CHAPTER VII
JOURNEYS
There is one thing about a lecturer’s experiences which has always been a mystery to me, though it has not been so much so since the advent of the picture palace. It is that one continually finds oneself going to places whose very names have hitherto been hidden from a fairly intelligent, well-travelled man, while great towns with many thousands of inhabitants seem to pass you by in silent disdain. I will not quote the names of those big towns lest I should find that there is a reason uncomplimentary to myself in their neglect of my services, but the fact is as I have stated and is in no wise peculiar to my own experience.
But some of those out-of-the-way places; what a wealth of memories they do recall; nearly all, I am happy to say, of a genial pleasant character, albeit the journey to some of them was a pilgrimage of pain. Indeed I have often wondered how it was that I, one of the frailest of men, with especially weak bronchial apparatus, have never “cracked up” on those wretched journeys. Recollections of them come crowding thick and fast, but I think I must award the palm of discomfort to one that was only difficult to reach by reason of a mistake, not on my part. I was due to lecture at Masham in Yorkshire on a certain evening on the morning of which I was at Huddersfield.
Trusting to information given me by a railway official at Huddersfield instead of to the local time-table (a mistake of mine), I arrived at Leeds to find that I could not make my connection through Ripon to Masham in time. So I wired to the stationmaster at Ripon asking him if he would kindly secure me a conveyance to Masham, distant ten miles. I duly arrived at Ripon to find awaiting me a dog-cart with a huge Yorkshire horse between the shafts and a typical Tyke holding the reins. There was also, the time being December, a bitter blasting north-east gale blowing over the moors, and of course I had left my heavy fur-lined overcoat at Huddersfield. I may say in passing that I dreaded to wear it for many reasons, but chiefly because of the chivying of the small boy.
We started, and before we had gone a mile I was congealed. Cold! Well, I don’t know exactly, but I was past feeling and only conscious of a dull desire that the truly infernal wind would cease blowing for just five minutes. But it never did, and at the end of one of the longest hours I have ever known, much longer than a trick at the wheel off the Horn, and God knows they were long enough (but I was young then), we surged into Masham, arriving at the hall an hour before the lecture was due. I was directed to the most hospitable abode of the local bank manager, who had invited me to stay with him (only I had never received the letter), and given such restoratives as kindness dictated.
He pressed me to stay the night, but I had booked my room at the hotel in Ripon and the trap had to go back, so I, newly warmed and fed, refused. The lecture went off with a bang as usual, and amid a chorus of congratulations and commiseration I mounted the trap again—and so home to the hotel, through a stronger wind and a light snowfall. Arriving at the hotel I had to be lifted out of the trap and carried into the bar parlour, where I was thawed out, while my driver, the burly taciturn giant, drank cold ale and looked pityingly, albeit with wonder, upon the weakling he had brought back.
A bonny fire was kindled in my room and boots and ostler carried me upstairs. Native delicacy, I suppose, prevented them valeting me, so it was with many a groan and much effort I got out of my clothes and between the blankets. And my last thought was that I was booked for a long stay—as to going to Sedbergh on the following day the idea was too ridiculous to entertain. Yet on awaking in the morning I was up and partly dressed before I remembered my parlous condition of the previous night, and it is not one of the least strange things in my strange life that this has ever been the case. Going to bed utterly beaten and apparently in for a long illness and rising next morning able to resume the war-path. I suppose it must be a remanet from the days when I couldn’t give in, like so many men and women in the same toilful walk of life.
Another journey of horror which comes into my mind at this time was one I made to the favourite watering-place of Lytham, but owing to the fact that I was also to speak on Sunday as well as lecture on Monday it was necessary that I should leave London on Saturday. Not being able to ascertain from the intricacies of Bradshaw anything definite as to the time of my arrival, I enquired at Euston and was informed that I could get a train at Preston for Lytham at about 4.30 a.m. (I speak loosely as to time, it being so long ago), arriving at Lytham somewhere about three hours later. Whereupon I booked and left Euston about ten o’clock, arriving at Preston somewhere about 2 a.m. I sought a first-class waiting-room, for in those palmy days I always travelled first class, but I found it full of a foul crowd of men, smoking, swearing, and spitting, and entirely resentful of my intrusion, especially so of my fur coat.
I quietly retired to the farthest corner of the room, wondering much but far too wise to say anything, and with my rug for a covering and my bag for a pillow laid me down upon one side of a big table that stood there. In spite of the devilish uproar I was soon asleep, but I was rudely awakened by being jerked off the table on to the befouled floor, amid a perfect tempest of delight. I picked myself up and silently collected my belongings amid the hoots and jeers of the crowd. And out upon that wind-swept platform I sought a resting-place on a bench (shelter from the wind there was none) and lay there wide awake until 4.30 a.m. I may here interpolate that letters addressed to Euston on the subject of this curious use of first-class waiting-rooms at Preston and Chester never even met with the courtesy of a reply.
Somewhere about 4.30 a train came in, and I, feeling a spasm of hope, made for it, finding a good fellow-porter who told me that it was going to Manchester and furthermore volunteered his opinion that no train for Lytham would go before ten o’clock.