| Howards End |
| Chapter XIX |
| If one wanted to show a foreigner England, perhaps the
wisest course would be to take him to the final section of the Purbeck
Hills, and stand him on their summit, a few miles to the east of Corfe.
Then system after system of our island would roll together under his feet.
Beneath him is the valley of the Frome, and all the wild lands that
come tossing down, from Dorchester, black and gold, to mirror
their gorse in
the expanse of Poole.
The valley of the Stour is
beyond, unaccountable stream, dirty at Blandford, pure at Wimborne—the Stour, sliding out of
fat fields, to marry the avon
beneath the tower of Christchurch. The valley of the
Avon—invisible, but far to the north the trained eye may see Clearbury Ring that
guards it, and the imagination may leap beyond that on to Salisbury
Plain itself, and beyond the Plain to all the glorious downs of Central England. Nor is
Suburbia absent. Bournemouth's ignoble coast cowers to
the right, heralding the pinetrees that mean, for all their beauty, red houses
and the Stock Exchange, and extend to the gates of London itself. So tremendous
is the City's trail! But the cliffs of Freshwater it shall never touch, and the
island will guard the Island's purity till the end of time. Seen from the west,
the Wight is beautiful beyond all laws of beauty. It is as if a fragment of
England floated forward to greet the foreigner—chalk of our chalk, turf of our turf, epitome of what
will follow. And behind the fragment lies Southampton, hostess to the nations,
and Portsmouth, a latent fire, and all around it, with double and treble collision of tides, swirls the
sea. How many villages appear in this view! How many castles! How many churches,
vanished or triumphant! How many ships, railways, and roads! What incredible
variety of men working beneath that lucent sky to what final end! The reason
fails, like a wave on the Swanage
beach; the imagination swells, spreads, and deepens, until it becomes geographic
and enccircles England. So Frieda Mosebach, now Frau Architect Liesecke, and mother to her husband's baby, was brought up to these heights to be impressed, and, after a prolonged gaze, she said that the hills were more swelling her than in Pomerania, which was true, but did not seem to Mrs. Munt apposite. Poole Harbour was dry, which led her to praise the absence of muddy foreshore at Friedrich Wilhelms Bad, Rügen, where beech-trees hang over the tideless Baltic, and cows may contemplate the brine. Rather unhealthy Mrs. Munt thought this would be, water being safer when it moved about. "And your English lakes—Vindermere, Grasmere—are they, then, unhealthy?" "No, Frau Liesecke; but that is because they are fresh water, and different. Salt water ought to have tides, and go up and down a great deal, or else it smells. Look, for instance, at an aquarium." "An aquarium! Oh, Meesis Munt, you mean to tell me that fresh aquariums stink less than salt? Why, when Victor, my brother-in-law, collected many tadpoles—" "You are not to say 'stink,'" interrupted Helen; "at least, you may say it, but you must pretend you are being funny while you say it." "Then 'smell.' And the mud of your Pool down there—does it not smell, or may I say 'stink, ha,ha'?" "There always has been mud in Poole Harbour," said Mrs. Munt, with a slight frown. "The rivers bring it down, and a most valuable oyster-fishery depends upon it." "Yes, that is so," conceded Frieda; and another international incident was closed. "'Bournemouth is,'" resumed their hostess, quoting a local rhyme to which she was much attached—"'Bournemouth is, Poole was, and Swanage is to be the most important town of all and biggest of the three.' Now, Frau Liesecke, I have shown you Bournemouth, and I have shown you Poole, so let us walk backward a little, and look down again at Swanage." |
Howards End
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