PILGRIMAGES

I use the word in something wider than Chaucer's sense, and yet in a sense not wholly different from his. For, though we no longer make an annual visit to the Shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, still we all feel bound, at least once a year, to go somewhere and do something quite out of our normal course. Perhaps, like Chaucer's friends, we "long" to do this in April, but the claims of business are generally too strong for us; so we have to content ourselves with admiring the peeps of greenery which begin to invade the soot of our urban gardens, and, if we are of a cultured habit, we can always quote Browning's Thrush or strain the kalendar so as to admit Wordsworth's Daffodils.

This notion of a yearly Pilgrimage as a necessity of rightly-ordered life seems to have fallen into a long abeyance. "Dan Chaucer" (for I love to be on easy terms with great men) described the social customs of the fourteenth century, and then the Pilgrimage seems to have been an established institution: "Tom Hughes" described those of the eighteenth, and this is what, writing in 1862, he says about the annual Pilgrimages of his own time:—

"I have been credibly informed, and am inclined to believe, that the various Boards of Directors of Railway Companies agreed together some ten years back to buy up the learned profession of Medicine, body and soul. To this end they set apart several millions of money, which they continually distribute judiciously among the Doctors, stipulating only this one thing—that they shall prescribe change of air to every patient who can pay, or borrow money to pay, a railway fare, and see their prescription carried out. If it be not for this, why is it that none of us can be well at home for a year together? It wasn't so twenty years ago—not a bit of it. The Browns did not go out of the county once in five years."

The Browns, as we all know, stood in Mr. Hughes's vocabulary for the Upper Middle Class of England—the class to which the clergy, the smaller squires, and the professional men belong; the class which in Chaucer's time contained the "Man of Lawe," the "Marchande," the "Franklyne," and the "Doctore of Phisyke"; and, although Mr. Hughes, who ought to know, says that in the earlier part of Queen Victoria's reign they were a stay-at-home class, they are now the most regular and the most zealous of Pilgrims. It was the majestic misfortune of the Duke in "Lothair" to have so many houses that he had no home. People so circumstanced do not need to go on Pilgrimages. After the autumn in a Scotch Castle, the winter in a country house in the Midlands, the spring in another in the Southern Counties, and the season in Grosvenor Square, people are glad of a little rest, and seek it in some "proud alcove" on the Thames or a sea-girt villa at Cowes. Unless their livers drive them to Carlsbad or their hearts to Nauheim, they do not travel, but display what Lord Beaconsfield called "the sustained splendour of their stately lives" in the many mansions which, in the aggregate, represent to them the idea of Home. I might perhaps on another occasion sketch the Grand Tour of Europe, on which, for educational purposes, the Earl of Fitzurse used to send his eldest son, young Lord Cubley; compressed, with his tutor and doctor, into a travelling-carriage, with a valet and a courier in the rumble. The Duke of Argyll's Autobiography has just told us what this kind of Pilgrimage was like; but to-day I am dealing with the present rather than the past.

It is the people with one house who go on Pilgrimages nowadays—the impoverished squire, the smoke-dried clergyman, the exhausted merchant, the harried editor. To these must be added all the inhabitants, male and female, of Lodging-land and Flat-land,—all "the dim, common populations" of Stuccovia and Suburbia. There are mysterious laws of association which connect classes with localities. Tradesmen love Margate; to clerks Scarborough is dear. The Semitic financier has long claimed Brighton for his own. Costermongers go hop-picking in Kent; artizans disport themselves on the nigger-haunted pier of Southend. Governed by some mysterious law of their being, schoolmasters make straight for the Alps. There they live the strenuous life and brave the perilous ascent; climb and puff and pant all day; rush in, very untidy and not very clean, to table d'hÔte; and season their meal with the "shop" of St. Winifred's or the gay banter of Rosslyn Common-room. It is agreeable to watch the forced cordiality, the thin tutorial humour, with which they greet some quite irresponsive pupil who happens to have strayed into the same hotel; and I have often had occasion to admire the precocious dexterity with which the pupil extricates himself from this dreaded companionship. Of Mr. Gladstone it was said by his detractors that he had something of the Schoolmaster in his composition; and this trait was aptly illustrated when, during the summer holidays some fifty years ago, he met the late Duchess of Abercorn in a country house accompanied by her schoolboy son, Lord George Hamilton. Not many mornings had elapsed before Mr. Gladstone said to the boy's mother, "Duchess, don't you think it a pity that your son should spend his holidays in entire idleness? I should be happy to give him an hour's Homer every morning." The offer was accepted, and the foundation of Lord George's lifelong hostility to the Liberal leader was securely laid. It is the nervous dread of some such awful possibility which supplies wings to the boy's feet and lies to his tongue when he encounters Dr. Grimstone or Basil Warde in a Swiss hotel.

While the Schoolmaster limits his aspirations to the Alps, the Oxford or Cambridge Don, having a longer vacation at his command, takes a more extended view, and urges his adventurous Pilgrimage along roads less trite. A few years ago an Oxford Don resolved to strike out what was then a quite new line, and spend his Long Vacation in Portugal. Conscious of insufficient acquaintance with the Portuguese language, he repaired to Mr. Parker's excellent shop in the Turl and enquired for a Portuguese Phrase-book. After some research, that never-failing bookseller produced "The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English." The book had an instant and a deserved success. The preface sets forth that "a choice of familiar dialogues, clean of gallicisms and despoiled phrases, it was missing yet to studious Portuguese and Brazilian youth; and also to persons of other nations that wish to know the Portuguese language." To supply this felt want Pedro Carolino compiled his hand-book for "the acceptation of the studious persons, and especially of the Youth, at which we dedicate him particularly." Among those studious persons was our Pilgrim-Don, who naturally turned in the first instance to a dialogue headed

"FOR TO TRAVEL

When do you start?

As soon as I shall have to finish a business at Cadiz.

Have you already arrested a coach?

Yes, sir, and very cheap.

Have you great deal of effects?

Two trunks and one portmanteau.

You may prepare all for to-morrow. We shall start at the coolness.

The way, is it good?

Very good.

At which inn shall stop us?

In that of the Sun, it is the best. The account mount is little. The supper, the bed, and the breakfast shall get up at thirty franks.

That seems to me a little dear."

The next dialogue follows in the natural order:—

"FOR TO BREAKFAST

John, bring us some thing for to breakfast.

Yes, sir; there is some sausages and some meat pies. Will you that I bring the ham?

Yes, bring him, we will cut a steak.

Put an nappe cloth upon this table.

Give us some plates, any knifes, and some forks, rinse the glasses.

I have eaten with satisfaction some pudding, sausages, and some ham. I shall take some tea.

Still a not her cup?

I thank you it is enough."

Breakfast over, the traveller engages a guide and starts out

"FOR TO SEE THE TOWN

We won't to see all that is it remarquable here.

Come with me, if you please. I shall not folget nothing what can to merit your attention. Here we are near to cathedraly. Will you come in there?

We will first go to see him in oudside, after we shall go in there for to look the interior."

A day of sight-seeing concludes happily with the ever-welcome dialogue—

"FOR TO DINE

Give us a rice soup.

What wine do you like best?

Bourgogne wine.

Give us some beef and potatoes, a beefsteak to the English.

What you shall take for dessert?

Give us some Hollande cheese and some prunes.

I will take a glass of brandy at the cherries.

Gentlemen, don't forget the waiter."

Parsimony is a bond which makes the whole world kin, and it is interesting to find embedded in 182 closely-printed pages of "despoiled phrases" two such characteristic specimens of sound English as "That seems to me a little dear" and "Don't forget the waiter."