Chapter 1 - Page 2

when he sallied out to see
it, had been too good to be true, the smallest thing in rivers he had
ever seen, and he had had to restrain himself from affecting a marked
accent and accosting some passer-by with the question, "Say! But is this
little wet ditch here the Historical River Thames?"

In America, it must be explained, Mr. Direck spoke a very good and
careful English indeed, but he now found the utmost difficulty in
controlling his impulse to use a high-pitched nasal drone and indulge in
dry "Americanisms" and poker metaphors upon all occasions. When people
asked him questions he wanted to say "Yep" or "Sure," words he would no
more have used in America than he could have used a bowie knife. But he
had a sense of rôle. He wanted 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