Pomona\'s Travels by Frank R. Stockton
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Frank R. Stockton >> Pomona\'s Travels
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13 _POMONA'S TRAVELS_
_A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her former
Handmaiden_
[Illustration]
POMONA'S TRAVELS
[Illustration]
BY
FRANK R. STOCKTON
ILLUSTRATED
BY
A.B. FROST
1894
[Illustration]
_In Uniform Binding_
_RUDDER GRANGE_
_Illustrated by A.B. Frost._
_POMONA'S TRAVELS_
_Illustrated by A.B. Frost._
[Illustration: CONTENTS]
LETTER ONE.
_Wanted,--a Vicarage_
LETTER TWO.
_On the Four-in-hand_
LETTER THREE.
_Jone overshadows the Waiter_
LETTER FOUR.
_The Cottage at Chedcombe_
LETTER FIVE.
_Pomona takes a Lodger_
LETTER SIX.
_Pomona expounds Americanisms_
LETTER SEVEN.
_The Hayfield_
LETTER EIGHT.
_Jone teaches Young Ladies how to Rake_
LETTER NINE.
_A Runaway Tricycle_
LETTER TEN.
_Pomona slides Backward down the Slope of the Centuries_
LETTER ELEVEN.
_On the Moors_
LETTER TWELVE.
_Stag-hunting on a Tricycle_
LETTER THIRTEEN.
_The Green Placard_
LETTER FOURTEEN.
_Pomona and her David Llewellyn_
LETTER FIFTEEN.
_Hogs and the Fine Arts_
LETTER SIXTEEN.
_With Dickens in London_
LETTER SEVENTEEN.
_Buxton and the Bath Chairs_
LETTER EIGHTEEN.
_Mr. Poplington as Guide_
LETTER NINETEEN.
_Angelica and Pomeroy_
LETTER TWENTY.
_The Countess of Mussleby_
LETTER TWENTY-ONE.
_Edinboro' Town_
LETTER TWENTY-TWO.
_Pomona and her Gilly_
LETTER TWENTY-THREE.
_They follow the Lady of the Lake_
LETTER TWENTY-FOUR.
_Comparisons become Odious to Pomona_
LETTER TWENTY-FIVE.
_The Family-Tree-Man_
LETTER TWENTY-SIX.
_Searching for Dorkminsters_
LETTER TWENTY-SEVEN.
_Their Country and their Custom House_
[Illustration]
[Illustration: List of Illustrations]
_Title Page_
_Vignette Heading to Table of Contents_
_Tail piece to Table of Contents_
_Vignette Heading to List of Illustrations_
_Tail-piece to List of Illustrations_
_Heading and Initial Letter_
_"Boy, go order me a four-in-hand"_
_The Landlady with an "underdone visage"_
_"I looked at the ladder and at the top front seat"_
_"Down came a shower of rain"_
_"Ask the waiter what the French words mean"_
_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
_Jone giving an order_
_The Carver_
_"You Americans are the speediest people"_
_"That was our house"_
_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
_"The young lady who keeps the bar"_
_"I see signs of weakening in the social boom"_
_At the Abbey_
_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
_"There, with the bar lady and the Marie Antoinette chambermaid, was
Jone"_
_"At last I did get on my feet"_
_"Rise, Sir Jane Puddle"_
_Vignette Heading and initial Letter_
_"In an instant I was free"_
_"If you was a man I'd break your head"_
_"I'm a Home Ruler"_
_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
_"And with a screech I dashed at those hogs like a steam engine"_
_"In the winter, when the water is frozen, they can't get over"_
_"Who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington!"_
_Mr. Poplington looking for luggage_
_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
_Pomona encourages Jonas_
_"Stop, lady, and I'll get out"_
_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
_"Your brother is over there"_
_To the Cat and Fiddle_
_"And did you like Chedcombe?"_
_"Jone looked at him and said that was the Highland costume"_
_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
_"I didn't say anything, and taking the pole in both hands I gave it a
wild twirl over my head"_
_Pomona drinking it in_
_Vignette Heading and Initial Letter_
_"A person who was a family-tree-man"_
_"This might be a Dorkminster"_
_Jone didn't carry any hand-bag, and I had only a little one_
[Illustration]
* * * * *
POMONA'S TRAVELS
This series of letters, written by Pomona of "Rudder Grange" to her
former mistress, Euphemia, may require a few words of introduction.
Those who have not read the adventures and experiences of Pomona in
"Rudder Grange" should be told that she first appeared in that story as
a very young and illiterate girl, fond of sensational romances, and
with some out-of-the-way ideas in regard to domestic economy and the
conventions of society. This romantic orphan took service in the
"Rudder Grange" family, and as the story progressed she grew up into a
very estimable young woman, and finally married Jonas, the son of a
well-to-do farmer. Even after she came into possession of a husband and
a daughter Pomona did not lose her affection for her former employers.
About a year before the beginning of the travels described in these
letters Jonas's father died and left a comfortable little property,
which placed Pomona and her husband in independent circumstances. The
ideas and ambitions of this eccentric but sensible young woman
enlarged with her fortune. As her daughter was now going to school,
Pomona was seized with the spirit of emulation, and determined as far
as was possible to make the child's education an advantage to herself.
Some of the books used by the little girl at school were carefully and
earnestly studied by her mother, and as Jonas joined with hearty
good-will in the labors and pleasures of this system of domestic study,
the family standard of education was considerably raised. In the
quick-witted and observant Pomona the improvement showed itself
principally in her methods of expression, and although she could not be
called at the time of these travels an educated woman, she was by no
means an ignorant one.
When the daughter was old enough she was allowed to accept an
invitation from her grandmother to spend the summer in the country, and
Pomona determined that it was the duty of herself and husband to avail
themselves of this opportunity for foreign travel.
Accordingly, one fine spring morning, Pomona, still a young woman, and
Jonas, not many years older, but imbued with a semi-pathetic
complaisance beyond his years, embarked for England and Scotland, to
which countries it was determined to limit their travels. The letters
which follow were written in consequence of the earnest desire of
Euphemia to have a full account of the travels and foreign impressions
of her former handmaiden. Pruned of dates, addresses, signatures, and
of many personal and friendly allusions, these letters are here
presented as Pomona wrote them to Euphemia.
_Letter Number One_
[Illustration]
LONDON
The first thing Jone said to me when I told him I was going to write
about what I saw and heard was that I must be careful of two things. In
the first place, I must not write a lot of stuff that everybody ought
to be expected to know, especially people who have travelled
themselves; and in the second place, I must not send you my green
opinions, but must wait until they were seasoned, so that I can see
what they are good for before I send them.
"But if I do that," said I, "I will get tired of them long before they
are seasoned, and they will be like a bundle of old sticks that I
wouldn't offer to anybody." Jone laughed at that, and said I might as
well send them along green, for, after all, I wasn't the kind of a
person to keep things until they were seasoned, to see if I liked them.
"That's true," said I, "there's a great many things, such as husbands
and apples, that I like a good deal better fresh than dry. Is that all
the advice you've got to give?"
"For the present," said he; "but I dare say I shall have a good deal
more as we go along."
"All right," said I, "but be careful you don't give me any of it green.
Advice is like gooseberries, that's got to be soft and ripe, or else
well cooked and sugared, before they're fit to take into anybody's
stomach."
Jone was standing at the window of our sitting-room when I said this,
looking out into the street. As soon as we got to London we took
lodgings in a little street running out of the Strand, for we both want
to be in the middle of things as long as we are in this conglomerate
town, as Jone calls it. He says, and I think he is about right, that it
is made up of half a dozen large cities, ten or twelve towns, at least
fifty villages, more than a hundred little settlements, or hamlets, as
they call them here, and about a thousand country houses scattered
along around the edges; and over and above all these are the
inhabitants of a large province, which, there being no province to put
them into, are crammed into all the cracks and crevices so as to fill
up the town and pack it solid.
When we was in London before, with you and your husband, madam, and we
lost my baby in Kensington Gardens, we lived, you know, in a peaceful,
quiet street by a square or crescent, where about half the inhabitants
were pervaded with the solemnities of the past and the other half bowed
down by the dolefulness of the present, and no way of getting anywhere
except by descending into a movable tomb, which is what I always think
of when we go anywhere in the underground railway. But here we can walk
to lots of things we want to see, and if there was nothing else to keep
us lively the fear of being run over would do it, you may be sure.
But, after all, Jone and me didn't come here to London just to see the
town. We have ideas far ahead of that. When we was in London before I
saw pretty nearly all the sights, for when I've got work like that to
do I don't let the grass grow under my feet, and what we want to do on
this trip is to see the country part of England and Scotland. And in
order to see English country life just as it is, we both agreed that
the best thing to do was to take a little house in the country and live
there a while; and I'll say here that this is the only plan of the
whole journey that Jone gets real enthusiastic about, for he is a
domestic man, as you well know, and if anything swells his veins with
fervent rapture it is the idea of living in some one place continuous,
even if it is only for a month.
As we wanted a house in the country we came to London to get it, for
London is the place to get everything. Our landlady advised us, when we
told her what we wanted, to try and get a vicarage in some little
village, because, she said, there are always lots of vicars who want to
go away for a month in the summer, and they can't do it unless they
rent their houses while they are gone. And in fact, some of them, she
said, got so little salary for the whole year, and so much rent for
their vicarages while they are gone, that they often can't afford to
stay in places unless they go away.
So we answered some advertisements, and there was no lack of them in
the papers, and three agents came to see us, but we did not seem to
have any luck. Each of them had a house to let which ought to have
suited us, according to their descriptions, and although we found the
prices a good deal higher than we expected, Jone said he wasn't going
to be stopped by that, because it was only for a little while and for
the sake of experience--and experience, as all the poets, and a good
many of the prose writers besides, tell us, is always dear. But after
the agents went away, saying they would communicate with us in the
morning, we never heard anything more from them, and we had to begin
all over again. There was something the matter, Jone and I both agreed
on that, but we didn't know what it was. But I waked up in the night
and thought about this thing for a whole hour, and in the morning I had
an idea.
"Jone," said I, when we was eating breakfast, "it's as plain as A B C
that those agents don't want us for tenants, and it isn't because they
think we are not to be trusted, for we'd have to pay in advance, and so
their money's safe; it is something else, and I think I know what it
is. These London men are very sharp, and used to sizing and sorting all
kinds of people as if they was potatoes being got ready for market, and
they have seen that we are not what they call over here gentlefolks."
"No lordly airs, eh?" said Jone.
"Oh, I don't mean that," I answered him back; "lordly airs don't go
into parsonages, and I don't mean either that they see from our looks
or manners that you used to drive horses and milk cows and work in the
garden, and that I used to cook and scrub and was maid-of-all-work on a
canal-boat; but they do see that we are not the kind of people who are
in the habit, in this country, at least, of spending their evenings in
the best parlors of vicarages."
"Do you suppose," said Jone, "that they think a vicar's kitchen would
suit us better?"
"No," said I, "they wouldn't put us in a vicarage at all; there
wouldn't be no place there that would not be either too high or too low
for us. It's my opinion that what they think we belong in is a lordly
house, where you'd shine most as head butler or a steward, while I'd be
the housekeeper or a leading lady's maid."
"By George!" said Jone, getting up from the table, "if any of those
fellows would favor me with an opinion like that I'd break his head."
"You'd have a lot of heads to break," said I, "if you went through this
country asking for opinions on the subject. It's all very well for us
to remember that we've got a house of our own as good as most rectors
have over here, and money enough to hire a minor canon, if we needed
one in the house; but the people over here don't know that, and it
wouldn't make much difference if they did, for it wouldn't matter how
nice we lived or what we had so long as they knew we was retired
servants."
At this Jone just blazed up and rammed his hands into his pockets and
spread his feet wide upon the floor. "Pomona," said he, "I don't mind
it in you, but if anybody else was to call me a retired servant I'd--"
"Hold up, Jone," said I, "don't waste good, wholesome anger." Now, I
tell you, madam, it really did me good to see Jone blaze up and get red
in the face, and I am sure that if he'd get his blood boiling oftener
it would be a good thing for his dyspeptic tendencies and what little
malaria may be left in his system. "It won't do any good to flare up
here," I went on to say to him; "fact's fact, and we was servants, and
good ones, too, though I say it myself, and the trouble is we haven't
got into the way of altogether forgetting it, or, at least, acting as
if we had forgotten it."
Jone sat down on a chair. "It might help matters a little," he said,
"if I knew what you was driving at."
"I mean just this," said I, "as long as we are as anxious not to give
trouble, or as careful of people's feelings, as good-mannered to
servants, and as polite and good-natured to everybody we have anything
to do with, as we both have been since we came here, and as it is our
nature to be, I am proud to say, we're bound to be set down, at least
by the general run of people over here, as belonging to the pick of the
nobility and gentry, or as well-bred servants. It's only those two
classes that act as we do, and anybody can see we are not special
nobles and gents. Now, if we want to be reckoned anywhere in between
these two we've got to change our manners."
"Will you kindly mention just how?" said Jone.
"Yes," said I, "I will. In the first place, we've got to act as if we
had always been waited on and had never been satisfied with the way it
was done; we've got to let people think that we think we are a good
deal better than they are, and what they think about it doesn't make
the least difference; and then again we've got to live in better
quarters than these, and whatever they may be we must make people
think that we don't think they are quite good enough for us. If we do
all that, agents may be willing to let us vicarages."
"It strikes me," said Jone, "that these quarters are good enough for
us. I'm comfortable." And then he went on to say, madam, that when you
and your husband was in London you was well satisfied with just such
lodgings.
"That's all very well," I said, "for they never moved in the lower
paths of society, and so they didn't have to make any change, but just
went along as they had been used to go. But if we want to make people
believe we belong to that class I should choose, if I had my pick out
of English social varieties, we've got to bounce about as much above it
as we were born below it, so that we can strike somewhere near the
proper average."
"And what variety would you pick out, I'd like to know?" said Jone,
just a little red in the face, and looking as if I had told him he
didn't know timothy hay from oat straw.
"Well," said I, "it is not easy to put it to you exactly, but it's a
sort of a cross between a prosperous farmer without children and a poor
country gentleman with two sons at college and one in the British army,
and no money to pay their debts with."
"That last is not to my liking," said Jone.
"But the farmer part of the cross would make it all right," I said to
him, "and it strikes me that a mixture like that would just suit us
while we are staying over here. Now, if you will try to think of
yourself as part rich farmer and part poor gentleman, I'll consider
myself the wife of the combination, and I am sure we will get along
better. We didn't come over here to be looked upon as if we was the
bottom of a pie dish and charged as if we was the upper crust. I'm in
favor of paying a little more money and getting a lot more
respectfulness, and the way to begin is to give up these lodgings and
go to a hotel such as the upper middlers stop at. From what I've heard,
the Babylon Hotel is the one for us while we are in London. Nobody will
suspect that any of the people at that hotel are retired servants."
[Illustration: "Boy, go order me a four-in-hand"]
This hit Jone hard, as I knew it would, and he jumped up, made three
steps across the room, and rang the bell so that the people across the
street must have heard it, and up came the boy in green jacket and
buttons, with about every other button missing, and I never knew him to
come up so quick before.
"Boy," said Jone to him, as if he was hollering to a stubborn ox, "go
order me a four-in-hand."
But this letter is so long I must stop for the present.
_Letter Number Two_
LONDON
When Jone gave the remarkable order mentioned in my last letter I did
not correct him, for I wouldn't do that before servants without giving
him a chance to do it himself; but before either of us could say
another word the boy was gone.
"Mercy on us," I said, "what a stupid blunder! You meant four-wheeler."
[Illustration: The Landlady with an "underdone visage"]
"Of course I did," he said; "I was a little mad and got things mixed,
but I expect the fellow understood what I meant."
"You ought to have called a hansom any way," I said, "for they are a
lot more stylish to go to a hotel in than in a four-wheeler."
"If there was six-wheelers I would have ordered one," said he. "I don't
want anybody to have more wheels than we have."
At this moment the landlady came into the room with a sarcastic glimmer
on her underdone visage, and, says she, "I suppose you don't
understand about the vehicles we have in London. The four-in-hand is
what the quality and coach people use when--" As I looked at Jone I saw
his legs tremble, and I know what that means. If I was a wanderin' dog
and saw Jone's legs tremble, the only thoughts that would fill my soul
would be such as cluster around "Home, Sweet Home." Jone was too much
riled by the woman's manner to be willing to let her think he had made
a mistake, and he stopped her short. "Look here," he said to her, "I
don't ask you to come here to tell me anything about vehicles. When I
order any sort of a trap I want it." When I heard Jone say trap my soul
lifted itself and I knew there was hope for us. The stiffness melted
right out of the landlady, and she began to look soft and gummy.
"If you want to take a drive in a four-in-hand coach, sir," she said,
"there's two or three of them starts every morning from Trafalgar
Square, and it's not too late now, sir, if you go over there
immediate."
"Go?" said Jone, throwing himself into a chair, "I said, order one to
come. Where I live that sort of vehicle comes to the door for its
passengers."
The woman looked at Jone with a venerative uplifting of her eyebrows.
"I can't say, sir, that a coach will come, but I'll send the boy. They
go to Dorking, and Seven Oaks, and Virginia Water--"
"I want to go to Virginia Water," said Jone, as quick as lightning.
"Now, then," said I, when the woman had gone, "what are you going to do
if the coach comes?"
"Go to Virginia Water in it," said Jone, "and when we come back we can
go to the hotel. I made a mistake, but I've got to stand by it or be
called a greenhorn."
I was in hopes the four-in-hand wouldn't come, but in less than ten
minutes there drove up to our door a four-horse coach which, not having
half enough passengers, was glad to come such a little ways to get some
more. There was a man in a high hat and red coat, who was blowing a
horn as the thing came around the corner, and just as I was looking
into the coach and thinking we'd have it all to ourselves, for there
was nobody in it, he put a ladder up against the top, and says he,
touching his hat, "There's a seat for you, madam, right next the
coachman, and one just behind for the gentleman. 'Tain't often that, on
a fine morning like this, such seats as them is left vacant on account
of a sudden case of croup in a baronet's family."
I looked at the ladder and I looked at that top front seat, and I tell
you, madam, I trembled in every pore, but I remembered then that all
the respectable seats was on top, and the farther front the nobbier,
and as there was a young woman sitting already on the box-seat, I made
up my mind that if she could sit there I could, and that I wasn't
going to let Jone or anybody else see that I was frightened by style
and fashion, though confronted by it so sudden and unexpected. So up
that ladder I went quick enough, having had practice in hay-mows, and
sat myself down between the young woman and the coachman, and when Jone
had tucked himself in behind me the horner blew his horn and away we
went.
[Illustration: "I looked at the ladder and at the top front seat"]
I tell you, madam, that box-seat was a queer box for me. I felt as
though I was sitting on the eaves of a roof with a herd of horses
cavoorting under my feet. I never had a bird's-eye view of horses
before. Looking down on their squirming bodies, with the coachman
almost standing on his tiptoes driving them, was so different from
Jone's buggy and our tall gray horse, which in general we look up to,
that for a good while I paid no attention to anything but the danger of
falling out on top of them. But having made sure that Jone was holding
on to my dress from behind, I began to take an interest in the things
around me.
Knowing as much as I thought I did about the bigness of London, I found
that morning that I never had any idea of what an everlasting town it
is. It is like a skein of tangled yarn--there doesn't seem to be any
end to it. Going in this way from Nelson's Monument out into the
country, it was amazing to see how long it took to get there. We would
go out of the busy streets into a quiet rural neighborhood, or what
looked like it, and the next thing we knew we'd be in another whirl of
omnibuses and cabs, with people and shops everywhere; and we'd go on
and through this and then come to another handsome village with country
houses, and the street would end in another busy town; and so on until
I began to think there was no real country, at least, in the direction
we was going. It is my opinion that if London was put on a pivot and
spun round in the State of Texas until it all flew apart, it would
spread all over the State and settle up the whole country.
At last we did get away from the houses and began to roll along on the
best made road I ever saw, with a hedge on each side and the greenest
grass in the fields, and the most beautiful trees, with the very trunks
covered with green leaves, and with white sheep and handsome cattle and
pretty thatched cottages, and everything in perfect order, looking as
if it had just been sprinkled and swept. We had seen English country
before, but that was from the windows of a train, and it was very
different from this sort of thing, where we went meandering along
lanes, for that is what the roads look like, being so narrow.
Just as I was getting my whole soul full of this lovely ruralness, down
came a shower of rain without giving the least notice. I gave a jump in
my seat as I felt it on me, and began to get ready to get down as soon
as the coachman should stop for us all to get inside; but he didn't
stop, but just drove along as if the sun was shining and the balmy
breezes blowing, and then I looked around and not a soul of the eight
people on the top of that coach showed the least sign of expecting to
get down and go inside. They all sat there just as if nothing was
happening, and not one of them even mentioned the rain. But I noticed
that each of them had on a mackintosh or some kind of cape, whereas
Jone and I never thought of taking anything in the way of waterproof or
umbrellas, as it was perfectly clear when we started.
[Illustration: "DOWN CAME A SHOWER OF RAIN"]
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