Azalea's Silver Web

by Elia Wilkinson Peattie

I like the English people. They are not always fizzing and bubbling like Americans. There is a repose about them and a quietness of character that rests me. It even rests me from my fizzly and bubbly self.

But deep down, Carin, beneath all the effervescence, there is something very quiet and peaceful in me. When I am alone, after the day of sight-seeing and chattering and laughing and admiring, I and this Still Soul of mine sit down together and commune.

Then I am no longer foolish. I am something that—how shall I put it? Something that forever strives! Is that it? I want to do well with my little life, Carin. I want to spin my silver web very beautifully, so that when I am old, and the web is all but done, I can look it over and be satisfied with it.

I have been keeping a diary, and in it are descriptions of all the places I have seen and the record of what I have done each day. When we get together again I shall show this to you, and then you can read all about what has been happening to me. But having written those descriptions once, I don’t at all feel like doing it again.

Anyway, what is the use? You have seen all of these places. They were an old story to you before I so much as thought of coming over here. But I do love London! Uncle and auntie have seen it before, and they get tired of wandering, so I am put in the care of an excellent Englishwoman who knows everything, apparently, and who is paid to pass on as much of her information to me as she possibly can. Her voice is very monotonous, unfortunately, so that I find myself nodding right on the busses, in the midst of her discourses, and I am afraid I am not learning one-tenth of what I ought.

But at odd moments I catch sight of things that enchant me.

The other day she and I were going to the Tate Gallery together, and after leaving the bus we came out on the Embankment by means of a curious little street, and suddenly, Carin, we were face to face with some sort of a ship wrecking place. It looked as if it had been there for hundreds of years. The great enclosure was heaped up with parts of ships, with the giant beams and the masts, and hulls, and, more interesting than all the rest, with countless figureheads.

Of course I knew that nearly every ship carries its figure at its bow. It was for such a purpose that the beautiful Victory of Samothrace was built, wasn’t it? But not until I had seen these great wooden creatures, made to represent Neptune and Boreas and Victory and Venus and mermaids and angels, and heaven knows what, did I have any idea what care the ship builders put on these figures.

Miss Sheepshanks, my chaperon, of course didn’t want me to stop to look at them. She was telling about the pictures waiting for us at the gallery, and reminding me of the closing hour, et cetera, et cetera, but for once I was determined to have my way. So I pleaded with her until she allowed me to go in. There was a white-headed old man in charge, whose face simply shone when I told him I would like to walk around and look at his figureheads. So we went side by side, Miss Sheepshanks following, looking as grieved as she could, and that darling old man told me stories about the ships these figures had come from.

I swear to you they literally smelled of the seven seas! Ah, such strange, weird creatures as some of them were, and their battered forms told their own story of the storms they had weathered and the sights they had seen.