Transcriber’s Note
When italics were used in the original book, the corresponding text has
been surrounded by _underscores_. Some corrections have been made to
the printed text. These are listed in a second transcriber’s note at
the end of the text.
[Illustration]
Schöne Aussicht
A Journal
of Our Trip Abroad
By
Louise Spilker
Illustrated by the Author
New York
The Knickerbocker Press
1901
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT, 1901
BY
LOUISE SPILKER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
Sooner or later the average mortal must be tempted in order to see
whether or not he will be found wanting. Naturally the sooner the
ordeal is over, the better. Just now it is a consuming desire to record
my first impressions abroad, to convince myself, if no one else in this
cold and venal world, that while enjoying this privilege of foreign
sights, I lived with my eyes open, trying to see things intelligently
and thoughtfully. Not enough of a travelled worldling to be able to
assimilate new impressions and views of life, or to be modified by new
surroundings without yielding to this temptation, I have had recourse
to the English language (as a vehicle to express my confusion of
ideas), whose words are cheap and easy substitutes for thought.
However, it is not written with the determination to give information,
or to temper it with any sort of humor or guide-book instruction; but
mitigated by actual knowledge of the places and things talked about. It
may prove that I really think I can tell what I saw, just as a
color-blind man thinks he can pick out red or blue; but the color-blind
man, be he ever so teachable, can never know what he misses; and
likewise the writer, without a heaven-sent sense or birthright for
book-making, never knows how ineffective her narration of sights in
book-form really is. It may be equally obvious that the gift has not
been cultivated with zeal or properly directed; but whoever reads, I
trust, will be born with the precious gift of sympathy.
It is amazing that one is not discouraged as they think of the better
utterances upon these same subjects, which have become so constant, so
multiplied, diffused, reported, repeated, stereotyped, telegraphed,
published, and circulated, that books, pamphlets, speeches and reviews
and reports are things that one tries to escape from. This effort will
be characterized by haste and superficiality, caused partly by the lack
of time and thought necessary to condense, or possibly a fear that its
substance might disappear in a process of condensation. He who runs may
read. In that great day of reckoning there will be charged to me so
many golden hours lost between sunrise and sunset, for persistency in
writing monotonous emotions while crossing the Atlantic for the first
time.
NEVER MIND
Whatever your work and whatever its worth,
No matter how strong and clever,
Some one will sneer if you pause to hear,
And scoff at your best endeavor.
For the target art has a broad expanse,
And wherever you chance to hit it,
Though close be your aim to the bulls-eye fame
There are those who will never admit it.
Though the house applauds while the artist plays
And a smiling world adores him,
Somebody is there with an ennuied air
To say that the acting bores him.
For the tower of art has a lofty spire,
With many a stair and landing,
And those who climb seem small of time
To one at the bottom standing.
So work along in your chosen niche
With a steady purpose to nerve you;
Let nothing men say who pass your way
Relax your courage or swerve you.
The idle will flock by the Temple of Art
For just the pleasure of gazing,
But climb to the top and do not stop
Though they may not be all praising.
_Ella Wheeler Wilcox._
CHAPTER I
For fear some of you may be deceived about this Atlantic, which was so
serenely peaceful and angelic in disposition when crossing on board the
Hamburg-American liner “Pennsylvania,” July 14, 1900, I will record
later impressions and tell you what a wild, treacherous person she is.
From July 14th to July 26th, was one of the smoothest, most placid
mill-ponds you could ever imagine, in spite of the fact that we started
on the voyage Friday, the 13th, from the Hoboken dock, where the
greatest of sea disasters had taken place but a few hours previous.
The night before our sunrise sailing was one of hideous recollection,
being the recent scene of such an unparalleled holocaust. The air we
breathed (when we could find time to catch it from our warfare with
Jersey mosquitoes and the heat), was permeated with the sickening
stench of decomposed animal flesh, made all the more horrible from the
possibility of there being a little human flesh with it. By our side
lay the charred and sunken wrecks of the “Bremen,” “Main,” and “Salle,”
with their ghastly cargoes, which had so recently been the scene of
many expectant and happy hearts. This terrible sight made the lump of a
big empty something harder to swallow, as we swung round so steadily
but surely from our slip, out into the deeper water. ’Mid the wails of
some and the silent sobs of the more sincere, to the accompaniment of
the little German band, we moved slowly but majestically down the bay,
exhilarated by a beautiful morning, before the fierce heat of the day
could burn. We watched the beloved and familiar sky-scrapers recede;
soon Bartholdi joined them, and they were en masse things of the past,
not to be soon forgotten, however. There were many things to engage
one’s thoughts about this time. My dreams of an ocean greyhound had
always been that it was an abiding-place next to heaven. Imagine my
disappointment as I watched them hiding away in her depths such
unsightly stuff as pig-iron, tallow, oils, and, worst of all, bales and
bales of that inflammable cotton; working for days and nights to
ballast this graceful thing of beauty. Sighs are less frequent, things
are less distinct, now only a fancy, as each revolution of the wheel of
the gigantic and throbbing engine widens that gulf of all gulfs—the
ocean—which I think the most magnificent object under heaven, and I
cannot but feel a slight disgust for the multitudes that view it
without emotion; yet it is with a shudder that I think of its grim,
tragic side, its rough billows and war of waves.
“Worlds of water heaped up on high,
Rolling like mountains in wild wilderness,
Horrible, hideous, roaring with hoarse cry.”
[Illustration]
In all its various forms it is an object of all others the most suited
to affect us with lasting impressions of the awful power that created
and controls it. The first breakfast was quite a feature; the bugle
call from one of the little German band was clearly heard by all. We
read of ocean greyhounds, record-breaking trips, the laying of
submarine cables, the practical subduing of the Atlantic; then we
consult our maps to discover it but a small pond. We read of things
Americans have done in England recently: won the Derby, bought the
underground railway, merchant delegates entertained by the King of
England, great gifts made to Scotch universities, large shares of
government loans taken, etc., until we think that the Atlantic has been
misrepresented. One has but to take his maiden voyage to have this
impression corrected; he can vouch that it is still the roughest and
wildest of oceans. Ten or twelve days’ passage over the Atlantic, with
all means to annihilate distance, one thinks its three thousand or more
tedious miles have been partly done away with; but I can assure you
they are all there. When we have travelled a thousand miles east and
find we are nowhere in particular, but realize we are still pitching
about on an uneasy sea, with an unconstant sky, and that a thousand
miles more will not make any perceptible change, we begin to have some
conception of an unconquerable sea. I can never listen with quite the
same satisfaction to the songs about the sea, “Life on the Ocean Wave,”
“What Are the Wild Waves Saying?” without thinking of its inability to
stand still for one brief second. The narrow berth plays shuffle-board
with your anatomy all night long. You walk up-hill to your “zimmer,”
and upon arriving there, discover that your stateroom is at the bottom
of the hill, and to open the door is equivalent to opening a trap-door.
You attempt to sit down, find you are sitting up, and in promenading
the deck (more than two squares long), you discover everybody who is
not shooting to his stateroom, is reaching out blindly for the
guard-rail, and is walking on a slant, as though a heavy wind were
blowing; the propeller is out of the water more than under, making with
its many revolutions more terrific noise than the cannonading of heavy
artillery. Then if you are fortunate enough to look at food, have your
plate, glass, knife, and fork in a rack, and consider yourself in great
luck if your soup is not in the lap of your best gown, which was made
with a view of enduring the entire trip.
How novel it all is for the first week; after that, you wish the band
would play a greater distance from your stateroom. The freaks that
aroused your keenest interest at first promenading the deck bareheaded,
when you were shivering under the largest steamer rug you could buy,
tire you. Even the celebrities on board, who have so charmingly
entertained you with their wit and music, cease to attract your
attention. Not even our Poultney Bigelow (who is certainly great in his
own mind) could amuse. Nor is “Barnaby,” of the famous “Ideal
Quartette,” as interesting as he once was. The Polish Jew is now the
most persistent in his call for aid for a family of paupers from his
native land whom Uncle Sam fails to receive into his bosom and returns
right side up with care. Even the waltz with the fat “Deutsch” captain
fails to amuse; only the taking of the ship’s log, which promises you
soon a view of the ever welcome sight of land, interests you. We passed
the Scilly Islands, with their menacing, grim rocks, late in the
evening of the 24th, the first sign, for twelve long days, that some
human friend was watching and waiting for us. No more welcome sound
than the scream of the seagull; no lovelier sight will we see abroad,
than the little English village, Plymouth, nestled at the edge of the
sea,—the luxuriant green bluff and red and white sails which fleck the
deep blue sea, together with thousands of white seagulls who came out
to meet us and escort us in. Having at last set foot on terra firma, we
certainly have a more profound respect for the grand old ocean. The
sunset on July 25th tried to make a lasting impression on us; for it
was certainly a most beautiful symphony in rose, gold and sea-foam
green, with all the indescribable tints that the blendings of these
three gorgeous colors could produce. How I would like to have painted
her wonderful color, which the sun dashed upon her sparkling surface!
The young moon, lying in the lap of the old one, superintended the
beautiful sunset, thinking, no doubt, how soon she would quiet these
splendid hues into a silvery sleep, as Wordsworth so perfectly phrases
it:
“This sea that bares her bosom to the moon.”
Nothing more clearly shows than extensive travel that humanity in every
clime is made with one nature. We are so cogently convinced of being
warmed and cooled by the same sun; grunting and sweating under every
pulsation of the sun and air, and are truly “bone of her bone, and
flesh of her flesh.” How readily we adapt ourselves to her every humor.
That nature shows a particular partiality for man, seems evident from
the fact that he is the only animal who can survive and subsist in all
the moods of all her climates.