III
A PILGRIMAGE TO CANTERBURY
No place within equal distance of London is of greater interest than Canterbury, and, indeed, there are very few cities in the entire Kingdom that can vie with the ancient cathedral town in historical importance and antiquity. It lies only sixty-five miles southeast of London, but allowing for the late start that one always makes from an English hotel, and the points that will engage attention between the two cities, the day will be occupied by the trip. Especially will this be true if, as in our case, fully two hours be spent in getting out of the city and reaching the highway south of the Thames, which follows the river to Canterbury.
Leaving Russell Square about ten o'clock, I followed the jam down Holborn past the Bank and across London Bridge, crawling along at a snail's pace until we were well beyond the river. A worse route and a more trying one it would have been hard to select. With more experience, I should have run down the broad and little-congested Kingsway to Waterloo Bridge and directly on to Old Kent road in at least one-fourth the time which I consumed in my ignorance. Nevertheless, if a novice drives a car in London, he can hardly avoid such experiences. Detailed directions given in advance cannot be remembered and there is little opportunity to consult street signs and maps or even to question the policeman in the never-ending crush of the streets. However, one gradually gains familiarity with the streets and landmarks, and by the time I was ready to leave London for America, I had just learned to get about the city with comparative ease.
Old Kent road, which leads out of London towards Canterbury, is an ancient highway, and follows nearly, if not quite, the route pursued by the Canterbury pilgrims of the poet Chaucer. In the main it is unusually broad and well kept, but progress will be slow at first, as the suburbs extend a long way in this direction, and for the first twenty-five miles one can hardly be said to be out of the city at any time. Ten miles out the road passes Greenwich, where the British observatory is located, and Woolwich, the seat of the great government arsenals and gun works, is also near this point, lying directly by the river.
Nearly midway between London and Rochester is the old town of Dartford, where we enjoyed the hospitality of the Bull Hotel for luncheon. A dingy, time-worn, rambling old hostelry it is, every odd corner filled with stuffed birds and beasts to an extent that suggested a museum, and as if to still further carry out the museum feature, mine host had built in a small court near the entrance a large cage or bird-house which was literally alive with specimens of feathered songsters of all degrees. The space on the first floor not occupied by these curios was largely devoted to liquor selling, for there appeared to be at least three bars in the most accessible parts of the hotel. However, somewhat to the rear there was a comfortable coffee room, where our luncheon was neatly served. We had learned by this time that all well regulated hotels in the medium sized towns, and even in some of the larger cities—as large as Bristol, for instance—have two dining rooms, one, generally for tourists, called the "coffee room," with separate small tables, and a much larger room for "commercials," or traveling salesmen, where all are seated together at a single table. The service is practically the same, but the ratio of charges is from two to three times higher in the coffee room. We found many old hotels in retired places where a coffee room had been hastily improvised, an innovation no doubt brought about largely by the motor car trade and the desire to give the motorist more aristocratic rates than those charged the well-posted commercials. Though we stopped in Dartford no longer than necessary for lunch and a slight repair to the car, it is a place of considerable interest. Its chief industry is a large paper-mill, a direct successor to the first one established in England near the end of the Sixteenth Century, and Foolscap paper, standard throughout the English-speaking world, takes its name from the crest (a fool's cap) of the founder of the industry, whose tomb may still be seen in Dartford Church.
A short run over a broad road bordered with beautiful rural scenery brought us into Rochester, whose cathedral spire and castle with its huge Norman tower loomed into view long before we came into the town itself. A few miles out of the town our attention had been attracted by a place of unusual beauty, a fine old house almost hidden by high hedges and trees on one side of the road and just opposite a tangled bit of wood and shrubbery, with several of the largest cedars we saw in England. So picturesque was the spot that we stopped for a photograph of the car and party, with the splendid trees for a background, but, as often happens in critical cases, the kodak film only yielded a "fog" when finally developed.
When we reached Rochester, a glance at the map showed us that we had unwittingly passed Gad's Hill, the home where Charles Dickens spent the last fifteen years of his life and where he died thirty-six years ago. We speedily retraced the last four or five miles of our journey and found ourselves again at the fine old place with the cedar trees where we had been but a short time before. We stopped to inquire at a roadside inn which, among the multitude of such places, we had hardly noticed before, and which bore the legend, "The Sir John Falstaff," a distinction earned by being the identical place where Shakespeare located some of the pranks of his ridiculous hero. The inn-keeper was well posted on the literary traditions of the locality. "Yes," said he, "this is Gad's Hill Place, where Dickens lived and where he died just thirty-six years ago today, on June 9th, 1870; but the house is shown only on Wednesdays of each week and the proprietor doesn't fancy being troubled on other days. But perhaps, since you are Americans and have come a long way, he may admit you on this special anniversary. Anyway, it will do no harm for you to try."
Personally, I could not blame the proprietor for his disinclination to admit visitors on other than the regular days, and it was impressed on me more than once during our trip that living in the home of some famous man carries quite a penalty, especially if the present owner happens to be a considerate gentleman who dislikes to deprive visitors of a glimpse of the place. Such owners are often wealthy and the small fees which they fix for admittance are only required as evidence of good faith and usually devoted to charity. With a full appreciation of the situation, it was not always easy to ask for the suspension of a plainly stated rule, yet we did this in many instances before our tour was over and almost invariably with success. In the present case we were fortunate, for the gentleman who owned Gad's Hill was away and the neat maid who responded to the bell at the gateway seemed glad to show us the place, regardless of rules. It is a comfortable, old-fashioned house, built about 1775, and was much admired by Dickens as a boy when he lived with his parents in Rochester. His father used to bring him to look at the house and told him that if he grew up a clever man, he might possibly own it some time.