A PILGRIMAGE TO CANTERBURY
No place within equal distance of London is of greater interest than Canterbury, and, indeed, there are very few cities in the entire Kingdom that can vie with the ancient cathedral town in historical importance and antiquity. It lies only sixty-five miles southeast of London, but allowing for the late start that one always makes from an English hotel, and the points that will engage attention between the two cities, the day will be occupied by the trip. Especially will this be true if, as in our case, fully two hours be spent in getting out of the city and reaching the highway south of the Thames, which follows the river to Canterbury.
Leaving Russell Square about ten o'clock, I followed the jam down Holborn past the Bank and across London Bridge, crawling along at a snail's pace until we were well beyond the river. A worse route and a more trying one it would have been hard to select. With more experience, I should have run down the broad and little-congested Kingsway to Waterloo Bridge and directly on to Old Kent road in at least one-fourth the time which I consumed in my ignorance. Nevertheless, if a novice drives a car in London, he can hardly avoid such experiences. Detailed directions given in advance cannot be remembered and there is little opportunity to consult street signs and maps or even to question the policeman in the never-ending crush of the streets. However, one gradually gains familiarity with the streets and landmarks, and by the time I was ready to leave London for America, I had just learned to get about the city with comparative ease.
Old Kent road, which leads out of London towards Canterbury, is an ancient highway, and follows nearly, if not quite, the route pursued by the Canterbury pilgrims of the poet Chaucer. In the main it is unusually broad and well kept, but progress will be slow at first, as the suburbs extend a long way in this direction, and for the first twenty-five miles one can hardly be said to be out of the city at any time. Ten miles out the road passes Greenwich, where the British observatory is located, and Woolwich, the seat of the great government arsenals and gun works, is also near this point, lying directly by the river.
Nearly midway between London and Rochester is the old town of Dartford, where we enjoyed the hospitality of the Bull Hotel for luncheon. A dingy, time-worn, rambling old hostelry it is, every odd corner filled with stuffed birds and beasts to an extent that suggested a museum, and as if to still further carry out the museum feature, mine host had built in a small court near the entrance a large cage or bird-house which was literally alive with specimens of feathered songsters of all degrees. The space on the first floor not occupied by these curios was largely devoted to liquor selling, for there appeared to be at least three bars in the most accessible parts of the hotel. However, somewhat to the rear there was a comfortable coffee room, where our luncheon was neatly served. We had learned by this time that all well regulated hotels in the medium sized towns, and even in some of the larger cities—as large as Bristol, for instance—have two dining rooms, one, generally for tourists, called the "coffee room," with separate small tables, and a much larger room for "commercials," or traveling salesmen, where all are seated together at a single table. The service is practically the same, but the ratio of charges is from two to three times higher in the coffee room. We found many old hotels in retired places where a coffee room had been hastily improvised, an innovation no doubt brought about largely by the motor car trade and the desire to give the motorist more aristocratic rates than those charged the well-posted commercials. Though we stopped in Dartford no longer than necessary for lunch and a slight repair to the car, it is a place of considerable interest. Its chief industry is a large paper-mill, a direct successor to the first one established in England near the end of the Sixteenth Century, and Foolscap paper, standard throughout the English-speaking world, takes its name from the crest (a fool's cap) of the founder of the industry, whose tomb may still be seen in Dartford Church.
A short run over a broad road bordered with beautiful rural scenery brought us into Rochester, whose cathedral spire and castle with its huge Norman tower loomed into view long before we came into the town itself. A few miles out of the town our attention had been attracted by a place of unusual beauty, a fine old house almost hidden by high hedges and trees on one side of the road and just opposite a tangled bit of wood and shrubbery, with several of the largest cedars we saw in England. So picturesque was the spot that we stopped for a photograph of the car and party, with the splendid trees for a background, but, as often happens in critical cases, the kodak film only yielded a "fog" when finally developed.
When we reached Rochester, a glance at the map showed us that we had unwittingly passed Gad's Hill, the home where Charles Dickens spent the last fifteen years of his life and where he died thirty-six years ago. We speedily retraced the last four or five miles of our journey and found ourselves again at the fine old place with the cedar trees where we had been but a short time before. We stopped to inquire at a roadside inn which, among the multitude of such places, we had hardly noticed before, and which bore the legend, "The Sir John Falstaff," a distinction earned by being the identical place where Shakespeare located some of the pranks of his ridiculous hero. The inn-keeper was well posted on the literary traditions of the locality. "Yes," said he, "this is Gad's Hill Place, where Dickens lived and where he died just thirty-six years ago today, on June 9th, 1870; but the house is shown only on Wednesdays of each week and the proprietor doesn't fancy being troubled on other days. But perhaps, since you are Americans and have come a long way, he may admit you on this special anniversary. Anyway, it will do no harm for you to try."
Personally, I could not blame the proprietor for his disinclination to admit visitors on other than the regular days, and it was impressed on me more than once during our trip that living in the home of some famous man carries quite a penalty, especially if the present owner happens to be a considerate gentleman who dislikes to deprive visitors of a glimpse of the place. Such owners are often wealthy and the small fees which they fix for admittance are only required as evidence of good faith and usually devoted to charity. With a full appreciation of the situation, it was not always easy to ask for the suspension of a plainly stated rule, yet we did this in many instances before our tour was over and almost invariably with success. In the present case we were fortunate, for the gentleman who owned Gad's Hill was away and the neat maid who responded to the bell at the gateway seemed glad to show us the place, regardless of rules. It is a comfortable, old-fashioned house, built about 1775, and was much admired by Dickens as a boy when he lived with his parents in Rochester. His father used to bring him to look at the house and told him that if he grew up a clever man, he might possibly own it some time.
We were first shown into the library, which is much the same as the great writer left it at his death, and the chair and desk which he used still stand in their accustomed places. The most curious feature of the library is the rows of dummy books that occupy some of the shelves, and even the doors are lined with these sham leather backs glued to boards, a whim of Dickens carefully respected by the present owner. We were also accorded a view of the large dining room where Dickens was seized with the attack which resulted in his sudden and unexpected death. After a glimpse of other parts of the house and garden surrounding it, the maid conducted us through an underground passage leading beneath the road, to the plot of shrubbery which lay opposite the mansion. In this secluded thicket, Dickens had built a little house, to which in the summer time he was often accustomed to retire when writing. It was an ideal English June day, and everything about the place showed to the best possible advantage. We all agreed that Gad's Hill alone would be well worth a trip from London. The country around is surpassingly beautiful and it is said that Dickens liked nothing better than to show his friends about the vicinity. He thought the seven miles between Rochester and Maidstone the most charming walk in all England. He delighted in taking trips with his friends to the castles and cathedrals and he immensely enjoyed picnics and luncheons in the cherry orchards and gardens.
A very interesting old city is Rochester, with its Eleventh Century cathedral and massive castle standing on the banks of the river. Little of the latter remains save the square tower of the Norman keep, one of the largest and most imposing we saw in England. The interior had been totally destroyed by fire hundreds of years ago, but the towering walls of enormous thickness still stand firm. Its antiquity is attested by the fact that it sustained a siege by William Rufus, the son of the Conqueror. The cathedral is not one of the most impressive of the great churches. It was largely rebuilt in the Twelfth Century, the money being obtained from miracles wrought by the relics of St. William of Perth, a pilgrim who was murdered on his way to Canterbury and who lies buried in the cathedral. Rochester is the scene of many incidents of Dickens' stories. It was the scene of his last unfinished work, "Edwin Drood," and he made many allusions to it elsewhere, the most notable perhaps in "Pickwick Papers," where he makes the effervescent Mr. Jingle describe it thus: "Ah, fine place, glorious pile, frowning walls, tottering arches, dark nooks, crumbling staircases—old cathedral, too,—earthy smell—pilgrims' feet worn away the old steps."
Across the river from Rochester lies Chatham, a city of forty thousand people and a famous naval and military station. The two cities are continuous and practically one. From here, without further stop, we followed the fine highway to Canterbury and entered the town by the west gate of Chaucer's Tales. This alone remains of the six gateways of the city wall in the poet's day, and the strong wall itself, with its twenty-one towers, has almost entirely disappeared. We followed a winding street bordered with quaint old buildings until we reached our hotel—in this case a modern and splendidly kept hostelry. The hotel was just completing an extensive garage, but it was not ready for occupancy and I was directed to a well equipped private establishment with every facility for the care and repair of motors. The excellence of the service at this hotel attracted our attention and the head waiter told us that the owners had their own farm and supplied their own table—accounting in this way for the excellence and freshness of the milk, meat and vegetables.
The long English summer evening still afforded time to look about the town after dinner. Passing down the main street after leaving the hotel, we found that the river and a canal wound their way in several places between the old buildings closely bordering on each side. The whole effect was delightful and so soft with sunset colors as to be suggestive of Venice. We noted that although Canterbury is exceedingly ancient, it is also a city of nearly thirty thousand population and the center of rich farming country, and, as at Chester, we found many evidences of prosperity and modern enterprise freely interspersed with the quaint and time-worn landmarks. One thing which we noticed not only here but elsewhere in England was the consummate architectural taste with which the modern business buildings were fitted in with the antique surroundings, harmonizing in style and color, and avoiding the discordant note that would come from a rectangular business block such as an American would have erected. Towns which have become known to fame and to the dollar-distributing tourists are now very slow to destroy or impair the old monuments and buildings that form their chief attractiveness, and the indifference that prevailed generally fifty or a hundred years ago has entirely vanished. We in America think we can afford to be iconoclastic, for our history is so recent and we have so little that commands reverence by age and association; yet five hundred years hence our successors will no doubt bitterly regret this spirit of their ancestors, just as many ancient towns in Britain lament the folly of their forbears who converted the historic abbeys and castles into hovels and stone fences.
Fortunately, the cathedral at Canterbury escaped such a fate, and as we viewed it in the fading light we received an impression of its grandeur and beauty that still keeps it pre-eminent after having visited every cathedral in the island. It is indeed worthy of its proud position in the English church and its unbroken line of traditions, lost in the mist of antiquity. It is rightly the delight of the architect and the artist, but an adequate description of its magnificence has no place in this hurried record. Time has dealt gently with it and careful repair and restoration have arrested its decay. It stands today, though subdued and stained by time, as proudly as it did when a monarch, bare-footed, walked through the roughly paved streets to do penance at the tomb of its martyred archbishop. It escaped lightly during the Reformation and civil war, though Becket's shrine was despoiled as savoring of idolatry and Cromwell's men desecrated its sanctity by stabling their horses in the great church.
The next day being Sunday, we were privileged to attend services at the cathedral, an opportunity we were always glad to have at any of the cathedrals despite the monotony of the Church of England service, for the music of the superb organs, the mellowed light from the stained windows, and the associations of the place were far more to us than litany or sermon. The archbishop was present at the service in state that fitted his exalted place as Primate of all England and his rank, which, as actual head of the church, is next to the king, nominally head of the church as well as of the state. He did not preach the sermon but officiated in the ordination of several priests, a service full of solemn and picturesque interest. The archbishop was attired in his crimson robe of state, the long train of which was carried by young boys in white robes, and he proceeded to his throne with all the pomp and ceremony that so delights the soul of the Englishman. He was preceded by several black-robed officials bearing the insignia of their offices, and when he took his throne, he became apparently closely absorbed in the sermon, which was preached by a Cambridge professor.
We were later astonished to learn that the archbishop's salary amounts to $75,000 per year, or half as much more than that of the President of the United States, and we were still more surprised to hear that the heavy demands made on him in maintaining his state and keeping up his splendid episcopal palaces are such that his income will not meet them. We were told that the same situation prevails everywhere with these high church dignitaries, and that only recently the Bishop of London had published figures to show that he was $25,000 poorer in the three years of his incumbency on an annual salary of $40,000 per year. It is not strange, therefore, that among these churchmen there exists a demand for a simpler life. The Bishop of Norwich frankly acknowledged recently that he had never been able to live on his income of $22,500 per year. He expressed his conviction that the wide-spread poverty of the bishops is caused by their being required to maintain "venerable but costly palaces." He says that he and many of his fellow-churchmen would prefer to lead plain and unostentatious lives, but they are not allowed to do so; that they would much prefer to devote a portion of their income to charity and other worthy purposes rather than to be compelled to spend it in useless pomp and ceremony.
Aside from its cathedral, Canterbury teems with unique relics of the past, some antedating the Roman invasion of England. The place of the town in history is an important one, and Dean Stanley in his "Memorials of Canterbury," claims that three great landings were made in Kent adjacent to the city, "that of Hengist and Horsa, which gave us our English forefathers and character; that of Julius Caesar, which revealed to us the civilized world, and that of St. Augustine, which gave us our Latin Christianity." The tower of the cathedral dominates the whole city and the great church often overshadows everything else in interest to the visitor. But one could spend days in the old-world streets, continually coming across fine half-timbered houses, with weather-beaten gables in subdued colors and rich antique oak carvings. There are few more pleasing bits of masonry in Britain than the great cathedral gateway at the foot of Mercery Lane, with its rich carving, weather-worn to a soft blur of gray and brown tones. Near Mercery Lane, too, are slight remains of the inn of Chaucer's Tales, "The Chequers of Hope," and in Monastery Street stands the fine gateway of the once rich and powerful St. Augustine's Abbey. Then there is the quaint little church of St. Martins, undoubtedly one of the oldest in England, and generally reputed to be the oldest. Here, in the year 600, St. Augustine preached before the cathedral was built. Neither should St. John's hospital, with its fine, half-timbered gateway be forgotten; nor the old grammar school, founded in the Seventh Century.
Our stay in the old town was all too short, but business reasons demanded our presence in London on Monday, so we left for that city about two o'clock. We varied matters somewhat by taking a different return route, and we fully agreed that the road leading from Canterbury to London by way of Maidstone is one of the most delightful which we traversed in England. It led through fields fresh with June verdure, losing itself at times in great forests, where the branches of the trees formed an archway overhead. Near Maidstone we caught a glimpse of Leeds Castle, one of the finest country seats in Kent, the main portions of the building dating from the Thirteenth Century. We had a splendid view from the highway through an opening in the trees of the many-towered old house surrounded by a shimmering lake, and gazing on such a scene under the spell of an English June day, one might easily forget the present and fancy himself back in the time when knighthood was in flower, though the swirl of a motor rushing past us would have dispelled any such reverie had we been disposed to entertain it. We reached London early, and our party was agreed that our pilgrimage to Canterbury could not very well have been omitted from our itinerary.