He replied instantly: “Go ahead, for this train isn’t due in until 7.55. Don’t mind me.”
I thanked him and began, but oh, just then the train began to cut capers and my corresponding movements about that compartment must have been amazing. My fellow-passenger laughed himself ill, especially when, struggling into a “biled” shirt I was hurled, with both my arms prisoned, from one side of the compartment to the other. Indeed his merriment had little cessation, for similar evolutions took place as I got into my trousers, fastened my collar, and made my white bow. When at last I had finished and he lay utterly exhausted on the cushions, he gasped out:
“Well, sir, I’ve never laughed so much in all my life and I’ll come to hear you lecture, for I feel anxious to know how such a preparation will affect you. Besides, I need a sedative and I guess a lecture is the sort of thing to quiet the most edgy nerves.”
I nodded, smiling grimly at his awkward compliment, so typical of the north, and just then the train rolled into the station on time. Giving my bag to a porter and telling him to get me a cab, I bolted to the refreshment room where I got a glass of port and snatched a couple of hard-boiled eggs. The hall couldn’t have been many yards from the station for half the second egg was in my fingers and the other half in my mouth when we arrived there. And I am afraid I was still swallowing when I stood up and faced the audience.
Of course the lecture went off all right, they always did somehow, but my greatest triumph that night was being met by my railway acquaintance, who lugged me off to his favourite hotel and insisted upon footing my bill, because, he said, I’d given him the jolliest half-day’s entertainment he’d ever had in his days, and one that would serve him with experiences to tell at his club, etc., for the rest of his life.
Another experience of a similar kind occurs to me, but the preliminaries were even more painful or wearing than this last. I was booked to lecture at Willenhall, a suburb of Wolverhampton, and came from London to keep my appointment. But my train broke down at Roade and by the time we got to New Street the connection for Willenhall had vanished, of course. However, the courteous stationmaster arranged for the train to be stopped at Willenhall to allow me to alight. So it was, but a howling mob of colliers filled the platform and though my bag got out I couldn’t. Vainly did the guard shout “keep back,” the crowd pressed in and the train moved off. I sprang out at the first opportunity, alighting on my back and rolling over several times, feeling very foolish when at last I remembered where I was, without the remarks of the stationmaster and porters, which tended to rub that fact in.
When I was able to move off I did so without comment, for I felt that any attempt of mine to reply would be entirely unworthy of the occasion. Outside the station I was assailed by a mob of ragged urchins competing for the job of carrying my bag, and selecting one, who was escorted by the rest, I arrived at the hall in about five minutes. I was met by the tired-looking secretary, to whom I commenced to apologise for its being ten minutes past eight, but he cut me short by saying:
“Don’t worry, the lanternist isn’t here yet!” Whereupon I suggested that I would change into platform rig if a corner could be found for me, and I was duly shown by the caretaker into his kitchen-living-room. Whew! I then realised that I was in the land of cheap coal, for I should think there must have been a couple of hundredweights on the fire. The room was so hot that by the time I had finished dressing the beautiful front of my dress shirt was limp as a piece of blotting-paper and I was nearly suffocated.
And still poor Perry hadn’t turned up. If ever he sees these words he’ll remember that awful night. I don’t know what the time was when he arrived, but I know that when at last he was ready for me it was past nine and the audience had been sitting patiently waiting—most of them—since 7.30. I went on and apologised for Perry and myself, putting all the blame where it belonged, on the railway company, for Perry’s failure was due to his lantern and cylinders of gas having been put off at some junction, Handsworth, I think, while he went on sublimely unconscious to Willenhall. And it was all the more reprehensible because, as he said, he was as well known on the lines all around Brum as one of the railway officials themselves. I didn’t suffer much, but it was a terrible experience for him, he being a man of considerable weight and the night stuffy.
A curious reminiscence of mine is concerning a lecture I gave at Hebden Bridge, one of those quaint, most picturesque manufacturing villages in the northern part of the West Riding of Yorkshire. I was not offered hospitality nor had I any previous correspondence with the secretary of the society engaging me, but that was nothing out of the common and after enquiry I made for the only hotel in the place (as far as I know). I was feeling very fit and comfortable after dinner as I sat smoking and awaiting eight o’clock, the hall being just across the road.