor immediately after luncheon, and I knew there would be no chance of my finishing the proof after his arrival. I was singularly vexed at my want of success, and suddenly I said to myself ‘I can’t get any information by ordinary means, I will try extraordinary.’ I have no idea what led me to this decision. I was not in a credulous mood, but frankly annoyed with myself. Taking down a volume, selected by mere chance, of the folio edition of the ‘Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission,’ printed in double columns and containing some hundreds of pages, I stuck my paper-knife into the top of the volume, on the principle of the old practice of Sortes Virgilianae, and turned to discover the results. On the right-hand page of the volume thus arrived at I found the record of a legal case drawn up by Lord Coke dealing with the very subject upon which I was interested. Such a coincidence is surely quite remarkable, even in a lifetime of literary research.

My last example is even more remarkable because it is more important in its results. I have been studying the tradition of London for some time, and am satisfied that I have made some important discoveries, which I hope soon to be in a position to publish. A fragment of this tradition was communicated to _The Athenæum_ by a distinguished scholar, and it was important to the case I was developing, especially if I could trace it to a Celtic source. But I had no evidence of this. Now business took me to Cardiff shortly after my discovery of this fragment, and I was occupied there for some few days. On the Saturday before returning home I journeyed to Caerleon to see the Roman remains there, and thoroughly enjoyed my morning’s visit. I wanted to go on to Caerwent to continue investigation there, and negotiated with the landlord of the inn to drive me over. While waiting for the trap being made ready, I talked to the landlady about the antiquities of Caerleon and asked whether there were any traditions of the place. She mentioned several quite well-known superstitions current in many parts of the country and believed in by the people of Caerleon, and then suddenly repeated almost word for word the fragment of London tradition in which I was so interested. The Caerleon people believed in and practised this London traditional rite definitely because it was a London rite, and the Celtic aspect of which I was in search was thereby established.

This short survey of coincidences in the experience of one person may be useful in more ways than one. Smaller occurrences have happened, but it did not seem worth while to note them. They seem to have produced a sort of feeling that my ‘luck’ was considerable, and accordingly I have thought it worth while to record them in the hope of discovering whether they have any value beyond that of interest for the curious.

_RAMBLER’S LICHEN._

BY SIR JAMES H. YOXALL, M.P.

With trunk, limbs, and branches of travel an English country highway lies on the land like the section or vertical slice of a tall felled tree; fringes of hedge its foliage and fields its clouds of air. Never straight-ruled on the map, no Roman cypress nor close, unerring poplar, it is rather some indigenous great beech or elm, that swayed to the winds with a not too ready yielding, and grew up in lines hardly gaunt enough to be angular yet too clean-run to be curves.

Rooted at Sherborne, say, one of these great arboriferous road-systems wends north by east, towards camps of the present and earthworks of the past. At a widening of bole it forks, pushing one arm out easterly and another south-westerly; such is the swayed posture here that you glimpse the dryad in it, as you do the Venus de Milo in some real tree-trunk that ivy swathes to the hip. The eastward limb, if you cleave to that, will become stem itself, and sway out curved arms of its own to woo you; take one of those rustling prongs for a mile or two and it bifurcates, so that soon, like the squirrel, you must choose your branch. From bough to bough you may leap (so to speak) by agile footpaths, but if you keep on along a lean lane that presently thins into a mere rut, you attain to the extremest twig. It is thus that afoot from Sherborne you reach to Sandford Orcas, say, or if your wayfaring tree be rooted at Yeovil, to that extremity of path a foredraught (to use the old Worcestershire name for an approach to a farm), which brings you to Barrington Court.

And all along your way there will have been bivouacs of blossoms, fruit, seed for the next blooming; or in every footprint of Primavera you may have seen the primrose lichening the banks, some morning still covered with dew. Pray do not remark that the primroses are primulaceous—it is the occulter analogies a true loiterer likes to ramble into—nor declare that lichens are parasites which stifle their billets: maybe, maybe. But they are gentle intruders anyhow, no Prussians in Belgium, and the householder lives long, on excellent terms with his guest. Lichens are dowerings; indeed, our own wrinkles might be glad of them—they prank and enrich; even the sad coloured ones do, and the black. ‘These weeds are memories,’ Lear said, and fair lichen of remembrance, musing emotions of pity or relish, and dew of tears, even, may alight upon a rambler as he goes his discursive, his essayist’s way. Though he latterly gad at a slackening pace, and the extreme twig bring him, chief mourner for himself, at the head of a dark procession, to some short, shallow trench and clay cot, I think he will have been the happier and the longer-lived for his lichening; he may also have become wealthy meanwhile, in _memorabilia_, the thiefless hoard that never lessens; he may even have been hallowed somewhat, not left untouched at heart as the true ungodly, they whom neither the beauty of this world nor the dream of another can impassion, or the ‘sense of tears in mortal things’ soften inside. With a venial, reverent Pharisaism, therefore, that in truth is but gratitude, a rambler may thank his wandering stars that _he_ has been no man unlichenable, upon whom no charm of place, or quip of illusion, nor the _lacrymae rerum_ gat hold.

Lovely are the swayed bodies of dryad and Venus trees in silvery April, before they have hung their leafy mantillas and aprons about them, as if shrinking from gaze. But beautiful as September sunshine is the lichen upon them too, itself a veil; so goodly to look at that county men quarrel across their small frontiers about it—I remember Sir William Harcourt saying at Malwood that whenever Mr. Gladstone and he met in the country they contended whether Hawarden or Malwood trees were lichened the better. Yet I think it is upon stone walls and roofs, in Dorset, say, that the fungi-algae look best of all. Pickthanks and esurient flatterers of trees they may be, perhaps, but like Danaë gold and silver they descend upon masonry, giving, not taking, and finely wrought as coins that were minted at Syracuse. With nothing of Sir Gorgius Midas in their profusion, they do not pretend to be county people, exclusive, and as soon will gild a hamlet gable as a mansion coat-of-arms. Like sunshine spattered through meshes of leaves they descend upon their billets, but to last there after sunset, and to endure through winter, like our men entrenched in Flanders. The lodging they prefer is stone, I say—a brown stone that empurples; they seldom select the wattle-and-daub of a washed, half-timbered wall.

Few dwellings of that architecture linger on in stone counties now, however—I mean the prototypal make, the human nest built of mud; masonry has almost everywhere ousted the caked stuff which Shakespeare so often saw ‘stop a hole, to keep the wind away.’ In Warwickshire, Wilts, and other river-bed counties a rambler still happens upon this primal type of cottage sometimes; as he does at Clifden Hampden, in the aged building called the ‘Barley Mow’ near Wallingford Bridge. He recognises the ancient cot, cote, hutch, hut, or whatever its earliest English name was, by the inwardly-slanting timbers of its ends, cloven tree-trunks, which lean up into the gables from the floor corners, in couples that meet as if to embrace, beneath the watershed of the roof. Two pairs of such tree-trunks, starting from right distances at the base, and tied together at the top by a ridge-tree, formed the skeleton of the prototypal house; perhaps in the earliest huts the four supports were living saplings, still growing in pairs at convenient spots, for these could be yoked into service—bent while still green, to be then beheaded; maybe our word ‘roof-tree’ began in that.

We think of the famous half-timbered house at Stratford-on-Avon as ‘Elizabethan,’ but Beowulf may have had some such a habitation as that: this primal type must be inconceivably aged;

‘Old shepherd in your wattle cote,
I think a thousand years are done
Since first you took your pipe of oat.’

is only feebly approximate in date. Even the Bronze Epoch knew the latticed hovel roofed with daub; perhaps the skin-clad builders took lesson by the swallow’s bungalow, or the clay lining of the throstle’s house. Or perhaps the prototypal hut was the tent made permanent, a wigwam expressed in woven withies and caked mud? It must have been general in Europe when Christ was born, for certain first-century tombstones, dug up in Alsace, resemble the primal home in shape, and show markings for timbers at the gables; most likely these were mimic copies of the dead man’s earthly dwelling, meant to house his otherwise vagrant soul; this is lichen of the greyest morning, though Egyptian funerary chambers are older still. But it is lichen that lives on yet, for what is a modern mausoleum but a mansion for the dead? A family vault at Woking is as tribal as a patronymic; we are born thus lichened—the youngest are grey with these spores from the past.

Such surnames as Dabb, Dauber, Dobb, and Dobbin descend from early manipulators of viscous mud, I suppose, special craftsmen developed at the very beginning of ‘division of labour,’ and there is a certain French phrase for sturdiness—_bâti à chaux et à sable_—which must date as far back as the earliest mixing of lime and sand in with mud. ‘Clay-dabber Dick,’ a resented nickname for a brickmaker now, would begin as a proper cognomen in some loamy county, where clay could be used flat between the timberings, in place of wattle plastered with mud. Tyler would name the artisan who posed ridge-tiles and pantiles, that Potter had moulded, and baked perhaps in Robinson Crusoe’s outdoor way: Defoe, by the bye, was once ‘secretary to a pantile works at Tilbury.’ Such craft names as Mason and Quarrier would begin in stone counties first, very likely; but Thatcher is as proved an ancient as Dobster or Dobbin—his lichen is as old as any, I daresay. For dab and thatch must always have gone together, and still in Wilts and Bucks garden-walls made of dab are thatched lest they dissolve under rain. Ramblers along English road-trees see this straw-weaving go on yet, thank goodness, as it surely always will wherever people own taste as well as land. There are thatched churches extant; one at Markby in Lincolnshire, near loamy cliffs that wall out the sea. What warmth and simplicity of worship, under thatch!

Thatch ennobles—it can suggest the stately peruke; thatch is sporting—a covert-coat for a cottage; thatch shades its serge into such tints of khaki that it weaves the right ‘British warm.’ A thatcher can be an artist, as much as any Dick Tinto who paints; and I will also claim that Hedger and Ditcher are very ancient and skilled artisans. Thatch shapes into such slopes, too, it so canopies and rounds off gables, dormers, and porches, that for fitness and comeliness its motley is your hamlet’s only wear. And as patentees in their advertisements do, I urge ‘Reject all substitutes!’ and against metal roofs in particular, corrugated iron that basely counterfeits pantiles, I launch the curse of the rambler; for upon such hectic, crinkly awnings no lichen of loveliness ever gets hold. Let roof-tree and road-tree grow ‘in beauty side by side,’ as Mrs. Hemans’ family did, say I, and the wig of the cottage be blonde.