Europe Revised Part 4

From Vienna we went southward into the Tyrolese Alps. It was a wonderful ride--that ride through the Semmering and on down to Northern Italy. Our absurdly short little locomotive, drawing our absurdly long train, went boring in and out of a wrinkly shoulder-seam of the Tyrols like a stubby needle going through a tuck. I think in thirty miles we threaded thirty tunnels; after that I was practically asphyxiated and lost count.

If I ever take that journey again I shall wear a smoke helmet and be comfortable. But always between tunnels there were views to be seen that would have revived one of the Seven Sleepers. Now, on the great-granddaddy-longlegs of all the spidery trestles that ever were built, we would go roaring across a mighty gorge, its sides clothed with perpendicular gardens and vineyards, and with little gray towns cl.u.s.tering under the ledges on its sheer walls like mud-daubers' nests beneath an eave. Now, perched on a ridgy outcrop of rock like a single tooth in a snaggled reptilian jaw, would be a deserted tower, making a fellow think of the good old feudal days when the robber barons robbed the traveler instead of as at present, when the job is so completely attended to by the pirates who weigh and register baggage in these parts.

Then--whish, roar, eclipse, darkness and sulphureted hydrogen!--we would dive into another tunnel and out again--gasping--on a breathtaking panorama of mountains. Some of them would be standing up against the sky like the jagged top of a half-finished cutout puzzle, and some would be buried so deeply in clouds that only their peaked blue noses showed sharp above the featherbed mattresses of mist in which they were snuggled, as befitted mountains of Teutonic extraction. And nearly every eminence was crowned with a ruined castle or a hotel. It was easy to tell a hotel from a ruin--it had a sign over the door.

At one of those hotels I met up with a homesick American. He was marooned there in the rain, waiting for the skies to clear, so he could do some mountain climbing; and he was beginning to get moldy from the prevalent damp. By now the study of bathing habits had become an obsession with me; I asked him whether he had encountered any bathtubs about the place. He said a bathtub in those alt.i.tudes was as rare as a chamois, and the chamois was entirely extinct; so I might make my own calculations. But he said he could show me something that was even a greater curiosity than a bathtub, and he led me to where a moonfaced barometer hung alongside the front entrance of the hotel.

He said he had been there a week now and had about lost hope; but every time he threatened to move on, the proprietor would take him out there and prove that they were bound to have clearing weather within a few hours, because the barometer registered fair. At that moment streams of chilly rain-water were coursing down across the dial of the barometer, but it registered fair even then. He said--the American did--that it was the most stationary barometer he had ever seen, and the most reliable--not vacillating and given to moods, like most barometers, but fixed and unchangeable in its habits.

I matched it, though, with a thermometer I saw in the early spring of 1913 at a coast resort in southern California. An Eastern tourist would venture out on the windswept and drippy veranda, of a morning after breakfast. He would think he was cold. He would have many of the outward indications of being cold. His teeth would be chattering like a Morse sounder, and inside his white-duck pants his knees would be knocking together with a low, m.u.f.fled sound. He would be so p.r.i.c.kled with gooseflesh that he felt like Saint Sebastian; but he would take a look at the thermometer--sixty-one in the shade! And such was the power of mercury and mind combined over matter that he would immediately chirk up and feel warm.

Not a hundred yards away, at a drug store, was one of those fickle-minded, variable thermometers, showing a temperature that ranged from fifty-five on downward to forty; but the hotel thermometer stood firm at sixty-one, no matter what happened. In a season of trying climatic conditions it was a great comfort--a boon really--not only to its owner but to his guests. Speaking personally, however, I have no need to consult the barometer's face to see what the weather is going to do, or the thermometer's tube to see what it has done. No person needs to do so who is favored naturally as I am. I have one of the most dependable soft corns in the business.

Rome is full of baths--vast ruined ones erected by various emperors and still bearing their names--such as Caracalla's Baths and t.i.tus' Baths, and so on. Evidently the ancient Romans were very fond of taking baths.

Other striking dissimilarities between the ancient Romans and the modern Romans are perceptible at a glance.

Chapter V

When the Seven A.M. Tut-tut leaves for Anywhere

Being desirous of tendering sundry hints and observations to such of my fellow countrymen as may contemplate trips abroad I shall, with their kindly permission, devote this chapter to setting forth briefly the following principles, which apply generally to railroad travel in the Old World.

First--On the Continent all trains leave at or about seven A.M. and reach their destination at or about eleven P.M. You may be going a long distance or a short one--it makes no difference; you leave at seven and you arrive at eleven. The few exceptions to this rule are of no consequence and do not count.

Second--A trunk is the most costly luxury known to European travel. If I could sell my small, shrinking and flat-chested steamer trunk--original value in New York eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents--for what it cost me over on the other side in registration fees, excess charges, mental wear and tear, freightage, forwarding and warehousing bills, tips, bribes, indulgences, and acts of barratry and piracy, I should be able to laugh in the income tax's face. In this connection I would suggest to the tourist who is traveling with a trunk that he begin his land itinerary in Southern Italy and work northward; thereby, through the gradual shrinkage in weight, he will save much money on his trunk, owing to the pleasing custom among the Italian trainhands of prying it open and making a judicious selection from its contents for personal use and for gifts to friends and relatives.

Third--For the sake of the experience, travel second cla.s.s once; after that travel first cla.s.s--and try to forget the experience. With the exception of two or three special-fare, so-called de-luxe trains, first cla.s.s over there is about what the service was on an accommodation, mixed-freight-and-pa.s.senger train in Arkansas immediately following the close of the Civil War.

Fourth--When buying a ticket for anywhere you will receive a cunning little booklet full of detachable leaves, the whole const.i.tuting a volume about the size and thickness of one of those portfolios of views that came into popularity with us at the time of the Philadelphia Centennial. Surrender a sheet out of your book on demand of the uniformed official who will come through the train at from five to seven minute intervals. However, he will collect only a sheet every other trip; on the alternate trips he will merely examine your ticket with the air of never having seen it before, and will fold it over, and perforate it with his punching machine and return it to you. By the time you reach your destination nothing will be left but the cover; but do not cast this carelessly aside; retain it until you are filing out of the terminal, when it will be taken up by a haughty voluptuary with whiskers. If you have not got it you cannot escape. You will have to go back and live on the train, which is, indeed, a frightful fate to contemplate.

Fifth--Reach the station half an hour before the train starts and claim your seat; then tip the guard liberally to keep other pa.s.sengers out of your compartment. He has no intention of doing so, but it is customary for Americans to go through this pleasing formality--and it is expected of them.

Sixth--Tip everybody on the train who wears a uniform. Be not afraid of hurting some one's feelings by offering a tip to the wrong person.

There will not be any wrong person. A tip is the one form of insult that anybody in Europe will take.

Seventh--Before entering the train inhale deeply several times. This will be your last chance of getting any fresh air until you reach your destination. For self-defense against the germ life prevailing in the atmosphere of the unventilated compartments, smoke a German cigar. A German cigar keeps off any disease except the cholera; it gives you the cholera.

Eighth--Do not linger on the platform, waiting for the locomotive whistle to blow, or the bell to ring, or somebody to yell "All aboard!"

If you do this you will probably keep on lingering until the following morning at seven. As a starting signal the presiding functionary renders a brief solo on a tiny tin trumpet. One puny warning blast from this instrument sets the whole train in motion. It makes you think of Gabriel bringing on the Day of Judgment by tootling on a penny whistle.

Another interesting point: The engine does not say Choo-choo as in our country--it says Tut-tut.

Ninth--In England, for convenience in claiming your baggage, change your name to Xenophon or Zymology--there are always about the baggage such crowds of persons who have the commoner initials, such as T for Thompson, J for Jones, and S for Smith. When next I go to England my name will be Zoroaster--Quintus P. Zoroaster.

Tenth--If possible avoid patronizing the so-called refreshment wagons or dining cars, which are expensive and uniformly bad. Live off the country. Remember, the country is living off you.

Chapter VI

La Belle France Being the First Stop

Except eighty or ninety other things the British Channel was the most disappointing thing we encountered in our travels. All my reading on this subject had led me to expect that the Channel would be very choppy and that we should all be very seasick. Nothing of the sort befell. The channel may have been suetty but it was not choppy. The steamer that ferried us over ran as steadily as a clock and everybody felt as fine as a fiddle.

A friend of mine whom I met six weeks later in Florence had better luck.

He crossed on an occasion when a test was being made of a device for preventing seasickness. A Frenchman was the inventor and also the experimenter. This Frenchman had spent valuable years of his life perfecting his invention. It resembled a hammock swung between uprights.

The supports were to be bolted to the deck of the s.h.i.+p, and when the Channel began to misbehave the squeamish pa.s.senger would climb into the hammock and fasten himself in; and then, by a system of reciprocating oscillations, the hammock would counteract the motion of the s.h.i.+p and the occupant would rest in perfect comfort no matter how high she pitched or how deep she rolled. At least such was the theory of the inventor; and to prove it he offered himself as the subject for the first actual demonstration.

The result was unexpected. The sea was only moderately rough; but that patent hammock bucked like a kicking bronco. The poor Frenchman was the only seasick person aboard--but he was sick enough for the whole crowd.

He was seasick with a Gallic abandon; he was seasick both ways from the jack, and other ways too. He was strapped down so he could not get out, which added no little to the pleasure of the occasion for everybody except himself. When the steamer landed the captain of the boat told the distressed owner that, in his opinion, the device was not suited for steamer use. He advised him to rent it to a riding academy.

In crossing from Dover to Calais we had thought we should be going merely from one country to another; we found we had gone from one world to another. That narrow strip of uneasy water does not separate two countries--it separates two planets.

Gone were the incredible stiffness and the incurable honesty of the race that belonged over yonder on those white chalk cliffs dimly visible along the horizon. Gone were the phlegm and stolidity of those people who manifest emotion only on the occasions when they stand up to sing their national anthem:

G.o.d save the King!

The Queen is doing well!

Gone were the green fields of Suss.e.x, which looked as though they had been taken in every night and brushed and dry-cleaned and then put down again in the morning. Gone were the trees that Maxfield Parrish might have painted, so vivid were they in their burnished green-and-yellow coloring, so spectacular in their grouping. Gone was the five-franc note which I had intrusted to a sandwich vender on the railroad platform in the vain hope that he would come back with the change. After that clincher there was no doubt about it--we were in La Belle France all right, all right!

Everything testified to the change. From the pier where we landed, a small boy, in a long black tunic belted in at his waist, was fis.h.i.+ng; he hooked a little fingerling. At the first tentative tug on his line he set up a shrill clamor. At that there came running a fat, kindly looking old priest in a long gown and a shovel hat; and a market woman came, who had arms like a wrestler and skirts that stuck out like a ballet dancer's; and a soldier in baggy red pants came; and thirty or forty others of all ages and sizes came--and they gathered about that small boy and gave him advice at the top of their voices. And when he yanked out the s.h.i.+ning little silver fish there could not have been more animation and enthusiasm and excitement if he had landed a full-grown Presbyterian.

They were still congratulating him when we pulled out and went tearing along on our way to Paris, scooting through quaint, stone-walled cities, each one dominated by its crumbly old cathedral; sliding through open country where the fields were all diked and ditched with small ca.n.a.ls and bordered with poplars trimmed so that each tree looked like a set of undertaker's whiskers pointing the wrong way.

And in these fields were peasants in sabots at work, looking as though they had just stepped out of one of Millet's pictures. Even the haystacks and the scarecrows were different. In England the haystacks had been geometrically correct in their dimensions--so square and firm and exact that sections might be sliced off them like cheese, and doors and windows might be carved in them; but these French haystacks were devil-may-care haystacks wearing tufts on their polls like headdresses.

The windmills had a rakish air; and the scarecrows in the truck gardens were debonair and c.o.c.ky, tilting themselves back on their pins the better to enjoy the view and fluttering their ragged vestments in a most jaunty fas.h.i.+on. The land though looked poor--it had a driven, overworked look to it.

Presently, above the clacking voice of our train, we heard a whining roar without; and peering forth we beheld almost over our heads a big monoplane racing with us. It seemed a mighty, winged Thunder Lizard that had come back to link the Age of Stone with the Age of Air. On second thought I am inclined to believe the Thunder Lizard did not flourish in the Stone Age; but if you like the simile as much as I like it we will just let it stand.

Three times on that trip we saw from the windows of our train aviators out enjoying the cool of the evening in their airs.h.i.+ps; and each time the natives among the pa.s.sengers jammed into the pa.s.sageway that flanked the compartments and speculated regarding the ident.i.ty of the aviators and the make of their machines, and argued and shrugged their shoulders and quarreled and gesticulated. The whole thing was as Frenchy as tripe in a ca.s.serole.

I was wrong, though, a minute ago when I said there remained nothing to remind us of the right little, tight little island we had just quit; for we had two Englishmen in our compartment--fit and proper representatives of a certain breed of Englishman. They were tall and lean, and had the languid eyes and the long, weary faces and the yellow buck teeth of weary cart-horses, and they each wore a fixed expression of intense gloom. You felt sure it was a fixed expression because any person with such an expression would change it if he could do so by anything short of a surgical operation. And it was quite evident they had come mentally prepared to disapprove of all things and all people in a foreign clime.

Silently, but none the less forcibly, they resented the circ.u.mstance that others should be sharing the same compartment with them--or sharing the same train, either, for that matter. The compartment was full, too, which made the situation all the more intolerable: an elderly English lady with a placid face under a mid-Victorian bonnet; a young, pretty woman who was either English or American; the two members of my party, and these two Englishmen.

And when, just as the train was drawing out of Calais, they discovered that the best two seats, which they had promptly preempted, belonged to others, and that the seats for which they held reservations faced rearward, so that they must ride with their backs to the locomotive--why, that irked them sore and more. I imagine they wrote a letter to the London Times about it afterward.

As is the pleasing habit of traveling Englishmen, they had brought with them everything portable they owned. Each one had four or five large handbags, and a carryall, and a hat box, and his tea-caddy, and his plaid blanket done up in a shawlstrap, and his framed picture of the Death of Nelson--and all the rest of it; and they piled those things in the luggage racks until both the racks were chock-full; so the rest of us had to hold our baggage in our laps or sit on it. One of them was facing me not more than five or six feet distant. He never saw me though. He just gazed steadily through me, studying the pattern of the upholstery on the seat behind me; and I could tell by his look that he did not care for the upholstering--as very naturally he would not, it being French.

We had traveled together thus for some hours when one of them began to cloud up for a sneeze. He tried to sidetrack it, but it would not be sidetracked. The rest of us, looking on, seemed to hear that sneeze coming from a long way off. It reminded me of a musical-sketch team giving an imitation of a bra.s.s band marching down Main Street playing the Turkish Patrol--dim and faint at first, you know, and then growing louder and stronger, and gathering volume until it bursts right in your face.