"Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan" (continued 5)

Children by the “Sad Sea-Wave.”

There is nothing sad about the sea from a child’s point of view. On many a long voyage I have known children be the light and the life of a ship fore and aft.

Coming from the Cape once I remember we had just one child passenger, a fair-haired, blue-eyed, curly-polled little rascal whom the sailors had baptised Tommy Tadpole. He was a saloon passenger, but was quite as often forward among the men on deck or down below. Not more than seven years of age, I often wondered he did not have his neck broken, for even in half a gale of wind he would be rushing about like a mad thing, or up and down the steep iron ladder that led to the engine room. He had a mother on board, and a nurse as well, but he was too slippery for either, and for the matter of that everyone on board was Tommy’s nurse or playmate.

Catch-me-who-catch-can was the boy’s favourite game, and at this he would keep three sailors busy for half-an-hour, and still manage to elude their grasp. How he doubled and bolted and dived, to be sure, round the binnacle, round the capstan, over the winch, under the spare anchor, down one ladder and up another—it was marvellous! One day I remember he was fairly caught; he got up into the main-rigging, and actually through the lubber hole into the main-top. Ah! but Tommy couldn’t get back, and there he sat for some time, for all the world like that sweet little cherub who sits up aloft to look after the life of poor Jack, till a sturdy seaman ran up, and Tommy rode down on his shoulder.

And the waves were never high enough, nor the wind stormy enough, to frighten Tommy Tadpole.

But country children on a visit to the seashore find fun and joy and something to laugh at in every breaker or tumbling wave.

A storm was raging at Brighton the day after my arrival there in the Wanderer. Great seas were thundering in upon the shingly beach and leaping madly over pier and wall.

“Look, look!” cried my little daughter Inez delightedly, “how the waves are smoking!”

“Surely,” she added, “great whales must be in the water to make it wobble so.”

But it was great fun to her to watch them “wobbling,” all the same.

She crowed with joy at the scene.

“Oh! they do make me laugh so,” she cried, clapping her tiny hands, “they are such fun!” Yes, and for weeks afterwards, whenever she thought of that storm-tossed ocean she would laugh.

But really you can find everlasting amusement at the seaside in summer or in autumn—supposing you are a child, I mean. Shingle is not very nice to dig among, perhaps, with a wooden spade, but then you find such quantities of pretty stones and shells among it, and morsels of coloured glass worn round by the action of the waves. You cannot build a very satisfactory house or fortification with the smaller kinds of shingle, but you can throw spadefuls of it in all directions—over your companions or over your nurse, and if a shower of it does fall on that old gentleman’s long hat, what matters it whether he be angry or not? it was fun to hear it rattle, and you would do it again and again if you only dared.

If you are permitted to take off shoes and stockings and tuck up your dress, what a glorious treat to wade on the soft sand, and feel the merry wee waves playing soft and warm about your legs! If you cannot have shoes and stockings off, then you can chase each receding wave, and let the advancing ones chase you. This will make you laugh, and if one should overtake you and go swilling round your ankles, why, what matters it? to listen to the water jerking in your boots at every step is in itself good fun.

There is endless amusement to be got out of seaweed, too, and if you have a big dog the fun will be fast and furious.

Perhaps he is a large Newfoundland, like our Hurricane Bob. By the seaside Bob is always on the best of terms with himself and every other living creature. You can bury him in the sand all but the nose; you can clothe him from head to tail with broad bands of wet seaweed, he enjoys it all, takes everything in good part. He will go splashing and dashing into the sea after a stick or a stone, and if you were to fall plump into the sea yourself he would jump after you, carry you out, and lay you on the beach in the most businesslike fashion imaginable; then shake himself, the water that flies from his great jacket of jet making rainbows all round him in the sunshine.

No; there is no sadness about the sea-wave in the happy, merry days of childhood.

Littlehampton is altogether a children’s watering-place. There they were by the dozen and score, sailing yachts in little pools, flying kites and building castles, playing at horses, riding on donkeys, gathering shells and seaweed, dancing, singing, laughing, screaming, racing, chasing, paddling and puddling, and all as happy as happy could be.

I was always pleased enough to have interesting children come and see me; whether they brought little bouquets of flowers with them—which they often did—or not, they always brought sunshine.

Let me give just one or two specimens of my juvenile visitors. I could give a hundred.

Sweet Maudie Brewer.

I could not help qualifying her name with a pretty adjective from the first moment I saw her. Not that Maudie is a very beautiful child, but so winning and engaging, and exceedingly old-fashioned. I made her acquaintance at the inn where my horses were stabled. She is an orphan—virtually, at all events—but the landlord of the hotel is exceedingly good to her, and very proud also of his wee six-year-old Maudie.

It is as a conversationalist that Maudie shines. She has no shyness, but talks like an old, old world-wise mite of a woman.

“Now,” she said, after we had talked on a variety of topics, “come into the parlour and I shall play and sing to you?”

As she took me by the hand I had to go, but had I known the little treat I was to have I should have gone more willingly. For not only can Maudie sing well, but she plays airs and waltzes in a way that quite surprised me; and I found myself standing by the piano turning over the leaves for this child of six summers as seriously as if she had been seventeen. That was Maudie Brewer.

Wee Dickie Ellis.

Dickie is another old-fashioned child, a handsome, healthful country boy, who lives in Yorkshire. Very chatty and very free was Dickie, but by no means impertinent. Age about seven. But his age does not cost Dickie a thought, for when I asked him how old he was, he said it was either six or sixteen, but he wasn’t sure which. He admired the caravan, and admired Hurricane Bob, but it was my talking cockatoo that specially took his fancy.

He had not been gone half-an-hour till I found him on the steps again.

“I’ve just coome,” he said, “to have another look at t’ould Poll parrot.”

Polly took to him, danced to him and sang to him, and finally make a great grab at his nose.

Dickie was back in an hour.

“Coome again,” he explained, “to have a look at t’ould Poll parrot.”

I thought I was rid of him now for the day; but after sunset, lo! Dickie appeared once more.

“I’m gangin’ to bed noo,” he said, “and I want to say ‘good-night’ to t’ould Poll parrot.”

And next morning, before I started, up came Dickie sure enough.

“Just coome,” he sadly remarked, “to have t’last look at t’ould Poll parrot.”

The Miner’s Sprite.

The Wanderer was lying in a quiet meadow in a mining district. It was a lovely summer’s evening; tall trees and a church tower not far off stood out dark against a crimson sky, for the sun had but just gone down. I was seated reading on the back steps, and all alone.

“Peas, sir,” said a voice close to me; “peas, sir.”

“I don’t buy peas,” I replied, looking up in some surprise, for I’d heard no footstep.

“Peas, sir,” persisted the child—“I mean, if oo peas, sir, I’ve come to see your talavan.”

What a sprite she looked! What a gnome! Her little face and hands and bare legs and feet were black with coal dust, only her lips were pink. When she smiled she showed two rows of little pearly teeth, and her eyes were very large and lustrous. I took all this in at a glance, and could not help noticing the smallness of her feet and hands and ears.

“Take my hand and help me up the stails. Be twick.” I did as I was told, and everything inside was duly criticised and admired. She sat on a footstool, and told me a deal about herself. She spent all the day in the mine, she said, playing and singing, and everybody loved her, and was so “dood” to her.

She lived with her pa and ma in a cottage she pointed to.

“But,” she added, “my pa isn’t my real faddel (father), and ma isn’t my real muddel (mother).” Here was a mystery.

“And where is your real father and mother?”

“Oh!” she replied, “I never had a real faddel and muddel.”

As she was going away she said,—

“You may tiss me, and tome and see me.”

I could not see my way to kiss so black a face, but I promised to go and see her at her “faddel’s” cottage. I did so in an hour, but only to find the mystery that hung around my little gnome deepened.

My little gnome was a gnome no more, but a fairy, washed and clean and neatly dressed, and with a wealth of sunny hair floating over her shoulders. The miner himself was clean, too, and the cottage was the pink of tidiness and order. There were even flowers in vases, and a canary in a gilded cage hanging in the window.

Though I stayed and talked for quite a long time, I did not succeed in solving the mystery.

“She ain’t ours, sir, little Looie ain’t,” said the sturdy miner. “Come to us in a queer way, but lo! sir, how we does love her, to be sure!”

Chapter Twenty Six.

From Inverness to London—Southward Away—The “Wanderer’s” Little Mistress—A Quiet Sabbath—A Dreary Evening at Aldbourne.

“While he hath a child to love him No man can be poor indeed; While he trusts a Friend above him None can sorrow, fear, or need.” Tupper.

I would willingly draw a veil over the incidents that occurred, and the accidents that happened, to the Wanderer from the time she left Inverness by train, till the day I find myself once more out on the breezy common of Streatham, with the horses’ heads bearing southward away!

But I am telling a plain unvarnished tale, not merely for the amusement of those who may do me the honour to read it, but for the guidance of those who may at some future date take it into their heads to enjoy a gipsy outing.

When I arrived in Glasgow the summer had so far gone, that it became a question with me whether I should finish my northern tour there and journey back to the south of England by a different route, or push on and cross the Grampians at all hazards, take the whole expedition, men, horses, and caravan, back by train to London, and tour thence down through the southern counties. The New Forest had always a charm for me, as all forests have, and I longed to take the Wanderer through it.

So I chose the latter plan, and for sake of the experience I gained—dark as it was—I do not now regret it.

I ought to say that the officials of all ranks belonging to the railway (North-Eastern route) were exceedingly kind and considerate, and did all for my comfort and the safety of the Wanderer that could be done. I shall never forget the pains Mr Marsters, of Glasgow, took about the matter, nor that of Mr McLean and others in Inverness.

The wheels were taken off the Wanderer as well as the wheel carriages, and she was then shipped on to a trolly and duly secured. The one great mistake made was not having springs under her.

Men and horses went on before, and the caravan followed by goods. In due time I myself arrived in town, and by the aid of a coachmaker and a gang of hands the great caravan was unloaded, and carefully bolted once more on her fore and aft carriages. Her beautiful polished mahogany sides and gilding were black with grime and smoke, but a wash all over put them to rights.

I then unlocked the back door to see how matters stood there. Something lay behind the door, but by dint of steady pushing it opened at last.

Then the scene presented to my view beggars description. A more complete wreck of the interior of a saloon it is impossible to conceive.

The doors of every cupboard and locker had been forced open with the awful shaking, and their contents lay on the deck mixed up in one chaotic heap—china, delft, and broken glass, my papers, manuscripts, and letters, my choicest photographs and best bound books, butter, bread, the cruets, eggs, and portions of my wardrobe, while the whole was freely besprinkled with paraffin, and derisively, as it were, bestrewn with blooming heather and hothouse flowers! Among the litter lay my little ammunition magazine and scattered matches—safety matches I need not say, else the probability is there would have been a bonfire on the line, and no more Wanderer to-day.

It seemed to me to be the work of fiends. It was enough to make an angel weep. The very rods on which ran the crimson silken hangings of the skylight windows were wrenched out and added to the pile.

It struck me at first, and the same thought occurred to the goods manager, that burglars had been at work and sacked the Wanderer.

But no, for nothing was missing.

Moral to all whom it concerns: Never put your caravan on a railway track.

It took me days of hard work to restore the status quo ante.

And all the while it was raining, and the streets covered with mud. The noise, and din, and dirt around me, were maddening. How I hated London then! Its streets, its shops, its rattling cabs, its umbrellaed crowds, the very language of its people. And how I wished myself back again on the wolds of Yorkshire, among the Northumbrian hills or the Grampian range—anywhere—anywhere out of the world of London, and feel the fresh, pure breezes of heaven blowing in my face, see birds, and trees, and flowers, and listen to the delightful sounds of rural life, instead of to cockney-murdered English.

Caravans like the Wanderer have no business to be in cities. They ought to give cities a wide, wide berth, and it will be my aim to do so in future.

The journey through London was accomplished in safety, though we found ourselves more than once in a block. When we had crossed over Chelsea Bridge, however, my spirits, which till now had been far below freezing point, began to rise, and once upon the common, with dwarf furze blooming here and there, and crimson morsels of ling (Erica communis), a balmy soft wind blowing, and the sun shining in a sky of blue, I forgot my troubles, and found myself singing once more, a free and independent gipsy.

But now to hark back a little. Who should meet me in London, all unexpectedly as it were, but “mamma”? I mean my children’s mother, and with her came my little daughter Inez! Long flaxen hair hath she, and big grey wondering eyes, but she is wise in her day and generation.

And Inez had determined in her own mind that she would accompany me on my tour through England—south, and be the little mistress of the land-yacht Wanderer.

So mamma left us at Park Lane, and went away home to her other wee “toddlers.” She took with her Polly, the cockatoo. It was a fair exchange: I had Inez and she had Polly; besides, one parrot is quite enough in a caravan, though for the matter of that Inie can do the talking of two.

A few silent tears were dropped after the parting—tears which she tried to hide from me.

But London sights and wonders are to a child pre-eminently calculated to banish grief and care, especially when supplemented by an unlimited allowance of ripe plums and chocolate creams.

Inez dried her eyes and smiled, and never cried again.

But if her cares were ended mine were only commencing, and would not terminate for weeks to come. Henceforward a child’s silvery treble was to ring through my “hallan,” (Scottish, cottage or place of abode) and little footsteps would patter on my stairs.

I was to bear the onus of a great responsibility. I was to be both “ma” and “pa” to her, nurse and lady’s maid all in one. Might not, I asked myself, any one or more of a thousand accidents befall her? Might she not, for instance, catch her death of cold, get lost in a crowd, get run over in some street, fall ill of pear and plum fever, or off the steps of the caravan?

I must keep my eye on her by night and by day. I made special arrangements for her comfort at night. The valet’s after-cabin was requisitioned for extra space, and he relegated to sleep on shore, so that we and Bob had all the Wanderer to ourselves.

I am writing these lines at Brighton, after having been a week on the road, and I must record that Inie and I get on well together. She is delighted with her gipsy tour, and with all the wonders she daily sees, and the ever-varying panorama that flits dreamlike before her, as we trot along on our journey. She nestles among rags on the broad coupé, or sits on my knee beside the driver, talking, laughing, or singing all day long. We never want apples and pears in the caravan—though they are given to us, not bought—and it is Inie’s pleasure sometimes to stop the Wanderer when she sees a crowd of schoolchildren, pitch these apples out, and laugh and crow to witness the grand scramble.

But some sights and scenes that present themselves to us on the road are so beautiful, or so funny, or so queer withal, that merely to laugh or crow would not sufficiently relieve the child’s feelings. On such occasions, and they are neither few nor far between, she must needs clap her tiny hands and kick with delight, and “hoo-oo-ray-ay!” till I fear people must take her for a little mad thing, or a Romany Rye run wild.

Such are the joys of gipsy life from a child’s point of view.

She eats well, too, on the road; and that makes me happy, for I must not let her get thin, you know. Probably she does get a good deal of her own way.

“You mustn’t spoil her,” ma said before she left. I’ll try not to forget that next time Inie wants another pineapple, or more than four ices at a sitting.

My great difficulty, however, is with her hair of a morning. She can do a good deal for herself in the way of dressing, but her hair—that the wind toys so with and drives distracted—sometimes is brushed out and left to float, but is more often plaited, and that is my work.

Well, when a boy, I was a wondrous artist in rushes. Always at home in woodland, on moor, or on marsh—I could have made you anything out of them, a hat or a rattle, a basket or creel, or even a fool’s cap, had you chosen to wear one. And my adroitness in rush-work now stands me in good stead in plaiting my wee witch’s hair.

Hurricane Bob is extremely fond of his little mistress. I’m sure he feels that he, too, has—when on guard—an extra responsibility, and if he hears a footstep near the caravan at night, he shakes the Wanderer fore and aft with his fierce barking, and would shake the owner of the footstep too if he only had the chance.

Our first bivouac after leaving London was in a kindly farmer’s stackyard, near Croydon. His name is M—, and the unostentatious hospitality of himself, his wife, and daughter I am never likely to forget.

I will give but one example of it.

“You can stay here as long as you please,” he said, in reply to a query of mine. “I’ll be glad to have you. For the bit of hay and straw your horses have you may pay if you please, and as little as you please, but for stable room—no.”

He would not insult my pride by preventing me from remunerating him for the fodder, nor must I touch his pride by offering to pay for stable room.

It was nearly seven o’clock, but a lovely evening, when I reached the gate of this farmer’s fine old house. Almost the first words he said to me as he came out to meet me on the lawn were these: “Ha! and so the Wanderer has come at last! I’m as pleased as anything to see you.”

He had been reading my adventures in the Leisure Hour.

We remained at anchor all next day, and Inez and I went to the Crystal Palace, and probably no two children ever enjoyed themselves more.

Next day was Saturday, and we started from the farm about eleven, but owing to a mishap it was two pm before we got clear of the town of Croydon itself.

The mishap occurred through my own absent-mindedness. I left the Wanderer in one of the numerous new streets in the outskirts, not far off the Brighton Road, and walked with Inez about a mile up into the town to do some shopping.

On returning, a heavy shower, a pelting shower in fact, came on, and so engrossed was I in protecting my little charge with the umbrella, that when I at last looked up, lo! we were lost! The best or the worst of it was that I did not know east from west, had never been in Croydon before, and had neglected to take the name of the street in which I had left the Wanderer.

It was a sad fix, and it took me two good hours to find my house upon wheels.

On through Red Hill, and right away for Horley; but though the horses were tired and it rained incessantly, it could not damp our spirits. At the Chequers Inn we found a pleasant landlord and landlady, and a delightfully quiet meadow in which we spent the Sabbath.

The Chequers Inn is very old-fashioned indeed, and seems to have been built and added to through many generations, the ancient parts never being taken down.

Sunday was a delightful day, so still, so quiet, so beautiful. To live, to exist on such a day as this amid such scenery is to be happy.

September 7th.—We are on the road by nine. It is but five-and-twenty miles to Brighton. If we can do seven-and-twenty among Highland hills, we can surely do the same in tame domestic England.

But the roads are soft and sorely trying, and at Hand Cross we are completely storm-stayed by the terrible downpours of rain. I do not think the oldest inhabitant could have been far wrong when he averred it was the heaviest he ever could remember.

During a kind of break in the deluge we started, and in the evening reached the cross roads at Aldbourne, and here we got snugly at anchor after an eighteen-mile journey.

My little maiden went to sleep on the sofa hours before we got in, and there she was sound and fast. I could not even wake her for supper, though on my little table were viands that might make the teeth of a monk of the olden times water with joyful anticipation.

So I supped alone with Bob.

I spent a gloomy eerisome evening. It was so gloomy! And out of doors when I dared to look the darkness was profound. The incessant rattling of the raindrops on the roof was a sound not calculated to raise one’s spirits. I began to take a dreary view of life in general, indeed I began to feel superstitions. I—

“Papa, dear.”

Ha! Inez was awake, and smiling all over. Well, we would have a little pleasant prattle together, and then to bed. The rattling of the raindrops would help to woo us to sleep, and if the wind blew the Wanderer would rock. We would dream we were at sea, and sleep all the sounder for it.

“Good-night, dearie.”

“Good-night, darling papie.”

Chapter Twenty Seven.

Storm-Stayed at Brighton—Along the Coast and to Lyndhurst—The New Forest—Homewards through Hants.

“Dim coasts and cloud-like hills and shoreless ocean, It seemed like omnipresence! God methought Had built Himself a temple; the whole world Seem’d imaged in its vast circumference.” Coleridge. “Rides and rambles, sports and farming, Home the heart for ever warming; Books and friends and ease; Life must after all be charming, Full of joys like these.” Tupper.

I love Brighton, and if there were any probability of my ever “settling down,” as it is called, anywhere in this world before the final settling down, I would just as soon it should be in Brighton as in any place I know.

It is now the 13th of September, and the Wanderer has been storm-stayed here for days by equinoctial gales. She occupies a good situation, however, in a spacious walled enclosure, and although she has been rocking about like a gun-brig in Biscay Bay, she has not blown over.

As, owing to the high winds and stormy waves, digging on the sands, gathering shells, and other outdoor amusements have been denied us, we have tried to make up for it by visiting the theatre and spending long hours in the Aquarium.

The Aquarium is a dear delightful place. We have been much interested in the performances of the Infant Jumbo, the dwarf elephant, and no wonder. He kneels, and stands, and walks, plays a mouth organ, makes his way across a row of ninepins, and across a bar, balancing himself with a pole like a veritable Blondin. He plays a street-organ and beats a drum at the same time; and last, and most wonderful of all, he rides a huge tricycle, which he works with his legs, steering himself with his trunk. This infant is not much bigger than a donkey, but has the sense and judgment of ten thousand donkeys. I should dearly like to go on a cycling tour with him to John o’ Groat’s. I believe we would astonish the natives.

How the wind has been blowing to be sure, and how wild and spiteful the waves have been; how they have leapt and dashed and foamed, wrecking everything within reach, and tearing up even the asphalt on the promenade!

Sunday was a pleasant day, though wind and sea were still high, and on Monday we made an early start.

It is a muggy, rainy morning, with a strong head wind. The sea is grey and misty and all flecked with foam, and the country through which we drive is possessed of little interest. Before starting, however, we must needs pay a farewell visit to the shore, and enjoy five minutes’ digging in the sand. Then we said,—

“Good-bye, old sea; we will be sure to come back again when summer days are fine. Good-bye! Ta, ta!”

Shoreham is a quaint and curious, but very far from cleanly little town.

We heard here, by chance, that the storm waves had quite destroyed a portion of the lower road to Worthing, and so we had to choose the upper and longer route, which we reached in time for dinner with the kindly landlord of the Steyne Hotel. If children are a blessing, verily Mr C— is blessed indeed; he hath his quiver full, and no man deserves it more.

Worthing, I may as well mention parenthetically, is one of the most delightful watering-places on the south coast, and I verily believe that the sun shines here when it does not shine anywhere else in England.

Two dear children (Winnie and Ernie C—) came with us for three miles, bringing a basket to hold the blackberries they should gather on their way back.

Winnie was enchanted with this short experience of gipsy life, and wanted to know when I would return and take her to Brighton. Ernie did not say much; he was quietly happy.

It broke up a fine afternoon, and now and then the sun shone out, making the drive to Littlehampton, through the beautiful tree scenery, quite a delightful one.

Reached Littlehampton-on-Sea by five o’clock, and, seeing no other place handy, I undid the gate of the cricket-field and drove right in. I then obtained the address of the manager or secretary, and sent my valet to obtain leave. I have found this plan answer my purposes more than once. It is the quickest and the best. It was suggested to me long, long ago on reading that page of “Midshipman Easy” where that young gentleman proposes throwing the prisoners overboard and trying them by court-martial afterwards.

So when Mr Blank came “to see about it” he found the fait accompli, looked somewhat funny, but forgave me.

Littlehampton-on-Sea is a quiet and pleasant watering-place, bracing, too, and good for nervous people. I am surprised it is not more popular. It has the safest sea-bathing beach in the world, and is quite a heaven on earth for young children.

We had a run and a romp on the splendid sands here last night, and I do not know which of the two was the maddest or the merriest, Hurricane Bob or his wee mistress. We are down here again this morning for half-an-hour’s digging and a good run before starting.

Now last night the waves were rippling close up to the bathing-machines, and Bob had a delicious dip. When we left the Wanderer this morning he was daft with delight; he expected to bathe and splash again. But the tide is out, and the sea a mile away; only the soft, wet, rippled sands are here, and I have never in my life seen a dog look so puzzled or nonplussed as Bob does at this moment.

He is walking about on the sand looking for the sea.

“What can have happened?” he seems to be thinking. “The sea was here last night, right enough. Or can I have been dreaming? Where on earth has it gone to?”

In the same grounds where the Wanderer lay last night, but far away at the other end of the field, is another caravan—a very pretty and clean-looking one. I was told that it had been here a long time, that the man lived in it with his young wife, supporting her and himself by playing the dulcimer on the street. A quiet and highly respectable gipsy indeed.

Delayed by visitors till eleven, when we made a start westward once again.

’Tis a glorious morning. The sky is brightly blue, flecked with white wee clouds, a haze on the horizon, with rock-and-tower clouds rising like snowbanks above it.

The road to Arundel is a winding one, but there are plenty of finger-posts in various stages of dilapidation. A well-treed country, too, and highly cultivated. Every three or four minutes we pass a farm-steading or a cottage near the road, the gardens of the latter being all ablaze with bright geraniums, hydrangeas, dahlias, and sunflowers, and all kinds of berried, creeping, and climbing plants.

How different, though, the hedgerows look now from what they did when I started on my rambles in early summer, for now sombre browns, blues, and yellows have taken the place of spring’s tender greens, and red berries hang in clusters where erst was the hawthorn’s bloom.

The blossom has left the bramble-bushes, except here and there the pink of a solitary flower, but berries black and crimson cluster on them; only here and there among the ferns and brackens, now changing to brown, is the flush of nodding thistle, or some solitary orange flowers, and even as the wind sweeps through the trees a shower of leaves of every hue falls around us.

A steep hill leads us down to the valley in which Arundel is situated, and the peep from this braeland is very pretty and romantic.

The town sweeps up the opposite hill among delightful woodlands, the Duke of Norfolk’s castle, with its flagstaff over the ruined keep, being quite a feature of the landscape.

We turn to the left in the town, glad we have not to climb that terrible hill; and, after getting clear of the town, bear away through a fine beech wood. The trees are already assuming their autumnal garb of dusky brown and yellow, and sombre shades of every hue, only the general sadness is relieved by the appearance here and there of a still verdant wide-spreading ash.

On and on. Up hill and down dell. Hardly a field is to be seen, such a wildery of woodlands is there on every side. The brackens here are very tall, and, with the exception of a few dwarf oak, elm, or elder-bushes, constitute the only undergrowth.

We are out in the open again, on a breezy upland; on each side the road is bounded by a great bank of gorse. When in bloom in May, how lovely it must look! We can see fields now, pale yellow or ploughed, suggestive of coming winter. And farm-steadings too, and far to the left a well-wooded fertile country, stretching for miles and miles.

Near to Bell’s Hut Inn we stop to water, and put the nosebags on. There is a brush-cart at the door, and waggons laden with wood, and the tap-room is crowded with rough but honest-looking country folks, enjoying their midday repast of bread and beer.

The day is so fine, the sun is so bright, and the sward so green, that we all squat, gipsy-fashion, on the grass, to discuss a modest lunch. Fowls crowd round us and we feed them. But one steals Foley’s cheese from off his plate, and hen steals it from hen, till the big Dorking cock gets it, and eats it too. Corn-flower scatters his oats about, and a feathered multitude surround him to pick them up. Pea-blossom brings her nosebag down with a vicious thud every now and then, and causes much confusion among the fowls.

Bob is continually snapping at the wasps.

Bread-and-cheese and ginger-ale are not bad fare on a lovely day like this, when one has an appetite.

Gipsies always have appetites.

A drunken drover starts off from the inn door without paying for his dinner. The landlady’s daughter gives chase. I offer to lend her Bob. She says she is good enough for two men like that. And so she proves.

We are very happy.

One’s spirits while on the road to a great extent rise and fall with the barometer.

Chichester seems a delightful old place. But we drove rapidly through it, only stopping to admire the cross and the cathedral. The former put me in mind of that in Castle-gate of Aberdeen.

Between Littlehampton and the small town of Botley, which the reader may notice on the map of Hampshire, we made one night’s halt, and started early next morning.

The view from the road which leads round the bay at Porchester is, even with the tide back, picturesque. Yonder is the romantic old castle of Porchester on the right middle distance, with its battlements and ivied towers; and far away on the horizon is Portsmouth, with its masts, and chimneys, and great gasworks, all asleep in the haze of this somewhat sombre and gloomy day.

Porchester—the town itself—could supply many a sketch for the artist fond of quaintness in buildings, in roofs, picturesque children, and old-fashioned public-houses. Who, I wonder, drinks all the “fine old beer,” the “sparkling ales,” and the “London stout,” in this town of Porchester? Every third house seems an inn.

Through Fareham, where we stopped to admire a beautiful outdoor aviary, and where a major of marines and his wife possessed themselves of my little maiden, and gave her cake and flowers enough to set up and beautify the Wanderer for a week at least.

Botley is one of the quietest, quaintest, and most unsophisticated wee villages ever the Wanderer rolled into. It is rural in the extreme, but like those of all rural villages, its inhabitants, if unsophisticated, are as kind-hearted as any I have ever met.

Botley can boast of nearly half-a-score of public-houses, but it has only one hotel, the Dolphin, and one butcher’s shop.

That milkman who let us into his field was right glad to see the caravan, which he had read a good deal about, and seemed proud to have us there, and just as pleased was the honest landlord of the Dolphin to have our horses. In the good old-fashioned way he invited my little daughter and me into the cosy parlour behind the bar, where we spent a few musical hours most enjoyably.

It seems though that Botley has not always borne the reputation of being a quiet place. For example, long ago, though the recollection of the affair is still green in the memory of the oldest inhabitants, there used to be held at Botley what were called “beef-fairs.” For months beforehand “twopences” were saved, to raise a fund for fair-day. When this latter came round, the agreement among these innocents was that having once taken the cup of beer in his hand every man must drain it to the bottom, to prove he was a man.

In his bacchanalian song “Willie brew’d a peck o’ maut,” Burns says:—

“The first that rises to gang awa’ A cuckold cowardly loon is he. The first that in the neuk does fa’ We’ll mak’ him king amang the three.”

But at the beef-fair of Botley matters were reversed, and the first that “in the neuk did fa’” was fined two shillings, and failing payment he was condemned to be hanged.

On a certain fair-day a certain “innocent” fell in the nook but refused to pay. Honour was honour among these fair folks, so first they stood the culprit on his head, and endeavoured to shake the money out of him. Disappointed and unsuccessful, they really did hang him, not by the neck but by the waist, to a beam.

Unfortunately for the poor fellow, the band came past, and away rushed his confrères to listen.

It did not matter much to the condemned joskin that he was trundled about the town for two hours after they had returned, and finally deposited under the settle of an inn. For he was dead!

One other example of the congeniality of the Botley folks of long ago. My attention was attracted to a large iron-lettered slab that hangs on the wall of the coffee-room of the Dolphin. The following is the inscription thereon:—

This Stone is Erected To Perpetuate a Most Cruel Murder Committed on the Body of Thos. Webb a Poor Inhabitant of Swanmore on the 11th of Feb. 1800 by John Diggins a Private Soldier in the Talbot Fencibles Whose Remains are Gibbeted on the Adjoining Common.

And there doubtless John Diggins’ body swung, and there his bones bleached and rattled till they fell asunder.

But the strange part of the story now has to be told; they had hanged the wrong man!

It is an ugly story altogether. Thus: two men (Fencibles) were drinking at a public-house, and going homewards late made a vow to murder the first man they met. Cruelly did they keep this vow, for an old man they encountered was at once put to the bayonet. Before going away from the body, however, the soldier who had done the deed managed to exchange bayonets with Diggins. The blood-stained instrument was therefore found in his scabbard, and he was tried and hanged. The real murderer confessed his crime twenty-one years afterwards, when on his deathbed.

So much for the Botley of long ago.

The iron slab, by the way, was found in the cellar of the Dolphin, and the flag of the Talbot Fencibles, strange to say, was found in the roof.

We took Southampton as our midday halt, driving all round the South Park before we entered—such a charming park—and stopped to dine among the guns away down beside the pier.

Then on for a few miles, bivouacking for the night in an inn yard, in order that we might return to Southampton and see the play.

Next day we reached Lyndhurst, and came safely to anchor in a meadow behind the old Crown Hotel, and this field we made our headquarters for several days.

It had always been my ambition to see something of the New Forest, and here I was in the centre of it. I had so often read about this wondrous Forest; I had thought about it, dreamt about it, and more than once it had found its way into the tales I wrote. And now I found the real to exceed the imaginary.

One great beauty about the New Forest is that it is open. There is nothing here of the sombre gloom of the Scottish pine wood. There are great green glades in it, and wide wild patches of heatherland. Even at the places where the trees are thickest the giant oaks thrust their arms out on every side as if to keep the other trees off.

“Stand back,” they seem to say. “We will not be crowded. We must not keep away the sunshine from the grass and the brackens beneath us, for all that has life loves the light. Stand back.”

What charmed me most in this Forest? I can hardly tell. Perhaps its gnarled and ancient oaks, that carried my thoughts back to the almost forgotten past; perhaps its treescapes in general, now with the tints of autumn burnishing their foliage; perhaps its glades, carpeted with soft green moss and grass, and surrounded with brackens branched and lofty, under which surely fairies still do dwell.

They say that the modern man is but a savage reformed by artificial means, and if left to himself would relapse to his pristine state. Well, if ever I should relapse thus, I’d live in the New Forest. Referring to the forest, Galpin says—“Within equal limits, perhaps, few parts of England afford a greater variety of beautiful landscapes than this New Forest. Its woody scenes, its extended lawns, and vast sweeps of wild country, unlimited by artificial boundaries, together with its river views and distant coasts, are all in a great degree magnificent. (There have been many portions of the Forest enclosed since these lines were written, but their gates are never closed against the stranger or sight-seer.) Still, it must be remembered that its chief characteristic, and what it rests on for distinction, is not sublimity but sylvan beauty.”

And this last line of Galpin’s naturally enough leads my thoughts away northward to the wild Highlands of Scotland, where sublimity is in advance of sylvan beauty, and brings the words of Wilson to my mind:—

“What lonely magnificence stretches around, Each sight how sublime, how awful each sound, All hushed and serene as a region of dreams, The mountains repose ’mid the roar of the streams.”

I have mentioned the wide-spreading oak-trees. Is it not possible that the mountain firs of our Scottish Highlands would spread also had they room? I mean if they were not planted so thickly, and had not to expend their growth in towering skywards in search of sunlight, their stems all brown and bare beneath, till looking into a pine wood is like looking into some vast cave, its dark roof supported by pillars.

Not very far from Carrbridge, in the Grampians, is one of the strangest and weirdest bits of pine forest it is possible to imagine. Here the trees have plenty of room to spread; they evidently owe their existence to birds that have brought the seeds from afar. Be that as it may, they are not very tall, but gnarled and branched in the most fantastic fashion, while in the open spaces between them grow heather and brackens of such height and magnificence that among them an army could hide. If fairies still dwell anywhere in this land of ours, surely it is in this weirdlike ferny forest of Alpine pine-trees.

I very greatly enjoyed my long drive through Sherwood Forest, on the Duke of Portland’s estate. There, I think, many of the oaks are even more aged than those in the New Forest here, though, perhaps, I am mistaken. Spenser’s lines would better therefore describe the former—

“Great oaks, dry and dead, Still clad with relics of their trophies old, Lifting to heaven their aged hoary heads, Whose feet on earth have got but feeble hold, And half disbowelled stand above the ground, With wreathed roots and naked arms, And trunks all rotten and unsound.”

In one of our rambles through the New Forest—driven we were in a dogcart over the green sward, through the ferns and through the furze, over glades and natural lawns, into tree caves, and round and about the gigantic monarchs of the woods—we were taken by our guide to see the king and queen oaks, a morsel of the bark of each of which now lies in the caravan. I would not like even to guess how old these oaks were—probably a thousand years and more. Yet had you and I, reader, a chance of living as long as these majestic trees may still exist, it would not be profitable for an assurance company to grant us an annuity.

But before seeing the king and queen I pointed out to our guide one particular oak.

“What a splendid old oak!” I remarked.

“Old,” was the reply—“why, sir, that’s only a hinfant hoak. He ain’t mebbe more’n three or four ’undred year old.”

And this was an infant!

I was silent for a spell after that. I was thinking.

’Twixt three and four hundred years of age! My mind was carried away back to the days of Henry the Eighth. He would be on the throne about that time, if I remember my school history aright, marrying and giving in marriage, cutting off heads right and left, and making himself generally jolly; and Cardinal Wolsey was up and about, and poor Buckingham was murdered under guise of an execution; and on the whole they were very busy and very bloody times, when this “hinfant hoak” first popped out of its acorn.

Lyndhurst may well be called the capital of this romantic forest.

It is quite a charming little town, chiefly built on the slope of a hill, with many beautiful villas and houses surrounding it.

It is well removed from the din and roar of the railway, and from shouts of station porters. It is a quiet place. No, I must qualify that statement; it would be quiet except for those everlasting bells. They clang-clang-clang every quarter of an hour all day long and all night, and all the year round. Poe speaks about:—

“The people, ah! the people, They that live up in the steeple, They are ghouls!”

Are the good folks of Lyndhurst ghouls? Anyhow, the whole of the inhabitants of the sweet little town may be said to live up in the steeple. Their nerves and ears are encased in felt perhaps, but may heaven help any nervous invalid who happens to make the neighbourhood of that church steeple his or her habitat. The bells, however, did not bother me much, for a gipsy can always sleep.

If he can stand the bells the visitor will be happy at Lyndhurst. There are capital shops, several excellent inns, lots of well-furnished apartments, and a most comfortable family hotel, the Crown, and everywhere you will meet civility,—at all events I did; and what is more I mean to go back to Lyndhurst, and do a deal more of the Forest.

The visitor should go to Mr Short’s, and secure bits of Forest scenery and his guide-book—author Mr Phillips. This gentleman is most enthusiastic in his descriptions of the Forest and everything in and about it.

I cannot refrain from making one or two extracts. Phillips gives a nice description of the beautiful church of Lyndhurst—the church with the bells, and is loud in his praises of Sir F. Leighton’s splendid wall painting, which all who visit the Forest must go and gaze on and study for themselves. Phillips is quoting Eustace Jones in his “picture parables” when he says:—

“All the shade is so graduated from either end to the glory in the centre, that the picture will not let you rest till you have gazed on Him, the Bridegroom—the King in His beauty. There is no light in the centre of the palace where the Bridegroom is; yet it is dazzling bright and shining, because He is the light thereof for ever and ever. All the light comes from Him, glowing out from His garments in some strange way, that makes it seem to come and go, as when you look full in the sun’s face at midday, and see him burn—till he leaves his image in your eyes, glowing now large, and now small, yet dazzling alway. The face I cannot describe. There is joy in it for those who have kept their lamps still burning; there is sadness in it for those from whom it turns away—ineffable pity. But is hope quite past, even for these? His glance is averted from them, but does the hand that holds out the lily sceptre only mean to taunt their stainfulness by the sight of purity which may never more be theirs? Is He mocking at their calamity? Surely, if so, the Iron Sceptre would be less cruel than the White Lily. It cannot be, for there is nothing like it in His face.

“It may be a reflection awakened of His pity: it may be for relief from the brightness, that makes one turn from Him to look at those sorrowful faces on His left hand. It is all His palace. It is as light here as on His right hand. But there is this difference—the same sun shines winter on the Foolish virgins and summer on the Wise. It is so cold. It would not be, but that the wings of the angel who sorrowfully warns them back, shut out His light, leaving them only a strange garish brightness, wherein the waning moonlight, straggling through a troubled sky, chills and deadens the glory that yet would fall if it might. Not one of these looks at Him. They cannot. Their eyes, used to the darkness, cannot bear His light. One, who has ventured nearest and looked, has covered her face with her mantle and bowed herself that she may not see His radiance even through the angel’s wing. The farthest off, who has strained her eyeballs to see the Bridegroom, must needs cover her dazzled eyes and turn away, for she cannot bear the sight. One lies, like Lazarus, at the gate, if perchance some crumbs from the banquet may be thrown to her;—but she has looked at Him for a moment, and cowers down, awestricken with the glory, lest she see Him and her heart be scorched like her eyes. Two have not yet dared to raise their eyes to look. They have come very near, but the angel, with eyes so full and compassionate (tears must be in them), prays them not. A broken vine trails across their way, to remind them of the True Vine, whose broken branches they are. But the branch still holds by a tiny splinter to the Vine, and even to these, now turned away with empty lamps, lightless, into the cold night where the moon is fast being obscured by stormy clouds, the angel at the outer porch still displays a scroll: ‘Ora!’—‘Pray.’ This cannot be to mock their agony! Pray yet, if perchance the door may still open to their knocking, though their lamps were lighted late. The Bridegroom has risen up; but the door is not yet shut. The eleventh hour is nearly gone, but He is long-suffering still. Will they return with but a glimmer of light before it is for ever too late? Who can tell? It is dark without, and late, and there is no hope in their faces, and the angels have hushed their golden music, that it may not jar upon the sadness of those who leave His gate in tears.

“But on His right they all look at Him—every eye. They must, lest they see the sorrow of their sisters; and His very brightness interposes a blinding screen of glory to hide the sadness and the awful chill that is outside and beyond. And looking on Him, their faces are lightened, and beam radiant. They have brought their little lamps to Him, burning. Oh! how tiny the flames look, and how brown is their light against His glory, for they are all shone down and dazzled out before Him, like earthly lights before the sun—candles fading blear-eyed before the noon. One of the figures, eager, with the smallest lamp of them all, has pressed by all the rest, and caught the Bridegroom’s hand, that she who was last might be first; whilst another, in the very background, is content to bear aloft her largest lamp, with three wicks bravely burning, calmly confident and trustful; for they who are first shall be last. One, half-averted, nurses and tends the flame of her lamp still—it has had but a little oil in it, and that scarce eked out till now. Close to the Bridegroom, an angel holds out a child’s hand, with a little feeble light, so that even if it does not last on, it shall only go out in His very presence. But the little one is safe, for of such is His kingdom, and in heaven her Angel has always beheld the Father’s face. These are all in the sunshine of His favour, and glow with the light that streams from Him. Yet the angel at the porch still says even to these, ‘Vigila!’—‘Watch ye!’ and still pours oil into the fading lamp at the gate.”

Barley, Holmsley, and Sway are within easy reach of Lyndhurst, even to the pedestrian lady.

Queen’s Bower Wood—

“Beautiful, beautiful Queen of the Forest, How art thou hidden so wondrously deep!”

—Is one of the most charming of forest woods, its handsome aged oak picturesquely overhanging the clear and bubbling stream, so soon to mix its waters with the all-absorbing sea. The stream here, as in so many other parts of the Forest, is covered in summer time with white water-lilies.

We visited Lymington in the Wanderer, and although the rain poured down in torrents all day, from under the broad canopy of the coupé we viewed the scenery safely and were delighted therewith.

Of course the Wanderer visited Minstead and Stony Cross.

What a magnificent view is to be got of the Forest from the breezy furze-clad common near the inn at Bramble Hill!

Hurricane Bob led the way with a rush down the grassy slope to Rufus’s Stone, and Inie and myself came scampering on after, all three of us as full of life as mavises in May time.

The scenery about this sacred spot is pretty enough, but we did not greatly admire the stone itself. Nor did Hurricane Bob, though he paid his respects to it after his own canine fashion.

It somewhat detracts from the romance of the place that close adjoining you can have three shies at a cocoa-nut for a penny. I spent a shilling unsuccessfully; Inie knocked one down at the first shot, and Bob, not to be behindhand, watched his chance and stole one, for which may goodness forgive him.

I wish I could spare space to say something about the birds and beasts and creeping things of the Forest, and about its wild flowers, but this chapter the reader will doubtless think too long already.

I must mention Forest flies and snakes, however. Of the latter we saw none in the wilds, but the well-known snake-catcher of the New Forest, who supplies the Zoological Gardens, paid us a visit at the caravan, and brought with him some splendid specimens. Many of these were very tame, and drank milk from a saucer held to them by my wee girl.

The adders he catches with a very long pair of surgical forceps presented to him by Dr Blaker, of Lyndhurst, whose kindness and hospitality, by-the-bye, to us, will ever dwell in my memory.

We heard great accounts of the Forest flies. They say—though I cannot verify it by my own experience—that long before the transatlantic steamers reach New York, the mosquitoes, satiated with Yankee gore, smell the blood of an Englishman, and come miles to sea to meet him.

And so we were told that the Forest flies would hardly care to bite a Forest horse, but at once attacked a strange one and sent him wild.

Hearing us talk so much about this wondrous Forest fly, it was not unnatural that it should haunt wee Inie’s dreams and assume therein gigantic proportions. One day, when ranging through a thicket—this was before ever we had become acquainted with the fly—we came upon a capital specimen of the tawny owl, winking and blinking on a bough. Inez saw it first.

“Oh, papa,” she cried aghast, “there’s a Forest Fly!”

This put me in mind of the anecdote of the woman who was going out to India with her husband, a soldier in the gallant 42nd.

“You must take care of the mosquitoes,” said another soldier’s wife, who had been out.

“What’s a mosquito, ’oman?”

“Oh!” was the reply, “a creature with a long snout hangin’ doon in front, that it sucks your blood wi’.”

On landing in India almost the first animal she saw was an elephant.

“May the Lord preserve us!” cried the soldier’s wife, “is that a mosquito?”

But we had to leave the dear old Forest at last, and turn our horses’ heads to the north once more. “It is,” says Phillips, “in such sequestered spots as these, removed from the everlasting whirl and turmoil of this high-pressure age, that we may obtain some glimpses of a life strangely contrasting in its peaceful retirement with our own; and one cannot envy the feelings of him who may spend but a few hours here without many happy and pleasant reflections.”

“The past is but a gorgeous dream, And time glides by us like a stream While musing on thy story; And sorrow prompts a deep alas! That like a pageant thus should pass To wreck all human glory.”

We met many pleasant people at Lyndhurst and round it, and made many pleasant tours, Lymington being our limit.

Then we bade farewell to the friends we had made, and turned our horses’ heads homewards through Hants.

When I left my little village it was the sweet spring time, and as the Wanderer stood in the orchard, apple-blossoms fell all about and over her like showers of driven snow. When she stood there again it was the brown withered leaves that rustled around her, and the wind had a wintry sough in it. But I had health and strength in every limb, and in my heart sunny memories—that will never leave it—of the pleasantest voyage ever I have made in my life.

Chapter Twenty Eight.

Caravanning for Health.

“Life is not to live, but to be well.”

This chapter, and indeed the whole of this appendix, may be considered nothing more or less than an apology for my favourite way of spending my summer outing.

Now there are no doubt thousands who would gladly follow my example, and become for a portion of the year lady or gentlemen gipsies, did not circumstances over which they have no control raise insuperable barriers between them and a realisation of their wishes. For these I can only express my sorrow. On the other hand, I know there are many people who have both leisure and means at command, people who are perhaps bored with all ordinary ways of travelling for pleasure; people, mayhap, who suffer from debility of nerves, from indigestion, and from that disease of modern times we call ennui, which so often precedes a thorough break-up and a speedy march to the grave. It is for the benefit of these I write my appendix; it is to them I most cordially dedicate it.

There may be some who, having read thus far, may say to themselves:—

“I feel tired and bored with the worry of the ordinary everyday method of travelling, rushing along in stuffy railway carriages, residing in crowded hotels, dwelling in hackneyed seaside towns, following in the wake of other travellers to Scotland or the Continent, over-eating and over-drinking; I feel tired of ball, concert, theatre, and at homes, tired of scandal, tired of the tinselled show and the businesslike insincerity of society, and I really think I am not half well. And if ennui, as doctors say, does lead the way to the grave, I do begin to think I’m going there fast enough. I wonder if I am truly getting ill, or old, or something; and if a complete change would do me good?” I would make answer thus:—You may be getting ill, or you may be getting old, or both at once, for remember age is not to be reckoned by years, and nothing ages one sooner than boredom and ennui. But if there be any doubts in your mind as regards the state of your health, and seeing that ennui does not weaken any one organ more than another, but that its evil effects are manifested in a deterioration of every organ and portion of the body and tissues at once, let us consider for a moment what health really is.

It was Emerson, I think, who said, “Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.”

There is a deal of truth underlying that sentence. To put it in my own homely way: if a young man, or a middle-aged one either, while spending a day in the country, with the fresh breezes of heaven blowing on his brow, with the larks a-quiver with song in the bright sunshine, and all nature rejoicing,—I tell you that if such an individual, not being a cripple, can pass a five-barred gate without an inclination to vault over it, he cannot be in good health.

Will that scale suit you to measure your health against?

Nay, but to be more serious, let me quote the words of that prince of medical writers, the late lamented Sir Thomas Watson, Bart:—

“Health is represented in the natural or standard condition of the living body. It is not easy to express that condition in a few words, nor is it necessary. My wish is to be intelligible rather than scholastic, and I should puzzle myself as well as you, were I to attempt to lay down a strict and scientific definition of what is meant by the term ‘health.’ It is sufficient for our purpose to say that it implies freedom from pain and sickness; freedom also from all those changes in the natural fabric of the body, that endanger life or impede the easy and effectual exercise of the vital functions. It is plain that health does not signify any fixed and immutable condition of the body. The standard of health varies in different persons, according to age, sex, and original constitution; and in the same person even, from week to week or from day to day, within certain limits it may shift and librate. Neither does health necessarily imply the integrity of all the bodily organs. It is not incompatible with great and permanent alterations, nor even with the loss of parts that are not vital—as of an arm, a leg, or an eye. If we can form and fix in our minds a clear conception of the state of health, we shall have little difficulty in comprehending what is meant by disease, which consists in some deviation from that state—some uneasy or unnatural sensation of which the patient is aware; some embarrassment of function, perceptible by himself or by others; or some unsafe though hidden condition of which he may be unconscious; some mode, in short, of being, or of action, or of feeling different from those which are proper to health.”

Can medicine restore the health of those who are threatened with a break-up, whose nerves are shaken, whose strength has been failing for some time past, when it seems to the sufferer—to quote the beautiful words of the Preacher—the days have already come when you find no pleasure in them; when you feel as if the light of the sun and the moon and the stars are darkened, that the silver cord is loosed, the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher broken at the fountain?

No, no, no! a thousand times no. Medicine, tonic or otherwise, never, alone, did, or could, cure the deadly ailment called ennui. You want newness of life, you want perfect obedience for a time to the rules of hygiene, and exercise above all.

Now I do not for a moment mean to say that caravanning is the very best form of exercise one can have. Take your own sort, the kind that best pleases you. But, for all that, experience leads me to maintain that no life separates a man more from his former self, or gives him a better chance of regeneration of the most complete kind, than that of the gentleman gipsy.

Take my own case as an example. I am what is called a spare man, though weighing eleven stone odd to a height of five feet nine. I am spare, but when well as wiry and hard as an Arab.

I had an unusually stiff winter’s work last season. On my 1,300-mile caravan tour I had assuredly laid up a store of health that stood me in good stead till nearly April, and I did more literary work than usual. But I began to get weary at last, and lost flesh. I slaved on manfully, that I might get away on my second grand tour, from which I have just returned, after covering ground to the extent of a thousand and odd miles. Well, I started, and as I took a more hilly route, the journey was more fatiguing for us all. We all weighed before starting; six weeks afterwards we weighed again; my coachman had increased one and a half pounds, my valet three pounds, while I, who underwent the greatest fatigue of the three, had put on five pounds. Nor was this all; my heart felt lighter than it had done for years, and I was singing all day long. Though not a young man, I am certainly not an old one, but before starting, while still toiling at the drudgery of the desk’s dull wood, I was ninety-five years of age—in feeling; before I had been six weeks on the road I did not feel forty, or anything like it.

The first fortnight of life in a great caravan like the Wanderer is just a little upsetting; even my coachman felt this. The constant hum of the waggon-wheels, and the jolting—for with the best of springs a two-ton waggon will jolt—shakes the system. It is like living in a mill; but after this you harden up to it, and would not change your modus vivendi for life in a royal palace.

Now I would not dream of insulting the understanding of my readers by presuming that they do not know what the simple rules of hygiene which tend to long life, perfect health, and calm happiness, are. There is hardly a sixteen-year-old schoolboy nowadays who has not got these at his finger-ends; but, unfortunately, if we do not act up to them with a regularity that at length becomes a habit, we are apt to let them slip from our mind; and it is so easy to fall off into a poor condition of health, but not so very easy to pull one’s self together again.

Let me simply enumerate, by way of reminding you, some of the ordinary rules for the maintenance of health. We will then see how far it is possible to carry these out in such a radical change of life as that of an amateur gipsy, living, eating, and sleeping in his caravan, and sometimes, to some extent, roughing it.

The following remarks from one of my books on cycling are very much to the point in the subject I am now discussing, and the very fact of my writing so will prove, I think, that I am willing you should hear both sides of the question, for I know there are people in this world who prefer the life of the bluebottle-fly—fast and merry—to what they deem a slow even if healthful existence. (“Health upon Wheels.” Messrs Iliffe and Co, 98 Fleet Street, London.)

Good habits, I say, may be formed as well as bad ones; not so easily, I grant you, but, being formed, or for a time enforced, they, too, become a kind of second nature.

Some remarks of the author of “Elia” keep running through my head as I write, and for the life of me I cannot help penning them, although they in a certain sense militate against my doctrine of reform. “What?” says the gentle author, “have I gained by health? Intolerable dulness. What by early hours and moderate meals? A total blank.”

I question, however, if Charles Lamb, after so many years spent in the London of his day, had a very great deal of liver left.—If he had, probably it was a very knotty one (cirrhosis) and piebald rather than healthy chocolate brown.

Now I should be sorry indeed if I left my readers to infer that, after a reckless life up to the age say of forty, forty-five, or fifty, a decided reformation of habits will so far rejuvenate a man that he shall become quite as healthy and strong as he might have been had he spent his days in a more rational manner; one cannot have his cake and eat it too, but better late than never; he can by care save the morsel of cake he has left, instead of throwing it to the dogs and going hot foot after it.

Every severe illness, no matter how well we get over it, detracts from our length of days: how much more then must twenty or more years of a fast life do so? With our “horse’s constitution” we may come through it all with life, but it will leave its mark, if not externally, internally.

I am perfectly willing that the reader should have both the cons and the pros of the argument, and will even sit in judgment on the statements I have just made, and will myself call upon witnesses that may seem to disprove them.

The first to take the box is your careless, sceptical, happy-go-lucky man, your live-for-to-day-and-bother-to-morrow individual, who states that he really enjoys life, and that he can point to innumerable acquaintances, who go the pace far faster than he does, but who, nevertheless, enjoy perfect health, and are likely to live “till a fly fells them.”

The next witness has not much to say, but he tells a little story—a temperance tale he calls it.

Two very aged men were one time subpoenaed on some case, and appeared in the box before a judge who was well-known as a staunch upholder of the principles of total abstinence. This judge, seeing two such aged beings before him, thought it a capital opportunity of teaching a lesson to those around him.

“How old are you?” he said, addressing the first witness.

“Eighty, and a little over,” was the reply.

“You have led a very temperate life, haven’t you?” said the judge.

“I’ve never tasted spirits, to my knowledge, all my life, sir.”

The judge looked around him, with a pleased smile on his countenance. Then he addressed the other ancient witness, who looked even haler than his companion.

“How old are you, my man?”

“Ninety odd, your worship.”

“Ahem?” said the judge. “You have doubtless led a strictly abstemious life, haven’t you?”

“Strictly abstemious!” replied the old reprobate; “indeed, sir, I haven’t been strictly sober for the last seventy years.”

Diet.—Errors in diet produce dyspepsia, and dyspepsia may be the forerunner of almost any fatal illness. It not only induces disease itself, but the body of the sufferer from this complaint, being at the best but poorly nourished, no matter how fat and fresh he may appear, is more liable to be attacked by any ailment which may be in the air. Dyspepsia really leaves the front door open, so that trouble may walk in.

The chief errors in diet which are apt to bring on chronic indigestion are: 1. Over-rich or over-nutritious diet. 2. Over-eating, from which more die than from over-drinking. 3. Eating too quickly, as one is apt to do when alone, the solvent saliva having thus no time to get properly mingled with the food. 4. The evil habit of taking “nips” before meals, by which means the blood is heated, the salivary glands rendered partially inert, the mucous membrane of the mouth rendered incapable for a time of absorption, and the gastric juices thrown out and wasted before their proper time, that is meal-time. 5. Drinking too much fluid with the meals, and thereby diluting the gastric juices and delaying digestion. 6. Want of daily or tri-weekly change of diet. 7. Irregularity in times of eating.

Drink.—I do not intend discussing the question of temperance. 1. But if stimulants are taken at all, it should never be on an empty stomach. 2. They ought not to be taken at all, if they can be done without. 3. What are called “nightcaps” may induce sleep, but it is by narcotic action, and the sleep is neither sound nor refreshing. The best nightcap is a warm bath and a bottle of soda water, with ten to fifteen grains of pure bicarbonate of soda in it.

Coffee is a refreshing beverage.

Cocoa is both refreshing and nourishing, but too much of it leads to biliousness.

Oatmeal. Water drunk from off a handful or two of this is excellent on the road.

Cream of tartar drink. This should be more popular than it is in summer. A pint of boiling water is poured over a dram and a half of cream of tartar, in which is the juice of a lemon and some of the rind; when cold, especially if iced, it is truly excellent in summer weather. It cools the system, prevents constipation, and assuages thirst.

Ginger-ale or ginger beer is good, but should be taken in moderation.

Tonic drinks often contain deleterious accumulative medicines, and should all be avoided.

Cold tea, if weak, flavoured with lemon-juice, and drunk without sugar, is probably the best drink of the road. But let it be good pure Indian tea.

Baths.—The morning cold sponge bath, especially with a handful or two of sea-salt in it, is bracing, stimulating, and tonic. No one who has once tried it for a week would ever give it up.

The Turkish bath may be taken once a week, or once a fortnight. It gets rid of a deal of the impurities of the blood, and lightens both brain and heart. Whenever one feels dull and mopish, he should indulge in the luxury of a Turkish bath.

Fresh air.—The more of this one has the better, whether by day or by night. Many chronic ailments will yield entirely to a course of ozone-laden fresh air, such as one gets at the seaside, or on the mountain’s brow. Have a proper and scientific plan of ventilating your bedrooms. Ventilators should be both in doors and windows, else one cannot expect perfect health and mental activity. Without air one dies speedily; in bad air he languishes and dies more slowly; in the ordinary air of rooms one exists, but he cannot be said to live; but in pure air one can be as happy and light-hearted as a lark.

Exercise.—This must be pleasurable, or at all events it must be interesting—mind and body must go hand in hand—if exercise is to do any good. It must not be over-fatiguing, and intervals of rest must not be forgotten. Exercise should never be taken in cumbersome clothing.

“Work,” I say in one of my books, “is not exercise.” This may seem strange, but it is true. I tell my patients, “I do not care how much you run about all day at your business, you must take the exercise I prescribe quite independently of your work.” There are perhaps no more hard-working men in the world than the Scottish ploughmen—wearily plodding all day long behind their horses, in wet weather or dry; no sooner, however, has the sun “gane west the loch,” and the day’s work is done, than, after supper and a good wash, those hardy lads assemble in the glen, and not only for one, but often three good hours, keep up the health-giving games for which their nation is so justly celebrated.

Cooking.—Good cooking is essential to health. I do not care how plainly I live, but pray exercise the attribute of mercy. Let my steak or chop be tender and toothsome; my fish or vegetables not overdone, and oh! pray boil me my potatoes well, for without old pomme de terre life to me would be one dreary void.

Now let us see how far the rules of health may be carried out in a caravan like the Wanderer.

First comes early rising. You get up almost with the lark—you are bound to, for there is a deal to be done in a caravan; what with getting breakfast, having the carriage tidied and dusted, the beds stowed away on the roof, dishes washed, stove cleaned, carpets shaken, and pantry swept and washed, eight o’clock comes before you know where you are. And by the time your flowers are rearranged in the vases, and everything so sweet and tidy that you do not mind Royalty itself having a look inside, it will be pretty near nine o’clock, and the horses will be round, the pole shipped, the buckets slung, and all ready for a start. But then you will think early rising the reverse of a hardship, for did you not turn in at ten o’clock? and have you not slept the sweet sleep of the just—or a gentleman gipsy?

The first thing you did when you got up was to have a bath under the tent which your servant prepared for you. Oh that delicious cool sponge bath of a lovely summer’s morning! If you do not join the birds in their song even before you have quite finished rubbing down, it is because you have no music in your soul.

But I mentioned a Turkish bath as a health accessory. Can that be had in a Wanderer caravan? Indeed it can. I have a portable one, and it does not exceed three inches in height, and when put away takes hardly as much space up as a pair of boots does.

The greatest cleanliness is maintainable in a caravan where regularity exists,—cleanliness of person, and cleanliness of the house itself.

As to regularity, this is one of the things one learns to perfection on a gipsy tour extending over months. There can be no comfort without it. Everything in its place must be your motto, and this is a habit which once learned is of the greatest service to one in more civilised life. For the want of regularity causes much worry, and worry is one of the primary causes of illness.

Fresh air.—You are in it all day. Now down in the valley among the woods, or breathing the balmy odours of the pine forests; now high up on the mountain top, and anon by the bracing sea-beach. And at night your ventilators are all open, without a chance of catching cold, so no wonder your sleep is as sweet and dreamless as that of a healthy child.

As to the weather, you are hardly ever exposed. The caravan does not leak, and if you are on the coupé you are protected by the verandah (vide frontispiece).

Exercise.—This you get in abundance, and that too of the most wholesome and exhilarating kind.

Food in the caravan.—Perhaps you have been living too freely before, and having too many courses; all this will be altered when you take to the road. Plainly you must live, and you will soon come to prefer a plain substantial diet.

The first result of your new mode of life—and this you will not be twenty-four hours out before you feel—will be hunger. It does not matter that you had a substantial breakfast at eight o’clock, you will find your way to the cupboard at eleven, and probably for the first time in your life you will find out what a delicious titbit a morsel of bread-and-cheese is. Yes, and I would even forgive you if you washed it down with one tiny glass of mild ale, albeit beer is not the best thing on the road.

At the midday halt you will have luncheon. You can drink your tea cold on the road or warm it in the spirit stove; and when settled for the night in some quiet and peaceful meadow, your servant will speedily cook the dinner, which has been put all ready in the Rippingille stove during the midday halt.

While this is being cooked, in the privacy of the saloon you can play the fiddle or discourse sweet music from the harmonium, or if tired lie on the sofa and read.

I have said that you must live plainly in a caravan. But the word plainly is a term. You may not have French dishes nor twenty courses, but I append extracts from bills of fare of caravan cookery, to show that diet is not necessarily a mere off-put in the Wanderer.

I must, however, premise that I myself did not always bother with so good a menu.

To begin with, here are my cook’s general instructions:—

Always see that the stove is clean and in order. Wipe the tanks thoroughly dry, if any oil is perceptible upon them; trim the wicks, light them, turn down low, place in the proper grooves, and carefully follow instructions given with the stove. When set fairly in, regulate the light by observing the height through the sight holes. Brush out the oven, and then all is ready for a good day’s work. All this will occupy very little time, one-tenth of that generally spent in lighting coal fires and trying to escape the dust and dirt the old-fashioned open range entailed. Next rinse out the kettle, fill with fresh water from the tap, place over one of the burners. Wash your hands, and then get all ready for breakfast. Cut rashers of bacon and slices of bread sufficient for the family requirements. Bring out the eggs, butter, pepper, salt; then the tea-caddy, coffee, etc, with their respective pots; plates, dishes, toast-rack, fish slice, teacup or small basin, and lay on the table near the stove, so that no time may be lost running about when the cooking begins. These instructions apply to all meals. First get the apparatus and material ready, and then begin to cook.

Breakfasts.

I. Toast, poached eggs, tea, coffee, or chocolate.

II. Toast, fried eggs and bacon, or mashed eggs, tea, etc.

III. Oatmeal porridge with butter and creamy milk, followed by a boiled new-laid egg and a rasher, with tea. N.B.—The butter is always the sweetest, and the milk the crème de la crème.

IV. Herrings, devilled melt and roe, toast, tea, etc, eggs bouillés.

V. Mock sausages, boiled eggs, and usual fixings.

VI. Finnan haddocks, poached eggs, and usual fixings. And so on ad libitum.

Eleven o’clock Snacks.

I. Bread or biscuit and cheese with a modicum of beer.

II. Bloater-paste or anchovy-paste, or buttered toast with cold tea.

III. Tongue and ham (potted), turkey and tongue, and fixings.

Luncheons.

The cold joints of yesterday, with hot potatoes, piquant sauces, and chutney; washed down with a cup of delicious chocolate or new milk.

Dinners.

I. Fried cutlets of fish; roast fowls; brown sauce, potatoes, greens, and bread; rice or golden pudding.

II. Spatch cock; minced meat, baked potatoes, green peas; custard.

III. Roast mutton, mashed turnips, potatoes; and fruit pudding.

IV. Rabbit stewed, game in season, vegetables; and sago pudding.

V. Beefsteak and onions, boiled potatoes, cauliflower; pudding.

VI. Salmon à la Reine; cold meat and salad; La Belle pudding.

And so on ad libitum, with wine or beer to suit the taste.

Suppers.

I. If required, a snack of anything handy.

II. Tomatoes forcés (tinned tomatoes if fresh cannot be had), cocoa, toast.

III. Macaroni cheese and toast.

IV. Eggs à la Soyer, toast; or a poached egg on toast. Salad, especially of lettuce, with a modicum of good beer or stout.

A cleverer cook than I could devise a hundred simple dishes for caravan cookery, but I do not think my menu is altogether prison fare.

Ailments Likely to be Benefited by Caravan Life.

I can, of course, only mention a few of these, and it must be distinctly understood that I am not trying to enforce the merits of a new cure. I am but giving my own impressions from my own experience, and if anyone likes to profit by these he may, and welcome.

I. Ennui.

II. Dyspepsia.

III. Debility and enfeeblement of health from overwork, or from worry or grief.

IV. Insomnia.

V. Chronic bronchitis and consumption in its earliest stages.

VI. Bilious habit of system.

VII. Acidity of secretions of stomach, etc.

VIII. All kinds of stomachic ailments.

IX. Giddiness or vertigo.

X. Hysteria.

XI. Headaches and wearying backaches.

XII. Constipated state of system.

XIII. Tendency to embonpoint.

XIV. Neuralgia of certain kinds.

XV. Liver complaints of a chronic kind.

XVI. Threatened kidney mischief.

XVII. Hay fever.

XVIII. Failure of brain power.

XIX. Anaemia or poverty of blood.

XX. Nervousness.

Some of the great factors in the cure of such complaints as the above by life in a caravan for a series of months would be, that perfect rest and freedom from all care which is so calming to shattered nerves, weary brains, and aching hearts. The constant and pleasurable change of scene and change of faces, the regularity of the mode of life, and the delightfully refreshing sleep, born of the fresh air and exercise, which is nearly always obtainable at night.

In concluding this chapter, let me just add that of all modes of enjoying life in summer and autumn I consider—speaking after a somewhat lengthy experience—caravan travelling the healthiest and the best.

Chapter Twenty Nine.

The Cycle as Tender to the Caravan.

“When the spring stirs my blood With the instincts of travel, I can get enough gravel On the old Marlborough road.” Thoreau.

I begin to think, reader, that the plan of putting headlines or verses to chapters, although a very ancient, time-honoured custom, is not such a very excellent one after all.

The verses are written subsequently, of course, after you have finished the chapter, and the difficulty is to get them to fit; you may have some glimmering notion that, once upon a time, some poet or other did say something that would be apropos, but who was it? You get off your easy-chair and yawn and stretch yourself, then lazily make your way to the bookshelf and commence the search among your favourite poets. It is for all the world like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay, and when you do find it, it isn’t half so bright as you thought it would be, only down you jot it in a semi-reckless kind of a way, feeling all the while as if you were a humbug, or committing some sort of a deadly sin.

If this good poet Thoreau had said,—

“When the spring stirs my blood With the instincts of travel, I can get enough exercise On my Marlborough tricycle.”

—Although not metre, it would have been to the point. But the poet did not, so there we are. Nevertheless, the Marlborough is the cycle I have bestridden during my tour this summer, and a sweet wee thing it is. In my caravan tour of 1885 it was the Ranelagh Club I had as tender to the Wanderer, also a good one.

But really, without a cycle, one would sometimes feel lost in caravan travelling. The Wanderer is so large that she cannot turn on narrow roads, so that on approaching a village, where I wish to stay all night, I find it judicious to stop her about a quarter of a mile out and tool on, mounted on the Marlborough, to find out convenient quarters. Then a signal brings the Wanderer on.

Another advantage of having a tender is this. In narrow lanes your valet rides on ahead, and if there really be no room for a trap to pass us, he warns any carriage that may chance to be coming our way.

Take, for example, that ugly climb we had when passing through Slochmuichk, in the Grampians (see illustration). My valet was on ahead, round the corner and on the outlook for coming vehicles, and so had anyone hove in sight a probable accident would have been avoided.

Again, when passing through a town where board schools with their busy bees of boys are numerous, my valet, on the Marlborough tender, comes riding up behind, and accordingly the bees do not have a chance of sticking on to the carriage.

Tramps will, at times, get up and try the drawers behind, but whenever I see a suspicious gang of these worthless loafers, a signal brings the tender flying back, and thus robbery is prevented.

I had the utmost satisfaction once this year in punishing some country louts. Butler, my valet, was innocently riding on about a hundred yards ahead, and no sooner had he passed than the three blackguards commenced stone-throwing. They had no idea then the cycle belonged to the caravan. They had soon after though. I slid quietly off the coupé, whip in hand, and for several seconds I enjoyed the most health-giving exercise. Straight across the face and round the ears I hit as hard as I knew how to. One escaped Scot-free, but two tumbled in the ditch and howled aloud for mercy, which I generously granted—after I got tired. The beauty of the attack was in its suddenness, and those roughs will remember it to their dying day.

But the main pleasure in possessing a cycle lies in the opportunities you have of seeing lovely bits of scenery, and quaint queer old villages, and quaint queer old people, quite out of the beaten track of your grand tour. And it is a pleasure to have a long quiet ride through woods and flowery lanes, of a summer’s evening, after having been in the caravan all day long.

Just let me pick one extract from a book I wrote last year, describing cycling in connection with my grand tour.

(“Rota Vitae, The Cyclist’s Guide to Health and Rational Enjoyment.” Published by Messrs Iliffe and Sturney, 98 Fleet Street, London.)

The little work is really a bombshell, as ancient divines used to call their tracts, aimed at the senseless making of records by cyclists who go flying from one end of the kingdom to the other, and come back as wise as they went, and infinitely more tired.

Haddington and round it.

Everywhere you go around Haddington, you will be charmed with the character and beauty of the scenery, and its great variety.

Inland, are there not grand old hills and wild woodlands, lonely straths and glens, and splendid sheets of water? Is there not, too, the finest tree scenery that exists anywhere in Scotland? Yes! and the very wild flowers and hedgerows themselves would repay one for all the toil incurred in rattling over somewhat stony roads, and climbing lofty braelands. Then, towards the east, you come in sight of the sea itself—the ever-beautiful, ever-changing sea. Go farther east still, go to the coast itself, and you will find yourself among such rock scenery as can hardly be beaten, expect by that in Skye or the Orkneys. When tired of wandering on the shore, and, if a naturalist, studying and admiring the thousand-and-one strange objects around you, why, you may go and hobnob with some of the fisher folks—male or female, take your choice—they will amuse, ay, and mayhap instruct you, while some of the oldest of them will tell you tales of the old smuggling days, and life in the caves, that will heat anything you ever read in books.

If you should stay at Cockburnspath all night you will not forget to visit the seashore and the caves. Those caves have a history, too; they were connected with the troublesome times of “auld lang syne,” and later still, they came in remarkably handy for bold smugglers, who, before the days of smart revenue cutters, made use of them as temporary storehouses when running a cargo on shore.

How lovely the sea looks on a summer’s day from the hills around here! How enchanting the woods! How wild! How quiet! You will be inclined to live and linger among scenery such as this, book in hand, perhaps, on a bank of wild thyme and bluebells, and if you do notice some blue-coated bicyclist, with red perspiring face and dusty tout ensemble, speeding past on his way to John-o’-Groat’s, how you will pity him! Farther west is the romantic Dunglass Dene, which you will visit without fail. Says Scott:

“The cliffs here rear their haughty head High o’er the river’s darksome bed; Here trees to every crevice clung, And o’er the dell their branches hung: And there, all splintered and uneven, The shivered rocks ascend to heaven; Oft, too, the ivy swathed their breast, And wreathed their garland round their crest; Or from the spires bade loosely flare Its tendrils in the summer air.”