CHAPTER II.—LEAVES FROM A YOUNG GENTLEMAN’S JOURNAL.
Before setting forth on this memorable pilgrimage to nowhere, I promised a certain friend of mine, in literary Bohemia, to keep notes of my adventures, with a view to future publication, illustrated by my own brilliant sketches. I fear the promise was a rash one, firstly, because I am constitutionally lazy and averse to literary exertion; and secondly, because I have, as yet, met with no adventures worth writing about. Not that I have altogether lost my first enthusiasm for the idea. There would be novelty in the title, at any rate: ‘Cruises in a Caravan, by Charles Brinkley, with illustrations by the author; photographic frontispiece, the caravan, with Tim as large as life, smirking self-consciously in delight at having his ‘pictur’ taken. My friend B——— has promised to find me a publisher, if I will only persevere. Well, we shall see. If the book does not progress, it will be entirely my own fault; for I have any amount of time on my hands. Paint as hard as I may all day, I have always the long evenings, when I must either write, read, or do nothing.
“So I am beginning this evening, exactly a fortnight after my first start from Chester. I purchased the caravan there from a morose individual with one eye, who had had it built with a view to the exhibition of a Wild Man of Patagonia, but said Wild Man having taken it into his head to return to County Cork, where he was born, and the morose individual having no definite idea of a novelty to take his place, the caravan came into the market. Having secured this travelling palace, duly furnished with window-blinds, a piece of carpet, a chair bedstead, a table, a stove, cooking utensils, not to speak of my own artistic paraphernalia, I sent over to Mulrany, Co. Mayo, for my old servant, Tim-na-Chaling, or Tim o’ the Ferry—otherwise Tim Lenney; and with his assistance, when he arrived, I purchased a strong mare at Chester Fair. All these preliminaries being settled, we started one fine morning soon after daybreak, duly bound for explorations along the macadamized highways and byways of North Wales.
“I am pleased to say that Tim, after he had recovered the first shock of seeing a peripatetic dwelling-house, took to the idea wonderfully. ‘Sure, it’s just like the ould cabin at home,’ he averred, ‘barrin’ the wheels, and the windies, and the chimley, and the baste to pull it along;’ and I think the resemblance would have been complete in his eyes, if there had only been two or three pigs to trot merrily behind the back door. As for myself, I took to the nomad life as naturally as if I had never in my life been in a civilized habitation. To be able to go where one pleased, to dawdle as one pleased, to stop and sleep where one pleased, was certainly a new sensation. My friends, observing my sluggish ways, had often compared me to that interesting creature, the snail; now the resemblance was complete, for I was a snail indeed, with my house comfortably fixed upon my shoulders, crawling tranquilly along.
“Of course the caravan has its inconveniences. Inside, to quote the elegant simile of our progenitors, there is scarcely room enough to swing a cat in; and when my bed is made, and Tim’s hammock is swung just inside the door, the place forms the tiniest of sleeping-chambers. Then our cooking arrangements are primitive, and as Tim has no idea whatever of the culinary art, beyond being able to boil potatoes in their skins, and make very doubtful ‘stirabout,’ there is a certain want of variety in our repasts. To break the monotony of this living I endeavour, whenever we come to a town with a decent hotel in it, to take a square meal away from home.
“Besides the inconveniences which I have mentioned, but which were, perhaps, hardly worth chronicling, the caravan has social drawbacks, more particularly embarrassing to a modest man like myself. It is confusing, for example, on entering a town, or good-sized village, to be surrounded by the entire juvenile population, who cheer us vociferously, under the impression that we constitute a ‘show,’ and afterwards, on ascertaining their mistake, pursue us with opprobious jeers; and it is distressing to remark that our mode of life, instead of inviting confidence, causes us to be regarded with suspicion by the vicar of the parish and the local policemen. We are exposed, moreover, to ebullitions of bucolic humour, which have taken the form of horse-play on more than one occasion. Tim has had several fights with the Welsh peasantry, and has generally come off victorious; though on one occasion he would have been overpowered by numbers if I had not gone to his assistance. Generally speaking, nothing will remove from the rural population an idea that the caravan forms an exhibition of some sort. When I airily alight and stroll through a village, sketch-book in hand, I have invariably at my heels a long attendant train of all ages, obviously under the impression that I am looking for a suitable ‘pitch,’ and am going to ‘perform.’
“To avoid these and similar inconveniences we generally halt for the night in some secluded spot—some roadside nook, or outlying common. But there is a fatal attraction in the caravan: it seems to draw spectators, as it were, out of the very bowels of the earth. No matter how desolate the place we have chosen, we have scarcely made ourselves comfortable when an audience gathers, and stragglers drop in, amazed and open-mouthed. I found it irksome at first to paint in the open air, with a gazing crowd at my back making audible comments on my work as it progressed; but I soon got used to it, and having discovered certain good ‘subjects’ here and there among my visitors, I take the publicity now as a matter of course. Even when busy inside, I am never astonished to see strange noses flattened against the windows—strange faces peeping in at the door. The human temperament accustoms itself to anything. When all is said and done, it is flattering to be an object of such public interest; and I do believe that when I return to civilization, and find no one caring in the least what I do, I shall miss the worldly tribute which is now my daily due.
“I begin this record in the Island of Anglesea, where we have arrived after our fortnight’s wanderings in the more mountainous districts of the mainland. Anglesea, I am informed, is chiefly famous for its pigs and its wild ducks. So far as I have yet explored it, I find it flat and desolate enough; but I have been educated in Irish landscapes, and don’t object to flatness when combined with desolation. I like these dreary meadows, these black stretches of melancholy moorland, these wild lakes and lagoons.
“At the present moment I am encamped in a spot where, in all probability, I shall remain for days. I came upon it quite by accident, about midday yesterday, when on my way to the market town of Pencroes; or rather, when I imagined that I was going thither, while I had in reality, after hesitating at three cross roads, taken the road which led in exactly the opposite direction. The way was desolate and dreary beyond measure—stretches of morass and moorland on every side, occasionally rising into heathery knolls or hillocks, or strewn with huge pieces of stone like the moors in Cornwall Presently the open moorland ended, and we entered a region of sandy hillocks, sparsely ornamented here and there with long harsh grass. If one could imagine the waves of the ocean, at some moment of wild agitation, suddenly frozen to stillness, and retaining intact their tempestuous forms, it would give some idea of the hillocks I am describing. They rose on every side of the road, completely shutting out the view, and their pale livid yellowness, scarcely relieved with a glimpse of greenness, was wearisome and lonely in the extreme. As we advanced among them, the road we were pursuing grew worse and worse, till it became so choked and covered with drifted sand as to be hardly recognizable, and I need hardly say that it was hard work for one horse to pull the caravan along; more than once, indeed, the wheels fairly stuck, and Tim and I had to pull with might and main to get them free.