Of course, it wasn't the first time I'd been out in the car, for I think I told you, the day Apollo was christened I had a spin; but it rained, and we went only through the Park. That was nothing. This morning we were bidding good-bye to London, and our pulses were beating high for the Tour. Young Nick drove on the christening day, but this time Sir Lionel took the driver's seat, with the brown idol beside him; and I saw instantly, by the very way he laid his hand on the steering-wheel, with a kind of caress—as a horse-lover pats a beloved mare's neck—that he and the golden car were in perfect sympathy.
We were starting early, because Sir Lionel had planned a good many things for us to see before dark; but early as it was, Piccadilly and Knightsbridge were seething with traffic. Motor-'buses like mad hippopotamuses; taxi-cabs like fierce young lions; huge carts like elephants; and other vehicles of all sorts to make up a confused medley of wild animals escaped from the Zoo. It looked appalling to mingle with, but our own private Dragon drove so skilfully, yet so carefully, that I never bit my heart once. Always the car seemed sentient, steering its way like a long, thin pike; then when the chance came, flashing ahead, dauntless and sure.
We went by a great domed palace—Harrod's Stores—and then over Putney Bridge, passing Swinburne's house, whose outside is as deceiving as an oyster-shell that hides a pearl; through Epsom, Charles the Second's "Brighton" (which I've been reading about in a volume of Pepys Sir Lionel has given me), to Leatherhead, along the Dorking Road, slowing up for a glimpse of Juniper Hall, glowing red as a smouldering bonfire behind a dark latticed screen of splendid Lebanon cedars. I dare say it's a good deal changed since dear little Fanny Burney's day, for the house looks quite modern; but then neither buildings nor the people who live in them show their age early in England.
Close under Box Hill we glided; and Sir Lionel pointed out a little path leading up on the left to George Meredith's cottage. Just a small house of gray stone it is (for I would get out and walk up part way to see it from far off, not to intrude or spy); and there that great genius shines out, a clear, white light for the world, like a beacon or a star.
Evidently Surrey air suits geniuses. Do you remember reading about Keats, that he wrote a lot of "Endymion" at Burford Bridge? It was only a little after ten o'clock when we passed the quaint-looking hotel there, but already at least a dozen motors were drawn up before it. I wanted to go in and ask if they show the room Lord Nelson used; but we had too many things to see.
Of course, I am always wishing for you, but I began to wish the hardest just as we came into this green, brackeny, fairyland of Surrey. It's the kind of country you love best; although I must say it was never planned for motors. Winding through those green tunnels which are the Surrey lanes, I felt as if, in some quaint dream, I were motoring on a tight-rope, expecting another car to want to pass me on the same rope—which naturally it couldn't!
It would have been much worse, though, if Young Nick had been driving. That little, smooth brown face of his looks as if its idol-simper hid no human emotions, and I believe if people and animals were perfectly flat, like paper dolls, so that they would do no harm to his car, he wouldn't mind how many he drove over. Luckily, however, they aren't flat, and the only thing earthly he adores, after his master, is his motor; so he is nice and cautious for its sake. But the Dragon thinks of everyone, and says there's no pleasure for him in motoring if he leaves a trail of distress or even annoyance along the road as he passes. He slows down at corners; he goes carefully round them; he almost walks Apollo in places where creatures of any kind may start out unexpectedly; and he blows our pleasant musical horn as if by instinct, never forgetting, as I'm sure I should do.
As we twisted and turned through the Surrey lanes, between Dorking and Shere, little children in red cloaks and tams appeared from behind hedges, looking like blowing poppies as they ran. And blue-eyed, gold-brown haired girls in cottage doorways, under hanging bowers of roses, were as decorative as Old Chelsea china girls. The red tiles of their roofs, as I turned back for one more glimpse, would already be half hidden in waves of green, but would just show up like beds of scarlet geraniums buried in leaves.
Shere was almost too beautiful to be real, with its rows of Elizabethan cottages whose windows twinkled at us with their diamond-shaped, diamond-bright panes, sparkling under their low, thatch-eyebrows, from between black oak beams. The Tudor chimneys were as graceful as the smoke wreaths that lazily spiraled above them, and the whole effect was—was—well, inexpressibly Birket Foster. I used to think he idealized; but then, I'd never seen anything of England but London, and didn't know how all English trees, cottages, and even clouds, are trained to group themselves to suit artists of different schools.
I kept wishing that you'd made me study architecture and botany, instead of languages and music. In justice to oneself, one ought, when travelling in England, to have at least a bowing acquaintance with every sort of architecture, and all families of flowers, to say nothing of trees, so that one might exclaim, as snobs do of royalties and celebrities: "Oh, she was the great granddaughter of So-and-So." "He married Lady This-and-That." Also, I find I need much more knowledge of literature than I have. This country is divided off into a kind of glorious chessboard, each square being sacred to some immortal author, playwright, or poet. The artists press them close, without overcrowding; and history lies underneath—history for every square inch.