During the afternoon we found lodgings, and established ourselves in them
before dark.
This English custom of lodgings, of which we had some experience at Rhyl
last year, has its advantages; but is rather uncomfortable for strangers,
who, in first settling themselves down, find that they must undertake all
the responsibility of housekeeping at an instant's warming, and cannot
get even a cup of tea till they have made arrangements with the grocer.
Soon, however, there comes a sense of being at home, and by our exclusive
selves, which never can be attained at hotels nor boarding-houses. Our
house is well situated and respectably furnished, with the dinginess,
however, which is inseparable from lodging-houses,--as if others had used
these things before and would use them again after we had gone,--a
well-enough adaptation, but a lack of peculiar appropriateness; and I
think one puts off real enjoyment from a sense of not being truly fitted.
July 1st.--On Friday I took the rail with J----- for Coventry. It was a
bright and very warm day, oppressively so, indeed; though I think that
there is never in this English climate the pervading warmth of an
American summer day. The sunshine may be excessively hot, but an
overshadowing cloud or the shade of a tree or of a building at once
affords relief; and if the slightest breeze stirs, you feel the latent
freshness of the air.
Coventry is some nine or ten miles from Leamington.
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