I Travel the Open Road - Classic Writings of Journeys Taken around the World. Various
Читать онлайн книгу.
of the sea, which is a fact, but it will be some time yet before masts are seen at Williton.
At Dunster there is a curious mill which has two wheels, overshot, one in front of the other, and both driven by the same sluice. It as very hot as we stood by the wheels; the mill dust came forth and sprinkled the foliage so that the leaves seemed scarce able to breathe; it drifted almost to the stream hard by, where trout were watching under a cloud of midges dancing over the ripples. They look as if entangled in an inextricable maze, but if you let your eye travel, say to the right, as you would follow the flight of a bird, you find that one side of the current of insects flies up that way, and the other side returns. They go to and fro in regular order, exactly like the fashionable folk in Rotten Row, but the two ranks pass so quickly that looked at both together the vision cannot separate them, they are faster than the impression on the retina.
At Selworthy a footpath leads up through a wood on Selworthy Hill, and as it ascends, always at the side of the slope, gradually opens out what is perhaps the finest view of Dunkery Beacon, the Dunkery range, and that edge of Exmoor on to the shore of the sea. Across the deep vale the Exmoor mountains rise and reach on either hand, immense breadths of dark heather, deep coombes filled with black shadow, and rounded masses that look dry and heated. To the right is the gleaming sea, and the distant sound of the surge comes up to the wood. The headland and its three curves boldly project into the sunlit waters; from its foot many a gallant stag hard pressed by the hounds has swum out into the track of passing vessels. Selworthy Woods were still in the afternoon heat; except for the occasional rustle of a rabbit or of a pheasant, there was no evidence of life; the sound of the sea was faint and soon lost among the ferns. Slowly, very slowly, great Dunkery grew less hard of aspect, shadows drew along at the base, while again the declining sun from time to time sent his beams into valleys till now dark. The thatched house at Holnicote by the foot of Selworthy much interested me; it is one of the last of thatched houses inhabited by a gentleman and landed proprietor. Sir Thomas Acland, who resides here, is a very large owner. Thatch prevails on his estates; thatched cottages, thatched farmhouses, and his thatched mansion. In the coolness of the evening the birds began to sing and squirrels played across the lawn in front of Holnicote House. Humble-bees hummed in the grass and visited the flowers of the holly bushes. Thrushes sang, and chaffinches, and, sweetest of all, if simplest in notes, the greenfinches talked and courted in the trees. Two cuckoos called in different directions, wood-pigeons raised their voices in Selworthy Wood, and rooks went over cawing in their deliberate way. In the level meadow from among the tall grasses and white-flowering wild parsley a landrail called 'crake, crake,' ceaselessly. There was a sense of rest and quiet, and with it a joyousness of bird-life, such as should be about an English homestead.
An essay from
Field & Hedgerow, 1889
SUNDAY IN LONDON
By George W. E. Russell
It is the middle of August, and there is nobody in London—except, of course, some four millions of people who do not count. There is nobody in London; and, most specially and noticeably, there is nobody in Church. Be it far from me to suggest that the Country Cousin and the Transatlantic Brother, who flood London in August and September, are persons of indevout habits. But they have their own methods and places of devotion (of which I may speak anon), and do not affect the Parish Churches, with which I am now concerned. I have excellent opportunities of judging; for, year in year out, in tropical heat or Arctic cold, my due feet never fail to walk the round of our Stuccovian churches, and I can testify that in August and September Vacancy and Depression reign unchallenged. Seats are empty. Galleries are locked. Collections sink to vanishing-point. The Vicar of St. Ursula's, Stucco Gardens, accompanied by his second wife, is sitting under a white umbrella at Dieppe, watching the aquatic gambols of his twofold family. The Senior Curate is climbing in the Alps. The Junior Curate, who stroked his College Boat last year and was ordained at Trinity, officiates in agonies of self-conscious shyness which would draw tears from a stone. A temporary organist elicits undreamt-of harmonies. The organ-blower is getting his health in the hopfields. The choirboys are let loose—
"On Brighton's shingly beach, on Margate's sand,
Their voice out-pipes the roaring of the sea."
The congregation represents the mere dregs and remnants of Stuccovia's social prime. Poor we have none, and our rich are fled to Scotland or Norway, Homburg or Marienbad. The seats are sparsely tenanted by "stern-faced men" (like those who arrested Eugene Aram), whom business keeps in London when their hearts are on the moors; over-burdened mothers, with herds of restless schoolboys at home for the holidays and craving for more ardent delights than Stucco Gardens yield; decayed spinsters of the type of Volumnia Dedlock, who, having exhausted the hospitable patience of their ever-diminishing band of friends, are forced to the horrid necessity of spending the autumn in London. The only cheerful face in the church belongs to the Pewopener, who, being impeded in the discharge of her function by arthritic rheumatism, is happiest when congregations are smallest and there are no week-day services to "molest her ancient solitary reign."
* * * * * *
Evensong is over. The organist is struggling with an inconceivable tune from "The English Hymnal" (for at St. Ursula's we are nothing if not up to date). The Curate, sicklied o'er with that indescribable horror which in his boating days he would have described as "The Needle," is furtively reperusing his manuscript before mounting the pulpit, and does not detect my craven flight as I slip through the baize door and disappear. It is characteristic of St. Ursula's that, even when empty, it is fusty; but this need surprise no one, for the architect was strong on a "scientific system of ventilation," and that, as we all know, means very little ventilation and an overwhelming amount of system.
However, my courageous flight has delivered me from asphyxiation, and, before returning to my modest Sunday supper of Paysandu Ox-tongue and sardines, I think that I will reinflate my lungs by a stroll round Hyde Park. There is a lovely redness in the western sky over the Serpentine Bridge, but it is still broad daylight. The sere and yellow turf of the Park is covered by some of those four millions who do not count and do not go to church, but who, apparently, are fond of sermons. At the end of each hundred yards I come upon a preacher of some religious, social, or political gospel, and round each is gathered a crowd of listeners who follow his utterances with interested attention. When I think of St. Ursula's and the pavid Curate and my graceless flight, I protest that I am covered with shame as with a garment. But the wrong done in the church can be repaired in the Park. I have missed one sermon, but I will hear another. Unluckily, when these compunctious visitings seized me I was standing by a rostrum of heterodoxy. For all I know the preacher may have followers among my readers; so, as I would not for the world wound even the least orthodox susceptibilities, I forbear to indicate the theory which he enounced. As he spoke, I seemed to live a former life over again; for I had once before been present at an exactly similar preaching, in company, either bodily or spiritual, with my friend Mr. James Payn, and his comments on the scene revived themselves in my memory, even as the remote associations of Ellangowan reawoke in the consciousness of Harry Bertram when he returned from his wanderings, and gazed, bewildered, on his forgotten home. (Henceforward it is Payn that speaks.) The preacher of Heterodoxy was entirely without enthusiasm, nor did his oratory borrow any meretricious attractions from the Muse. It was a curious farrago of logic without reason and premisses without facts, and was certainly the least popular, though not the least numerously attended, of all the competing sermons in the Park. Suddenly the preacher gave expression to a statement more monstrous than common, on which an old lady in the crowd, who had heretofore been listening with great complacency, exclaimed in horror, "I'm sure this ain't true Gospel," and immediately decamped. Up to that point, she had apparently been listening under the impression that the preacher belonged to her own blameless persuasion, and was in the blankest ignorance of all that he had been driving at.
But Sunday in London has religious attractions to offer besides those purveyed by St. Ursula's and Hyde Park. I said at the outset that the Country Cousin and the Transatlantic Brother have their own methods and places of devotion—their Mecca is St. Paul's Cathedral. One of the pleasantest ways of spending a Sunday evening in London is to join the pilgrim-throng. The great west doors