He who expects to find these “Loiterings” of mine of any service as a
“Guide Book” to the Continent, or a “Voyager’s Manual,” will be sorely
disappointed; as well might he endeavour to devise a suit of clothes
from the patches of cloth scattered about a tailor’s shop, there might
be, indeed, wherewithal to repair an old garment, or make a pen-wiper,
but no more.
My fragments, too, of every shape and colour--sometimes showy and
flaunting, sometimes a piece of hodden-grey or linsey-wolsey--are all I
have to present to my friends; whatever they be in shade or texture,
whether fine or homespun, rich in Tyrian dye, or stained with russet
brown, I can only say for them, they are all my own--I have never
“cabbaged from any man’s cloth.” And now to abjure decimals, and talk
like a unit of humanity: if you would know the exact distance between
any two towns abroad--the best mode of reaching your destination--the
most comfortable hotel to stop at, when you have got there--who built
the cathedral--who painted the altar-piece--who demolished the town in
the year fifteen hundred and--fiddlestick--then take into your
confidence the immortal John Murray, he can tell you all these, and much
more; how many kreutzers make a groschen, how many groschen make a
gulden, reconciling you to all the difficulties of travel by historic
associations, memoirs of people who lived before the flood, and learned
dissertations on the etymology of the name of the town, which all your
ingenuity can’t teach you how to pronounce.
Well, it’s a fine thing, to be sure, when your carriage breaks down in a
_chaussée_, with holes large enough to bury a dog--it’s a great
satisfaction to know, that some ten thousand years previous, this place,
that seems for all the world like a mountain torrent, was a Roman way.
If the inn you sleep in, be infested with every annoyance to which inns
are liable--all that long catalogue of evils, from boors to bugs--never
mind, there’s sure to be some delightful story of a bloody murder
connected with its annals, which will amply repay you for all your
suffering.
And now, in sober seriousness, what literary fame equals John Murray’s?
What portmanteau, with two shirts and a night-cap, hasn’t got one “Hand-
book?” What Englishman issues forth at morn, without one beneath his
arm? How naturally, does he compare the voluble statement of his _valet-
de-place_, with the testimony of the book. Does he not carry it with him
to church, where, if the sermon be slow, he can read a description of
the building? Is it not his guide at _table-d’hôte_, teaching him, when
to eat, and where to abstain? Does he look upon a building, a statue, a
picture, an old cabinet, or a manuscript, with whose eyes does he see
it? With John Murray’s to be sure! Let John tell him, this town is
famous for its mushrooms, why he’ll eat them, till he becomes half a
fungus himself; let him hear that it is celebrated for its lace
manufactory, or its iron work--its painting on glass, or its wigs;
straightway he buys up all he can find, only to discover, on reaching
home, that a London shopkeeper can undersell him in the same articles,
by about fifty per cent.
In all this, however, John Murray is not to blame; on the contrary, it
only shows his headlong popularity, and the implicit trust, with which
is received, every statement he makes. I cannot conceive anything more
frightful than the sudden appearance of a work which should contradict
everything in the “Hand-book,” and convince English people that John
Murray was wrong. National bankruptcy, a defeat at sea, the loss of the
colonies, might all be borne up against; but if we awoke one morning to
hear that the “Continent” was no longer the Continent we have been
accustomed to believe it, what a terrific shock it would prove. Like the
worthy alderman of London, who, hearing that Robinson Crusoe was only a
fiction, confessed he had lost one of the greatest pleasures of his
existence; so, should we discover that we have been robbed of an
innocent and delightful illusion, for which no reality of cheating
waiters and cursing Frenchmen, would ever repay us.
Of the implicit faith with which John and his “Manual” are received, I
remember well, witnessing a pleasant instance a few years back on the
Rhine.
On the deck of the steamer, amid that strange commingled mass of
Cockneys and Dutchmen, Flemish boors, German barons, bankers and
blacklegs, money-changers, cheese-mongers, quacks, and consuls, sat an
elderly couple, who, as far apart from the rest of the company as
circumstances would admit, were industriously occupied in comparing the
Continent with the “Hand-book,” or, in other words, were endeavouring to
see, if nature had dared to dissent from the true type, they held in
their hands.
“‘Andernach, formerly. Andemachium,’” read the old lady aloud. “Do you
see it, my dear?”
“Yes,” said the old gentleman, jumping up on the bench, and adjusting
his pocket telescope--“yes,” said he, “go on. I have it.”
“‘Andernach,’” resumed she, “‘is an ancient Roman town, and has twelve
towers----’”
“How many did you say?”
“Twelve, my dear--”
“Wait a bit, wait a bit,” said the old gentleman; while, with
outstretched finger, he began to count them, one, two, three, four, and
so on till he reached eleven, when he came to a dead stop, and then
dropping his voice to a tone of tremulous anxiety, he whispered,
“There’s one a-missing.”
“You don’t say so!” said the lady, “dearee me, try it again.”
The old gentleman shook his head, frowned ominously, and recommenced the
score.
“You missed the little one near the lime-kiln,” interrupted the lady.
“No!” said he abruptly, “that’s six, there’s seven--eight--nine--ten--
eleven--and see, not another.”
Upon this, the old lady mounted beside him, and the enumeration began in
duet fashion, but try it how they would, let them take them up hill, or
down hill, along the Rhine first, or commence inland, it was no use,
they could not make the dozen of them.
“It is shameful!” said the gentleman.
“Very disgraceful, indeed!” echoed the lady, as she closed the book, and
crossed her hands before her; while her partner’s indignation took a
warmer turn, and he paced the deck in a state of violent agitation.
It was clear that no idea of questioning John Murray’s accuracy had ever
crossed their minds. Far from it--the “Handbook” had told them honestly
what they were to have at Ander-nach--“twelve towers built by the
Romans,” was part of the bill of fare; and some rascally Duke of Hesse
something, had evidently absconded with a stray castle; they were
cheated, “bamboozled, and bit,” inveigled out of their mother-country
under false pretences, and they “wouldn’t stand it for no one,” and so
they went about complaining to every passenger, and endeavouring, with
all their eloquence, to make a national thing of it, and, determined to
represent the case to the minister, the moment they reached Frankfort.
And now, as the _a propos_ reminds me, what a devil of a life an English
minister has, in any part of the Continent, frequented by his
countrymen.
Let John Bull, from his ignorance of the country, or its language,
involve himself in a scrape with the authorities--let him lose his
passport or his purse--let him forget his penknife or his portmanteau;
straightway he repairs to the ambassador, who, in his eyes, is a cross
between Lord Aberdeen and a Bow-street officer. The minister’s functions
are indeed multifarious--now, investigating the advantages of an
international treaty; now, detecting the whereabouts of a missing cotton
umbrella; now, assigning the limits of a territory; now, giving
instructions on the ceremony of presentation to court; now, estimating
the fiscal relations of the navigation of a river; now, appraising the
price of the bridge of a waiter’s nose; as these pleasant and harmless
pursuits, so popular in London, of breaking lamps, wrenching off
knockers, and thrashing the police, when practised abroad, require
explanation at the hands of the minister, who hesitates not to account
for them as national predilections, like the taste for strong ale and
underdone beef.
He is a proud man, indeed, who puts his foot upon the Continent with
that Aladdin’s lamp--a letter to the ambassador. The credit of his
banker is, in his eyes, very inferior to that all-powerful document,
which opens to his excited imagination the salons of royalty, the dinner
table of the embassy, a private box at the opera, and the attentions of
the whole fashionable world; and he revels in the expectation of
crosses, cordons, stars, and decorations--private interviews with
royalty, ministerial audiences, and all the thousand and one flatteries,
which are heaped upon the highest of the land. If he is single, he
doesn’t know but he may marry a princess; if he be married, he may have
a daughter for some German archduke, with three hussars for an army, and
three acres of barren mountain for a territory--whose subjects are not
so numerous as the hairs of his moustache, but whose quarterings go back
to Noah; and an ark on a “field azure” figures in his escutcheon. Well,
well! of all the expectations of mankind these are about the vainest.
These foreign-office documents are but Bellerophon letters,--born to
betray. Let not their possession dissuade you from making a weekly score
with your hotel-keeper, under the pleasant delusion that you are to dine
out, four days, out of the seven. Alas and alack! the ambassador doesn’t
keep open-house for his rapparee countrymen: his hôtel is no shelter for
females, destitute of any correct idea as to where they are going, and
why; and however strange it may seem, he actually seems to think his
dwelling as much his own, as though it stood in Belgrave-square, or
Piccadilly.
Now, John Bull has no notion of this--he pays for these people--they
figure in the budget, and for a good round sum, too--and what do they do
for it? John knows little of the daily work of diplomacy. A treaty, a
tariff, a question of war, he can understand; but the red-tapery of
office, he can make nothing of. Court gossip, royal marriages--how his
Majesty smiled at the French envoy, and only grinned at the Austrian
_chargé d’affaires_--how the queen spoke three minutes to the Danish
minister’s wife, and only said “_Bon jour, madame_,” to the
Neapolitan’s--how plum-pudding figured at the royal table, thus showing
that English policy was in the ascendant;---all these signs of the
times, are a Chaldee MS. to him. But that the ambassador should invite
him and Mrs. Simpkins, and the three Misses and Master Gregory Simpkins,
to take a bit of dinner in the family-way--should bully the landlord at
the “Aigle,” and make a hard bargain with the “Lohn-Kutcher” for him at
the “Sechwan”--should take care that he saw the sights, and wasn’t more
laughed at than was absolutely necessary;--all that, is comprehensible,
and John expects it, as naturally as though it was set forth in his
passport, and sworn to by the foreign secretary, before he left London.
Of all the strange anomalies of English character, I don’t know one so
thoroughly inexplicable as the mystery by which so really independent a
fellow as John Bull ought to be--and as he, in nineteen cases out of
twenty, is, should be a tuft hunter. The man who would scorn any
pecuniary obligation, who would travel a hundred miles back, on his
journey, to acquit a forgotten debt--who has not a thought that is not
high-souled, lofty, and honourable, will stoop to any thing, to be where
he has no pretension to be--to figure in a society, where he is any
thing but at his ease--unnoticed, save by ridicule. Any one who has much
experience of the Continent, must have been struck by this. There is no
trouble too great, no expense too lavish, no intrigue too difficult, to
obtain an invitation to court, or an embassy _soirée_.
These embassy _soirées_, too, are good things in their way--a kind of
terrestrial _inferno_, where all ranks and conditions of men enter--
stately Prussians, wily Frenchmen, roguish-looking Austrians, stupid
Danes, haughty English, swarthy, mean-looking Spaniards, and here and
there some “eternal swaggerer” from the States, with his hair “_en
Kentuck_,” and “a very pretty considerable damned loud smell” of tobacco
about him. Then there are the “_grandes dames_,” glittering in diamonds,
and sitting in divan, and the ministers’ ladies of every gradation, from
plenipos’ wives to _chargé d’àfaires_, with their _cordons_ of whiskered
_attachés_ about them--maids of honour, _aides-de-camp du roi_, Poles,
_savans_, newspaper editors, and a Turk. Every rank has its place in the
attention of the host: and he poises his civilities, as though a ray the
more, one shade the less, would upset the balance of nations, and
compromise the peace of Europe. In that respect, nothing ever surpassed
the old Dutch embassy, at Dresden, where the _maître d’hôtel_ had strict
orders to serve coffee, to the ministers, _eau sucrée_, to the
secretaries, and, nothing, to the _attachés_. No plea of heat, fatigue,
or exhaustion, was ever suffered to infringe a rule, founded on the
broadest views of diplomatic rank. A cup of coffee thus became, like a
cordon or a star, an honourable and a proud distinction; and the
enviable possessor sipped his Mocha, and coquetted with the spoon, with
a sense of dignity, ordinary men know nothing of in such circumstances;
while the secretary’s _eau sucrée_ became a goal to the young aspirant
in the career; which must have stirred his early ambition, and
stimulated his ardour for success.
If, as some folk say, human intellect is never more conspicuous, than
where a high order of mind can descend to some paltry, insignificant
circumstance, and bring to its consideration all the force it possesses;
certes diplomatic people must be of a no mean order of capacity.
From the question of a disputed frontier, to that of a place at dinner,
there is but one spring from the course of a river towards the sea, and
a procession to table, the practised mind bounds as naturally, as though
it were a hop, and a step. A case in point occurred some short time
since at Frankfort.
The etiquette in this city gives the president of the diet precedence of
the different members of the _corps diplomatique_, who, however, all
take rank before the rest of the diet.
The Austrian minister, who occupied the post of president, being absent,
the Prussian envoy held the office _ad interim_, and believed that, with
the duties, its privileges became his.
M. Anstett, the Russian envoy, having invited his colleagues to dinner,
the grave question arose who was to go first? On one hand the dowager,
was the Minister of France, who always preceded the others; on the other
was the Prussian, a _pro tempore_ president, and who showed no
disposition to concede his pretensions.
The important moment arrived--the door was flung wide; and an imposing
voice proclaimed--“_Madame la Baronne est servie_.” Scarce were the
words spoken, when the Prussian sprang forward, and, offering his arm
gallantly to Madame d’Anstett, led the way, before the Frenchman had
time to look around him.
When the party were seated at table, M. d’Anstett looked about him in a
state of embarrassment and uneasiness: then, suddenly rallying, he
called out in a voice audible throughout the whole room--“Serve the soup
to the Minister of France first!” The order was obeyed, and the French
minister had lifted his third spoonful to his lips before the humbled
Prussian had tasted his.
The next day saw couriers flying, extra post through all Europe,
conveying the important intelligence; that when all other precedence
failed, soup, might be resorted to, to test rank and supremacy.
And now enough for the present of ministers ordinary and extraordinary,
envoys and plenipos; though I intend to come back to them at another
opportunity.