I expect you've seen it, madam, or read about it,
and I am not going to describe it; but I will just say that Jone, who
had rather objected to coming out to see any more old ruins, which he
never did fancy, and only came because he wouldn't have me come by
myself, was so touched up in his soul by what he saw there, and by
wandering through this solemn and beautiful romance of bygone days, he
said he wouldn't have missed it for fifty dollars.
We came back to Gloucester to-day, and to-morrow we are off for Buxton.
As we are so near Stratford and Warwick and all that, Jone said we'd
better go there on our way, but I wouldn't agree to it. I am too
anxious to get him skipping round like a colt, as he used to, to stop
anywhere now, and when we come back I can look at Shakespeare's tomb
with a clearer conscience.
* * * * *
LONDON.
After all, the weather isn't the only changeable thing in this world,
and this letter, which I thought I was going to send to you from
Gloucester, is now being finished in London. We was expecting to start
for Buxton, but some money that Jone had ordered to be sent from London
two or three days before didn't come, and he thought it would be wise
for him to go and look after it. So yesterday, which was Saturday, we
started off for London, and came straight to the Babylon Hotel, where
we had been before.
Of course we couldn't do anything until Monday, and this morning when
we got up we didn't feel in very good spirits, for of all the doleful
things I know of, a Sunday in London is the dolefullest. The whole town
looks as if it was the back door of what it was the day before, and if
you want to get any good out of it, you feel as if you had to sneak in
by an alley, instead of walking boldly up the front steps.
Jone said we'd better go to Westminster Abbey to church, because he
believed in getting the best there was when it didn't cost too much,
but I wouldn't do it.
[Illustration: "Who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington!"]
"No," said I. "When I walk in that religious nave and into the hallowed
precincts of the talented departed, the stone passages are full of
cloudy forms of Chaucers, Addisons, Miltons, Dickenses, and all those
great ones of the past; and I would hate to see the place filled up
with a crowd of weekday lay people in their Sunday clothes, which would
be enough to wipe away every feeling of romantic piety which might rise
within my breast."
As we didn't go to the Abbey, and was so long making up our minds where
we should go, it got too late to go anywhere, and so we stayed in the
hotel and looked out into a lonely and deserted street, with the wind
blowing the little leaves and straws against the tight-shut doors of
the forsaken houses. As I stood by that window I got homesick, and at
last I could stand it no longer, and I said to Jone, who was smoking
and reading a paper:
"Let's put on our hats and go out for a walk, for I can't mope here
another minute."
So down we went, and coming up the front steps of the front entrance
who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington! He was stopping at that
hotel, and was just coming home from church, with his face shining like
a sunset on account of the comfortableness of his conscience after
doing his duty.
Letter Number Sixteen
BUXTON
When I mentioned Mr. Poplington in my last letter in connection with
the setting sun I was wrong; he was like the rising orb of day, and he
filled London with effulgent light. No sooner had we had a talk, and we
had told him all that had happened, and finished up by saying what a
doleful morning we had had, than he clapped his hand on his knees and
said, "I'll tell you what we will do. We will spend the afternoon among
the landmarks." And what we did was to take a four-wheeler and go
around the old parts of London, where Mr. Poplington showed us a lot of
soul-awakening spots which no common stranger would be likely to find
for himself.
If you are ever steeped in the solemnness of a London Sunday, and you
can get a jolly, red-faced, middle-aged English gentleman, who has made
himself happy by going to church in the morning, and is ready to make
anybody else happy in the afternoon, just stir him up in the mixture,
and then you will know the difference between cod-liver oil and
champagne, even if you have never tasted either of them. The afternoon
was piled-up-and-pressed-down joyfulness for me, and I seemed to be
walking in a dream among the beings and the things that we only see in
books.
Mr. Poplington first took us to the old Watergate, which was the river
entrance to York House, where Lord Bacon lived, and close to the gate
was the small house where Peter the Great and David Copperfield lived,
though not at the same time; and then we went to Will's old
coffee-house, where Addison, Steele, and a lot of other people of that
sort used to go to drink and smoke before they was buried in
Westminster Abbey, and where Charles and Mary Lamb lived afterward, and
where Mary used to look out of the window to see the constables take
the thieves to the Old Bailey near by.
