I—THE GATE OF THE EMPIRE
When one comes back to it, after long absence, one sees exactly the same staring, cold white cliffs under the same stars. Ministries may have fallen; the salaries of music-hall artistes may have risen; Christmas boxes may have become a crime; war balloons may be in the air; the strange notion may have sprouted that school children must be fed before they are taught: but all these things are as nothing compared to the changeless fact of the island itself. You in the island are apt to forget that the sea is eternally beating round about all the political fuss you make; you are apt to forget that your 40-h.p. cars are rushing to and fro on a mere whale’s back insecurely anchored in the Atlantic. You may call the Atlantic by soft, reassuring names, such as Irish Sea, North Sea, and silver streak; it remains the Atlantic, very careless of social progress, very rude.
The ship under the stars swirls shaking over the starlit waves, and then bumps up against granite and wood, and amid cries ropes are thrown out, and so one is lashed to the island. Scarcely any reasonable harbours in this island! The inhabitants are obliged to throw stones into the sea till they emerge like a geometrical reef, and vessels cling hard to the reef. One climbs on to it from the steamer; it is very long and thin, like a sword, and between shouting wind and water one precariously balances oneself on it. After some eighty years of steam, nothing more comfortable than the reef has yet been achieved. But far out on the water a black line may be discerned, with the silhouettes of cranes and terrific engines. Denied a natural harbour, the island has at length determined to have an unnatural harbour at this bleak and perilous spot. In another ten years or so the peaceful invader will no longer be compelled to fight with a real train for standing room on a storm-swept reef.
And that train! Electric light, corridors, lavatories, and general brilliance! Luxuries inconceivable in the past! But, just to prove a robust conservatism, hot-water bottles remain as the sole protection against being frozen to death.
“Can I get you a seat, sir?”
It is the guard’s tone that is the very essence of England. You may say he descries a shilling on the horizon. I don’t care. That tone cannot be heard outside England. It is an honest tone, cheerful, kindly, the welling-up of a fundamental good nature. It is a tone which says: “I am a decent fellow, so are you; let us do the best for ourselves under difficulties.” It is far more English than a beefsteak or a ground-landlord. It touches the returned exile profoundly, especially at the dreadful hour of four a. m. And in replying, “Yes, please. Second. Not a smoker,” one is saying, “Hail! Fellow-islander. You have appalling faults, but for sheer straightness you cannot be matched elsewhere.”
One comes to an oblong aperture on the reef, something resembling the aperture of a Punch and Judy show, and not much larger. In this aperture are a man, many thick cups, several urns, and some chunks of bread. One struggles up to the man.
“Tea or coffee, sir?”
“Hot milk,” one says.
“Hot milk!” he repeats. You have shocked his Toryism. You have dragged him out of the rut of tea and coffee, and he does not like it. However—brave, resourceful fellow!—he pulls himself together for an immense effort, and gives you hot milk, and you stand there, in front of the aperture, under the stars and over the sea and in the blast, trying to keep the cup upright in a mêlée of elbows.
This is the gate, and this the hospitality, of the greatest empire that, etc.
“Can I take this cup to the train?”
“Certainly, sir!” says the Punch and Judy man genially, as who should say: “God bless my soul! Aren’t you in the country where anyone can choose the portmanteau that suits him out of a luggage van?”
Now that is England! In France, Germany, Italy, there would have been a spacious golden café and all the drinks on earth, but one could never have got that cup out of the café without at least a stamped declaration signed by two commissioners of police and countersigned by a Consul. One makes a line of milk along the reef, and sits blowing and sipping what is left of the milk in the train. And when the train is ready to depart one demands of a porter:
“What am I to do with this cup?”
“Give it to me, sir.”
And he planks it down on the platform next a pillar, and leaves it. And off one goes. The adventures of that thick mug are a beautiful demonstration that the new England contains a lot of the old. It will ultimately reach the Punch and Judy show once more (not broken—perhaps cracked); not, however, by rules and regulations; but higgledy-piggledy, by mutual aid and good nature and good will. He tranquil; it will regain its counter.
The fringe of villas, each primly asleep in its starlit garden, which borders the island and divides the hopfields from the Atlantic, is much wider than it used to be. But in the fields time has stood still.. . . Now, one has left the sea and the storm and the reef, and already one is forgetting that the island is an island.. . . Warmth gradually creeps up from the hot-water bottles to one’s heart and eyes, and sleep comes as the train scurries into the empire.... A loud reverberation, and one wakes up in a vast cavern, dimly lit, and sparsely peopled by a few brass-buttoned beings that have the air of dwarfs under its high, invisible roof. They give it a name, and call it Charing Cross, and one remembers that, since one last saw it, it fell down and demolished a theatre. Everything is shuttered in the cavern. Nothing to eat or to drink, or to read, but shutters. And shutters are so cold, and caverns so draughty.
“Where can I get something to eat?” one demands.
“Eat, sir?” A staggered pause, and the porter looks at one as if one were Oliver Twist. “There’s the hotels, sir,” he says, finally.
Yet one has not come by a special, unique train, unexpected and startling. No! That train knocks at the inner door of the empire every morning in every month in every year at the same hour, and it is always met by shutters. And the empire, by the fact of its accredited representatives in brass buttons and socialistic ties, is always taken aback by the desire of the peaceful invader to eat.
One wanders out into the frozen silence. Gas lamps patiently burning over acres of beautiful creosoted wood! A dead cab or so! A policeman! Shutters everywhere: Nothing else. No change here.
This is the changeless, ineffable Strand at Charing Cross, sacred as the Ganges. One cannot see a single new building. Yet they say London has been rebuilt.
The door of the hotel is locked. And the night watchman opens with the same air of astonishment as the Punch and Judy man when one asked for milk, and the railway porter when one asked for food. Every morning at that hour the train stops within fifty yards of the hotel door, and pitches out into London persons who have been up all night; and London blandly continues to be amazed at their arrival. A good English fellow, the watchman—almost certainly the elder brother of the train-guard.
“I want a room and some breakfast.”
He cautiously relocks the door.
“Yes, sir, as soon as the waiters are down. In about an hour, sir. I can take you to the lavatory now, sir, if that will do.”
Who said there was a new England?
One sits overlooking the Strand, and tragically waiting. And presently, in the beginnings of the dawn, that pathetic, wistful object the first omnibus of the day rolls along—all by itself—no horses in front of it! And, after hours, a waiter descends as bright as a pin from his attic, and asks with a strong German accent whether one will have tea or coffee. The empire is waking up, and one is in the heart of it.