Letters from Mrs.
Lucy P. Russell, Who Sailed from New York June 12th, 1920 for a Tour
of Europe
Lanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwrn, Drocwyll Llantysiliogogoch,
Wales
My Dear Post-Dispatch:
Please print the above address carefully. Certain friends in
Rockingham promised to organize a rescue party in case I got lost and I am lost
right now.
We left London one afternoon in a pouring rain by a tender
to the Limehouse Pier where we boarded the good ship “Perth” bound for Dundee.
The ride down the Thames was a wonderful revelation of “England’s commerce;
huge vessels from strange, far lands pushed aside small craft from neighboring
countries. Fleets of heavily laden barges shouldered their way to the great
city, liners and battleships, tramp freighters, yachts and houseboats met and
passed. Flags of all nations fluttered in the smoke and rain. Horns bellowed
and bells clanged out their warnings through the mist and Babel itself never
heard so many different languages. We sailed straight up the North Sea for two
nights and a day and a half, right over the ground (or rather water) where the
German raiders passed, not far from where Kitchener went down, and where the
battle off the Dogger Banks was fought. We passed Flamborough Head and
Scarborough, the first English town to be bombarded, you know, and Whitley,
where all the best jet comes from. And Robin Hood’s bay and Grace Darling’s
lighthouse and landed in Dundee early one morning. Was much disappointed in
“bonnie Dundee,” which has nothing to recommend it but its site above the Tay.
So we pushed on to Perth where Messrs. Frazer and McDonald have an immense
trade in cattle and sheep. Their auction rooms hold 10,000 sheep, 1,500
bullocks, 2,000 cows and 800 horses. Mr. Frazer himself conducted us through
and pointed with great pride to the very seat occupied recently by an American
gentleman who paid $33,000 for an Aberdeen-Angus bull, and received a gold
watch from his fellow-townsmen for bringing home such a treasure.
Then we caught the noon train for Callendar and entered the
magic land immortalized by Sir Walter Scott. Ben Lede towers above the clean
little village, Benvoirlich and Uam Var are in sight, and “Monan’s rill” pours
into Lake Vennachar not far away. We loitered through the quaint streets
smiling at familiar Scotch names; we watched a game of bowls and drank a cup of
tea, tne mounted a couch for the Trossach country. A most beautiful ride it is,
up the shore of Vennachar, pasat the Brig’ o’ Turk, through fragrant forests
and over crystal streams until we stood by Loch Achray at the foot of Ben
Vencie and watched the grey clouds roll across his furrowed brow. Spent the
night at “The Trossachs,” a comfortable hotel on the shore of Achray. It is
built of the native gray stone and just seems to spring from the mountain like
any other rock.
Next morning we took a long tramp along the loch (lake) and
knelt to pick the “slight hare bell” by its side, watched the multitudes
darting in and out of their holes, climbed up to the sheep-fold high on the
mountain and plucked the spicey “wilding rose” growing over the grey rocks,
wandered into the graveyard of the tiny “kirk” and read the names on the
stones, “Cameron,” “Graham,” “Ferguson,” McGregor”—just like our home names. It
was a witness to Scotch courage that so many of the crosses in the tiny
enclosure were new and bore the battle names of the Great War.
No one need expect me to write of the beauty of this region;
Sir Walter has finished that job. Just read again “The Lady of the Lake” and be
sure that not one word is out of place, but no wizardry of the written word can
ever bring to the eye the coloring of mountain and heather, sky and velvet
fields, beetling crags and shining water. Scotch houses have a way of hooking
part of the rock on and of which they are built and very much like the men who
built them, square, angular, upright and reliable, from the humble Highland
cottage with its “but and ben” to the lordly Castle in Edinburgh town they all
have the same look of stern integrity. The cottages do not all have bright
flowers around them as in England and the land is not so fertile. It cannot be,
there isn’t so much of it on the ground. But whenever there is a level space it
bears a wonderful crop of wheat and oats, potatoes and hay. There are fine, fat
cows in the valleys and millions of sheep on the mountains. Why not on our
mountains in North Carolina?
Another coach took us to Loch Katrine, which we crossed in a
steamer named “Sir Walter Scott.” We sailed past the “silver strand” and
“Ellen’s Isle” and tried to locate the different peaks and shadowy glens. I
asked a lady near me if she knew the localities, and she said she knew nothing
about it being from Australia. There were also two Japanese on the boat.
Another coach took us nine miles through the mountains to
Loch Lomond down whose blue waters we sailed for two hours to Balloch where all
the Turkey red dye is made. The shores of the lake are full of most beautiful,
stately dwellings, the estates of rich Glasgow merchants, but Ballock castle
and its grounds have been purchased for a park for the citizens of that town.
We intended to spend the night in Glasgow, but a walk
through the streets and a wait at the station determined us to get out as soon
as possible. Every man we saw and not a few women, were drunk, staggering,
singing, ghastly drunk. I did not thing such a scene possible anywhere on
earth. They laugh at America over here for prohibition, but the scenes I
witnessed in Glasgow and E’boro have determined me to send over some
Missionaries as soon as possible.
We reached Edinboro late and were glad to creep into the
first hotel we saw, “The Caledonia,” and the next morning found ourselves close
under the walls of the towering castle and across the street from St.
Cuthbert’s “Free Kirk” and the beautiful chimes called me into its open doors.
The Scotch church has reserved more ritual in its service than we American
Presbyterians use. The minister wore a gown and bands and his assistant who
read the Gospel and the notices was clothed in crimson silk. The sang the
age-old “Rouse’s Version” of the Psalms and I joined in lustily because nobody
knew the tunes any better than I did. The afternoon we spent in a long drive
around the city, into the Castly and Holyrood Palace, to the homes of John Knox
and Robert Burns. We stood by “The Heart of Midlothian” and lingered along
Princes Street by the Scott monument and by St. Giles, the only Presbyterian
Cathedral in the world, and it is St. Gargen’s lovely memorial to Robert Louis
Stevenson. Next day we spent in exploring the city and some of its treasures of
“ye olden times,” and some of the handsome shops.
Wednesday’s ride through the Lowlands, the hills enriched by
the blood of the Covenanters, to Merrie Carlisle was most interesting. I found
out why the Scotch people emigrate. They are found all over the habitable
globe, and the inhabitable too. It is to get away from the Scotch climate. The
clouds hang low and dark, the sky is NEVER free from clouds and it rains every
few minutes, sometimes oftener. The trees are dark, somber firs and larches,
the buildings are of the native brown and grey stone, the fences and walls of
the same, the whole atmosphere of the country is dark, glowering, stern and
very cold. Holyrood Palace gives one a chill and after walking through Mary
Stuart’s picture gallery no one smiles for
a whole day. Al the same, “Caledonia, stern and wild,” is darkly
beautiful and when it comes to producing fine men and women, do you know any
land that can beat it?
Train service over here is excellent, rapid and
comparatively cheap, 12 hours from Edinboro to Llandudno, a watering place on
the Irish Sea in the north of Wales, with grand golf links and beach for
bathing. When an Englishman goes on holiday there are certain things to be done
and he does them, certain clothes to wear and he wears them. If he goes to the
seaside, it is the thing to go in swimming. If the weather is hot, all right.
If there are icebergs in the bay, so much worse for the icebergs; in he goes,
splashed around and comes out in various shades of purple and pink. It is
proper to go “boating” in white flannel trousers and brightly colored blagers.
It may be raining in torrents and mud six inches deep, but here comes the white
breeches. As for golf nobody can hit a little white ball with a crooked stick
unless he has on long woolen stockings. It simply isn’t done.
From Llandudno we made excursions by motor-bus to
Bettsw-y-Coed and Cap-el-rig, to Criccrth and Pwllhemi and other places whose
names I am too sleepy to spell. One of us played golf on Great Orine Head and
with the sea on three sides of him and fold upon fold of the dark Welsh
mountains on the other. Llandudno is the place where Lewis Carroll wrote Alice
in Wonderland. The rabbit is still there.
We came back to London through Wales and the English
Midlands and stopped at Stratford-upon-Avon, and it is a very good place to
stop.
Yours truthfully, L.P.R. (Mailed from London, July 31.)
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