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!