Let me close this chapter by assuring secretaries, one and all, that I carry into my retirement none but the pleasantest recollections of their uniform courtesy and kindness to me, often manifested under most trying circumstances. I would also like to add my whole-hearted admiration of the way in which these gentlemen (and ladies) perform their, for the most part gratuitous, and certainly onerous, duties.
CHAPTER XVII
DISCURSIONS
Speaking generally, I have no doubt that it is true that an experienced traveller is far less liable to get into trouble on his journeys than a novice. But that any experience, no matter how great and varied, can render a traveller immune from the troubles of travel is a fond and vain superstition, only believed in by those who have had no experience. Take a recent experience of my own, for instance, and with it comfort, ye who have hitherto blamed your own inexperience for trouble into which you have fallen on some journeys. I am a Londoner, and I lived in London at the time of which I speak. I may say that although my experience of travelling in London and elsewhere was extensive and peculiar, I was handicapped by a great difficulty in breathing which made it hard for me to get about in this rapid age.
It chanced that I was due to lecture at Charterhouse one Saturday evening, and had, as usual, planned to return home after the lecture. It had been foggy the previous day, and the South-Western system, according to its wont in fog, had gone all to pieces, but twelve hours of perfectly clear weather had been experienced since, and I trusted therefore that my late afternoon train would be running as usual. But when I arrived at Waterloo I was met by the all too frequent experience of travellers whom a cruel fate condemns to use that most labyrinthine of stations, viz. an utter ignorance on the part of the officials as to when my train would start or which platform it would start from. Crowds of bewildered passengers hurried from one gate to another, badgering and exasperating the helpless officials with utterly futile questions, until, I suppose in desperation, a whole lot of them were embarked upon a train bound somewhere. How gladly they passed in through the barriers, had their tickets clipped and took their seats. And how wretched was their condition when, the train being full, an official arrived from somewhere, took down the direction board, and replaced it with a totally different one, resulting in the whole of them being turned out and cast adrift again.
But that such things happen continually at Waterloo I might endeavour to emphasise them, in order to be believed, but we all accept the South-Western as we do any other affliction which we are powerless to avoid, cease to wonder at its vagaries, and resign ourselves to them with what philosophy we may. I shall only, therefore, add that I did get a train to Godalming, starting only an hour late, but I learned that it was a train which should have started an hour earlier than the one I had intended to go by. However, I arrived at Charterhouse in time for a little dinner and my lecture, and was hospitably offered a bed by Mrs. Fletcher, as the running of the trains was so capricious. But I had said that I would return that night, and there was, very wisely, no ’phone at the school. However, it was arranged that the motor should run me down to the station, where, if I found the time-table to be still out of action, I was to ’phone home and return.
But when I arrived there I found the night beautifully clear, and an official emphatically assured me that the 9.33 to Waterloo would run on time, so I dismissed the car, and in due time, punctual to the minute, caught my train. In hallowed phrase all went well until we reached Woking, where a large number of passengers joined the train for Waterloo. But it did not leave, and to all questions the officials replied that they knew no more than their questioners the reason for the delay. Suddenly the fatal cry resounded from end to end of the train, “All change.” That packed train-load of people crowded the platform again, and the train we had left was shunted into the middle line of rails, where it remained to tantalise us by its ineptitude.
In cold and misery and apprehension we all waited on that platform until at last a train came in which landed us at Waterloo at 11.45. The tube served me well, but I was nearly exhausted after changing at Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, and there I found the Highgate Tube in an awful muddle. Platform and trains were alike jammed with people, and the train men could not work. We were pulled out of the trouble by the energy of the driver, who came to the rescue of the guards, until at Mornington Crescent our load lightened a bit. Eventually I arrived at Highgate at 12.25, in one of the densest fogs of my recollection. All traffic was stopped, I was two miles from home, all uphill, and hardly able to stand from pain and racking cough. And it was bitterly cold. I battered at the door and rang the bell of the Archway Tavern, but it had only recently closed, and my summons was reasonably treated as that of some drunken wanderer.
I was very near collapse, and began to think of the immediate possibility of this being my end, for every breath I painfully drew was laden with death. Then a policeman hove in sight, to whom I addressed an appeal to get me in somewhere, weighted with half a crown. But he said there was nothing nearer than Finsbury Park, well over a mile away, except a doss-house, to which he dared not send me. And then he suddenly remembered having seen not far away a hansom cab with a poor old driver who had made practically nothing all the week. So he left me, and went in search of the cab, and in a very few minutes I had offered that poor old cabman half a sovereign to get me home. To say that we were both overjoyed is to put it very mildly. After seeing me safe inside, and the front let down, he started his old horse on a walk through the dense hedge of fog, but there was nothing in the way, and between us we found my home in half an hour. And when I sank upon a chair exhausted in my own room it was 2.20 a.m. But I was saved. I am thus prolix only to show how all my experience and local knowledge could not help me in these circumstances from having one of the very worst times of my life, and it was a wonder that I was not found dead upon the Highgate pavement.
A delightful recollection of mine is of an experience at the faithful city of Londonderry, an experience which I can afford to laugh at and enjoy now, but which at one time certainly began to look sinister. I arrived at the Great Northern Hotel in excellent time, for my lecture was not until eight, as usual, and my train was in about six. The secretary being very hard driven did not meet me, there was no need, for all was plain and straightforward. I had a chop, and while consuming it enquired of the waiter the way to the Y.M.C.A. Hall, where the lecture was given on my previous visit, but the way to which I did not remember because I had been taken there by the secretary. The waiter pointed to the old wall opposite to the hotel, showed me how to get to the top of it, and assured me that if I followed it round for about ten minutes I should arrive at my destination, for it was on the wall.
So I set out, not without some misgivings, for the night was very dark, and there was a high wind with driving rain. My breathing made the going in that exposed position very difficult, and I did not meet a single person of whom I could enquire, though I was certainly following my instructions. At last, after I had walked for twenty minutes, I felt sure I must be wrong, and looking over the wall into the street below, I spied a man, of whom I enquired if I was going right for the Y.M.C.A. Hall. He looked round him with that vacant air that in a citizen so annoys the strange enquirer of his way, and was about to direct me downhill or back again whence I had come. So I hastily said: