VIII
Sir Franklin Ingleside did not use the kettle-holder. He hung it on a nail by the fire-place, and whenever he is asked about it, or people smile at its very striking colours, he says, “I value that very highly; that is the profit that I made out of a toy-shop which I once kept.”
THE GARDENS AND THE NILE
THE GARDENS AND THE NILE
THE STORY OF SPEKE
In Kensington Gardens, close to Lancaster Gate, there rises from the grass beside the path leading direct to “Physical Energy” a column of red granite, bearing the words “In Memory of Speke. Victoria Nyanza and the Nile. 1864.” Anyone curious enough to stand for a while near this column and listen to the nurses and children who pass would hear some strange suggestions as to why the column is there, and who or what Speke was; but for the most part the answer to the question is: “I don’t know,” or, “How should I know?” or, “Inquire of your pa”; or, by the more daring, “Speke was a great man.”
“Yes, but what kind of a great man? What did he do?”
“Do? Oh! [airily] he did great things. That’s why he has a monument—monuments are put up only to great men.”
“Yes, nurse, but do tell me what Speke did?”
“That I shan’t now. I might have done if you hadn’t worried me so. But I’ll tell you what he didn’t do: he didn’t ask questions all day long. No great man ever did.”
That evening, perhaps, just before bedtime, the same question will be repeated at home.
“Father, who is Speke?”
“Speke?”
“Yes, there’s a monument in the Gardens in memory of Speke.”
“YES, NURSE, BUT DO TELL ME WHAT SPEKE DID?”
“A very unsuitable inscription, I think. Bad advice. Little boys—yes, and little girls too—should be seen and not heard. I would rather it said ‘In honour of not speaking.’” (This father, you see, was one of the funny fathers who think that children want only to laugh.)
“No, father, not S-p-e-a-k; S-p-e-k-e.”
“Oh, Speke!—yes, of course, well, Speke—Speke was a great man.”
“Nurse said that, father. But what did he do?”
“Do? Oh, he was a great, great Englishman! A very noble life. That’s why he has a monument. Monuments, you know, are raised only to the great. You have seen the Albert Memorial, and the statue of the Duke of Wellington at Hyde Park Corner?”
“Yes, father, but do tell me what Speke did?”
“Speke—my dear child, do you know what the time is? It’s twenty to eight. You ought to have been upstairs for ten minutes. Good-night. Sleep well.”
The result is that for several years the children of Bayswater and Kensington have had to invent stories of Speke for themselves. They know in a vague way that he was a traveller, because of the other words on the monument; but that is all. They don’t know whether he was young or old; whether he travelled in 1864, or died in 1864. Some of them, the smaller ones, connecting Victoria Nyanza in some way with Queen Victoria, think of Speke as something to do with Kensington Gardens—perhaps he was the head gardener, they think, or the man who planted the trees. To others the word Nile on the column suggests thoughts of Moses in the bulrushes, and Pharaoh and the Israelites.
Meanwhile, who was Speke?
I will tell you.
John Hanning Speke was born on May 4, 1827, at Jordans, near Ilchester, in Somersetshire. That was the year when it was first observed that Englishmen walked with their hands in their pockets. Speke’s father was a captain in the 14th Dragoons, and the son was brought up to be a soldier too; and in 1844, when he was seventeen, he entered the army, and went to the Punjab in India, where he fought in several battles and became a lieutenant. Any time he could get from active service he spent in exploring the Himalayas and in hunting wild beasts and looking for rare plants and fossils.
In 1854, when his ten years in India were over, he went to Africa in order to carry out his pet scheme of exploring the centre of that Continent, which was then almost unknown. Before, however, he could get to work properly the Crimean War broke out, and he at once volunteered for service there and fought very gallantly; and then, in 1856, he really began again upon Africa in earnest, in company with another intrepid traveller, Sir Richard Burton, the wonderful man who made the pilgrimage to Mecca disguised so cleverly as a Mohamedan that he was not discovered. Had he been he would have been killed at once.
The particular ambition of Burton and Speke was to trace the river Nile back to its source in the mysterious heart of the Mountains of the Moon.
Has it ever occurred to you that every river has a source—that every river begins somewhere, in a tiny spring? Few forms of exploration are more interesting than to trace a stream back to its first drop. The Thames, for example, begins in the Cotswold Hills—the merest little trickle. All running water, you know, sooner or later reaches the sea. That little trickle in the Cotswolds will in time glide past Henley and Hampton Court and Westminster Bridge, and past the Tower, and help to bear up the thousands of vessels in the Port of London, and at last will run out into the sea at Gravesend. Some day perhaps you will walk up the banks of the Upper Thames until you come to the Cotswold spring.
But of course a river, although we speak of its having one source, has others too. Many streams run into the Thames, and each of these has also its source. There is one, indeed, close to Speke’s monument—the Westbourne, which gives its name to Westbourne Grove, where Whiteley’s is. The West Bourne, like all the little London rivers, now runs underground, but it used to be open a hundred and more years ago. The West Bourne rises near the Finchley Road Station, and has many adventures before it reaches the Thames and the sea. It runs, I have been told, under the Bayswater Road into the Serpentine. At the bottom of the Serpentine it comes out again in a waterfall, where the rabbits are, and again runs underground to the King’s garden at the back of Buckingham Palace, where it reappears as a beautiful lake. Then it dives under the Palace and comes up again as the water in St. James’s Park, where all the interesting water-fowl live and have nests on an island—the ducks and gulls and cormorants and penguins. Then, once more, it disappears, this time under the Horse Guards and Whitehall, and comes out into the Thames. Not a bad career for a little bit of a stream rising at Hampstead, is it?
To explore that stream would be fairly easy, and it is not difficult to explore the Thames. But in order to realize quite what Speke did you must think for a moment of what it means to travel in unexplored countries. There are no maps: you have no notion what is before you; the natives may be suspicious of you and make war at once, or they may at first pretend to be friendly and then suddenly attempt a massacre; fever is always on your track; wild beasts may be in such numbers as to be a continual danger. It is a great thing to dare all these known and unknown perils just to do—what? To make a fortune? No. To add a country to England’s possessions? No. But just to gain a little more knowledge of geography; just to add one more fact to the world’s sum.
Illness came to both explorers, and they endured very severe privations, and at last Burton had to give up and allow Speke to go on alone. They parted at Kazé on July 9, 1858, just fifty years ago, Speke setting out with thirty-five native followers and supplies for six weeks. On August 3 he discovered a gigantic lake, to which he gave the name Victoria Nyanza—Victoria after his Queen, and Nyanza meaning a piece of water.
You should now get your atlas and look for the Nile and Kazé and the vast lake, where, as Speke then thought, and as is now known, the river Nile begins its course of three thousand four hundred miles, which does not end until, after passing through Khartoum, and Dongola, and Wady Halfa, and Assouan, and Thebes, and Ghizeh, and Cairo, it glides into the sea by the many mouths of its delta at Rosetta and Damietta and Alexandria.
Speke then returned to England, to tell his countrymen all about his discovery, and in 1860 he set out for Africa again, and began a series of very tedious and harassing marches from Zanzibar through Uganda to reach Victoria Nyanza once more, and explore it thoroughly. Illness again interrupted him, and the native kings were not wholly friendly, but at last, on July 28, 1862, he came to the head of the lake where the water that becomes the Nile tumbles over the edge of a cataract. This cataract he named Ripon Falls.
Speke telegraphed his news to England directly he reached a civilized town, so that when he himself landed at Southampton, in 1863, he was received as a hero, and honours were showered upon him, and he was the most famous traveller of his own or almost any other day.
Not every one, however (including Burton), was satisfied that the Nile really began at Ripon Falls, and books were written by Burton and others in support of rival theories. Speke, who naturally believed himself to be right, arranged to meet some of these other geographers in a public discussion at Bath, in September, 1864; but on the very morning of that day, as he was out partridge-shooting, he accidentally shot himself and died at the early age of thirty-seven.
Isn’t that a wretched way for a man to die after braving all the perils of unknown Africa?
And now, whenever you see the Speke monument again you will think of that great inland sea in Africa called Victoria Nyanza, and the Nile tumbling out of it and beginning its wonderful journey to the Mediterranean.
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A
SHILLING
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A
SHILLING
Has it ever occurred to you through how many hands a piece of money passes in the course of a day, a week, a month, and what it does for its owners during that time? I am fortunately in the position to be able to tell you of the adventures of a shilling of my acquaintance during a single day; and the story will show you how busy a piece of silver can be.
“Let me see, you want an ordinary day,” the shilling said. “Of course, sometimes I am not busy at all—I just lie all the time in a till or a drawer at the Bank (we hate being at the Bank on Sundays), or I may belong for the time being to a miser, or I may be locked up in a money-box. (Children have no notion how irksome it is to an active intelligent coin to be put away in a dark money-box for weeks and weeks, with no recreation but an occasional rattle.) But I will tell you my adventures on a rather special day on which I not only went to church, but to a race-meeting, and was lost into the bargain. I was not busier then than I have been at other times, but I had rather more ups and downs than a day usually sees.
“When I woke it was quite light, and as I lay on the dressing-table with all the other coins the sunshine came through the chinks of the blind and made me pleasantly warm. Not so warm as I am in a pocket, but still very comfortable, especially as I had been cold in the night.
“It was a new room to me, and I was very glad to see it, or, indeed, to see anything again, since for nearly a year I had been locked up in a little girl’s money-box, with no one to talk to but a few low pennies and a very rude little threepenny bit, who squeaked his impertinences into my ear all day long. Every now and then another penny would come tumbling in among us with a crash, sometimes bruising us horribly, but never any real gentlefolk, not even a sixpence. Luckily, however, this little girl’s mother had the sense to have a birthday, and so at last I was taken out, to be exchanged at a flower-shop for a pot of musk.
“I lay in the flower-shop till for an hour or so, and then a nice-looking gentleman with grey hair came in for some pink carnations for a lady on Campden Hill, and I was given to him as change. He put me in his pocket, and there I remained till he came home, when I was placed on the dressing-table with all the other coins.
“I was the only shilling, the others being a very old half-crown, quite deaf and short-tempered, a tired florin, some more vulgar pennies (pennies can be very coarse), and a sovereign, who was too proud even to look at us and at once went to sleep.
“I don’t know what I should have done for company had it not been for a very affable silver-backed hair-brush on the table close to me, who told me one or two interesting stories of his youth and the grand people he used to see when he was lying in a Bond-Street window. He was in the midst of the romance of a very giddy tortoiseshell comb whom he had once loved, when the gentleman got up and began to brush his hair, and when he set the brush down again it was too far off for conversation. These are the little things that human beings do not think of, but which mean so much to us. We always like to be put close together according to our metal, gold near gold, silver near silver, and so on, and we like, also, to keep near our own values too—half-crowns near half-crowns, and pennies near pennies (although now and then I will admit I have heard some very funny and enlightening things from copper, even from halfpennies, although it is true that they do drop their h’s and are often exceedingly unwashed).
“Well, to get on with my story: when the gentleman had finished dressing he put us all into his pockets again and went downstairs. Me he put in his left-hand trouser pocket with the half-crown and the florin; the pennies in his right, and the sovereign in his waistcoat. And here let me say that it is much more comfortable to be a man’s money than a woman’s. Men put us in their pockets and keep us cosy: women put us in purses, where we can hardly breathe.
“Directly after breakfast my gentleman hurried off to the Notting Hill Gate Tube station, and pushed me through a pigeon-hole to the ticket-seller, who laid me on the counter before him with a great many other coins all spread out. Before, however, I could say anything more than just ‘How do you do?’ to them, I was taken up again and given in change to another traveller.
“This traveller had a little boy with him on his way back to school from Liverpool Street, and I very nearly passed into his possession as a tip, but just at the last moment the traveller thought better of it, and instead of giving the little boy a single shilling gave him half a crown (as all fathers and uncles ought to do at the very least), and so I went back into his pocket again.
“After the boy had gone I had a busy two hours in the city. I was first paid away to a ’bus conductor, and was given by him in change to a lady on her way to a special service at St. Paul’s. I was there laid in a collection plate, which usually means a long rest for us; but happily one of the clergymen wanted a pound’s worth of silver, and I had the luck to be among it. He paid me to a cabman who took him to the Royal Academy, and by this cabman I was soon after given as change to a gentleman whom he drove from the Albany to Waterloo. This gentleman dropped me into a pocket full of money and settled down in the corner of a railway carriage to read the paper and smoke a cigar.
“‘Do you know where we are going?’ said one of the other coins to me. ‘We are going to the races. We may have some fun.’
“This pleased me very much, for I had never been to the races in my life, but had heard much about them from time to time.
“‘Sometimes we make a lot of money for our master,’ the coin continued, ‘but sometimes he loses us for ever.’
“‘Yes,’ said a very fat five-shilling piece, who was hurting me horribly by the way he leaned against me, ‘but, of course, you [meaning me] are too small to make any money. It is fellows like me, and sovereigns and half-sovereigns, that make the money.’
“None the less, as it happened, I made some too, although I had a dreadful shock for a moment when my master gave me to a man for a race-card, and I thought I should never have any fun at all. Luckily, however, the race-card man was thirsty, and I found my way into a till, and then I was given as change to a waiter, and soon after realized that I was in the till of the members’ restaurant.
“There, for the first time in my life, I met a bank-note. The delicate, fragile thing! She was very proud, but quite affable. We call them Duchesses. You should hear them rustle as they move! They don’t live with us, of course; they live in leather cases in the more fashionable parts of the clothing, but now and then we find ourselves in the same plate at restaurants, and I tell you it is a great moment for a shilling when that happens. How one’s heart beats! That was what occurred on this very occasion. I went out of the till in company with this beautiful, refined creature, and the gentleman to whom we were carried gave me back to the waiter as a tip.
“No sooner was lunch over than the waiter ran out on the course with me in his hand, and went up to a man who was standing on a box, and asked: ‘What price Flatiron?’ and the man said, ‘Tens.’ Then the waiter handed me to the man, and he dropped me into a bag full of other money, both silver and gold, and gave the waiter a ticket.
“‘Who are you on?’ the other coins asked me eagerly. I had no notion what they meant. ‘What is the name of your horse?’ they said. This puzzled me even more, and I said I didn’t know any names of horses, but the waiter had asked about a flatiron. ‘That’s it,’ said the others; ‘that’s your horse.’ And then I found that several others of them were there for Flatiron’s sake too, while the others were for other horses, such as Saucy Sally, and Pink Pearl, and Rufus, and See-you-later.
“Every moment other coins came tumbling in, and then the race began. We could not see it, of course, but we could hear the cries of the crowd, and we rattled about in our excitement as the names of our own horses reached us. At last it was over, and we heard the man groan out that Flatiron had won. And very soon the waiter came for his winnings, and a half-sovereign and I were handed to him. I tell you I was proud to think that I had been the means of bringing one of those conceited half-sovereigns to life again, but he would not even say ‘Thank you.’
A BLUE RIBBON WAS THREADED THROUGH ME, AND I WAS HUNG ROUND A LITTLE GIRL’S NECK.
“The waiter spat on both of us for luck, and put us in his pocket, and then went off to a refreshment tent, where I was pushed across a wet counter and again dropped into a till, quite damp, but happily I was taken out again before I could catch cold, and given as change to the chauffeur of a motor-car.
“Almost immediately after that the chauffeur started his car and drove his master back to London. I could not see anything—a coin very rarely can—but I felt the vibration of the engine, and every now and then I heard the horn blow.
“The interesting part of the ride, however, was the talk I had with a shilling with a hole in it. ‘Whatever you do,’ he said, ‘don’t ever let them bore a hole in you. Life isn’t worth living after that. It’s not so much that it hurts as that no one will take you. I had a hole bored in me when I was quite new, and a blue ribbon was threaded through me, and I was hung round a little girl’s neck. That was all right, especially as we used to go to all kinds of places together, even to the pantomime and “Peter Pan,” and from where I used to hang I could see too; but one day, in a crowd in London, a thief with a pair of scissors cut the ribbon and pulled me off, and I have never been happy since. I have been in many persons’ possession, but I see nothing of life, because I change hands only at night. When it is light the people won’t have me. They call out, “Hi, this shilling won’t do!” and push me back again. I can’t buy anything by day at all, but at night I am slipped into cabmen’s hands. It is very uncomfortable for me, for not only am I condemned to a kind of furtive, dishonest life, but I have to hear the dreadful things the cabmen say when they discover me.
“‘There is only one worse thing,’ he went on, ‘and that is to be a bad shilling. But there aren’t many of those made, because it doesn’t pay to make false coins so small. The coiners spend their time on bad half-crowns and florins, which cost hardly any more to make than a shilling and are worth ever so much more.’
“He went on to tell me of a bad half-crown that he once knew which was now nailed to the counter of a tobacconist’s in Bermondsey. ‘Think of it,’ he said, ‘nailed to a counter. Never able to move again: never able to buy another thing for ever and ever!’ We both shuddered.
“Directly the car was in its garage the chauffeur hurried to his lodgings and changed his clothes and went out to enjoy himself. It was now about half-past six. He put his money into different pockets, and I found myself with half a crown and a florin. They were fairly sociable, especially when they knew I had won money at the races, but I had their company only a very short time, for suddenly I began to feel myself sinking. I cried out for help, but all in vain; and in a moment I fell with a rush and knew no more until I awoke to find myself in the mud of the street.
“There was a hole in the pocket!
“I lay there for a long time in an agony of fear that I should be run over. I heard the beat of horses’ feet close to me and the rumbling of wagons that shook the ground, and now and then a motor-car dashed by and turned me cold with fear. But as no harm came to me I realized that I must have fallen—I could not see for mud—very near the gutter; perhaps quite in it.
“‘I do wish some one would pick me up,’ I thought, ‘but I don’t see how they can, for if I can’t see them for mud, they can’t see me for mud.’ Just as I was saying this to myself, I felt a great splash on my face, and then another and another. A shower, and a very heavy one, had begun. In spite of the wet this made me very happy, for I was gradually being washed clean, and ‘now,’ thought I, ‘I shall be seen.’
“It happened exactly as I guessed, for almost immediately afterwards a hand pounced down on me and picked me up, and I heard a man’s voice say, ‘Well, I’m blowed if it ain’t a bob!’ I almost screamed as he put me between his teeth and bit me. ‘And a good’un too,’ he added, and then addressing the woman with him, who was leading a little boy, he said: ‘Come on, old girl, and we’ll have some dinner after all,’ and we all went off to the nearest Lockhart’s refreshment-room and sat down at a table by the fire.
“‘What shall it be, missis?’ the man asked. ‘Two pots of splash for me and you, and three doorsteps and a mug of chalk for his nibs?’
“The woman said that would do nicely, and the man went off to get the things from the counter, and as he had to give me in payment that was the last I saw of him and his family; for which I was sorry, for they were nice kindly sort of people although so poor. But I was able to see what he meant by his strange words, for he took back with him two cups of coffee, and three thick slices of bread and butter, and a mug of milk.
“Half an hour later I was given in change to a jolly navvy who was having an evening out with his girl. They had finished their supper and were now on their way to the circus. He held me in his hand until we got to the gallery door, and then I was pushed through a little grating and once again flung into a crowded till.
“There I felt I was doomed to stay for some time, for it was late and no one else was likely to come in. However, I did not mind much, for I was very tired and my head buzzed. ‘A shilling’s,’ I said to myself, as I lay there, ‘is a very disappointing life. Here am I lying in the till of a circus ticket-office and seeing nothing, while my late owner, who but for me would not be at the circus at all, is having all the fun.’ Where I lay I could faintly hear the band and the laughter. ‘But for me,’ I continued, ‘why, but for me and other coins people couldn’t do anything at all. It is we who give them their power. Just see what I have done this very day since I got up—I have bought tickets and food and drink and cab-rides for many people; I have been put into the plate at church and I have won ten shillings at the races; I have given pleasure and profit; I have fed the hungry; and I have just sent two worthy persons into the gallery of this circus. Not a bad day’s work!’
“So saying I composed myself to sleep, but just at that moment one of the managers came round to ask for some change, and once again I was sent out into the world. The manager put on his hat and overcoat and started for home, giving me for his ticket at the station, where I passed out again as change to a gentleman who was going to Notting Hill Gate, who put me in his pocket and did not take me out until he went to bed. And would you believe it? when I looked round I found I was on the very same dressing-table on which I had awakened in the morning, with my friend the silver-backed brush beside me.
“‘Then he didn’t spend you to-day?’ said the hair-brush, as soon as the man had gone to bed, and we could get a little time to ourselves.
“‘Oh, didn’t he?’ I exclaimed. ‘Why, I’ve been all over London, in all kinds of pockets to-day. I’ll tell you all about it.’
“Which I did; so that you and the hair-brush are now equally wise.”
And there the shilling’s story ended.
But did it ever occur to you before what a traveller a coin can be, and that it is quite possible to get again at night the same coin you parted with in the morning?
THE RING OF FORTITUDE