Plum Pudding by Christopher Morley

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We stood at the front door of the baggage car, and in a pleasant
haze of the faculties we thought of a number of things. We thought
of some books we had seen up on East Fifty-ninth Street, in that
admirable row of old bookshops, particularly Mowry Saben's volume of
essays, "The Spirit of Life," which we are going back to buy one of
these days; so please let it alone. We then got out a small
note-book in which we keep memoranda of books we intend to read and
pored over it zealously. Just for fun, we will tell you three of
the titles we have noted there:

"The Voyage of the Hoppergrass," by E.L. Pearson.
"People and Problems," by Fabian Franklin.
"Broken Stowage," by David W. Bone.

But most of all we thought, in a vague sentimental way, about that
pleasant Long Island country through which the engine was haling and
hallooing all those carloads of audacious commuters.

Only the other day we heard a wise man say that he did not care for
Long Island, because one has to travel through a number of
half-built suburbs before getting into real country. We felt, when
he said it, that it would be impossible for us to tell him how much
some of those growing suburbs mean to us, for we have lived in them.
There is not one of those little frame dwellings that doesn't give
us a thrill as we buzz past them. If you voyage from Brooklyn, as we
do, you will have noticed two stations (near Jamaica) called
Clarenceville and Morris Park. Now we have never got off at those
stations, though we intend to some day. But in those rows of small
houses and in sudden glimpses of modest tree-lined streets and
corner drug stores we can see something that we are not subtle
enough to express. We see it again in the scrap of green park by the
station at Queens, and in the brave little public library near the
same station--which we cannot see from the train, though we often
try to; but we know it is there, and probably the same kindly lady
librarian and the children borrowing books. We see it again--or we
did the other day--in a field at Mineola where a number of small
boys were flying kites in the warm, clean, softly perfumed air of a
July afternoon. We see it in the vivid rows of colour in the
florist's meadow at Floral Park. We don't know just what it is, but
over all that broad tract of hardworking suburbs there is a secret
spirit of practical and persevering decency that we somehow
associate with the soul of America.

We see it with the eye of a lover, and we know that it is good.

Having got as far as this, we took the trouble to count all the
words up to this point. The total is exactly 1100.

[Illustration]

SOME INNS

The other evening we went with Titania to a ramshackle country hotel
which calls itself _The Mansion House_, looking forward to a fine
robust meal. It was a transparent, sunny, cool evening, and when we
saw on the bill of fare _half broiled chicken_, we innocently
supposed that the word _half_ was an adjective modifying the
compound noun, _broiled-chicken_. Instead, to our sorrow and
disappointment, it proved to be an adverb modifying _broiled_ (we
hope we parse the matter correctly). At any rate, the wretched fowl
was blue and pallid, a little smoked on the exterior, raw and sinewy
within, and an affront to the whole profession of innkeeping.
Whereupon, in the days that followed, looking back at our fine mood
of expectancy as we entered that hostelry, and its pitiable collapse
when the miserable travesty of victuals was laid before us, we fell
to thinking about some of the inns we had known of old time where
we had feasted not without good heart.

To speak merely by sudden memory, for instance, there was the fine
old hotel in Burlington, Vermont--is it called the _Van Ness
House_?--where we remember a line of cane-bottomed chairs on a long
shady veranda, where one could look out and see the town simmering
in that waft of hot and dazzling sunshine that pours across Lake
Champlain in the late afternoon: and _The Black Lion_, Lavenham,
Suffolk; where (unless we confuse it with a pub in Bury St. Edmunds
where we had lunch), there was, in the hallway, a very fine old
engraving called "Pirates Decoying a Merchantman," in which one
pirate, dressed in woman's clothes, stood up above the bulwarks
waving for assistance, while the cutlassed ruffians crouched below
ready to do their bloody work when the other ship came near enough.
Nor have we forgotten _The Saracen's Head_, at Ware, whence we went
exploring down the little river Lea on Izaak Walton's trail; nor
_The Swan_ at Bibury in Gloucestershire, hard by that clear green
water the Colne; nor another _Swan_ at Tetsworth in Oxfordshire,
which one reaches after bicycling over the beechy slope of the
Chilterns, and where, in the narrow taproom, occurred the fabled
encounter between a Texas Rhodes Scholar logged with port wine and
seven Oxfordshire yokels who made merry over his power of carrying
the red blood of the grape.

Our friend C.F.B., while we were meditating these golden matters,
wrote to us that he is going on a walking or bicycling trip in
England next summer, and asks for suggestions. We advise him to get
a copy of Muirhead's "England" (the best general guidebook we have
seen) and look up his favourite authors in the index. That will
refer him to the places associated with them, and he can have rare
sport in hunting them out. There is no way of pilgrimage so pleasant
as to follow the spoor of a well-loved writer. Referring to our
black note-book, in which we keep memoranda of a modest pilgrimage
we once made to places mentioned by two of our heroes, viz., Boswell
and R.L.S., we think that if we were in C.F.B.'s shoes, one of the
regions we would be most anxious to revisit would be Dove Dale, in
Derbyshire. This exquisite little valley is reached from Ashbourne,
where we commend the _Green Man Inn_ (visited more than once by
Doctor Johnson and Boswell). This neighbourhood also has memories of
George Eliot, and of Izaak Walton, who used to go fishing in the
little river Dove; his fishing house is still there. Unfortunately,
when we were in those parts we did not have sense enough to see the
Manyfold, a curious stream (a tributary of the Dove) which by its
habit of running underground caused Johnson and Boswell to argue
about miracles.

Muirhead's book will give C.F.B. sound counsel about the inns of
that district, which are many and good. The whole region of the
Derbyshire Peak is rarely visited by the foreign tourist. Of it,
Doctor Johnson, with his sturdy prejudice, said: "He who has seen
Dove Dale has no need to visit the Highlands." The metropolis of
this moorland is Buxton: unhappily we did not make a note of the inn
we visited in that town; but we have a clear recollection of
claret, candlelight, and reading "Weir of Hermiston" in bed; also a
bathroom with hot water, not too common in the cheap hostelries we
frequented.

We can only wish for the good C.F.B. as happy an evening as we spent
(with our eccentric friend Mifflin McGill) bicycling from the
_Newhaven Inn_ in a July twilight. The _Newhaven Inn_, which is only
a vile kind of meagre roadhouse at a lonely fork in the way (where
one arm of the signpost carries the romantic legend "To Haddon
Hall"), lies between Ashbourne and Buxton. But it is marked on all
the maps, so perhaps it has an honourable history. The sun was dying
in red embers over the Derbyshire hills as we pedalled along. Life,
liquor, and literature lay all before us; certes, we had no thought
of ever writing a daily column! And finally, after our small
lanterns were lit and cast their little fans of brightness along the
flowing road, we ascended a rise and saw Buxton in the valley below,
twinkling with lights--

"_And when even dies, the million-tinted,
And the night has come, and planets glinted
Lo, the valley hollow
Lamp-bestarred!_"

Nor were all these ancient inns (to which our heart wistfully
returns) on British soil. There was the _Hotel de la Tour_, in
Montjoie, a quaint small town somewhere in that hilly region of the
Ardennes along the border between Luxemburg and Belgium. Our memory
is rather vague as to Montjoie, for we got there late one evening,
after more than seventy up-and-down miles on a bicycle, hypnotic
with weariness and the smell of pine trees and a great warm wind
that had buffeted us all day. But we have a dim, comfortable
remembrance of a large clean bedroom, unlighted, in which we duskily
groped and found no less than three huge beds among which we had to
choose; and we can see also a dining room brilliantly papered in
scarlet, with good old prints on the walls and great wooden beams
overhead. Two bottles of ice-cold beer linger in our thought: and
there was some excellent work done on a large pancake, one of those
durable fleshy German _Pfannkuchen_. For the odd part of it was
(unless our memory is wholly amiss) Montjoie was then (1912)
supposed to be part of Germany, and they pronounced it Mon-yowey.
But the Reich must have felt that this was not permanent, for they
had not Germanized either the name of the town or of the hostelry.

And let us add, in this affectionate summary, _The Lion_--(_Hotel
zum Loewen_)--at Sigmaringen, that delicious little haunt on the
upper Danube, where the castle sits on a stony jut overlooking the
river. Algernon Blackwood, in one of his superb tales of fantasy (in
the volume called "The Listener") has told a fascinating gruesome
story of the Danube, describing a sedgy, sandy, desolate region
below the Hungarian border where malevolent inhuman forces were
apparent and resented mortal intrusion. But we cannot testify to
anything sinister in the bright water of the Danube in the flow of
its lovely youth, above Sigmaringen. And if there were any evil
influences, surely at Sigmaringen (the ancient home and origin of
the Hohenzollerns, we believe) they would have shown themselves. In
those exhilarating miles of valley, bicycled in company with a
blithe vagabond who is now a professor at Cornell, we learned why
the waltz was called "The Blue Danube." So heavenly a tint of
transparent blue-green we have never seen elsewhere, the hurrying
current sliding under steep crags of gray and yellow stone, whitened
upon sudden shallows into long terraces of broken water. There was a
wayside chapel with painted frescoes and Latin inscriptions (why
didn't we make a note of them, we wonder?) and before it a cold gush
sluicing from a lion's mouth into a stone basin. A blue crockery mug
stood on the rim, and the bowl was spotted with floating petals from
pink and white rose-bushes. We can still see our companion, tilting
a thirsty bearded face as he drank, outlined on such a backdrop of
pure romantic beauty as only enriches irresponsible youth in its
commerce with the world. The river bends sharply to the left under a
prodigious cliff, where is some ancient castle or religious house.
There he stands, excellent fellow, forever (in our memory) holding
that blue mug against a Maxfield Parrish scene.

Just around that bend, if you are discreet, a bathe can be
accomplished, and you will reach the _Lion_ by supper time, vowing
the Danube the loveliest of all streams.

Of the _Lion_ itself, now that we compress the gland of memory more
closely, we have little to report save a general sensation of
cheerful comfort. That in itself is favourable: the bad inns are
always accurately tabled in mind. But stay--here is a picture that
unexpectedly presents itself. On that evening (it was July 15, 1912)
there was a glorious little girl, about ten years old, taking supper
at the _Lion_ with her parents. Through the yellow shine of the
lamps she suddenly reappears to us, across the dining room--rather a
more luxurious dining room than the two wayfarers were accustomed to
visit. We can see her straight white frock, her plump brown legs in
socks (not reaching the floor as she sat), her tawny golden hair
with a red ribbon. The two dusty vagabonds watched her, and her
important-looking adults, from afar. We have only the vaguest
impression of her father: he was erect and handsome and not
untouched with pride. (Heavens, were they some minor offshoot of the
Hohenzollern tribe?) We can see the head waiter smirking near their
table. Across nine years and thousands of miles they still radiate
to us a faint sense of prosperity and breeding; and the child was
like a princess in a fairy-tale. Ah, if only it had all been a
fairy-tale. Could we but turn back the clock to that summer evening
when the dim pine-alleys smelled so resinous on the Muehlberg, turn
back the flow of that quick blue river, turn back history itself and
rewrite it in chapters fit for the clear eyes of that child we saw.

Well, we are growing grievous: it is time to go out and have some
cider. There are many other admirable inns we might soliloquize--The
_Seven Stars_ in Rotterdam (Molensteeg 19, "nabij het Postkantoor");
_Gibson's Hotel_, Rutland Square, Edinburgh ("Well adapted for
Marriages," says its card); the _Hotel Davenport_, Stamford,
Connecticut, where so many palpitating playwrights have sat
nervously waiting for the opening performance; the _Tannhaeuser
Hotel_ in Heidelberg, notable for the affability of the
chambermaids. Perhaps you will permit us to close by quoting a
description of an old Irish tavern, from that queer book "The Life
of John Buncle, Esq." (1756). This inn bore the curious name _The
Conniving House_:

The _Conniving-House_ (as the gentlemen of Trinity called it in
my time, and long after) was a little public house, kept by
_Jack Macklean_, about a quarter of a mile beyond Rings-end, on
the top of the beach, within a few yards of the sea. Here we
used to have the finest fish at all times; and in the season,
green peas, and all the most excellent vegetables. The ale here
was always extraordinary, and everything the best; which, with
its delightful situation, rendered it a delightful place of a
summer's evening. Many a delightful evening have I passed in
this pretty thatched house with the famous _Larrey Grogan_, who
played on the bagpipes extreme well; dear _Jack Lattin_,
matchless on the fiddle, and the most agreeable of companions;
that ever charming young fellow, _Jack Wall_ ... and many other
delightful fellows; who went in the days of their youth to the
shades of eternity. When I think of them and their evening
songs--_We will go to Johnny Macklean's--to try if his ale be
good or no_, etc., and that years and infirmities begin to
oppress me--What is life!

There is a fine, easy, mellow manner of writing, worthy the subject.
And we--we conclude with honest regret. Even to write down the
names of all the inns where we have been happy would be the
pleasantest possible way of spending an afternoon. But we advise you
to be cautious in adopting our favourites as stopping places. Some
of them are very humble.

[Illustration]

THE CLUB IN HOBOKEN

The advertisement ran as follows:

Schooner _Hauppauge_
FOR SALE
By U.S. Marshal,
April 26, 1 P.M.,
Pier G, Erie R.R.,
Weehawken, N.J.
Built at Wilmington, N.C., 1918; net
tonnage 1,295; length 228; equipped with
sails, tackle, etc.

This had taken the eye of the Three Hours for Lunch Club. The club's
interest in nautical matters is well known and it is always looking
forward to the day when it will be able to command a vessel of its
own. Now it would be too much to say that the club expected to be
able to buy the _Hauppauge_ (the first thing it would have done, in
that case, would have been to rename her). For it was in the slack
and hollow of the week--shall we say, the bight of the week?--just
midway between pay-days. But at any rate, thought the club, we can
look her over, which will be an adventure in itself; and we can see
just how people behave when they are buying a schooner, and how
prices are running, so that when the time comes we will be more
experienced. Besides, the club remembered the ship auction scene in
"The Wrecker" and felt that the occasion might be one of most
romantic excitement.

It is hard, it is very hard, to have to admit that the club was
foiled. It had been told that at Cortlandt Street a ferry bound for
Weehawken might be found; but when Endymion and the Secretary
arrived there, at 12:20 o'clock, they learned that the traffic to
Weehawken is somewhat sparse. Next boat at 2:40, said a sign. They
hastened to the Lackawanna ferry at Barclay Street, thinking that by
voyaging to Hoboken and then taking a car they might still be in
time. But it was not to be. When the _Ithaca_ docked, just south of
the huge red-blotched profile of the rusty rotting _Leviathan_, it
was already 1 o'clock. The _Hauppauge_, they said to themselves, is
already on the block, and if we went up there now to study her, we
would be regarded as impostors.

But the club is philosophic. One Adventure is very nearly as good as
another, and they trod ashore at Hoboken with light hearts. It was a
day of tender and untroubled sunshine. They had a queer sensation of
being in foreign lands. Indeed, the tall tragic funnels of the
_Leviathan_ and her motionless derelict masts cast a curious shadow
of feeling over that region. For the great ship, though blameless
herself, seems a thing of shame, a remembrance of days and deeds
that soiled the simple creed of the sea. Her great shape and her
majestic hull, pitiably dingy and stark, are yet plainly conscious
of sin. You see it in every line of her as she lies there, with the
attitude of a great dog beaten and crouching. You wonder how she
would behave if she were towed out on the open bright water of the
river, under that clear sky, under the eyes of other ships going
about their affairs with the self-conscious rectitude and pride that
ships have. For ships are creatures of intense caste and
self-conscious righteousness. They rarely forgive a fallen
sister--even when she has fallen through no fault of her own.
Observe the _Nieuw Amsterdam_ as she lies, very solid and spick, a
few piers above. Her funnel is gay with bright green stripes; her
glazed promenade deck is white and immaculate. But, is there not
just a faint suggestion of smugness in her mien? She seems thanking
the good old Dutch Deity of cleanliness and respectability that she
herself is not like this poor trolloping giantess, degraded from the
embrace of ocean and the unblemished circle of the sea.

That section of Hoboken waterfront, along toward the green
promontory crowned by Stevens Institute, still has a war-time
flavour. The old Hamburg-American line piers are used by the Army
Transport Service, and in the sunshine a number of soldiers, off
duty, were happily drowsing on a row of two-tiered beds set outdoors
in the April pleasantness. There was a racket of bugles, and a squad
seemed to be drilling in the courtyard. Endymion and the Secretary,
after sitting on a pier-end watching some barges, and airing their
nautical views in a way they would never have done had any pukka
seafaring men been along, were stricken with the very crisis of
spring fever and lassitude. They considered the possibility of
hiring one of the soldiers' two-tiered beds for the afternoon.
Perhaps it is the first two syllables of Hoboken's name that make it
so desperately debilitating to the wayfarer in an April noonshine.
Perhaps it was a kind of old nostalgia, for the Secretary remembered
that sailormen's street as it had been some years ago, when he had
been along there in search of schooners of another sort.

But anatomizing their anguish, these creatures finally decided that
it might not be spring fever, but merely hunger. They saw the statue
of the late Mr. Sloan of the Lackawanna Railroad--Sam Sloan, the
bronze calls him, with friendly familiarity. The aspiring forelock
of that statue, and the upraised finger of Samuel Sullivan Cox ("The
Letter Carriers' Friend") in Astor Place, the club considers two of
the most striking things in New York statuary. Mr. Pappanicholas,
who has a candy shop in the high-spirited building called Duke's
House, near the ferry terminal, must be (Endymion thought) some
relative of Santa Claus. Perhaps he _is_ Santa Claus, and the club
pondered on the quite new idea that Santa Claus has lived in Hoboken
all these years and no one had guessed it. The club asked a friendly
policeman if there were a second-hand bookstore anywhere near. "Not
that I know of," he said. But they did find a stationery store where
there were a number of popular reprints in the window, notably "The
Innocence of Father Brown," and Andrew Lang's "My Own Fairy Book."

But lunch was still to be considered. The club is happy to add The
American Hotel, Hoboken, to its private list of places where it has
been serenely happy. Consider corned beef hash, with fried egg,
excellent, for 25 cents. Consider rhubarb pie, quite adequate, for
10 cents. Consider the courteous and urbane waiter. In one corner of
the dining room was the hotel office, with a large array of push
buttons communicating with the bedrooms. The club, its imagination
busy, conceived that these were for the purpose of awakening
seafaring guests early in the morning, so as not to miss their ship.
If we were, for instance, second mate of the _Hauppauge_, and came
to port in Hoboken, The American Hotel would be just the place where
we would want to put up.

That brings us back to the _Hauppauge_. We wonder who bought her,
and how much he paid; and why she carries the odd name of that Long
Island village? If he would only invite us over to see her--and tell
us how to get there!

[Illustration]

THE CLUB AT ITS WORST

A barbecue and burgoo of the Three Hours for Lunch Club was held,
the club's medical adviser acting as burgoomaster and Mr. Lawton
Mackall, the managing director, as jest of honour. The news that
Lawton was at large spread rapidly through the city, and the club
was trailed for some distance by an infuriated agent of the Society
for the Deracination of Puns. But Lawton managed to kick over his
traces, and the club safely gained the quiet haven of a Cedar Street
chophouse. Here, when the members were duly squeezed into a stall,
the Doctor gazed cheerfully upon Endymion and the Secretary who held
the inward places. "Now is my chance," he cried, "to kill two bards
with one stone."

Lawton, says the stenographic report, was in excellent form, and
committed a good deal of unforgivable syntax. He was somewhat
apprehensive when he saw the bill of fare inscribed "Ye Olde Chop
House," for he asserts that the use of the word "Ye" always involves
extra overhead expense--and a quotation from Shakespeare on the back
of the menu, he doubted, might mean a couvert charge. But he was
distinctly cheered when the kidneys and bacon arrived--a long strip
of bacon gloriously balanced on four very spherical and
well-lubricated kidneys. Smiling demurely, even blandly, Lawton
rolled his sheave of bacon to and fro upon its kidneys. "This is the
first time I ever saw bacon with ball bearings," he ejaculated. He
gazed with the eye of a connoisseur upon the rather candid works of
art hanging over the club's corner. He said they reminded him of Mr.
Coles Phillips's calf-tones. The Doctor was speaking of having
read an interesting dispatch by Mr. Grasty in the _Times_. "I
understand," said Lawton, "that he is going to collect some of his
articles in a book, to be called 'Leaves of Grasty'."

Duly ambered with strict and cloudy cider, the meal progressed,
served with humorous comments by the waitress whom the club calls
the Venus of Mealo. The motto of the club is _Tres Horas Non Numero
Nisi Serenas_, and as the afternoon was still juvenile the gathering
was transferred to the waterfront. Passing onto the pier, Lawton
gazed about him with admirable naivete. Among the piles of freight
were some agricultural machines. "Ha," cried the managing director,
"this, evidently, is where the Piers Plowman works!" The club's
private yacht, white and lovely, lay at her berth, and in the
Doctor's cabin the members proceeded to the serious discussion of
literature. Lawton, however, seemed nervous. Cargo was being put
aboard the ship, and ever and anon there rose a loud rumbling of
donkey engines. The occasional hurrying roar of machinery seemed to
make Lawton nervous, for he said apprehensively that he feared
someone was rushing the growler. In the corridor outside the
Doctor's quarters a group of stewardesses were violently
altercating, and Lawton remarked that a wench can make almost as
much noise as a winch. On the whole, however, he admired the ship
greatly, and was taken with the club's plans for going cruising. He
said he felt safer after noting that the lifeboats were guaranteed
to hold forty persons with cubic feet.

By this time, all sense of verbal restraint had been lost, and the
club (if we must be candid) concluded its session by chanting, not
without enjoyment, its own sea chantey, which runs as follows:--

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