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THE RETROSPECT

by

ADA CAMBRIDGE

Author of
"Thirty Years in Australia," "Path and Goal," etc.







London
Stanley Paul & Co.
31 Essex Street, Strand, W.C.
Colonial Edition.




TO

MY FRIENDS, KNOWN AND UNKNOWN

WHO WERE YOUNG AND HAVE GROWN OLD WITH ME

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK




CONTENTS

        I. Coming Home
       II. About Town
      III. In Beautiful England
       IV. The Home of Childhood
        V. Halcyon Days
       VI. Earliest Recollections
      VII. Old Times and New
     VIII. Some Early Sundays
       IX. My Grandfather's Days
        X. Outdoor Life
       XI. At the Seaside
      XII. Excursions to Sandringham
     XIII. A Trip South
      XIV. "Devon, Glorious Devon!"
       XV. In the Garden of England




CHAPTER I

COMING HOME


There was a gap of thirty-eight years, almost to a day, between my
departure from England (1870), a five-weeks-old young bride, and my
return thither (1908), an old woman. And for about seven-eighths of that
long time in Australia, while succeeding very well in making the best of
things, I was never without a subconscious sense of exile, a chronic
nostalgia, that could hardly bear the sight of a homeward-bound ship.
This often-tantalised but ever-unappeased desire to be back in my native
land wore the air of a secret sorrow gently shadowing an otherwise happy
life, while in point of fact it was a considerable source of happiness
in itself, as I now perceive. For where would be the interest and
inspiration of life without something to want that you cannot get, but
that it is open to you to try for? I tried hard to bridge the distance
to my goal for over thirty years, working, planning, failing, starting
again, building a thousand air-castles, more or less, and seeing them
burst like soap-bubbles as soon as they began to materialise; then I
gave up. The children had grown too old to be taken; moreover, they had
attained to wills of their own and did not wish to go. One had fallen to
the scythe of the indiscriminate Reaper, and that immense loss dwindled
all other losses to nothing at all. I cared no more where I lived, so
long as the rest were with me. In England my father and mother, who had
so longed for me, as I for them, were in their graves; no old home was
left to go back to. I was myself a grandmother, in spite of kindly and
even vehement assurances that I did not look it; more than that, I
_could_ have been a great-grandmother without violating the laws of
nature. At any rate, I felt that I was past the age for enterprises. It
was too late now, I concluded, and so what was the use of fussing any
more? In short, I sat down to content myself with the inevitable.

I was doing it. I had been doing it for several years. The time had come
when I could look out of window any Tuesday morning, watch a
homeward-bound mail-boat put her nose to sea, and turn from the
spectacle without a pang. The business of building air-castles
flourished, as of yore, but their bases now rested on Australian soil.
What was left of the future was all planned out, satisfactorily, even
delightfully, and England was not in it.

Then was the time for the unexpected to happen, and it did. A totally
undreamed-of family legacy, with legal business attached to it, called
my husband home. Even then it did not strike me that I was called too;
for quite a considerable time it did not strike him either. But there
befell a period of burning summer heat, the intensity and duration of
which broke all past records of our State and established it as a
historic event for future Government meteorologists; the weaklings of
the community succumbed to it outright or emerged from it physically
prostrate, and I, who had encountered it in a "run-down" condition, was
of the latter company. The question: "Was I fit to be left?" obtruded
itself into the settled policy: it logically resolved itself into the
further question: "Was I fit to go?" There was nothing whatever to
prevent my going if I could "stand" it, and a long sea-voyage had been
doctors' prescription for me for years. Mysteriously and, as it were,
automatically, I brisked up from the moment the second question was
propounded, and before I knew it found myself enrolled as a member of
the expedition. The two-berth cabin was engaged; travelling trunks, and
clothes to put in them, bestrewed my bedroom floor. I was going home--at
last!

And was it too late? Had I outlived my long, long hope? Not a bit of it.
I had outlived nothing, and it was exactly and ideally the right time.
"You will be disappointed," said more than one of my travelled old
friends, who had known the extravagance of my anticipations. "It will be
sad for you, finding all so strange and changed." "You will feel
dreadfully out of it, after so many years." "You will be very
lonely"--thus was I compassionately warned not to let a too sanguine
spirit run away with me. They were all wrong. I never had a
disappointment: nothing was sad for me, of all the change; no one could
have been less out of it, or less lonely. Every English day of the whole
six months was full of pleasure; I was not even bored for an hour. At no
time of my life could I have made the trip with a lighter heart (being
assured weekly that all was well behind me). Children would have meant
a burden, however precious a burden, and had I gone in my parents'
lifetime it would have been with them and me as our ship's captain said
it was with his wife during his brief sojourns with her; for half the
time she was overwrought with the joy of his return, and for the other
half miserable in anticipation of his departure, so that he never knew
her in her normal state. That my father and mother had long been dead,
and that the tragedies of home love and loss, with which I was so
familiar, were not pressing close about me, probably accounted more than
anything else for my being so well and happy. Also, it is not until a
woman is sixty, or thereabouts, that she is really free to enjoy
herself.

Well! I never was so well since I was born. The long sea-voyage did all
that was asked of it, and incidentally brought home to me the truth of
the old adage that silver lines all clouds. "If only we were not so far
away!" had been my inward wail for eight and thirty years. "If only we
had emigrated to Canada, or South Africa, or almost any part of the
British Empire but this! Then we might have flown home every few years
as easily as we now go from Melbourne to Sydney, and at no more
expense." I have the same regret, intensified, now that I am back in
Australia again. But there is no gain without its corresponding loss.
Not only might the joys of England after exile have become staled by
this time, but a voyage of a week or two would not have prepared me to
make the most of them. I am convinced that years of health and life are
given to those who, at the right juncture, can afford six weeks of
sea-travel at a stretch, and they may have been given to me and my
companion; I quite believe so. Each of us was a stone heavier at the end
of our holiday than at the beginning, and in the interval we forgot that
we were a day over twenty-five.

Consider for a moment the perfect adjustment of the conditions to the
needs of the invalid with no disease but exhaustion. I pass over the
special favours vouchsafed to me, in idyllic weather and tranquil seas,
and the mothering of a devoted stewardess who is my friend for life;
also in finding quiet and pleasant company in a saloon party of but
eighteen. That sort of luck cannot be purchased even with a first-class
steamer ticket, nor is it necessary to the efficacy of the treatment.
Take only the itinerary--that of the Suez route at a suitable season--as
it may be observed by anybody.

First, the run across the Indian Ocean--in the case of the mail-steamers
from Adelaide to Colombo, in our case from Adelaide to Aden. Three whole
weeks, without a break, without an incident, if all goes well. I had
never imagined the sea could be so blank as it presented itself to us on
this first section of our voyage. Ships may have passed in the night,
but I saw none by day; no land, no birds, no whales, no phosphorescent
wakes, no anything, except sea and sky and lovely sunsets. It may have
been monotonous, but it was monotony in the right place. It brought to
me, at the outset, that complete rest from all effort and excitement
which was the necessary preliminary to recovery and repair. I reposed on
my comfortable lounge from morn till eve, playing with a trifle of
needlework (too stupid with blissful torpor to read, while the
strangeness of quite idle hands would have induced the fidgets,
sea-drugged as I was). I ate, and slept, and basked, like a soulless
animal; forgot there were such things as posts and newspapers, as
dinner-planning and stocking-mending, as calls and committee-meetings;
forgot that I was the mother of a family, and had abandoned it for the
first time in history; forgot whether I was ill or well, or had nerves
or not; and thus soaked and steeped and soddened in peace, insensibly
renewed and established my strength, not patching it anyhow just to
carry on with, as one does on land, with a casual week at a
watering-place or in the mountains, but unhurriedly, uninterruptedly,
solidly, rebuilding it from the bottom up.

Then, when strength becomes aware that it is ready for use--at the
moment when one begins to feel that the monotony has lasted long
enough--then back comes the delightful world, with a new face of beauty
to match the new ardour of love for it that has been silently generating
within us. All the light of enterprising and romantic youth was in the
gaze I levelled through my binoculars (given to me for my voyage in
1870) at the first substantial token that I was in the gorgeous East,
one of the fairylands of imagination (comprising, roughly, all the
unknown earth) from the days of infancy when I learned to read. It was
an Arab dhow. I knew that pointed wing as well as I knew the shape of
chimney-pots, but the wonder that I was seeing it with my bodily eyes,
even as a speck upon the horizon, was overwhelming. I stared and stared,
but could not speak.

The rest was pure enchantment. As we drew near to the magnificent rock
of Aden--hateful place, I know, to its white inhabitants, and an old
tale not worth mentioning to the average Australian tourist--I said, in
my ecstasy: "This pays for the voyage, if we see nothing more." The
first white-awninged launch that bustled up to us, manned by two
nondescripts, one huge Nubian <DW64> and one beautiful Somali boy, bore
through the brilliant air and water an official gentleman who probably
would have sold his soul for a London fog; it was not he, but another
official gentleman who swallowed nearly a bottle of ship's brandy while
attending to ship's business, and was presented with another bottle on
his departure by a sympathiser who understood his case. It was a hot
morning in the middle of May, and I had been accustomed from my youth to
atmospheric light and colour as glorious as the radiant setting of this
strange outpost of Empire in the East. Evidently it is in the eye
(backed by a strong imagination) of the gazer that poetic beauty lies.

After this, the unspeakable experiences followed thick and fast. Night
in the Straits, with Venus so bright that she cast a reflection like
moonlight across the water; the Red Sea in the morning--minarets on the
horizon, and those rocks of desolation, with the loneliest human
dwelling conceivable (the arcaded lighthouse) on the top of one of the
most impressively desolate; that other lighthouse at the gulf entrance,
with its flashing rays of red and white, its rock-base velvety purple
against a solemn sunset sky; Mount Sinai amongst the hills of Holy Land;
the majestic desert of so many dreams. Time was when I sniffed at the
colour of Holman Hunt's "Scapegoat" landscape, but here it was,
translated into living light, but no fainter in tint than the dead
paint had made it. Sapphires were not in it with that blue-green sea at
Suez, in which the jostling bumboats floated as in clearest glass. The
rocky shores to left were mauve, the right-hand desert and Holman-Hunty
hummocks salmon-pink, and no mortal painter was ever born, or ever will
be, to "get" the bloomy glow and fairy delicacy of Nature's textures and
technique. The Eastern sun blazed broadly over the scene, the
temperature at noon was ninety-nine degrees in the shade; the
composition was perfect.

Between tea-time and dinner we passed out of the city and close to its
domestic doorsteps--the closest I had yet come to Eastern life; and long
after we were in the canal it was a picture to look back upon from which
I could not tear my eyes. Low on the gleaming water--the two towns
linked by the dark thread of the railway embankment, brooded over by
that majestic mauve and violet hill--it was a vision of beauty indeed as
the light effects changed from moment to moment with the sinking of the
gorgeous sun. I could afford no time to dress that night. In my hat, as
I was, I snatched a mouthful of dinner, and was up again on deck, to
make the most of the short twilight; and so I saw the shadowy last of
Suez and more than I expected to see of the canal.

"Just a little ditch in the sand," somebody had told me, as one might
say, a primrose by the river's brim was nothing more. Apart from its
otherwise tremendous significance, that narrow watercourse was a highway
of romance to me. Egypt--Arabia--the very names set one's heart
thumping. It would be thrilling to be there even if one were blind. The
silence of the desert is more eloquent than any sound. But from the most
unsentimental point of view it was a ditch of varied aspects, that only
the dullest traveller could call uninteresting.

The Canal Company, it appeared, was widening it to double its original
measure across, top and bottom--something like a ten years' job, with
millions of money and priceless brain-matter in it--and we saw the
engineers at work. That is to say, they were not at work at the moment,
because the day's task was done; but there were their excavations and
machinery, fine and effective, and I can never look at such,
apprehending their meaning, without a lifting of the heart, a sense of
the beauty that is in the world unrecognised by that name. What, I
wondered, did my schoolgirl idol and apostle of beauty, Ruskin, think of
this ditch when it was a-making? Did he say? If, to my knowledge, he had
called it a desecration of Nature, I should instantly have agreed with
him. Now, to my life-educated eyes and soul, the very Holy Land was
sanctified by the faithful endeavour and achievement evidenced in
haulage-trucks and pipe-lines and those twin steel rails that he hated
so much, telling all their serious story to whoever could understand it.

It was indeed a beautiful as well as an instructive picture, that left
bank, as we moved beside it. The native labourers, after their work,
squatted in their little camps and dug-outs, and in the sand, or stood
statue-like to watch our passing, sharply silhouetted figures and groups
against the translucent sky, each a "study" that, if in a gallery, one
would go miles to see. Strings of camels were being led to water or were
wending homeward with their loads. Little encampments straight out of
the Bible, desert palm-trees, desert distances, all in the golden
afterglow, the clear-shining twilight, the evening peace that was too
peaceful for words, were gems for the collector of poetic impressions,
to be for ever cherished and preserved. And then how striking was the
rare glimpse of a Saxon face, the glance at us of grave eyes that one
knew had the all-governing brain behind them. The British Occupation in
Egypt--there it was, in the person of that lonely man in tent or
boat-house, advance agent of the Civilisation that spells Prosperity in
whatever part of the world it goes. One of these, out riding with a
lady, rode down to the water's edge to watch us pass. In their white
garb they were perfectly groomed, like their beautiful Arab horses,
which they sat in a style that was good to see; but they were pathetic
figures, with that lonely waste around them. I divined a deadly
homesickness in the eyes that followed our progress as long as we could
be seen, the same ache of the heart that afflicted me, for so many
years, whenever I saw a ship going to England without me. Yet one could
be quite sure that they never dreamed of slipping cables on their own
account as long as duty to the Empire held them where they were. Not the
man, at any rate.

And so it grew too dark to see anything beyond the edge of our
searchlight, which showed only post-heads in the water, and I went to
bed.

I was asleep when we passed Ismailia, contrary to my intentions, but I
got up at four o'clock, to lose no more. Still unbroken desert to the
right; to the left a well-made embankment with a roadway atop, and
behind that a belt of bamboos and greenery, telegraph lines and a
railway, broken at intervals by the oases of the _gares_. An American
navy-boat made way for us at one of these, a pair of submarines
conspicuous on her deck. At a little before five the sun of a lovely
morning rose on our starboard side, and one saw the desert wet and dark,
yielding its immemorial savagery to the civilising hand and brain. One
of the fine up-to-date dredges, amongst the many dredges, was pumping
the mud up on the land as it sucked it from the canal bottom. In the
shining sun-flushed pools of its creation black forms of storks moved
statelily, apparently finding nourishment already where there had been
none before. On the left bank there was the embodied spirit of progress
again, doubtless looking at his work and on the way to expedite it;
white-clothed, white-helmeted, enthroned on a railway trolly, which a
bare-legged native ran along the line as it were a perambulator on ball
bearings, two more natives sitting upon it, ready to take turns with him
at the job. Lifting the eye slightly, one saw open water along the sky
behind them, a flashing, glittering strip, studded with forty-two lateen
sails that might have been carved of mother o' pearl; and almost
immediately, straight ahead, a low mass of something as yet misty and
formless in the dazzling rose and gold of the morning, reminiscent of
Suez in its sunset transfiguration--Port Said, less than an hour from
us.

It was Sunday, and divine service in the reading-room had been arranged.
Soon after six, at about the time of passing the Gare de Naz-el-ech,
passengers began to come up, a few with prayer-book in hand. But divine
service was "off," by order of the captain--a religious man, very
regular in his attendance at public worship. He knew how it would be at
seven-thirty, when we were going to drop anchor in the port at seven,
and that was exactly how it was--every inch of ship overrun with ardent
pedlars, while coaling from the great lighters, three or four lashed
abreast, was in full swing. I may as well say at once that for me, as
for nearly all the passengers (my own companion, who declared himself
quite happy in his choice, being the only member of the saloon party to
stay at home), that Sunday, as a Sunday, has to be wiped off the slate
entirely, posted as missing amongst the Sabbath days of life. I must
confess further that it was the most delightful (so called) Sunday I
ever spent. At last I did more than see the Gorgeous East of lifelong
dreams; I felt it, I had speech with it. In a select party, headed by
the dear woman who, apart from her solid social position, was the chief
pillar of the church on board, I was permitted to go ashore. I had the
free use of six hours to do what I liked in.

In the half-hour before breakfast I did exciting business with the
bumboatmen. I bought a piece of tapestry, representing camels,
palm-trees, mosques and the like, which the native vendor assured me was
handmade in Egyptian prisons, though in my heart of hearts I knew
better; also brooches and bracelets which seemed dirt cheap at two and
three shillings apiece, the exact counterparts of which I afterwards
bought at William Whiteley's for sixpence ha'penny. As soon after
breakfast as we could get our letters ready, I was rowed through the
jewel-bright water into the world of fairy tales. Oh, I know what Port
Said is to those familiar with it, and I could have seen for myself, had
I wished to see, that the Gorgeous East could be flimsy and tawdry,
even ugly, here and there; but it _was_ the East, and that was enough;
the glamour of the rosy spectacles beautified all. Nothing was easier
than to forget and ignore what would doubtless be impossible to overlook
on a second visit, and impossible to put up with on a third or fourth.

Having arrived at the centre of things, we appointed an hour for
luncheon at the Hotel Continental, and split our party into twos and
threes. An unattached man took charge of me and another unattached lady,
and escorted us about the town and to the shops which alone attracted
her (for she knew Port Said already). Wonderful shops, too, some of them
were, and it was no wasted time I spent roaming about them, while she
gave her attention to spangled scarves and lace; but the lattice-veiled
windows of the mysterious dwelling-rooms above them, and the flowing and
glowing life of the narrow streets, were what I had come to see. It was
delightful to return to the pavement under the Continental, and there
sit, with a cold and bubbling lemon drink, in one of the low chairs
which so hospitably invite the wayfarer, to watch the stream of mingling
East and West go by, and its eddies around one--the veiled native lady
touching skirts with the breezy English girl; the turbaned sherbet
seller, his remarkable brazen ewer under his arm, dodging the swift
bicycle; the oily-eyed and sodden rapscallion of the Levant, or the
bejewelled and bepowdered person no better than she should be, elbowing
the spare young cleric slipping through these dangerous places on his
way to the Pan-Anglican Congress. And the stranger contrasts on the
wide, tiled side-walk, a continuous outdoor cafe rather than a
promenade--Frenchmen playing dominoes, swarthy traders doing secret
business over their drinks; passengers from the various ships in port,
mothers and aunts with children by the hand; here and there the habitual
tourist, easily identified; here and there the impeccably clothed,
clean-limbed white figure, whose high bearing and bluff dignity
proclaimed the important person--soldier of distinction,
big-game-hunting lord of leisure, powerful Government official, as the
case might be. All up and down, around the low tables, faces of all
nations, speech of all languages, and, as an undercurrent, the
incessantly made gentle appeal for notice from the dark-skinned pedlars
sinuously navigating the narrow channels between the chairs, with their
cheap jewellery and picture post-cards and puzzle walking-sticks, trying
how far they could go under the eye of the Egyptian policeman, standing
ready to order them over the curb at the first sign of unwelcome
pertinacity.

For a good half-hour we sat at ease, in the middle of this picture, and
I enjoyed myself surpassingly. Then a little more shopping on behalf of
my still unsatisfied lady companion, and then the gathering of the whole
seven of our landing party at the appointed rendezvous for luncheon. We
were ready for the meal, and it was not the least memorable of the
aesthetic pleasures of that "Sunday out." I am told it was simply as a
meal ashore, after many meals at sea, that I found it so delectable, but
in justice to the courteous French proprietor, as he seemed to be, who
himself took charge of our table, and for my own credit as a
connoisseur, I deny that assertion, made only by those who were not
there. I declare, on my honour, that, apart from the good cookery, the
bread, butter and beer of the Hotel Continental at Port Said--such a
seemingly unlikely place in which to find them so--were the best I ever
tasted. Particularly the bread. One of the remaining ambitions of my
life is to find out whether that bread was French, or Egyptian, or
Turkish, or what (the reader bears in mind that this is the story of an
innocent abroad), and to get some more of it, if possible.

We sat outside the house again, to repose after our repast, and I should
think there was no more contented person in the world than I was then. I
bought a little more Brummagem rubbish that palmed itself off as of
Oriental manufacture, of the softly persistent pedlars circulating about
my chair; and our escort settled the hotel bill, which worked out at
four-and-sixpence for each of us. Never did I grudge hard-earned money
for sensual indulgence less. I would not now take pounds for my
recollections of that meal, because the day could not have been perfect
without it.

So it drew on for four o'clock, when leave expired. Tired, hot and
happy, we wandered back to the quay, dropped our threepenny pieces into
official hands before the tantalised boatmen, stepped into our cushioned
barge and were rowed to the ship. There we found coaling done, afternoon
tea prepared for us, everything ready for the start. And, again in the
decline of the brilliant day, we saw the whole place bathed in
celestially rosy light, a last impression of the gorgeous East as one
loves to imagine it, to be hung on the line of the picture gallery of
memory alongside Aden and Suez. Because decks were being washed down,
the captain allowed a few of us to survey the scene from his bridge, and
while we rested weary bones we gazed from that commanding altitude upon
the unforgettable panorama--the houses of the sea-front, the casino, the
famous lighthouse, the bathing-beach with its white surf and its
machines, the long breakwater walling the exit from the canal,
and--farewelling us, as it seemed--the impressive statue of Ferdinand de
Lesseps, pointing back to his great work. At sunset we fetched up the
coats so long unworn, and in the fresh air of the Mediterranean watched
the flushing and fading of the distant city, low on the water like
another Venice, until the evening bugle called us down. Too tired to
dress, we ate our dinner perfunctorily, took a last look at the
spacious, cool-breathing night, saw the Damietta light twinkling, and
went to bed early. No one so much as mentioned church.

Then came three quiet days, sunny and cool, in which the right thing to
do was to lie on one's long chair and recover from excitements.
Meditation was so sweet, and I was so grateful to Port Said, that I
could not grumble at losing Malta, where the ship had no engagements. A
far-off, faint reflection of what was supposed to be a flashlight in
Valetta harbour consoled me on my way to bed one night with its
suggestion that Templars really lived, and that the old cathedral and
the old steep streets were still there, awaiting the future pilgrim. No
more did I set foot in "foreign parts," but what I further saw of them
sufficed to make each remaining day of the voyage memorable. "The Bay of
Tunis," says the captain, and: "Old Carthage lies behind that hill."

We were so close to the African shore that we could see the occasional
town, the lonely farm, the lonelier fort or monastery, very distinctly;
and the little unfenced, unshaped patches of tillage scratched out of
the wilderness, and the little roadways meandering through the gaps of
the crowding rock-ranges, otherwise so savagely desolate; and the
evening lights sparsely scattered along the shore, and the early morning
camp-fires on the seaward declivities, so high up and isolated as to
suggest the fastnesses of the pirates of bygone days. A horn of the Bay
of Algiers stole out of twilight mist, and lit up its clustering lamps
as we looked at it; and the following day revealed the face of Spain,
frowning at her _vis-a-vis_, but splendid in a stormy sunset, a velvety
violet mass against a flaming sky.

At four o'clock again on Sunday morning I was up and dressed, summoned
by the captain stamping overhead. And out of the dawn came majestic
Gibraltar--the sun was up before five--and Algeciras of recent fame,
ships and warships, hills, houses, hamlets, windmills, roads and Tarifa
Point transfixing a wrecked steamer, sad detail of a picture full of
life and charm. Another red-letter Sunday, but not quite so red as the
last. Divine service was duly celebrated in the saloon after dinner--our
last on board.

The captain stamped again at five A.M. on Monday, and I saw the Castle
of Cintra on its rocky headland, and more of the interesting life of the
country as we slid along its shores. I cut breakfast short to feast on
the historic landscape (in youth I had devoured the literature of the
Cid, the Peninsular War, and Don Quixote, in a score of weighty tomes),
to study the contours of Spanish houses, to count the number of visible
Spanish windmills, all twirling their sails for business, in the good
old Mediaeval style. Until the sailors at their work of holystoning and
sluicing drove us from the last inch of deck, and rain--almost the only
rain we had on that blessed voyage--drew a grey curtain over the scene.

The Bay of Biscay was an angel. Summer-blue sea and sky, blushing
gloriously when sunset interfused them, a young horned moon, with its
attendant star, hanging over the saffron afterglow and making night
heavenly; hardly a breaking wave. And the East was all behind us, and
Malta and Spain, even Australia, which still held the kernel of one's
heart; their memories were put away like precious pictures in their
packing-cases, until presently one would have time to hang them in the
light again. Nothing could be thought of now but that which we were to
see to-morrow--England, the Mecca of our pilgrimage--after thirty-eight
years.

It was Thursday, the 4th of June, at nine in the morning, when it
happened. Of all the lovely mornings we had at sea that was the
loveliest. A little hazy on the sky-line, but sunny, bree