Mr. Britling Sees It Through | Page 2

to be visibly and
audibly America eye-witnessing. He wanted to be just exactly what he
supposed an Englishman would expect him to be. At any rate, his
clothes had been made by a strongly American New York tailor, and
upon the strength of them a taxi-man had assumed politely but firmly
that the shillings on his taximeter were dollars, an incident that helped
greatly to sustain the effect of Mr. Direck, in Mr. Direck's mind, as
something standing out with an almost representative clearness against
the English scene.... So much so that the taxi-man got the dollars....
Because all the time he had been coming over he had dreaded that it
wasn't true, that England was a legend, that London would turn out to
be just another thundering great New York, and the English exactly like
New Englanders....
Section 2

And now here he was on the branch line of the little old Great Eastern
Railway, on his way to Matching's Easy in Essex, and he was suddenly
in the heart of Washington Irving's England.
Washington Irving's England! Indeed it was. He couldn't sit still and
just peep at it, he had to stand up in the little compartment and stick his
large, firm-featured, kindly countenance out of the window as if he
greeted it. The country under the June sunshine was neat and bright as
an old-world garden, with little fields of corn surrounded by dog-rose
hedges, and woods and small rushy pastures of an infinite tidiness. He
had seen a real deer park, it had rather tumbledown iron gates between
its shield-surmounted pillars, and in the distance, beyond all question,
was Bracebridge Hall nestling among great trees. He had seen thatched
and timbered cottages, and half-a-dozen inns with creaking signs. He
had seen a fat vicar driving himself along a grassy lane in a governess
cart drawn by a fat grey pony. It wasn't like any reality he had ever
known. It was like travelling in literature.
Mr. Britling's address was the Dower House, and it was, Mr. Britling's
note had explained, on the farther edge of the park at Claverings.
Claverings! The very name for some stately home of England....
And yet this was only forty-two miles from London. Surely it brought
things within the suburban range. If Matching's Easy were in America,
commuters would live there. But in supposing that, Mr. Direck
displayed his ignorance of a fact of the greatest importance to all who
would understand England. There is a gap in the suburbs of London.
The suburbs of London stretch west and south and even west by north,
but to the north-eastward there are no suburbs; instead there is Essex.
Essex is not a suburban county; it is a characteristic and individualised
county which wins the heart. Between dear Essex and the centre of
things lie two great barriers, the East End of London and Epping Forest.
Before a train could get to any villadom with a cargo of season-ticket
holders it would have to circle about this rescued woodland and travel
for twenty unprofitable miles, and so once you are away from the main
Great Eastern lines Essex still lives in the peace of the eighteenth
century, and London, the modern Babylon, is, like the stars, just a light

in the nocturnal sky. In Matching's Easy, as Mr. Britling presently
explained to Mr. Direck, there are half-a-dozen old people who have
never set eyes on London in their lives--and do not want to.
"Aye-ya!"
"Fussin' about thea."
"Mr. Robinson, 'e went to Lon', 'e did. That's 'ow 'e 'urt 'is fut."
Mr. Direck had learnt at the main-line junction that he had to tell the
guard to stop the train for Matching's Easy; it only stopped "by request";
the thing was getting better and better; and when Mr. Direck seized his
grip and got out of the train there was just one little old Essex
station-master and porter and signalman and everything, holding a red
flag in his hand and talking to Mr. Britling about the cultivation of the
sweet peas which glorified the station. And there was the Mr. Britling
who was the only item of business and the greatest expectation in Mr.
Direck's European journey, and he was quite unlike the portraits Mr.
Direck had seen and quite unmistakably Mr. Britling all the same, since
there was nobody else upon the platform, and he was advancing with a
gesture of welcome.
"Did you ever see such peas, Mr. Dick?" said Mr. Britling by way of
introduction.
"My word," said Mr. Direck in a good old Farmer Hayseed kind of
voice.
"Aye-ya!" said the station-master in singularly strident tones. "It be a
rare year for sweet peas," and then he slammed the door of the carriage
in a leisurely manner and did dismissive things