The Retrospect

All the places in Scott's novels – my first romances, read aloud to us little girls by our mother as we sat at our sewing tasks about her knee; all the castles in the English histories; the lakes and fells of the north, the soft hills and dales of Derbyshire, the moorlands of Jane Eyre and Katherine Earnshaw, the Devon of Lorna Doone and Amyas Leigh…

I cannot count them. But, of them all, Devonshire was my dream of dreams.

My grandmother lived her last years there, and there she died. From her and the aunts we had descriptions of the county and its manifold charms; they only ratified what I had already learned. I think this must have been before the youngest aunt became a royal governess, or it may have been there was an interregnum in her career as such; anyway, she had her home in Devonshire at this time, which may have been a reason why I did not go there. However much I might long to see a place of dreams, I could not have wanted to see it in her company. Besides which, to go to Devonshire from Norfolk, in those days and to untravelled persons of our means, loomed as huge an undertaking as it would now be (not to me, but to rural stay-at-homes) to go to Egypt or Madeira from the same place.

At any rate, I did not go. I communed with my favourite Blackmore (as I now commune with his successor in my regard, delightful Eden Phillpotts), and dreamed of going some day. And when the some day came, it was my last in England for eight and thirty years. For the first time I crossed the land from east to west, on my journey to the ship in Plymouth Sound. Leaving Paddington at night, darkness (not sleep) hid the most of the way, but the light of the May morning came early enough to show me the part I had most longed to see. Pale dawn it was, and the train rushing along, but in all my years of exile I treasured the impressions of the little that I saw; they but fixed the old dream and made it permanent. I still had scarcely begun to realise it, but I seemed to know better what it would be to realise it. "We are to return in five years," I remarked to my drowsy partner, for so we had promised to do, in the innocence of our hearts. "Then we must see Devonshire."

We did not return in seven times five years, and when we did I might never have seen Devonshire, as I have never seen the lakes and fells, or Kenilworth, or hosts of things, but for one of those little happenings which come without warning us of the great ones in their train.

Some few summers ago I went to a new place to spend the Long Vacation with a son whom I was accustomed to companion at such times. Alone of our family, we chose, when choice was ours, the wilds of nature for our holiday resorts; and he sent for me to join him on an island that he had discovered, in a cottage that stood on its own lone beach, where we could live the simple life like Robinson Crusoes, plus the advantages of a general store (only one) and a daily steamer to and from the mainland, within the distance of a healthy walk from our abode. I went, and we had a great time – then and on several subsequent occasions in the same locality. No maids, no dressing; no constraint imposed and no effort required in the heat of the year (the Long Vacation of Australian universities begins in December and ends in March); absolute repose, combined with delightful occupation. We walked out of our beds into our morning bath in the sea, and returned for a plunge or an idle wallow at any time of day that the whim took us. We never failed to bathe (in this only bathroom at our disposal) before sitting down to our evening meal, and more than once I have risen in a hot night to soothe restless nerves in moonlit water. The sea was almost at our threshold, gently lapping a beach as smooth to naked feet as a ballroom floor. On the other side of the island, where it faces the south, the Pacific hurls its weight upon rocky headlands and thunders in rocky caverns as stern and wild as Caledonia's coasts can show. It was there we went for picnics.

Of course, we were not quite alone. The island had been discovered by others and had boasted a tiny watering-place for years. Two hotels and several boarding houses clustered about the single store (there are two now) and the little pier where the little steamer called twice daily, going to and returning from the source of fresh meat and newspapers; and these houses were filled in the summer season, and we numbered friends amongst their guests.

But the point to be mentioned is that our delightfully remote cottage belonged to a gentleman through whom – although we never met or knew each other – I came to realise my dream of some day seeing Devonshire. I often wish I had known him; for by all accounts he was a rare and original person.

In the oldest of our old times, the pre-gold times, when these lands were being "taken up" by a gallant set of young men, cadets of what we call "good" British families, he had been a pioneer squatter. But then, while the days of our history were still the "early days" – before or soon after my own arrival – he went back, married, settled and lived the bulk of his life like any other English gentleman of wealth and social standing, in accordance with the habits and customs of his family. I do not know for how many years he had inhabited his fine house in Devonshire, at which I was a happy guest so recently, but I know they were a great many. Then, a widower, approaching a late old age, he divided his large fortune amongst his nine daughters (reserving what he deemed to be sufficient for his remaining needs), settled the family house upon them for their joint use, and came back to Australia – to the little island on the Victorian coast where by such a small chance we found him.

Still farther along the lonely beach from our little cottage he had built his last home, much of it with his own hands. A four-roomed weather-board house, bare-floored, unceiled – sufficient, and no more. Here he had been living for some time, with one man for his whole establishment – the uncrowned king of the island, who could not meet a child without giving it a coin, or hear of a necessity that he did not exercise all his gentlemanly ingenuity to relieve, as when he sent a sack of sugar to a struggling mother "to make lollies for the little girl" – when two of his eight daughters in England (one was married in New South Wales) came out to see how he was getting on. I think it was not until they arrived that he built new rooms for their accommodation, and it is significant that at the same time he built himself another room quite detached from the house, which he left to their more civilised control, and the maid who was now added to the establishment; but, whether he invited them or not, he had reason to bless their coming. Unless he was the sort of man who would just as soon die alone and untended as not, which he very likely was.

I joined my son on the island the day after the old man met with the accident which caused his death. One of the many children who put themselves in his way at every possible opportunity had been to see him, to announce a birthday and receive the inevitable half-crown, and in the course of the proceedings had spied a small rifle leaning against the wall. It had just been used, or was going to be used, on minahs that were eating the orchard fruit. Unseen by his host, the boy picked up the weapon, and, "fooling" with it, shot his benefactor in the leg. I heard of the mishap, and of the periodical inquiries from our cottage as to the patient's state. No alarm was manifested, and his daughters came to see me. Later, as the wound seemed obstinate, it was thought wise to take it to Melbourne for treatment; and one morning they carried the unwilling invalid along the beach before our cottage to the steamer that was to take him thither. He raised himself from his stretcher, and waved his hand to us, and that was all I ever saw of him. He died in Melbourne some weeks later. But the island, all aweep and heart-broken, got his body back; and his grave on the sandy hill, in the midst of sea waters, seems an appropriate resting-place for such a man – more so than the monumental vaults and tombs that hold the dust of his kin of England.

To his one Australian daughter he left his Australian home. I rented it from her for a year or two. The daughters who had come out to see him returned to their sisters in Devonshire. I stayed with them for some time before they left, and we parted as friends, and with the mutual hope that we might meet again. There was small prospect of a reunion in England then.

But the time came. To my unutterable surprise I found myself there, engaged to pay them a visit. One of them, that is the elder, with her father's nomadic blood in her veins, voyaged back again after a couple of years and set up her tent on the island much as he did, only rather more luxuriously. Her return coincided with my departure, and for the moment I missed her at both ends of the world. But M. was at home, and to her I set forth joyfully on a morning of September, about a year ago from this date of writing.

I took that once formidable journey alone, my husband being absorbed in the pursuit of partridges, which was happiness enough for him. He had been marking them down all the summer and had brought his favourite gun across the world for their sakes; by the same token I had to pack it amongst my clothes because he had not room for it in his own baggage, stuffed with the rest of his sporting paraphernalia. And at first it looked as if the Fates were still inclined to head me off from Devonshire. I was all ready to start a week before I did when I slipped on the stairs and sprained my foot. I signified the necessary postponement by telegram with a foreboding heart, and as soon as I could hobble, in a slipper, flung all regard for appearance to the winds and got ready again, before more accidents could happen. And then I had, so to speak, to fight my way.

I had never travelled any distance alone, having no vocation for independence, but I assured my caretakers that any fool or baby could get about on English railways without risk or trouble. It was otherwise at home, where porters regard themselves, and with reason regard themselves, as your gracious patrons, who do not seek you, but have to be sought.

"All I shall have to do," said I, remembering my drive from Liverpool Street to Eaton Place for half-a-crown, "is to take a hansom to Paddington Station. The porters will do all the rest for me."

"Oh, nonsense," said they, "to waste time and money on cabs, when there is an Underground that will take you straight across the city from one point to the other." They would not hear of it.

By the Underground I was to go, and so carefully was I provided for that an important official of Liverpool Street Station was engaged in a friendly way to meet me there and personally conduct me from train to train. The salient points in my appearance were described to him and his to me, and when he readily undertook the job assigned to him it was reasonably assumed that I was safeguarded as far as human means could do it. That I went wrong after all was not their fault nor mine. It was in the first place the fault of one who told my friend who was the friend of the Liverpool Street official – to whom he immediately forwarded the false information – that I was going by another train. In the second place it was the fault of a porter. Poor, dear porter! In whatever form he waited upon me he was an ideal servant to my Australian notions, although I was sufficiently altruistic to wish him for his own sake the standing of his antipodean brother who is not a servant but a potentate, self-respecting to hauteur in his conscious command of the situation. In the present instance he was but human and over-zealous, and I would not blame him for the world.

When my train from Cambridgeshire drew up at its London platform he was ready for me at the carriage door, as usual. And when I looked beyond him for his superior who was to take charge of me, and saw no one resembling our mutual friend's description of him, I was relieved and pleased. For I had rebelled against the waste of his precious time and the obligation I should be under to him, although overruled by assurances that the favour would be on my side. I had protested that the English porter was all-sufficient for every possible need that could arise.

So now I put myself into his hands with as complete a trust as the highest official or a whole Board of Directors could have inspired; and I told him I wanted to go to Praed Street by the Underground, and asked him to see to everything and put me on the right train. And I gave him sixpence.

Perhaps that was a mistake. I was always being told that I had no business to give a porter more than twopence (the Australian porter will condescend to pocket sixpence, but I never dared insult him with less), and I used to make it threepence when no one was looking, without feeling that I had been too generous, in deference to the customs of the country. It is certainly an odd thing that the only two little railway accidents that befell me in England were due to the only porters I gave sixpences to. It would almost seem as if so much prosperity turned their heads.

On this occasion it was to make assurance of the right train on the Underground doubly sure that I tipped my man the first sixpence; and he laid himself out to earn it in such a way that I was ashamed not to have made it a shilling. He bought me my ticket for Praed Street – that was all right; he put my luggage on the train and myself into the special care of the conductor. He did all that man could do. But it was the wrong train.

I discovered presently that I had been along that same Underground before, on one of my visits to the Franco-British Exhibition. I had not taken much notice of the names of passing stations then, having the usual escort; but now I did. And Praed Street seemed an immense time coming along, whereas Paddington was left farther and farther behind us, and signs of our approach to Shepherd's Bush accumulated. So I spoke to the conductor. Imagine the feelings of an innocent abroad! "There's no Praed Street on this line," said he. "You are in the wrong train."

I kept my head fairly in an experience unprecedented in my career. I confided in the conductor – because I had found that in England you can go to any official in a difficulty, with the certainty of getting good advice and every possible assistance, and he told me what to do. I did it (with my luggage and my lame foot) in the sweat of my brow, somehow. I got out at the next station. For once, no porter, until a passing civilian, appealed to, sought one out for me, who, when he appeared, acted as the dear man invariably did. I returned to the station the conductor had told me to return to; exactly the same thing happened. The civilian in this case connected me with an elderly, slow porter, who seemed to have all the business of the train and platform to himself. I knew what the time was. I thought of where I was in London and of my friends in Devonshire, driving three miles to meet me; and I cried to that poor, doddering old man that I would give half-a-crown to anybody who would help me to catch the Exeter express. He stared at me as if he wanted time to get such a stupendous proposition into his brain; then he sadly realised that he could not do it. But from somewhere out of the ground sprang a vigorous young porter who without loss of time took the matter in hand.

"You run along as hard as you can run," said he, "and I'll meet you under the big clock."

I did run, although in other circumstances I should have believed it almost impossible to put my left foot to the ground. And I ran the right way too, although I did not know it, and although I have a natural genius for taking wrong ones; up and down stairs and along devious passages, sped by the directing fingers and shouts that answered my gasping query to every railway man I passed; and so I came out on a high gallery in the great arena of Paddington Station – to see my train below me, but still far away, and the big clock that was my rendezvous with the luggage porter (nowhere to be seen) pointing to the very minute that the time-table fixed for its departure!

I flew along that bridge to the end, hurled myself almost headlong down the stairs to the platform, reached my train; and there was still no sign of the luggage porter, far or near, and they were shutting the carriage doors, and the guard was lifting his hand to give the signal to start. He was a fine, big, important-looking man – I shall not forget him – and but for my experience of English railway officers it would not have occurred to me to approach him at such a moment; but I had the happy inspiration to do so, and was thereby saved.

"He will be here directly," said that guard with the manners of a prince. "I will hold the train a moment."

He held it for moments that made two minutes before my laggard henchman came into view, and then helped him to bundle my things into the corridor of my carriage, there being no time to seek the van. Blessings on him! I hope it may be my good fortune to travel in his charge again before I die. And I was only a third-class passenger.

That is another of the pleasures of English railway travel. At home we have no third class, and your own servants do not deign to travel second. I do not myself, except sometimes on a country journey, the long-distance trains having a special character and equipment. But in England the third-class carriage was our only wear; but twice did we put on airs and take a second – a first never. In Australia when you ask for your unspecified ticket, unless you are blatantly horny-handed and begrimed with toil, the young man behind the wicket gives you a first-class as a matter of course; in England he gives you a third, with the same inward knowledge that he is doing the proper thing, no questions asked. And with that evidence in your hand of your lack of social consequence, you are of as much importance as anybody to the English official, who is a gentleman every time. My guard of the Great Western could not have done more for me if I had been the queen.

And so, thanks to him, I was off at last. In a full carriage, of course, where I had to sit in the middle, but still, safely embarked for Devonshire. And when the agitation of my nerves subsided I looked at the passing landscape which I had last seen as a girl and a bride and thought of all that had happened – heavens! what had not happened? – since that far-off day. Its face might have changed – it must have done – but it was the same country, the same towns and villages, and woods and fields. I had seen them for the first time in the twilight of a May evening in 1870 – that evening of farewells and heartbreak, of all evenings in my life – and never since till now …

One advantage of being a third-classer is that you can chat with a neighbour without misgiving, if you feel that way disposed. I could not read in English trains; it would have been a wicked waste of eyesight when there was so much better than books to look at; and if you do not read you either incline to talk or you are supposed to be ready to do so. There was a little lady in the corner next to me whom I liked the look of, and who apparently returned the compliment, and we made one of those little ships-that-pass friendships, which are often as pleasant as they are brief, before she left me at Newton Abbot, to branch off to Cornwall. She had a school in that county, but had been called from it to a sick brother in America – in the Wild West too – a couple of years before we met; and his illness, death, and difficulties resulting from them had only now released her to return to the quiet life which had been so violently interrupted. So she had had her great experiences and was having them now as well as I. She had left a locum tenens in charge of her school, and she did not know how she was going to find things, nor how she was going to settle down into the old narrow groove again.

As in Port Said, I was minded not to dock my trip of any of its charms, and would not bring the customary private sandwich for my midday repast. There was a restaurant car on the train (we have them too, but I have never used them), and I intended to enjoy the novelty of lunching therein. I had seen photographs of the tempting interiors – third class! – in magazines, and from the platforms of great junctions had peeped at them through their own glass windows. It was another bit of experience to be taken in its course and the most infinitesimal bit was valuable.

So at one o'clock I rose and proudly journeyed down the train. But I had not noticed the preliminary boy sent round to collect orders, and the Master of Ceremonies politely informed me that the tables were filled. Another luncheon would be ready in half-an-hour, he said, but now I was "off" lunching that way, and wished I had catered for myself as usual. Returning to my seat I found my neighbour with her little refreshment set out on a napkin spread over her neat lap. She insisted on my sharing it with her, and after decent demur I did. There was a meat-pie and I had half; two cakes and I had one; two bananas and I had one. Later on I returned her hospitality as best I could by inviting her to tea with me, and then I sampled the possibilities of the restaurant car and found them all that I could wish.

By this time we were in Devonshire. We were actually waiting at Exeter – Exeter, of which I had heard so much, endeared by so many old associations – and I was too deeply engaged with my good tea and nice bread-and-butter to seriously and adequately realise the fact. Alas! when it comes to tea I am afraid I am a gross person.

But I did not see Exeter in 1870. It was dark night then. I do not know if we even passed that way. Later in the afternoon, when I came to the scenes on which that old, old May dawn rose so tragically, you might have offered me tea without my seeing it. I could see nothing but the Devonshire that was all I knew, and think of nothing but identifying as much of it as possible. Ivy Bridge, name as well as place, I had had the memory-print of for all the years, but it lay beyond my goal to-day. That other place, unknown, where the sea came up to the railway and the train ran through and under the red cliffs, I found was Dawlish. Sweet spot, so long beloved! I am told that the one blot on the beauty of Dawlish is the railway on its sea-front. This is from the resident's point of view. Let him remember what its position means sometimes to the passing railway traveller.