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Title: Travelling Sketches.

Author: Anthony Trollope

Release Date: February 24, 2014 [EBook #44992]

Language: English

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  TRAVELLING SKETCHES.


  BY


  ANTHONY TROLLOPE.


  [REPRINTED FROM THE "PALL MALL GAZETTE."]




  LONDON:
  CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
  1866.




  CONTENTS.


                                                   PAGE

  THE FAMILY THAT GOES ABROAD BECAUSE IT'S THE
  THING TO DO                                         1

  THE MAN WHO TRAVELS ALONE                          15

  THE UNPROTECTED FEMALE TOURIST                     29

  THE UNITED ENGLISHMEN WHO TRAVEL FOR FUN           43

  THE ART TOURIST                                    57

  THE TOURIST IN SEARCH OF KNOWLEDGE                 71

  THE ALPINE CLUB MAN                                84

  TOURISTS WHO DON'T LIKE THEIR TRAVELS              98




TRAVELLING SKETCHES.




THE FAMILY THAT GOES ABROAD BECAUSE IT'S THE THING TO DO.


That men and women should leave their homes at the end of summer and go
somewhere,--though it be only to Margate,--has become a thing so fixed
that incomes the most limited are made to stretch themselves to fit the
rule, and habits the most domestic allow themselves to be interrupted
and set at naught. That we gain much in health there can be no doubt.
Our ancestors, with their wives and children, could do without their
autumn tour; but our ancestors did not work so hard as we work. And we
gain much also in general knowledge, though such knowledge is for the
most part superficial, and our mode of acquiring it too often absurd.
But the English world is the better for the practice. "Home-staying
youths have ever homely wits," and we may fairly suppose that our
youths are less homely in this particular after they have been a day
or two in Paris, and a week or two in Switzerland, and up and down the
Rhine, than they would have been had they remained in their London
lodgings through that month of September,--so weary to those who are
still unable to fly away during that most rural of months.

Upon the whole we are proud of our travelling; but yet we must own
that, as a nation of travellers, we have much to learn; and it always
seems that the travelling English family which goes abroad because it's
the thing to do, with no clearly defined object as to the pleasure to
be obtained or the delights to be expected,--with hardly a defined
idea of the place to be visited, has, as a class, more to learn than
any other class of tourists.

In such family arrangements daughters of course predominate. Sons can
travel alone or with their own friends. This arrangement they generally
prefer, and for it they are always able to give substantial reasons,
in which their mammas may, or may not, put implicit confidence.
Daughters can travel alone too occasionally, as I hope to be able to
show by-and-by in a sketch of that much abused but invaluable English
lady, the Unprotected Female Tourist. But such feminine independence
is an exception to the rule, and daughters are generally willing to
submit themselves to that paternal and maternal guidance from which
the adult male tourist so stoutly revolts. Paterfamilias of course is
there, paying the bills, strapping up the cloaks, scolding the waiters,
obeying, but not placidly obeying, the female behests to which he is
subject, and too frequently fretting uncomfortably beneath the burden
of the day, the heat and the dust, the absence of his slippers, and
the gross weight of his too-matured proportions. And he has, too, other
inward grievances of which he can say nothing to any ear. Something of
the salt of youth is left to him,--something of the spirit, though but
little of the muscle,--and he thinks of his boys who are far afield,
curtailed in their exploits by no petticoats, abridged by no stiff
proprieties; and he wishes that he was with them, feeling that his
trammels are heavy. The mother, of course, is there, kind to all her
party, but too often stiff and hard to all beyond it, anxious that papa
should have his comforts, anxious that her girls should see everything,
but afraid to let them see too much, sometimes a little cross when the
work becomes too hard or the pace of the pony is too rough, somewhat
dowdy in her cotton dress, and ill-suited to the hat which she wears.
She possesses every virtue under the sun. Of human beings she is the
least selfish. Her heart is full of love, and all who know her dote
upon her. At home she is charming, at home she is graceful and sweet
to be seen. But on her travels things do not go easily with her, and
her temper will sometimes become ruffled. The daughters are determined
to do the thing well, to see everything, to be stopped by no English
prejudices, to be at their ease, or at any rate look as though they
were; to talk French boldly in spite of their little slips; to wear
their dresses jauntily, and make the best of themselves; to have all
their eyes open, and carry home with them something from every day's
work. Who will say that they are wrong? Nay, who will not declare that
they are right in all this? But they overdo the thing in their intense
desire to utilize every moment; they are, alas, sometimes a little
ashamed of papa and mamma; and as they return down the Rhine, having
begun in Switzerland, and done Baden Baden, Frankfort, and Homburg on
their way, their dresses are not quite so jaunty, nor their gloves so
neat, nor their hats in such perfect trim, as when those articles were
inspected on the evening before they left home. That resolve to make
the best of themselves has been somewhat forgotten during the stern
realities of their journeys. A French girl will remember her crinoline
and her ribbons throughout every moment of her long day's work,--will
think of them through it all, preserving herself that she may preserve
them, if they were worth a thought at the beginning. If she is minded
to end dowdily, she will begin dowdily. But the trouble of such
continued care is too much for an English girl. She lapses first into
indifference, and from indifference to aversion; till at last she takes
an absolute pride in the absence of those little prettinesses which
she had at first been determined to maintain so stoutly. Who has not
seen her at the Dover railway station on her return home, as she stands
there grasping with one hand an Alpine stock and an umbrella, while she
leans listlessly on the other, regardless of the torn extremities of
her gloves and the battered form of her hat?

Such is the family that goes abroad because it is the thing to do.
The spirit that instigates them to roam afield is no hankering after
fashion. The father and mother, and daughters also, of the family of
which I speak, are well aware that such tourings are too common to
confer fashion or distinction. The days in which we heard that--

    Mrs. Grill is very ill,
      And nothing will improve her,
    Unless she sees the Tuileries,
      And waddles down the Louvre,--

are well nigh over, and are certainly over for such sensible people as
I am describing. It is not fashion that they seek, nor is it chiefly
amusement. Paterfamilias, when he starts, knows that he will not be
amused, and already wishes that the journey was over, and that he
could be back at his club. Mamma dreads it somewhat, and has more of
misgiving than of pleasant anticipation. She has not much of happiness
when papa is cross, and he is usually cross when he is uncomfortable.
And then the people at the inns are so often uncivil; and she fears the
beds! And the girls look for no unalloyed satisfaction. They know that
they have hard work before them, and the dread of those slips in their
French is not pleasant to them. But it is the thing to do. Not to have
seen Florence, Rome, Munich, and Dresden, not to be at home as regards
the Rhine, not to have ridden over the Gemmi or to have talked to
Alpine climbers at Zermatt, is to be behind the world. And then there
is so much to be done in Europe! Ars longa, vita brevis. Last year papa
wouldn't move,--that is, he wouldn't move beyond Cromer. Carry is,
alas! twenty-nine; Fanny is twenty-seven; even Sophie,--the childish
Sophie,--is twenty-four. Under such circumstances, who can dare to
think of ease, or even of pleasure? Years are flowing by, and the
realities of life,--still doubtful realities, but with so much of pain
in the doubt!--are coming on. Who can say how soon the income arising
from paternal energy may be at an end, and that the modest means of
pensioned age may render all such work impracticable? It is imperative
that the places be seen, that the lions be killed and ticked off as
difficulties done with and overcome. What may be the exact balance
of advantage to any of them when the tour is over, neither Carry nor
Fanny stops to inquire; but they put their heads together and determine
that the thing must be arranged. They feel that they are right. "It is
education," says Fanny, with her eyes glittering. "Home-staying youths
have ever homely wits," says Sophie, thinking perhaps too much of her
own advantage in point of years. "I will talk to papa in earnest,"
says Carry, with resolute mildness. She does talk to papa in earnest,
conscious that she is thereby doing her duty; and thus the family goes
abroad, because it is the thing to do.

In the old days,--days, let us say, that are now some hundred and fifty
years old,--young Englishmen used to travel for their education; but
it entered into the minds of those who sent them that they should see
something of the society of the countries which they visited. And in
such travelling time was given for such intercourse. But with the
ordinary English tourist, and especially with the ordinary English
tourist family, there is no such attempt now, no hope of any such good
fortune. Carry and Fanny mean to talk French boldly, but they intend
to do so in railway carriages, at hotel dinners, and to the guides and
waiters. No preparation is made for any attempt at social intercourse.
Letters of introduction are not obtained, nor is there time allowed
for any sojourn which would make an entrance into society possible.
That does not come even into Fanny's programme, though Fanny is
enthusiastic. Scenery, pictures, architecture, and a limited but minute
geographical inquiry, are the points to which it is intended that
attention shall be given. And of these much is learned. A true love of
scenery is common to almost all who will take the trouble to seek it. I
think that it is, at any rate, common to all English men and women. Of
pictures the knowledge acquired is most frequently what may be called
dead knowledge. Carry soon learns to know a Rubens from a Raphael,
and almost learns to know a Titian from a Tintoretto. She stores her
memory with facts as to individual pictures, remembers dates, and
can tell you who was the teacher of whom. She is sometimes a little
restless and mildly impatient during her labours in the galleries, and
rejoices often when the hard day's work is done and the custodian bids
her depart. But her toils have not been barren, and she enjoys after a
fashion what she has learned. Architecture comes easier, as the time
given to it is necessarily less, and the attention may be more vaguely
applied. But, on that account, less is carried away, and the memories
of the cathedral have dwindled to nothing, while the positions of the
world-famous pictures are still remembered. As to the geography,
it comes unsought, and remains unappreciated; but it is not on that
account the less valuable. How few of our young ladies can define the
position of Warsaw; while so many know accurately that of Wiesbaden!

Many accusations have been made against travelling English families,
touching that peculiarity of theirs in going hither and thither without
an attempt to see and know the people of the countries they visit; and
it is alleged, and truly alleged, that Frenchmen and Germans coming
here do make efforts to come among us and see us, and learn of what
like we are. But I think that we can defend ourselves on that score. We
travel among Frenchmen and Germans in bulk, while they come among us by
twos and threes. Our twos and our threes see as much of them as they
see of us. With them families do not go abroad because it is the thing
to do. How many an Englishman stays in Paris two days to see the city;
whereas no Frenchman comes to London for such a flying visit, unless he
be a _commis voyageur_, or has some business in hand.

The family that travels because it is the thing to do, is, I am sure,
in the right. Fanny understood her point when she said that it was
education. It is education; but if one can judge from the faces,
voices, and manners of the persons undergoing it, it is not often
pleasure. The work has been too hard, the toil too unremitting, the
endeavour to make the most of the short six weeks too unrelenting, to
allow of much of the softness of summer enjoyment. The stern Fanny,
who, as she has gone on her way, has made the foreign Bradshaw all
her own, has allowed no rest to her weary father, no ease to her
over-driven mother. "If we don't do Munich now, we shall never do it,"
she has said with energy. And thus the sullen father and the despairing
mother have been dragged along further dusty railroads, to another hot
city of pictures, in which Paterfamilias found nothing to comfort him
but the beer, and mamma no alleviation but the excessive punctuality
and neatness of the washerwoman.

But, at last, they are at home,--the penance is over, and the true
pleasure begins. They have done the work and have garnered the wages.
Papa is sufficiently happy in feeling that he cannot be again taken
away from his dressing-room and cellar, at any rate, for ten months;
and mamma, as she once more creeps into her own bed, thanks God that
she has been enabled to go through her duty. Carry and Fanny hide their
travelling gear with some little feeling of shame, and, as they toil
at their journals for the first week of their return, take pride in
thinking that they have seen at any rate as much as their neighbours.




THE MAN WHO TRAVELS ALONE.


Men who travel alone may be divided into two classes. There is the man
who cannot get a companion, and the man who does not want one. There is
also, between these two solitary men, an intermediate solitary man, who
travels alone because he cannot find the companion that would exactly
suit him. But, whatever may be the cause of his solitude, the man who
travels alone is not, I think, to be envied.

If he be a studious, thoughtful man, taking delight in museums and
houses of assembly, given to chemistry and the variations of European
politics, fond of statistics and well-instructed in stuffed vermin, he
may be as happy travelling alone as he would be alone in his library;
but such a man is exceptional, and I am not now speaking of him. He is
a student and not a tourist. He is going to school and not out for a
holiday. The man who travels alone, with whom we have to do, is one who
goes abroad for a little health, for a good deal of recreation if he
can find it, and for the pleasure of looking about him and seeing the
world. The improvement in health he may find; but the recreation will
be doubtful, unless he be one by nature averse to gregarious habits.

When we see such a one,--and such a one is often seen straying along
the Rhine or wandering listlessly among the mountains,--we always
suppose him to be alone because he cannot help it. We are never kind
enough to give him credit for a choice for solitude; and we avoid him
sedulously because we have it in our power to give him that one thing
that he wants. Such is the human nature of tourists, which in this
respect is very like to the human nature of people who stay at home. We
like to have at our houses those whom it is difficult to obtain, and do
not care to entertain those who are always ready to come to us.

It must be admitted that the ill-nature of tourist parties in this
respect is justified to a great degree by the experienced results of
any exceptional good-nature into which soft-hearted persons may be
occasionally betrayed. Who among us that has been thus soft-hearted
on an occasion has not repented in sackcloth and ashes? The solitary
tourist when once taken up can hardly be dropped; he appears, and
reappears, and comes up again till the original friends of the original
good-natured sinner become gloomy and sullen and talk of strong
measures. Whispers of an enforced separation are murmured about,
and Jones, who has picked the man up, and who "found that there was
something in him" as they sat next each other in a railway carriage, is
made to understand by Smith and Walker, that unless he can contrive
to drop Mr. Robinson, he must be dropped himself. It is not so easy to
drop Mr. Robinson. The paths of Switzerland, and the roads into Italy,
are open to all the world.

Poor Robinson! we will cling to him for a while, and endeavour to show
the nature of the misery which he suffers. At home he is an honest
fellow, and those who know him best say that he is a gentleman. He is
quite equal to the men whom he meets on his tour, and who look down
upon him because of his solitude. The time will probably come when he
will be no longer alone, when he will have a wife and children, and a
house into which Jones would think it a blessing to be admitted.

But at present Robinson is alone, and has known himself to be thrown
aside by the men whose society he coveted. He had come out on his tour
with much compunction, dreading his solitude, believing in his heart
of hearts that it would be better for him to go with his sisters
to Broadstairs. But he had accused himself of being unmanly, he had
buckled on his armour in the shape of a Murray's guide, a vocabulary,
and a Bradshaw, and had started by the Ostend boat, assuring himself
that many others had done the same before him, and had returned home
proudly to tell the tale of their wanderings. On the railway to Cologne
he had picked up with Jones, and for twenty-four hours the prospects of
a blessed union had cheered him. He had followed the friends to their
hotel with some half-word of excuse. He had sat by Smith at the first
dinner, dividing Smith from a pretty young countrywoman, and had found
Smith to be somewhat unpleasant. Had he understood his game he would
have taken himself to the other side of Smith. Wanting to gain much, he
should have surrendered something. In the evening he had smoked with
Jones, whose good-nature had not as yet been outraged. Then had Walker
and Smith roundly brought their friend to task, and Jones having asked
the poor fellow which way he meant to travel on the morrow, had plainly
told him that he and his party intended to take another route.

Some chance reader of these words may, perhaps, one day have felt such
rebuke, and be able to understand its harshness. "Ah, yes! very well,"
said Robinson. "Then I dare say we shall not meet again. I couldn't
very well alter my plan now." There was a dash of manliness about him,
and he could show some gallantry before the traitor friend who had
become his foe. But when he went up to his room, the tears were almost
in his eyes, and as he turned into bed, he resolved that on the morrow
he would betake himself home.

But on the morrow his heart was higher, and he persevered. He saw the
three odious men as they started from the inn door, and was able to
perceive that they were not gentlemen. Smith he thought he had seen
behind a counter. As for Walker, he had caught Walker tripping with his
_h_s, and was glad to be rid of him. Before his breakfast was over he
had taught himself almost to believe that he had dropped the equivocal
party, and had told himself that he should be very careful how he
selected his acquaintance.

But not the less was he very melancholy, and at the end of the second
day from that morning had fallen into a dreary state of misanthropy.
Ideas had begun to float through his brain which he believed to be
philosophical, but which all tended to the no-good-in-anything school
of thought. He had assumed a constrained look of contempt, and would
hardly notice the waiter, as he declined one after another the dishes
brought to him at dinner. In the evening he roamed about moodily in the
twilight, asking himself psychological questions about suicide; not,
indeed, intending to kill himself, but having a fancy for the subject
as one of great interest. He thought that he might, perhaps, have
killed himself had he not felt that his doing so would be deleterious
to his sisters. As for Jones, or Smith, or Walker, in his present
mood he would not have spoken to them. He was in love with solitude,
and would have been severe to any Jones or any Walker who might have
intruded upon him.

But on the next day he makes another effort, having encountered our
friend Paterfamilias, with his wife and three daughters, upon a Rhine
steamboat. Like a prudent young man in such circumstances, he first
speaks a word to the father, and the father admits the word graciously.
Fathers so situated are always oblivious of their daughters, and never
remember that they, when young men, used to make similar attempts.
But mothers never forget, and with accurate measures of mental yard
and foot, take inventory of all comers, weighing every gesture, and
knowing the value of every stitch in the man's garment, and of every
tone in the man's voice. The stitches and tones belonging to Robinson
were not much in his favour. When a man is at discount with himself he
is usually below par with all the world beside. When in the course
of a couple of hours Robinson had remarked to Sophie,--the youthful
Sophie,--that the Rhine was the monarch of rivers, the mother speaks a
cautious word to Carry, the eldest daughter, and just as misanthropy
was giving place to a genial love for all his kind under a pleasant
smile on Sophie's mouth, the whole family whisk themselves away, and
our friend is again alone.

He has Childe Harold in his pocket, and the labour of learning a stanza
or two by heart carries him on into Switzerland. In ascending the
Rigi he again comes across Jones and Walker. Alas for human nature,
he is only too happy to be recognized by those whom he had assured
himself that he despised! A civil word half spoken by a panting voice,
a nod of recognition which could hardly not have been given, draws
him once more into their social circle, and he forgets the counter,
and the doubtful _h_s, and the bearishness of the obdurate Smith. If
they will only open their arms to him, and let him be one of them! A
fear comes upon him that they may suspect him to be impecunious, and
he adapts his conversation to the idea, striving to make it apparent,
by words carefully turned for the purpose, that he is quite another
sort of person than that. Walker sees the attempt, and measures the
man accordingly,--but measures him wrongly. Poor Robinson has been
mean,--is mean; he has sunk beneath the weight of his solitude to a
lowness that is not natural to him; but he has not the meanness of
which they suspect him. "If you let that man hang on to you any longer,
he'll be borrowing money of you," says Smith. Jones remarks that it
takes two men to play at that game; but on the following morning the
three friends, having necessarily been domiciled with Robinson on
the top of the mountain that night, are careful to descend without
him, and the poor wretch knows that he has again been dropped. The
trio, as they descend the hill, are very merry withal respecting the
Robinson difficulty, indulging that joy of ascendancy which naturally
belongs to us when we have discovered anyone low enough to require our
assistance.

Along the lakes and over the mountains goes the wretched man, still in
solitude. He tells himself in moments of sober earnest that he has made
a mistake, and has subjected himself to great misery in attempting to
obtain alone delights which by their very nature require companionship.
Robinson is not a student. He cares nothing for minerals, and knows
nothing of botany. Neither the social manners of the people among whom
he is wandering, nor the formation of the earth's crust in those parts,
are able to give him that excitement which he requires. The verdure
of the Alps, the peaks of the mountains, the sun rising through the
mists, would give him pleasure if he had with him another soul to
whom he could exclaim in the loving intimacy of free intercourse, "By
George, Tom, that is jolly! It's all very well talking of Cumberland,
but one must come to Switzerland to see that." Every man cannot be
a Childe Harold; and even to be a Childe Harold one must begin by a
stout determination to be unhappy, and to put up with it. In his own
lodgings in London Robinson has lived a good deal alone, and, though he
has not liked it, he has put up with it. It has been the business of
his life. But he has it not in him to travel alone and to enjoy it. If,
indeed, the Foreign Office in Whitehall had entrusted him with a letter
or even a teapot, to carry to the Foreign Office at Vienna, he would
have executed his mission with manly fidelity, and would have suffered
nothing on the journey. The fact that he had a teapot to convey would
have been enough for his support. But then work is always so much
easier than play.

But he goes on wearily, and still makes an effort or two. As he falls
down into Italy, looking with listless, unseeing eyes at all the
prettinesses of the Ticino, he comes upon another Robinson, and there
is a chance for him. But he has unconsciously learned and despised
his own littleness, and in that other lonely one he fears to find
one as small, or it may be smaller than himself. He gathers his toga
round him, in the shape of knapsack and walking-stick, with somewhat
of dignity, and looks at his brother with suspicious eye. His brother
makes some faint effort at fraternization, such as he had made before,
and then Robinson,--our Robinson,--is off. He wants a companion
sorely, but he does not want one who shall be so low in the world's
reckoning as to want him. So he passes on, and having at last tramped
out with weary feet his six weeks of wretched vacation, he returns
home rejoicing to think that on the morrow he shall be back amidst the
comforts of his desk and stool, and the society of his fellow-labourers.

Most of us are Robinsons. We are so far lucky indeed, the greater
number of us, that we need not be solitary Robinsons. We have our
friends, and are better advised than to attempt the enjoyment of our
tours alone. But as to our capacity for doing so, or our conduct if we
should attempt it, I doubt whether many of us would be much stronger
than he was.




THE UNPROTECTED FEMALE TOURIST.


The unprotected female tourist is generally a much stronger-minded
individual than the solitary male traveller, and has a higher purpose,
a better courage, and a greater capacity for meeting and conquering
the difficulties of the road. The poor fellow, indeed, whose solitary
journey we described the other day, had no purpose, unless a vague idea
of going where amusement would come to him, rather than of seeking it
by any effort of his own, may be called a purpose; but the unprotected
female knows what she is about; she has something to do and she
does it; she has a defined plan from which nothing moves her; the
discomfort of a day will not turn her aside; nor will she admit of any
social overtures till she has formed a judgment of their value, and has
fair reason to believe that she will receive at any rate as much as
she gives. The unprotected female, as she knows and uses the strength
of her weakness, so does she perceive and measure the weakness of her
strength. She cannot be impetuous, and impulsive, and kitten-like, as
may girls who can retreat at once behind their mother's crinoline or
under their father's umbrella, should a cloud be seen in the distance
or the need for shelter be felt.

How or under what influences the unprotected female commences her
tour, who can tell? It will usually be found, if inquiry be made as
to her family, that she has a brother, or a father, or a mother; that
she need not be an unprotected female tourist, had she not elected
that line as the best for her pleasure or her profit. She is seldom
very young;--but neither is she very old. The lady whose age would
admit of her travelling alone without remark rarely chooses to do
so; and when she does, she is not the lady whom we all know as the
unprotected female. The unprotected female must be pretty, or must
at least possess feminine graces which stand in lieu of prettiness,
and which can put forward a just and admitted claim for personal
admiration. She is not rich, and travels generally with economy; but
she is rarely brought to a shift for money, and her economies conceal
themselves gracefully and successfully. She learns the value of every
franc, of every thaler, of every zwansiger as she progresses, and gets
more change out of her sovereigns than any Englishman will do. She
allows herself but few self-indulgences, and controls her appetites.
She can enjoy a good dinner as well as her brother could do; but she
can go without her dinner with a courageous persistence of which her
brother knows nothing. She never pays through the nose in order that
people indifferent to her may think her great or generous, though she
pays always sufficient to escape unsatisfactory noises and to prevent
unpleasant demands. Her dress is quiet and yet attractive; her clothes
fit her well; and if, as one is prone to suspect, they are in great
part the work of her own hand, she must be an industrious woman, able
to go to her needle at night after the heat and dust of the day are
over. Her gloves are never worn at the finger-ends; her hat is never
shapeless, nor are her ribbons ever soiled; the folds of her not too
redundant drapery are never misarranged, confused, or angular. She
never indulges in bright colours, and is always the same, and always
neat; and they who know her best believe that if she were called out of
her room by fire in the middle of the night, she would come forth calm,
in becoming apparel, and ready to take an active part in the emergency
without any infringement on feminine propriety. She is never forward,
nor is she ever bashful. A bashful woman could not play her game,
and a forward woman immediately encounters sorrow when she attempts
to play it. She can decline all overtures of acquaintanceship without
giving offence, and she can glide into intimacies without any apparent
effort. She can speak French with fluency and with much more than
average accuracy, and probably knows something of German and Italian.
Without such accomplishments as these let no woman undertake the part
of an unprotected female tourist. She can converse on almost any
subject; and, if called on to do so, can converse without any subject.
As she becomes experienced in her vocation she learns and remembers
all the routes of travelling. She is acquainted with and can explain
all galleries, cathedrals, and palaces. She knows the genealogies of
the reigning kings, and hardly loses herself among German dukes. She
understands politics, and has her opinion about the Emperor, the King
of Prussia, and the Pope. And she can live with people who know much
more than herself, or much less, without betraying the difference
between herself and them. She can be gay with the gay, and enjoy that;
or dull with the dull, and seem to enjoy that. What man as he travels
learns so much, works so hard, uses so much mental power, takes so
much trouble in all things, as she does? She is never impatient, never
exacting, never cross, never conquered, never triumphant, never humble,
never boastful, never ill, never in want of assistance. If she fall
into difficulties she escapes from them without a complaint. If she be
ill-used she bears it without a murmur; if disappointed,--as must so
often be the case with her,--she endures her cross and begins again
with admirable assiduity. Yet she is only an unprotected female, and
they who meet her on her travels are too apt to declare that she is an
old soldier.

Unprotected female tourists, such as I have described, are not very
numerous; but there are enough of them to form a class by themselves.
From year to year, as we make our autumn excursions, we see perhaps
one of them, and perhaps a second. We meet the same lady two or three
times, making with her a pleasant acquaintance, and then passing on.
The farther we go afield the more likely we are to encounter her.
She is always to be met with on the Nile; she is quite at home at
Constantinople; she goes frequently to Spain; you will probably find
her in Central America; but her head-quarters are perhaps at Jerusalem.
She prefers the saddle to any other mode of travelling, and can sit
on horseback for any number of hours without flinching. For myself,
I have always liked the company of the unprotected female, and have
generally felt something like the disruption of a tender friendship
when circumstances have torn me from her.

But why is she what she is? As to the people that one ordinarily meets
when travelling, no one stops to inquire why they are what they are.
Mr. and Mrs. Thompson have come together, naturally enough; and,
naturally enough, there are three or four Miss Thompsons. And when
young Mr. Thompson turns up alone, no one thinks very much about him.
But one is driven to think why Miss Thompson is there at Cairo all
by herself. You go to the Pyramids with her, and you find her to be
very pleasant. She sits upon her donkey as though she had been born
sitting on a donkey; and through dust and heat and fleas and Arabs
she makes herself agreeable as though nothing were amiss with her.
You find yourself talking to her of your mother, your sister, or your
friend,--but not of your wife or sweetheart. But of herself, excepting
as regards her life at Cairo, she says nothing to you. You ask yourself
many questions about her.

    Who was her father? who was her mother?
    Had she a sister? had she a brother?
    Or was there a dearer one still, and a nearer one
              Yet than all other?

Why is she alone? and how is it possible that a girl whose dress fits
her so nicely should not have "a nearer one and dearer one yet than all
other?"

But you may take it for granted that she has not; or if she has, that
he is no better than he should be;--that his nature is such as to
have driven her to think solitude better than his company. Love of
independence has probably made the unprotected female tourist what she
is;--that and the early acquired knowledge that such independence in a
woman requires very special training. She has probably said to herself
that she would rise above the weakness of her sex,--driven, perhaps, to
that resolve by some special grief which, as a woman, she has incurred.
She is something of a Bohemian, but a Bohemian with a regret that
Bohemianism should be necessary to her. She will not be hindered by
her petticoats from seeing what men see, and from enjoying that which
Nature seems to bring within a man's reach so easily, but which is so
difficult to a woman. That there might be something more blessed than
that independence she is ready enough to admit to herself. Where is
the woman that does not admit it? But she will not admit that a woman
should live for that hope alone; and therefore she is riding with you
to the Pyramids,--others of course accompanying you,--and talking to
you with that studied ease which is intended to show that, though she
is an unprotected female, she knows what she is about, and can enjoy
herself without any fear of you, or of Mrs. Grundy. You find her to be
very clever, and then think her to be very pretty; and if,--which may
probably be the case,--you are in such matters a fool, you say a word
or two more than you ought to do, and the unprotected female shows you
that she can protect herself.

But Miss Thompson is wrong for all this, and I think it will be
admitted that I have made the best of Miss Thompson's case. The line
which she has taken up is one which it is impossible that a woman
should follow with ultimate satisfaction. She cannot unsex herself
or rid herself of the feeling that admiration is accorded to her as
a pretty woman. She has probably intended,--honestly intended,--to
be quit of that feeling, and to move about the world as though, for
her, men and women were all the same, as though no more flirting were
possible, and love-making were a thing simply good to be read of in
novels. But if so, why has she been so careful with her gloves, and her
hat, and all her little feminine belongings? It has been impossible to
her not to be a woman. The idea and remembrance of her womanly charms
have always been there, always present to her mind. Unmarried men
are to her possible lovers and possible husbands,--as she is also a
possible wife to any unmarried man,--and also a possible love. Though
she may have devoted herself to celibacy with her hand on the altar,
she cannot banish from her bosom the idea which, despite herself,
almost forms itself into a hope. We will not ask as to her past life;
but for the future she will be what she is,--only till the chance
comes to her of being something better. It is that free life which she
leads,--which she leads in all innocency,--which makes it impossible
for her to be true to the resolution she has made for herself. Such
a woman cannot talk to men without a consciousness that intimacy may
lead to love, or the pretence of love, or the dangers of love. Nor, it
may be said, can any unmarried woman do so. And therefore it is that
they do not go about the world unprotected, either at home or abroad.
Therefore it is that the retreat behind mamma's ample folds or beneath
papa's umbrella is considered to be so salutary.

You, my friend, with your quick, impulsive, and, allow me to say,
meaningless expression of admiration, received simply the rebuke
which you deserved. Then there was an end of that, and Miss Thompson,
being somewhat used to such misadventures, thought but little of it
afterwards. She has to do those things when the necessity comes upon
her. But it does happen, sometimes, that the unprotected female,--who
has a heart, though other women will say that she has none,--is
touched, and listens, and hopes, and at last almost thinks that she has
found out her mistake. The cold exterior glaze of the woman is pricked
through, and there comes a scratch upon the stuff beneath. A tone in
her voice will quaver as though everything were not easy with her. She
will forget for the moment her prudence, and the usual precautions
of her life, and will dream of retiring within the ordinary pale of
womanhood. She will think that to cease to be an unprotected female may
be sweet, and for a while she will be soft, and weak, and wavering. But
with unprotected females such ideas have to pass away very fleetly.
I am afraid it must be said that let a woman once be an unprotected
female, so she must remain to the end. Who knows the man that has taken
an unprotected female to his bosom and made her the mistress of his
home, and the chief priestess of his household gods? And if any man
have done so, what have his friends said of him and his adventure?

And so the unprotected female goes on wandering still farther afield,
increasing in cleverness every year, and ever acquiring new knowledge;
but increasing also in hardness, and in that glaze of which I have
spoken, till at last one is almost driven to confess, when one's wife
and daughters declare her to be an old soldier, that one's wife and
daughters are not in justice liable to contradiction.




THE UNITED ENGLISHMEN WHO TRAVEL FOR FUN.


The United Englishmen who travel for fun are great nuisances to other
tourists, are great nuisances to the towns they visit and the scenes
they disturb, are often nuisances in a small way to the police, are
nuisances to people saying their prayers in churches, are nuisances
to visitors in picture galleries, are nuisances to the ordinary
travellers of the day, and are nuisances to the world at large--except
the innkeepers and the railway companies; but they generally achieve
their own object, and have what the Americans call a good time of it.
A United Englishman travelling for fun should not be over twenty-five
years of age, but up to that age what he does, though he be a nuisance,
should be forgiven him. Though we ourselves may be annoyed by the
freaks of such travellers, shocked by their utter disregard of apparel,
stunned by their noises, and ashamed of them as our countrymen, yet
we are well pleased that our sons should be among their number, and
are conscious that amidst all that energetic buffoonery and wild
effrontery, education is going on, and that much is being learned,
though the recipient of the learning would himself be ashamed to own
any such fact to himself.

The men of whom I am now speaking are generally gentlemen by
birth,--who have been educated or missed being educated, as education
is obtained or missed by the sons of English gentlemen,--are pleasant
fellows who have learned to love each other at school or college,
and have nothing about them that is mean or in itself ignoble; but
they are young of their age, men for whom nature has hitherto done
more than art, who have hardly as yet learned to think, and are still
enjoying all the irresponsible delights of boyhood at a time of life
at which others less fortunate are already immersed in the grievous
cares of earning their bread. I do not know that any country except
England produces such a crop. We see United Frenchmen on their travels;
but they are discreet, well dressed, anticipating the life of middle
age rather than adhering to the manners of boyhood,--much given to
little attentions to women, and very decorous in their language. And
young German tourists are encountered everywhere, though more often
alone than in union; but the German tourist is almost always a German
student. Life is a serious thing to him, and he is resolved that he
will not lose this most precious period of it. United Germans, rough
in their pleasures, and noisy in their demonstrations, may no doubt
be found; but they are to be found in their own cities, at their
universities, among their own people. It does not come in their way
to go forth and exhibit their rowdiness among strangers. And as to
Americans, who has ever seen a young American? An American who travels
at eighteen, travels because he is blasé with the world at home, tired
of democratic politics, and anxious to see whether anything may still
be gleaned from European manners to improve the not yet perfected
institutions of his own country. Among tourists of the order of United
Englishmen an American young man is altogether out of his element. He
will attempt sometimes to live as they live, but will soon retire,
disgusted partly by them and partly by his own incompetence. I have
known an American who could be loud, and jolly, and frolicsome, and yet
carry himself like a gentleman through it all; but I have never known a
young American who could do so.

Englishmen of the class in question are boys for a more protracted
period of their life, and remain longer in a state of hobbledehoyhood,
than the youths probably of any other nation. They are nurtured on the
cold side of the wall, and come slowly to maturity; but the fruit,
which is only half ripe at the end of summer, is the fruit that we keep
for our winter use. I do not know that much has been lost in life by
him who, having been a boy at twenty, is still a young man at forty.
But even in England we are changing all this now-a-days, and by a
liberal use of the hot-water pipes of competition are in a way to force
our fruit into the market as early as any other people. Let us hope
that what we gain in time may not be lost in flavour.

But we have not yet advanced so far as to put down the bands of United
Englishmen who travel for fun. Who does not know the look of the band,
and cannot at a glance swear to their vocation? The smallest number
of such a party is three, and it does not often exceed five. They
are dressed very much alike. The hat, whatever be its exact shape, is
chosen with the purpose of setting all propriety instantly at defiance.
No other description can be given of it. To say that it is a slouch
hat, or a felt hat, or a Tom-and-Jerry hat, conveys no idea of the hat
in question. The most discreet Low Church parson may wear a slouch
hat, and may look in it as discreet and as Low Church as he does in
his economically preserved chimney-pot at home. But the United English
tourist batters his hat, and twists it, and sits on it, and rumples and
crumples it, till it is manifestly and undeniably indicative of its
owner. And having so completed its manufacture he obtrudes it upon the
world with a remarkable ingenuity. In a picture gallery he will put it
on the head of a bust of Apollo; in a church he will lay it down on
the railing of the altar, or he will carry it on high on the top of
his stick, so that all men may see it and know its owner by the sign.
Sitting in public places he will chuck it up and catch it, and at
German beer-gardens he will spread it carefully in the middle of the
little table intended for the glasses. He never keeps it on his head
when he should take it off,--because he is a gentleman; but he rarely
keeps it on his head when that is the proper place for it,--because he
is a United Englishman who travels for fun. He wears a suit of grey
clothes, the coat being a shooting coat, and the trousers, if he be
loud in his vocation, being exchanged for knickerbockers. And it is
remarkable that the suit in which you will see him will always strike
you as that which he had procured for last year's tour, and that he is
economically wearing it to shreds on the present occasion. But this
is not so. The clothes were new when he left London; but he has been
assiduous with his rumpling and crumpling here as he has been with his
hat, and at the expiration of his first week out he is able to boast
to himself that he has, at any rate, got rid of the gloss. He wears
flannel shirts, and in warm weather goes about without a cravat. He
carries in his portmanteau a dress-coat, waistcoat, and trousers,
which are of no use to him, as who would think of asking such a man to
dinner? But, as he abhors the extra package which a decent hat would
make needful, he is to be seen in Paris, Vienna, or Florence with that
easily-recognized covering for his head which I have above described.
He has a bludgeon usually in his hand, and often a pipe in his mouth.
He knows nothing of gloves, but is very particular as to the breadth
and strength of his shoes. He often looks to be very dirty; but his
morning tub is a religious ceremony, and, besides that, he bathes
whenever he comes across a spot which, from its peculiar difficulties,
is more than ordinarily inappropriate for the exercise.

These tourists for fun are known well by all that large class of men
who are engaged in supplying the wants of summer travellers. No one
ever doubts their solvency; no innkeeper ever refuses them admittance;
no station-master or captain of a steamboat ever takes them for other
than they are. They are not suspected, but known; and therefore a
certain tether is allowed to them which is not to be exceeded. They
are looked after good-humouredly, and are so restrained that they
shall not be made to feel the restraint if the feeling can be spared
them. "Three mad Englishmen! They're all right. I've got my eye on
them. They won't do any harm?" That seems to be the ordinary language
which is held about them by those to whom falls the duty of watching
them and supplying their wants. The waiters were very good-natured to
them, patting them, as it were on the back, and treating them much
as though they were children. But it is understood that they must
have wherewithal to eat and to drink well, and that their bells must
be answered if any quiet is to be preserved in the houses. Sometimes
there will be a row, and the English pride will flare up and conceive
itself to have been insulted. The United Englishman who travels for
fun has a great idea of his country's power, and resents violently any
uncourteous interference with his vagaries. But it is so generally
known that the "mad Englishman" is all right, and that he won't do
any real harm if an eye be kept on him, that such rows seldom end
disastrously.

These united tourists often quarrel among themselves, but their
quarrels do not come to much. Green tells White that Brown is the most
ill-tempered, evil-minded, cross-grained brute that was ever born, that
he thought so before and that now he knows it; that he was a fool to
come abroad with such a beast, and that he was absolutely, finally,
and irrevocably resolved that never, under any circumstances, will he
speak to the man again. The party will be broken up, but he cannot help
that. There will be difficulty about the division of money, but he
cannot help that. Yes; it is true that he is fond of Brown's sister,
but neither can he help that. It has always been his wonder that such a
sister should have such a brother. Only for Mary Brown he never would
have come abroad with this pig of a fellow. The quarrel while it rages
is very hot, and Brown tells White that Green is the greatest ass
under the sun. Nevertheless the quarrel is made up before breakfast on
the following morning, and the three men go on together without much
remembrance of the language which they had used.

I have said that most of us would like to see our sons go out on such
parties, and I think that we should be right in sending them. The
United Englishmen who travel for fun rarely get into much evil. They do
not get drunk, nor do they gamble at the public tables. And undoubtedly
they learn much, though it seems that they are always averse to learn
anything. How education is accomplished or of what it consists, who
yet has been able to explain to us? That by far the greater portion
of our education is involuntary all men will probably admit. We learn
to speak, to walk, to express our emotions, and to control such
expression; to be grave and gay, and to understand the necessity of
alternating between the two, by copying others unconsciously. We
exercise a thousand arts which we do not know how we acquired, and
the more we see of the world the more do we learn of such arts,--even
though we are not aware of the process. That our friends Brown, Green,
and White might have learned more than they did learn on that tour of
theirs, may be true enough; but for all that, they do not come back as
empty as they went.

And they have had this merit,--that they have in truth enjoyed what
they have done. Little clouds there have been,--such as that quarrel
between Brown and his future brother-in-law; but they have been passing
mists which have hardly served to disturb the sunshine of their tour.
Together they started, together they have been over mountains and
through cities, performing feats which, in their own judgments, are
little short of marvellous, and together they return at the end of
their holiday satisfied with themselves and with the world at large.
They have seen pictures and walked through cathedrals; but, above all,
they have stood upon the slopes of the hills and have looked at the
mountains. They have listened to the little rivers as they tumbled, and
have laid their hands upon the edges of mighty rocks; they have smelt
the wild thyme as it gave out its fragrance beneath their feet, and
have peered wondering through the blue crevasses of the glacier. They
have sat in the sweet gloom of the evening and have watched the surface
of the lake as it lay beneath them without a ripple, and have waited
there till the curtain of night has hid the water from their view. Then
they have thrown themselves idly on their backs, and have counted the
stars in the firmament over their head, wondering at the beauty of the
heavens. They have said little perhaps to each other of the romance
of such moments, of the poetry, which has filled their hearts; but the
romance and the poetry have been there; and they have brought home with
them a feeling for beauty which will last them through their lives, in
spite of their crumpled hats, their big bludgeons, their short pipes,
and their now almost indecent knickerbockers.




THE ART TOURIST.


The class of art tourists is very numerous, and of all tourists the art
tourist is, I think, the most indefatigable. He excels the tourist in
search of knowledge both in length of hours and in assiduity while he
is at his work. The art tourist now described is not the man or woman
who goes abroad to learn to paint, or to buy pictures and gems, or to
make curious art investigations. Such travellers are necessarily few
in number, and set about their work as do other people of business.
They are not tourists at all in the now accepted meaning of the word.
Our art tourist is he,--or quite as often she,--who flies from gallery
to gallery, spending hours and often days in each, with a strong
determination to get up conscientiously the subject of pictures.
Sculpture and architecture come also within the scope of the labours
of the art tourist, but not to such an extent as to influence them
materially. Pictures are the ever present subject of the English
art tourist's thoughts, and to them and their authors he devotes
himself throughout his holiday with that laborious perseverance which
distinguishes the true Briton as much in his amusement as in his work.
He is studying painters rather than pictures,--certainly not pictures
alone as things pleasing in themselves. A picture, of which the painter
is avowedly unknown, is to such a one a thing of almost no interest
whatever,--unless in the more advanced period of his study he should
venture to attempt to read the riddle and should take upon himself
to name the unknown. And this work of the art tourist, though it may
lead to a true love of pictures, does in no wise arise from any such
feeling. And, indeed, it is quite compatible with an entire absence of
any such predilection. Men become learned in pictures without caring
in the least for their beauty or their ugliness, just as other men
become learned in the laws, without any strong feeling either as to
their justice or injustice. The lawyer looks probably for a return for
his labours in a comfortable income, and the art tourist looks for
his return in that sort of reputation which is now attached to the
knowledge of the history of painting.

The first great object of the art tourist is to be able to say, without
reference to any card, guide-book, or affixed name, and with some
approach to correctness, who painted the picture then before him;
and his next great object is to be able to declare the date of that
painter's working, the country in which he lived, the master who taught
him, the school which he founded, the name of his mistress or wife,
the manner of his death, and the galleries in which his chief works
are now to be found.

As regards the first object,--that of knowing the painter from his
work,--the art tourist soon obtains many very useful guides to
his memory. Indeed, it is on guides to his memory that he depends
altogether. When he has progressed so far that he can depend on his
judgment instead of his memory, he has ceased to be an art tourist, and
has become a connoisseur. The first guide to memory is the locality of
the picture. He knows that Raphaels are rife at Florence, Titians at
Venice, Vandykes at Genoa, Guidos at Bologna, Van Eykes and Memlings
in Flanders, and Rembrandts and Paul Potters in Holland. Pictures
have been too much scattered about to make this knowledge alone
good for much; but joined to other similar aids, it is a powerful
assistance, and prevents mistakes which in an old art tourist would
be disgraceful. Next to this, probably, he acquires a certain, though
not very accurate idea of dates, which supplies him with information
from the method and manner of the picture. If he is placed before a
work of some early Tuscan painter,--Orcagna, or the like,--he will
know that it is not the work of some comparatively modern painter of
the same country,--such as Andrea del Sarto;--and so he progresses.
Then the old masters themselves were very liberal in the aids which
they gave to memory by repeating their own work,--as, indeed, are some
of their modern followers, who love to produce the same faces year
after year upon their canvas,--I will not say usque ad nauseam, for
how can we look on a pretty face too often? The old masters delighted
to paint their own wives or their own mistresses,--the women, in
short, whom they loved best and were most within their reach, guided
perhaps by some idea of economy in saving the cost of a model; and
this peculiarity on their part is a great assistance to art tourists.
He or she must be a very young art tourist who does not know the
Murillo face, or the two Rubens faces, or the special Raphael face,
or the Leonardo da Vinci face, or the Titian head and neck, or the
Parmigianino bunch of hair, or the Correggio forehead and fingers.
All this is a great assistance, and gives hope to an art tourist in a
field of inquiry so wide that there could hardly be any hope without
such aid. And then these good-natured artists had peculiar tricks with
them, which give further most valuable help to the art tourist in his
work. Jacobo Bassano paints people ever cringing towards the ground,
and consequently a Jacobo Bassano can be read by a young art tourist
in an instant. Claude Lorraine delighted to insert a man carrying a
box. That vilest of painters, Guercino, rejoices in turbans. Schalken
painted even scenes by candle-light, so that he was called Della Notte.
Jan Steen usually greets us with a portrait of himself in a state of
drunkenness. Adrian van Ostade seldom omits a conical-shaped hat, or
Teniers a red cap and a peculiar figure, for which the art tourist
always looks immediately when he thinks of discovering this artist. All
these little tricks of the artist, and many more of the same kind, the
art tourist soon learns, much to his own comfort.

And then he progresses to a kind of knowledge which comes somewhat
nearer to art criticism, but which does not yet amount to the exercise
of any judgment on his own part. He learns to perceive the peculiar
manner of certain artists who painted peculiarly; and though by the
knowledge he so attains he may be led into error,--as when he takes
a Lancret for a Watteau,--still the error is never disgracefully
erroneous. He knows at once the girl by Greuze, with her naked shoulder
and her head on one side; he knows at once the old woman by Denner,
the little wrinkles on whose face, as he looks at them through his
magnifying glass, seem to be so very soft. The unnatural sunshine of
Claude he knows, and the natural sunshine of Cuyp. The blotches of
Rembrandt and the smoothness of Carlo Dolci are to him as A, B, C. The
romantic rocks and trees of Salvator Rosa do not certainly represent
nature,--to which they bear no resemblance,--but to him they represent
Salvator Rosa very adequately. The pietistic purity of Fra Angelico
strikes him forcibly, and the stiff grace of Perugino; though, when he
advances as far as this, he is somewhat prone to make mistakes. And he
learns to note the strong rough work of the brush of Paul Veronese,
and the beautiful blue hills of Titian's backgrounds. He distinguishes
between the graceful dignity of a Venetian nobleman and the manly
bearing of a Florentine citizen; and he recognizes the spears of
Paolo Uccello, who painted battles; and the beards of Taddeo Gaddi,
who painted saints; and the long-visaged virgins with fair hair, by
Sandro Botticelli. And he will gradually come to perceive how those
long-visaged, fair-haired virgins grew out of the first attempts at
female dignity by Cimabue, and how they progressed into the unnatural
grace of Raphael, and then descended into the meretricious inanities of
which Raphael's power and Raphael's falseness were the forerunners.

And so the art tourist goes on till he really knows something about
painting,--even whether he have a taste or no,--and becomes proud of
himself and his subject. That second object of which I have spoken, and
which has reference to the life of the painter, he of course acquires
from books. And it may be remarked that the popularity of this kind of
knowledge has become so strong that much of the information is given
in the ordinary guide-books. We do not much care to know who taught
Christopher Wren to be an architect, or whence Mozart learned the art
of music, or even how Canova became a sculptor. But it is essential to
the art tourist, to the youngest tyro in art touring, that he should
know that Titian was the scholar of Bellini, and Raphael of Perugino,
and Vandyke of Rubens. The little intricacies of the schooling,--how
this man migrated from one school to another, and how the great
pernicious schools of art at last formed themselves, destroying
individual energy,--these come afterwards. But to the diligent art
tourist they do come. And it is delightful to hear the contests on the
subject of art tourists who have formed themselves, one on Kugler and
another on Waagen; who have read the old work of Vasari, or have filled
themselves with a widely-extended mass of art information from the late
excellent book by Mr. Wornum.

The upshot of all this has been the creation of a distinct and new
subject of investigation and study. Men and women get up painting as
other men and women get up botany, or entomology, or conchology, and a
very good subject painting is for the purpose. It is innocent, pretty,
and cheap;--for I take the fact of the tour to be given as a matter of
course. It leads its pursuers to nothing disagreeable, and is as open
to women as to men. And it leads to very little boring of other people
who are not tourists, which, perhaps, is its greatest advantage; for
though the art tourist will sometimes talk to you of pictures, what is
that to the persecution which you are called on to endure in inspecting
cupboards full of pickled snakes or legions of drawers full of empty
egg-shells? The work of an art tourist must at least be more attractive
than the unalluring task of collecting postage-stamps and monograms.
And, above all, let it be remembered that if it so chance that the art
tourist have an eye in his head, he may at last become a lover of art.

The work of the art tourist begins about the middle of September,
is carried on hotly for that and the next three months, and then
completes its season at Rome in Easter. It flourishes, however, only in
autumn, as the normal art tourist is one who is either away from his
business for his holiday, or whose period of travelling is dependent on
some such person. The work is begun at the Louvre, for the disciple in
this school of learning will never condescend to use our own National
Gallery, though for the purposes of such learning our own is perhaps
the best gallery in the world. He begins in the Louvre; and, indeed, in
the tribune of that gallery, under the influence of the great picture
by Paul Veronese, which is probably the most marvellous piece of
painting in the world, the resolution to get up painting is often taken
by the young scholar. Then the galleries of Italy are seen--Venice,
Bologna, Florence, Rome, and perhaps Naples; Antwerp and Bruges
probably come next; and then Dresden, Munich, and Vienna. By this time
the art tourist is no longer a tyro, but, stored with much knowledge,
burns for the acquisition of more. He pines after Madrid and Seville,
and steals a day or two from some year's holiday for Amsterdam and the
Hague. He works hard and conscientiously at his galleries, as though he
could turn aside in idleness from no wall, on which pictures are hung,
without dishonesty.

And then how the subject swells before him when he takes to
fresco-painting, and begins to despise easel pictures! He penetrates to
Assisi, and declares the Campo Santo at Pisa to be the centre of the
world of Art! He expatiates to you with vigour on the chapel in the
Carmine, and turns from you in disgust when he finds that you don't
know what that chapel is, or where that chapel may be.

There is an old saying, which the world still holds to be very true,
but which is, nevertheless, I think, very false: "Whatever you do, do
well." Now there are many things which are worth doing which cannot
be done well without the devotion of a lifetime, and which certainly
are not worth such devotion as that. Billiards is a pretty game, but
to play billiards well is a dangerous thing. And chess is a beautiful
game; but they who play chess really well can rarely do much else. Art
tourists are in this danger, that it is quite possible they may teach
themselves to think that they should do their art touring so well as to
make that the one pleasurable pursuit of their lives. After all, it is
but a collecting of dead leaves, unless the real aptitude and taste be
there.




THE TOURIST IN SEARCH OF KNOWLEDGE.


I think that we all know the tourist in search of knowledge, the
tourist who goes abroad determined not to waste a day, who is resolved
to bring back with him when he returns from his travels information
that shall be at any rate an equivalent to him for the money and time
expended. This tourist in search of knowledge no doubt commands our
respect in a certain degree. He is a sedulous man, probably exempt from
any strong evil proclivities, anxious to do the best he can with his
life, imbued with a respectable ambition, and animated by that desire
to be better than those around him which generally saves a man from
being below the average if it does not suffice to do more for him than
that. But, having said so much in praise of tourists of this class, I
do not know that there is much more to be said in their favour. Such
men are usually bores as regards their effect upon others; and, as
regards themselves, they seem in too many cases to have but little
capacity for following up the special career which they have proposed
to themselves. They are diligent in their inquiries, but have laid down
for themselves no course of study. They wish to learn everything, but
have too great a faith for learning everything easily. They have seldom
realized to themselves how hard is the task of mastering information,
and think that in going far afield from their own homes they have
found, or are like to find, a royal road to knowledge. And then they
have a worse fault than this incorrectness of idea which I have imputed
to them. They are apt to forestall the merits which they should in
truth never claim till the knowledge has been won, and as seekers for
wisdom, assume the graces which others should give them when such
acquired wisdom has become the manifest result of their labours.

There are female tourists in search of knowledge as well as male; but
a woman has so much more tact than a man, that she is usually able
to hide that which is objectionable in her mode of action. Perhaps
the middle-aged single lady, or the lady who is not yet middle-aged
but fears that she may soon become so, is more prone to belong to
this class of travellers than any species of man; but she keeps her
investigations somewhat in the background, goes through her heavy
reading out of sight, and asks her most pressing questions _sotto
voce_, when she and her hoped-for informant are beyond the hearing
of the multitude. The male investigator of Continental facts has no
such reticence. He demands the price of wheat with bold voice before a
crowd of fellow-travellers; he asks his question as to the population
of the country, and then answers it himself with a tone of conscious
superiority, and he suggests his doubts as to the political action of
the people around him with an air of omniscience that is intended to
astonish all that stand within hearing of him.

What a glorious thing is knowledge, and how terrible to us are those
lapses of opportunity with which the consciences of most of us are
burdened in this respect! And to us who are ignorant, whose lapses in
that respect have been too long to have been numerous, how great the
man looms who has really used his intellect, and exercised his brain,
and stirred his mind! But as he looms large, so does the ignorant
man who affects acquirements and prides himself on knowledge which
can hardly even be called superficial--as, spread it as thin as he
may, he cannot make it cover a surface--appear infinitesimally mean
and small! The getter-up of quotations from books which he has never
read,--how vile he is to all of us! The man who allows it to be
assumed that he can understand a subject or a language till he breaks
down, caught in the fact, despised, but pitied through the extent of
his misery,--how poor a creature he is in his wretchedness! The tourist
in search of knowledge may of course be a man infinitely too strong
to fall into any of these pitfalls. He may be modest-minded though
ambitious, silent in his search, conscious of his ignorance where he is
ignorant, and doubtful of his learning where he is learned. No doubt
there are such English tourists,--many of them probably passing from
city to city year after year,--with eyes and ears more readily open
than their mouths; but not such a one is the tourist of whom we are
here speaking. Travellers such as they become liable to no remark,
and escape the notice of all observers. But the normal traveller in
search of knowledge, with whom all of us who are habitual tourists
are well acquainted, is altogether of a different nature. He is the
Pharisee among students. He is always thanking God that he is not as
those idlers who pass from country to country learning nothing of the
institutions of the people among whom they travel,--not as that poor
Publican, that lonely traveller, who, standing apart, hardly daring to
open his mouth, asks some humble question which shows thoroughly and at
once the extent of his ignorance.

Our tourist in search of knowledge,--the tourist who is searching for
that which he thinks he has got, but which he never will find,--is
seldom a very young man. Nor is he often a man stricken in years. The
man over fifty who makes inquiries with eager pretension but with no
fixed aptitudes in that direction, after the price of flour and the
fluctuations of the population, must be a fool indeed. The tourist
now in question will usually be progressing from thirty to forty. He
is a severe man in his mien, given to frowning at all puerilities,
and especially hostile to his young countrymen who travel for fun, in
denouncing whose sins he is prone to put forward his best eloquence.
Nor is he much more gracious to young ladies who travel with their
mammas, and who sometimes show a tendency to cultivate the acquaintance
of those scandalous young British rioters. To the unprotected female
tourist he will sometimes unbend, and will find in her a flattering
listener, and one who is able to understand and appreciate the depth
and breadth of his acquirements. He generally starts from home
alone, but will occasionally be found joined for a time to a brother
traveller, induced to adopt such company by sympathy in tastes and
motives of economy. But sympathy in tastes will not carry the two far
together, as, little as may be their capacity for fathoming depths,
each will be able to fathom the depth of the other. The tourist in
search of knowledge will generally be found dressed in gaiters, in a
decorous suit of brown garments, and accompanied by a great coat, rug,
and umbrella, carefully packed together with a strap. Now, in these
latter days, he has relinquished his chimney-pot, and covered himself
with a dark soft felt hat, which must add greatly to his comfort.
Indeed, his appearance would be much in his favour, as opposed in its
decency to the violent indecency of some of our British tourists, were
it not for a certain priggishness of apparel which tells a tale against
him and acts terribly to his disfavour. It must, however, be acknowledged
of the tourist in search of knowledge that he never misbehaves himself.
He is not often to be seen in the churches during the hours of public
worship,--for what is there for an inquiring tourist to learn in such
places at such times?--but when chance does so place him he disturbs
no one, and entails upon the big Swiss, or verger with the cocked hat,
no necessity to keep an eye upon him. He is no great frequenter of
galleries, preferring the useful to the ornamental in his inquiries;
but he makes his little tour of inspection to any art collections that
are of especial note, so that he may be able to satisfy himself and his
admirers that he has seen everything. Occasionally he will venture on a
morsel of art criticism, and then the profundity of his ignorance is
delightful to those who feel that, as a tourist in search of knowledge,
he is turning up his nose at them. He will generally admire a "Carlo
Dolci," and will have some word to say in favour of Salvator Rosa. But
he will be found much more frequently in libraries and museums. These
will be his hunting-grounds, though it will be out of the power of the
ordinary tourist to ascertain what he does there. He is, however, an
enduring, conscientious man, and can pass along from shelf to shelf and
from one glass-covered repository to another, hardly missing a stuffed
bird or an Indian arrow-head. And he will listen with wondrous patience
to the details of guides, jotting down figures in a little book, and
asking wonder-working questions which no guide can answer. And he looks
into municipal matters wherever he goes, learning all details as to
mayors, aldermen, and councillors, as to custom duties on provisions, as
to import duties on manufactures, as to schools, convents, and gaols, to
scholars, mendicants, and criminals. He does not often care much for
scenery, but he will be careful to inquire how many passengers the
steamboats carry on the lakes, and what average of souls is boarded and
lodged at each large hotel that he passes. He would like to know how
many eggs are consumed annually, and probably does ask some question as
to the amount of soap used in the laundries.

To the romance and transcendental ebullitions of enthusiastic admirers
of nature he is altogether hostile, and dislikes especially all
quotations from poetry. "Cui bono?" is his motto. To whom will any
of these things do any good? Has Dante fed any hungry mouths, or has
Shakspeare put clothes on the backs of any but a poor company of
players? He will tell you that Byron wasted a fortune, and that Shelley
wasted himself. The jingle of rhymes is an injury to him, as is also
the scraping of a fiddle. To get up either poetry or music would be out
of his line, and he recognizes no utility that does not show itself
by figures. So he goes on from town to town, passing quickly through
the mountains and by the lakes, and conscientiously performs the task
which he had laid out for himself before he started. When he returns
home he has never been enticed to the right or to the left. He has
spent exactly the number of francs which he had allowed himself. He had
ordered breakfast to be ready for him in his home on a certain morning
by eight o'clock, and exactly at that hour he appears and is ready for
his meal. He has kept his journal every day; and, over and beyond his
journal, he has filled a pocket-book so full of figures that even his
methodical mind can hardly disentangle them from the crowded pages. He
has an idea of publishing an article on the consumption of rye-flour in
Pomerania, and is a happy man until he finds that the effort is beyond
his power.

But he has had no holiday, and it may be doubted whether such a man
wants any holiday; whether the capability of enjoying holiday-time has
been vouchsafed to him. To sit on a mountain-side and breathe sweeter
air than that which his daily work affords him gives him no delight.
Neither the rivers nor the clouds nor the green valleys have been dear
to him. But he has worked conscientiously in his vocation, and in the
result of that work will be his reward. If his memory serves him, or
even if it does not, he will be able to repeat among friends and foes
an amount of facts which will show that he has not been a tourist in
search of knowledge for nothing.

That such a man has made a mistake in his ideas as to knowledge and
in his mode of seeking it may be our opinion and that of some others,
and yet may be a very false opinion. And we may certainly confess
that any true searching after knowledge must be beneficial, even
though the method of the search may to our eyes and in our estimation
be ungainly and inefficacious. It is not against the search that
protest is here made. It is against the pretence of the man that
our battle is waged, against the broad phylacteries worn so openly
on the foreheads of utilitarian tourists that our little shafts are
pointed. Let the tourist in search of knowledge work hard and despise
all holiday-making, and sacrifice himself to statistics, if he have
strength and will to do so; but in doing so, let him cease to thank God
that he is not as other men are.




THE ALPINE CLUB MAN.


It would have been easier and much pleasanter to write of the Alpine
Club man, and to describe his peculiarities and his glories, if that
terrible accident had not happened on the Matterhorn. It is ill jesting
while the sad notes of some tragic song are still sounding in our ears.
But the Alpine Club man has of late made himself so prominent among
English tourists,--has become, with his ropes, his blankets, and his
ladders, so well-acknowledged and much-considered an institution, that
it would be an omission were he not to be included in our sketches.
And, moreover, it may not be amiss to say yet a word or two as to the
dangers of Alpine Club pursuits,--a word or two to be added to all
those words that have been said in these and other columns on the same
subject.

It may well, I think, be made a question whether we are not becoming
too chary of human life; whether we do not allow ourselves to be
shocked beyond proper measure by the accidental death of a fellow
mortal. There are two points of view from which we look at these sudden
strokes of fate, which are so distinctly separated in our minds as to
turn each calamity into two calamities; and the one calamity or the
other will be regarded as the more terrible according to the religious
tendencies of the suffering survivor. There is the religious point of
view, which teaches us to consider it to be a terrible thing that a man
should be called upon to give up his soul without an hour for special
preparation; and there is the human point of view, which fills us with
an ineffable regret that one well loved should be taken from those
who loved him, apparently without a cause,--with nothing, as we may
say, to justify the loss of a head so dear. As regards the religious
consideration, we know of course that we are constantly praying, with
more or less of earnestness, that the evil of sudden death may not
come upon us,--as we pray also that battles may not come. But yet, if
occasion require it, if the honour of the country seemed to demand it,
we do not hesitate about battles. We may say, at least, that we never
hesitate on account of the death that must ensue, though we do hesitate
with extreme caution on the score of the money that must be spent.
And we consider,--if the cause have been good,--that the blood spilt
on battle-fields has been well spilt, and that the lives gallantly
rendered there have been well rendered. But the carnage there has all
been the carnage of sudden death. It may be,--and yet it may hardly
be,--that the soldier, knowing the chances of his profession, shall
keep himself prepared for the death-dealing blow; but if the soldier
on the eve of battle can do so, then why not he who is about to climb
among the mountain snows? But, in truth, the subject is one which does
not admit of too curious an inquiry. As we pray to be removed from
sudden death, so do we pray that we may always be prepared for it.
We are going ever with our lives in our hands, knowing that death is
common to all of us; and knowing also,--for all of us who ever think
do know it,--that to him who dies death must be horrible or blessed,
not in accordance with an hour or two of final preparation, but as may
be the state of the dying man's parting soul as the final result of
the life which he has led. It suits us in some of our religious moods
to insist much on the special dangers of sudden death, but they are
dangers which come home in reality to very few of us. What parson,
though praying perhaps daily against sudden death, believes that his
own boy is specially endangered,--specially endangered as regards his
soul,--when he stands with his breast right before the bullets of his
country's enemy? In war, in commerce, not unfrequently in science,
we disregard utterly the perils of sudden death; and if, as regards
religion, these perils do not press on us in war and commerce, or in
science, neither should they do so in reference to other pursuits. Is
there any man with a faith so peculiar as to believe that salvation
will be refused to him who perishes among the mountains of Europe
because his employment is regarded as an amusement; but that it will be
given to the African traveller because his work is to be accounted as a
work of necessity? For myself, I do not think that there is a man who
so believes.

And as to the human point of view,--that wearing regret which almost
melts the heart into a stream of woe when the calamity comes home to
oneself,--the argument is nearly the same. The poor mother whose dear
gallant boy has fallen in battle, as she thinks of her lad's bright
eyes and curling locks, and straight young active limbs, and of all
the glories of the young life which she herself gave with so many
pangs,--as she remembers all this, she cannot reconcile herself to the
need of war, nor unless she be a Spartan, can she teach herself to
think that that dear blood has been well shed for the honour of her
country. And, should he have fallen from some snowy peak, her judgment
of the event will be simply the same. It will be personal regret, not
judgment. It is equally impossible that she should console herself
in either event by calculating that the balance of advantage to the
community of which she is a member is on that side to which courage and
the spirit of adventure belong.

In our personal regrets we must all think of our individual cases; but
in discussing such a question as belonging to England at large, we can
only regard the balance of advantage. And if we find that that spirit
of enterprise which cannot have its full swing, or attain its required
momentum without the fatality which will attend danger, leads to happy
results,--that it makes our men active, courageous, ready in resource,
prone to friendship, keen after gratifications which are in themselves
good and noble; that it leads to pursuits which are in themselves
lovely, and to modes of life which are worthy of admiration, then let
us pay the necessary cost of such happy results without repining. That
we should, all of us, have a tear of sorrow for those gallant fellows
who perished on the Matterhorn is very good;--

    For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
    Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer;
    Who would not sing for Lycidas?

But shall it be said among us that no boat is again to be put off from
our shores because that one "fatal and perfidious bark" was "built in
the eclipse?"

There is a fate infinitely worse than sudden death,--the fate of him
who is ever fearing it. "Mors omnibus est communis." We all know
it, and it is the excitement coming from that knowledge which makes
life pleasant to us. When we hear of a man who is calm and collected
under every danger, we know that we hear of a happy man. In hunting,
in shooting, in yachting, in all adventures, in all travelling,--I
had almost said in love-making itself,--the cream of the charm lies
in the danger. But danger will not be danger long if none of the
natural results of danger come; and the cream of such amusements
would, under such safe circumstances, soon become poor and vapid as
skim-milk. I would say that it is to be hoped that that accident on the
Matterhorn may not repress the adventurous spirit of a single English
mountain-climber, did I not feel so sure that there will be no such
repression as to leave no room for hoping.

And now for a word or two about the Alpine Club men, who have
certainly succeeded in making their club an institution, clearly to be
recognized on the face of the earth. Whether rational or irrational in
his work, the Alpine Club man has been successful in his pursuit. A few
years since,--how very few it seems to be!--to have gone up Mont Blanc
was a feat which almost opened the gates of society to the man who had
done it; but Mont Blanc is now hardly more than equal to the golden
ball on the top of St. Paul's Cathedral. There will soon be no peak
not explored, no summit in Europe that is not accessible, no natural
fortress that has not been taken. The Alpine Club will have used up
Switzerland, and the present hunting-grounds of these sportsmen will be
expended. But money increases quickly, and distances decrease; wings
that a few years since were hardly strong enough for a flight over
the Channel now carry their owners safely to the Danube and the Nile;
Jerusalem and the Jordan are as common to us as were Paris and the
Seine to our grandfathers; cigar ships travelling at railway paces will
carry new Alpine members to the mountains of Asia and South America,
and we shall be longing eagerly in some autumn soon to come for news
along the wires from Chimborazo, or for tidings from the exploring
party on Dhawalagri.

But, in the meantime, the Alpine Club man still condescends to show
himself in Europe, though his condescension is not unmixed with a
certain taint of pride. He does not carry himself quite as another man,
and has his nose a little in the air, even when he is not climbing.
He endeavours to abstain from showing that he despises the man who
enjoys his mountains only from the valley; but the attempt is made
with too visible an effort, and he is not quite able to bear himself,
as though he, as a genuine Alpine Club man, were not, in some sort,
a god upon the earth. To have had his feet where our feet have never
rested, and can never rest, to have inhaled an air rarer than that
which will ever inflate our lungs, to be one of a class permitted to
face dangers which to us would be simply suicidal, does give him a
conscious divinity of which he is, in his modesty, not quite able to
divest himself. He abstains from mountain talk as a scholar abstains
from his grammar, or a chemist from his crucibles; but we feel that he
is abstaining because of our ignorance; and when, at our instigation,
he does speak of mountains, we feel that he talks of them as though
they were naught, out of pity to our incompetence.

There are many pursuits among us which are of their own nature so
engrossing that he who is wedded to them cannot divorce himself
from their influences. Who does not feel that a policeman is always
a policeman, enjoying the detection of an imaginary thief in every
acquaintance with whom he may exchange a word, and conscious of the
possibility of some delightfully-deep criminality in the bosom of
each of his dearest friends? The very nature of the man has become
impregnated with the aptitudes of his art. How nearly impossible it
is for the actor not to be an actor, or for a cricketer who is great
in cricket to forget his eleven, or for the billiard-player to cleanse
his mind from hazards and canons. And with all such experts there
grows up gradually an unconscious feeling that the art in which he is
skilful is the one art worthy of a man's energy and of his intellect.
To meet a foeman worthy of his steel he will willingly cross to the
antipodes; and, as he goes, he pities his fellow-travellers who are
cumbering themselves with the troubles of the journey for no purpose
worthy of their labour. The genuine Alpine Club man,--he who aspires
to any distinction among his colleagues,--is dipped as deeply in the
waters of this mania as are the policeman, and the actor, and the
cricketer. He climbs but for two months in each year of his life, but
he lives his life in those two months. As the days of his thraldom to
the ordinary duties of life come to an end,--the days in which he is
merely a clergyman in his parish, or a lawyer among his clients, or
a clerk at his desk,--his heart grows light and his nostrils almost
expand with the expectation of the longed-for mountain air. Then, if
you know nothing of mountain-climbing you are nothing to him,--simply
nothing. If you are incapable of his exercise you are an unfortunate
one, to whom God has not vouchsafed the best gift of physical life; or
if you are neglectful, you are as the prodigal son who wasted all his
substance. You eat and drink that you may enjoy it, sacrificing for
your sensual pleasures muscles that might have made you respectable
among climbers, while he,--he eats and drinks solely with reference
to the endurance of his limbs and the capacity of his lungs. Knowing
all that he abandons and that you enjoy, how should he not become a
Pharisee in his vocation, thanking God that he is not as other men are?

But there is very much to be said in favour of this vocation. The hero
of the Alpine Club, when at his work, is always a happy man. When he
is defeated, his defeat is only an assurance of future enterprise,
and when he is victorious his triumph knows no alloy. There is nothing
ignoble or sordid in his work. He requires no money reward to instigate
him to excellence, as do those who deal in racehorses and run for
prizes. His Ascot Cup is a fragment of rock from some pointed peak,
his Derby is the glory of having stood where man never stood before
him. The occupation which he loves has in it nothing of meanness;
it is never tainted with lucre; nor does his secret joy come from
the sorrow of another. What father wishes his son to be great as a
billiard-player? What father does not fear to see his son too great,
even as a cricketer, or on the river? But the Alpine Club entails no
such fears. The work is all pure,--pure in its early practice and pure
in its later triumphs. Its contact is with nature in her grandest
attire, and its associations are with forms that are as suggestive of
poetry to the intellect as they are full of beauty for the senses.




TOURISTS WHO DON'T LIKE THEIR TRAVELS.


After all it should be our first object in our autumn tourings to
like the business that we have in hand. In all that we do, whether
of work or play, this should be a great object with us, seeing
that the comfort or discomfort--we may almost say the happiness or
unhappiness--of our life depends upon it. But one would suppose that in
these vacation rambles of ours, made for the recreation of our health
and the delectation of our spirits, there would be no doubt on this
head,--no doubt as to our taking due care that our amusement should be
to our own liking, and that we so journeyed as to be able to enjoy
our journeyings. But there is reason to fear that such enjoyment does
not always result from the efforts made. We see, alas, too many of our
countrymen struggling through the severe weeks of their annual holiday
with much of the agony but with little of the patience of martyrs. We
see them thwarted at every turn and cross because they are thwarted.
We see them toiling as no money-reward would induce them to toil at
home, and toiling with very little of that reward for which they are
looking. We see them hot and dusty, ill at ease, out of their element,
bored almost past their powers of endurance, so weary with work as to
drag along their unhappy limbs in actual suffering, dreading what is
to come, and looking back upon what they have accomplished as though
to have done the thing, to have got their tour over and finished, was
the only gratification of which they were susceptible. And with many
tourists this final accomplishment of the imposed task is the only
gratification which the task affords. To have been over the railroads
of the Continent, to have touched at some of those towns whose names
are known so widely, to have been told that such a summit was called by
one name and such another summit by another name, to have crossed the
mountains and heard the whistle of a steamer on an Italian lake,--to
have done these things so that the past accomplishment of them may be
garnered like a treasure, is very well;--but oh and alas, the doing
of them!--the troubles, the cares, the doubts, the fears! Is it not
almost a question whether it would not be better to live at home
quietly and unambitiously, without the garnering of any treasure which
cannot be garnered without so much discomfort and difficulty? But yet
the tourists go. Though the difficulties are great, their ambition is
greater. It does not do to confess that you have not seen an Alp or
drunk German beer.

So much may be taken for granted. Whether we are capable of enjoying
it or not, the tour has to be made. In all probability many tours have
been made. Those who can be allowed to enjoy themselves quietly at
home, or eat shrimps through their holiday pleasantly at Ramsgate, are
becoming from year to year, not fewer in number, but lower down in the
social scale: so that this imperative duty of travelling abroad,--and
of doing so year after year,--becomes much extended, and embraces all
of us who are considered anybody by those around us. Our wives feel
that they owe it to ourselves to enforce from us the performance of so
manifest a duty, even when from tenderness of heart they would fain
spare us. And we, who are their husbands, cannot deny them when they
put before us so plain a truth. Men there are bold enough to stay from
church on Sundays, to dine at their clubs without leave, to light
cigars in their own parlours, and to insist upon brandy-and-water
before they go to bed; but where is the man who can tell his wife and
daughters that it is quite unnecessary that they should go up the Rhine?

If this be so,--if the necessity for going be so great, and the power
of enjoying the journey be so rare, it must be worth our while to
inquire into the matter, with the object of seeing whether the evil
may not be in some degree remedied. The necessity which presses upon
the tourist is granted; but there may be a question whether the misery
of those who suffer cannot be remedied. If we examine the travelling
practices of those who do suffer, and see why it is that they do not
enjoy their work, we may perhaps get a lesson that shall be serviceable
to us.

The great trouble of those who travel and do not like it,--the
overpowering parent grief,--is in the language. The unfortunate tourist
cannot speak to those among whom he is going. This simply, without the
composite additions to the fact which come to him from the state of
his own mind upon the subject, would be a misfortune,--a want to be
lamented. But the simple misfortune is light, indeed, in comparison
with that to which it is increased by those composite additions of his
own fabrication. The tourist in question can speak no word of German
or Italian, but unfortunately he can speak a word or two of French,
and hence comes all his trouble. Not to speak German or Italian is
not disgraceful, but to be ignorant of French is, in his eyes, a
disgrace. Shall he make his attempts and save himself by his little
learning? or shall he remain mute and thus suggest the possibility of
positive knowledge? Doubting between the two he vacillates, and can
obtain neither the comparative safety of absolute dependence, nor the
substantial power of responsible action. For the first fortnight he
stumbles along with his broken words, making what effort is in his
power; but it seems to himself that from day to day the phrases become
more difficult rather than easier, and at last he gives himself up into
the hands of some more advanced linguist, revenging himself upon his
friends by a solemn and enduring melancholy, as though he were telling
every one around him that, in spite of his incapacity to speak French,
he had something within him surpassing show.

That this man is making a great mistake is certain enough, but it is
a mistake to which he is driven by erroneous public utterances on the
subject. It is not true, in fact, that he is in any way disgraced by
his ignorance of French; but it is true that he has so been told by
those who write and those who talk upon the matter. To speak French
well is a great advantage and a charming grace. Not to speak it at all
is a great disadvantage, but it is no disgrace. Circumstances with many
have not given them opportunity of learning the language; and others
have no aptitude for acquiring a foreign tongue. There is no disgrace
in this. But there is very deep disgrace in the consciousness of deceit
on the subject,--in the self-knowledge possessed by the unfortunate one
that he desires to be supposed capable of doing that which he cannot
do. It is from this that he becomes sore; and how terribly common are
the instances of such soreness!

From year to year we see in our guide-books and volumes of travel the
silly boastings which drive silly men and women into this difficulty.
Those who inform us how we should travel continually speak to us as
though German and Italian were known to most of us, and talking French
was as common with us as eating and drinking. But to talk French well
is not common to Englishmen; it is in truth a rare accomplishment.
And then these informants, armed, let us hope, with true knowledge on
their own parts, jeer most unmercifully at us poor tourists who venture
to come abroad in our ignorance. We are ridiculed for our dumbness if
we are dumb, and for our efforts at speech if we attempt to speak.
And then we are talked at, rather than addressed. The accomplished
informant who intends to guide us speaks always to some brother as
accomplished as himself, and warns this learned brother against the
ignorance of the masses. It is not very long since a distinguished
contributor to a very distinguished newspaper advised his readers that
an Englishman at Rome should never know another Englishman there; and
this warning of Britons against other Britons on the Continent is so
common that it has reached us all. It means nothing; or, at any rate,
should be taken as meaning nothing. Not one amongst twenty of English
men or English women who travel, can travel, or should attempt to
travel, after the fashion which is intended to be prescribed by these
counsellors. A few among us may so live abroad as to become conversant
with the inner life of the people with whom they are dwelling,--to know
their houses, their sons and their daughters; to see their habits, to
talk with them, eat with them, and quarrel with them; but to do this is
not and should not be the object of the vacation tourist; and if the
vacation tourist cannot save himself from being made miserable by his
guide-books and pretentious informants, because he is unable to do that
which he never should have regarded as being within his power, he had
certainly better remain at home.

To wander along the shores of lakes, to climb up mountains, to visit
cities, to see pictures, and stand amidst the architecture of the old
or of the new world, is very good, even though the man who does these
things can speak no word out of his own language. To speak another
language well is very good also, and to speak another language badly
is much better than not to speak it at all. All that is required is
that there should be no humbug, no pretence, no insincerity, either
as regards self or others. Let him whose foreign vocabulary is very
limited use it boldly as far as it will go; and let him acknowledge
to himself that he is going to see the outside of things, and not the
inside. It is not given to any of us to see the inside of many things.
Why be discomforted because you cannot learn the mysteries of Italian
life, seeing that in all probability you know nothing of the inner
life of the man who lives next door to you at home? There is a whole
world close to you which you have not inspected. What do you know of
the thoughts and feelings of those who inhabit your own kitchen? But in
seeing the outer world, which is open to your eye, there may be great
joy, almost happiness,--if you will only look at it with sincerity.

There is another grievance, cognate with this grievance of language,
which much troubles some tourists,--a grievance which indeed springs
altogether from that lack of language. The money of these unlearned
ones will not go so far with them as it would do if they could do their
bargaining in French with a fluent tongue. The imperious guide-books
have not failed to throw into the teeth of monolingual travellers their
disadvantages in this respect, and to do all that lay in their power
to add a further heavy misery on this head to the other miseries of
tourists. No doubt my friend the Italian innkeeper would be more easily
pressible--what we generally call more reasonable--in his financial
arrangements if you could argue out the question of your bed and supper
in good Tuscan; but in this matter, as in all others, you must pay for
that which you have not got, and cut your coat according to your cloth.
Are you going to be miserable because you, who have to pay your railway
fares, cannot travel as cheaply as your friend who has a free ticket
wherever he goes? A free ticket is a nice thing; but not having one,
you must pay your fare.

But there are other sources of unhappiness, independent of those
arising from language, which go far towards robbing the English tourist
of the pleasure he has anticipated. He always attempts to do too much,
and in his calculations as to space and time forgets that his body is
human and that his powers of endurance are limited. With his Bradshaw
in his hand and his map before him, he ignores the need of rest, and
lays out for himself a scheme of travelling in which there is no
leisure, no repose, no acknowledgment on his own part that even sleep
is necessary for him. To do all that can be done for the money is the
one great object which he has ever in view; to visit as many cities as
may possibly be visited in the time, to have run the length of as many
railways as can be brought within the compass of his short six weeks,
to tick off the different places one after another on his list, as
though it were a duty imperative upon him to see them all, and having
seen them, to hurry on to new scenes,--this is his plan of action, and
with such a plan of action is it possible that he should like his work?
Must it not be a certain result of such travelling that the traveller
will have but one source of comfort during his journey, and that that
will spring from the blessed remembrance that his labours will have an
end?

If I may venture to give two words of advice to those of my
fellow-countrymen who travel frequently during their vacations, and who
feel on self-examination that they have not hitherto in reality liked
their tourings, in those two words I will advise them both to affect
less and to perform less. What matters it who knows that you cannot
speak two words of French together grammatically? All whom it in the
least concerns probably do know it. Be content to speak your two words
ungrammatically, or, if that be beyond you, be content not to speak
them at all. The mountains and valleys will render themselves to you
without French. The pictures on the walls will not twit you with your
ignorance. Venus and Apollo could not come to you out of their marble,
though they were as many-tongued as Mezzofanti; but they will come
to you if you speak to them out of your own heart with such language
as is at your ready disposal. But, above all things, take your time
in discoursing with these works of nature and these works of art. To
be able to be happy and at rest among the mountains is better than a
capacity for talking French in saloons.


     London: Printed by SMITH, ELDER AND CO., Old Bailey, E.C.




TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

Obvious printer errors have been corrected. Otherwise, the author's
original spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been left intact.





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