Letter from Lucy Russell, Touring Europe, 1920

From the Aug. 19, 1920 issue of the Rockingham Post-Dispatch

Letters from Mrs. Lucy P. Russell, Who Sailed from New York June 12^th, 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.)