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EUROPE REVISED
By Irvin S. Cobb
To My Small Daughter
Who bade me shed a tear at the tomb of Napoleon, which I was very glad
to do, because when I got there my feet certainly were hurting me.
NOTE
The picture on page 81 purporting to show the undersigned leaping head
first into a German feather-bed does the undersigned a cruel injustice.
He has a prettier figure than that--oh, oh, much prettier!
The reader is earnestly entreated not to look at the picture on page 81.
It is the only blot on the McCutcheon of this book.
Respectfully,
The Author.
Chapter I
We Are Going Away From Here
Foreword.--It has always seemed to me that the principal drawback
about the average guidebook is that it is over-freighted with facts.
Guidebooks heretofore have made a specialty of facts--have abounded in
them; facts to be found on every page and in every paragraph. Reading
such a work, you imagine that the besotted author said to himself, "I
will just naturally fill this thing chock-full of facts"--and then went
and did so to the extent of a prolonged debauch.
Now personally I would be the last one in the world to decry facts as
such. In the abstract I have the highest opinion of them. But facts,
as someone has said, are stubborn things; and stubborn things, like
stubborn people, are frequently tiresome. So it occurred to me that
possibly there might be room for a guidebook on foreign travel which
would not have a single indubitable fact concealed anywhere about its
person. I have even dared to hope there might be an actual demand on
the part of the general public for such a guidebook. I shall endeavor to
meet that desire--if it exists.
While we are on the subject I wish to say there is probably not
a statement made by me here or hereafter which cannot readily be
controverted. Communications from parties desiring to controvert this or
that assertion will be considered in the order received. The line
forms on the left and parties will kindly avoid crowding. Triflers and
professional controverters save stamps.
With these few introductory remarks we now proceed to the first subject,
which is The Sea: Its Habits and Peculiarities, and the Quaint Creatures
Found upon Its Bosom.
From the very start of this expedition to Europe I labored under a
misapprehension. Everybody told me that as soon as I had got my sea
legs I would begin to love the sea with a vast and passionate love. As a
matter of fact I experienced no trouble whatever in getting my sea legs.
They were my regular legs, the same ones I use on land. It was my sea
stomach that caused all the bother. First I was afraid I should not
get it, and that worried me no little. Then I got it and was regretful.
However, that detail will come up later in a more suitable place. I am
concerned now with the departure.
Somewhere forward a bugle blares; somewhere rearward a bell jangles. On
the deck overhead is a scurry of feet. In the mysterious bowels of the
ship a mighty mechanism opens its metal mouth and speaks out briskly.
Later it will talk on steadily, with a measured and a regular voice;
but now it is heard frequently, yet intermittently, like the click of
a blind man's cane. Beneath your feet the ship, which has seemed until
this moment as solid as a rock, stirs the least little bit, as though it
had waked up. And now a shiver runs all through it and you are reminded
of that passage from Pygmalion and Galatea where Pygmalion says with
such feeling:
She starts; she moves; she seems to feel the thrill of life along her
keel.
You are under way. You are finally committed to the great adventure. The
necessary good-bys have already been said. Those who in the goodness of
their hearts came to see you off have departed for shore, leaving sundry
suitable and unsuitable gifts behind. You have examined your stateroom,
with its hot and cold decorations, its running stewardess, its all-night
throb service, and its windows overlooking the Hudson--a stateroom
that seemed so large and commodious until you put one small submissive
steamer trunk and two scared valises in it. You are tired, and yon white
bed, with the high mudguards on it, looks mighty good to you; but you
feel that you must go on deck to wave a fond farewell to the land you
love and the friends you are leaving behind.
You fight your way to the open through companionways full of frenzied
persons who are apparently trying to travel in every direction at once.
On the deck the illusion persists that it is the dock that is moving and
the ship that is standing still. All about you your fellow passengers
crowd the rails, waving and shouting messages to the people on the dock;
the people on the dock wave back and shout answers. About every other
person is begging somebody to tell auntie to be sure to write. You
gather that auntie will be expected to write weekly, if not oftener.
As the slice of dark water between boat and dock widens, those who are
left behind begin running toward the pierhead in such numbers that each
wide, bright-lit door-opening in turn suggests a flittering section of
a moving-picture film. The only perfectly calm person in sight is a
gorgeous, gold-laced creature standing on the outermost gunwale of the
dock, wearing the kind of uniform that a rear admiral of the Swiss navy
would wear--if the Swiss had any navy--and holding a speaking trumpet
in his hand. This person is not excited, for he sends
thirty-odd-thousand-ton ships off to Europe at frequent intervals, and
so he is impressively and importantly blase about it; but everybody else
is excited. You find yourself rather that way. You wave at persons you
know and then at persons you do not know.
You continue to wave until the man alongside you, who has spent years
of his life learning to imitate a siren whistle with his face, suddenly
twines his hands about his mouth and lets go a terrific blast right in
your ear. Something seems to warn you that you are not going to care for
this man.
The pier, ceasing to be a long, outstretched finger, seems to fold back
into itself, knuckle-fashion, and presently is but a part of the oddly
foreshortened shoreline, distinguishable only by the black dot of
watchers clustered under a battery of lights, like a swarm of hiving
bees. Out in midstream the tugs, which have been convoying the ship, let
go of her and scuttle off, one in this direction and one in that, like a
brace of teal ducks getting out of a walrus' way.
Almost imperceptibly her nose straightens down the river and soon on
the starboard quarter--how quickly one picks up these nautical
terms!--looming through the harbor mists, you behold the statue of Miss
Liberty, in her popular specialty of enlightening the world. So you go
below and turn in. Anyway, that is what I did; for certain of the larger
ships of the Cunard line sail at midnight or even later, and this was
such a ship.
For some hours I lay awake, while above me and below me and all about me
the boat settled down to her ordained ship's job, and began drawing the
long, soothing snores that for five days and nights she was to continue
drawing without cessation. There were so many things to think over.
I tried to remember all the authoritative and conflicting advice that
had been offered to me by traveled friends and well-wishers.
Let's see, now: On shipboard I was to wear only light clothes, because
nobody ever caught cold at sea. I was to wear the heaviest clothes I
had, because the landlubber always caught cold at sea. I was to tip only
those who served me. I was to tip all hands in moderation, whether they
served me or not. If I felt squeamish I was to do the following things:
Eat something. Quit eating. Drink something. Quit drinking. Stay on
deck. Go below and lie perfectly flat. Seek company. Avoid same. Give it
up. Keep it down.
There was but one point on which all of them were agreed. On no account
should I miss Naples; I must see Naples if I did not see another
solitary thing in Europe. Well, I did both--I saw Naples; and now I
should not miss Naples if I never saw it again, and I do not think I
shall. As regards the other suggestions these friends of mine gave me, I
learned in time that all of them were right and all of them were wrong.
For example, there was the matter of a correct traveling costume.
Between seasons on the Atlantic one wears what best pleases one. One
sees at the same time women in furs and summer boys in white ducks.
Tweed-enshrouded Englishmen and linen-clad American girls promenade
together, giving to the decks that pleasing air of variety and
individuality of apparel only to be found in southern California during
the winter, and in those orthodox pictures in the book of Robinson
Crusoe, where Robinson is depicted as completely wrapped up in
goatskins, while Man Friday is pirouetting round as nude as a raw
oyster and both of them are perfectly comfortable. I used to wonder
how Robinson and Friday did it. Since taking an ocean trip I understand
perfectly. I could do it myself now.
There certainly were a lot of things to think over. I do not recall now
exactly the moment when I ceased thinking them over. A blank that was
measurable by hours ensued. I woke from a dream about a scrambled egg,
in which I was the egg, to find that morning had arrived and the ship
was behaving naughtily.
Here was a ship almost as long as Main Street is back home, and six
stories high, with an English basement; with restaurants and elevators
and retail stores in her; and she was as broad as a courthouse; and
while lying at the dock she had appeared to be about the most solid and
dependable thing in creation--and yet in just a few hours' time she had
altered her whole nature, and was rolling and sliding and charging and
snorting like a warhorse. It was astonishing in the extreme, and you
would not have expected it of her.
Even as I focused my mind on this phenomenon the doorway was stealthily
entered by a small man in a uniform that made him look something like an
Eton schoolboy and something like a waiter in a dairy lunch. I was about
to have the first illuminating experience with an English manservant.
This was my bedroom steward, by name Lubly--William Lubly. My hat is off
to William Lubly--to him and to all his kind. He was always on duty;
he never seemed to sleep; he was always in a good humor, and he always
thought of the very thing you wanted just a moment or two before you
thought of it yourself, and came a-running and fetched it to you. Now
he was softly stealing in to close my port. As he screwed the round,
brass-faced window fast he glanced my way and caught my apprehensive
eye.
"Good morning, sir," he said, and said it in such a way as to convey a
subtle compliment.
"Is it getting rough outside?" I said--I knew about the inside. "Thank
you," he said; "the sea 'as got up a bit, sir--thank you, sir."
I was gratified--nay more, I was flattered. And it was so delicately
done too. I really did not have the heart to tell him that I was not
solely responsible--that I had, so to speak, collaborators; but Lubly
stood ready always to accord me a proper amount of recognition for
everything that happened on that ship. Only the next day, I think it
was, I asked him where we were. This occurred on deck. He had just
answered a lady who wanted to know whether we should have good weather
on the day we landed at Fishguard and whether we should get in on time.
Without a moment's hesitation he told her; and then he turned to me with
the air of giving credit where credit is due, and said:
"Thank you, sir--we are just off the Banks, thank you."
Lubly ran true to form. The British serving classes are ever like that,
whether met with at sea or on their native soil. They are a great and
a noble institution. Give an English servant a kind word and he thanks
you. Give him a harsh word and he still thanks you. Ask a question of a
London policeman--he tells you fully and then he thanks you. Go into an
English shop and buy something--the clerk who serves you thanks you with
enthusiasm. Go in and fail to buy something--he still thanks you, but
without the enthusiasm.
One kind of Englishman says Thank you, sir; and one kind--the Cockney
who has been educated--says Thenks; but the majority brief it into a
short but expressive expletive and merely say: Kew. Kew is the commonest
word in the British Isles. Stroidinary runs it a close second, but Kew
comes first. You hear it everywhere. Hence Kew Gardens; they are named
for it.
All the types that travel on a big English-owned ship were on ours. I
take it that there is a requirement in the maritime regulations to the
effect that the set must be complete before a ship may put to sea. To
begin with, there was a member of a British legation from somewhere
going home on leave, for a holiday, or a funeral. At least I heard it
was a holiday, but I should have said he was going home for the other
occasion. He wore an Honorable attached to the front of his name and
carried several extra initials behind in the rumble; and he was filled
up with that true British reserve which a certain sort of Britisher
always develops while traveling in foreign lands. He was upward of seven
feet tall, as the crow flies, and very thin and rigid.
Viewing him, you got the impression that his framework all ran straight
up and down, like the wires in a bird cage, with barely enough perches
extending across from side to side to keep him from caving in and
crushing the canaries to death. On second thought I judge I had better
make this comparison in the singular number--there would not have been
room in him for more than one canary.
Every morning for an hour, and again every afternoon for an hour, he
marched solemnly round and round the promenade deck, always alone
and always with his mournful gaze fixed on the far horizon. As I said
before, however, he stood very high in the air, and it may have been he
feared, if he ever did look down at his feet, he should turn dizzy and
be seized with an uncontrollable desire to leap off and end all; so I am
not blaming him for that.
He would walk his hour out to the sixtieth second of the sixtieth minute
and then he would sit in his steamer chair, as silent as a glacier and
as inaccessible as one. If it were afternoon he would have his tea at
five o'clock and then, with his soul still full of cracked ice, he would
go below and dress for dinner; but he never spoke to anyone. His steamer
chair was right-hand chair to mine and often we practically touched
elbows; but he did not see me once.
I had a terrible thought. Suppose now, I said to myself--just suppose
that this ship were to sink and only we two were saved; and suppose we
were cast away on a desert island and spent years and years there, never
knowing each other's name and never mingling together socially until the
rescue ship came along--and not even then unless there was some mutual
acquaintance aboard her to introduce us properly! It was indeed a
frightful thought! It made me shudder.
Among our company was a younger son going home after a tour of the
Colonies--Canada and Australia, and all that sort of bally rot. I
believe there is always at least one younger son on every well-conducted
English boat; the family keeps him on a remittance and seems to feel
easier in its mind when he is traveling. The British statesman who
said the sun never sets on British possessions spoke the truth, but
the reporters in committing his memorable utterance to paper spelt the
keyword wrong--undoubtedly he meant the other kind--the younger kind.
This particular example of the species was in every way up to grade and
sample. A happy combination of open air, open pores and open casegoods
gave to his face the exact color of a slice of rare roast beef; it also
had the expression of one. With a dab of English mustard in the lobe of
one ear and a savory bit of watercress stuck in his hair for a garnish,
he could have passed anywhere for a slice of cold roast beef.
He was reasonably exclusive too. Not until the day we landed did he and
the Honorable member of the legation learn--quite by chance--that they
were third cousins--or something of that sort--to one another. And
so, after the relationship had been thoroughly established through
the kindly offices of a third party, they fraternized to the extent
of riding up to London on the same boat-train, merely using different
compartments of different carriages. The English aristocrat is a
tolerably social animal when traveling; but, at the same time, he does
not carry his sociability to an excess. He shows restraint.
Also, we had with us the elderly gentleman of impaired disposition, who
had crossed thirty times before and was now completing his thirty-first
trip, and getting madder and madder about it every minute. I saw him
only with his clothes on; but I should say, speaking offhand, that he
had at least fourteen rattles and a button. His poison sacs hung 'way
down. Others may have taken them for dewlaps, but I knew better; they
were poison sacs.
It was quite apparent that he abhorred the very idea of having to cross
to Europe on the same ocean with the rest of us, let alone on the
same ship. And for persons who were taking their first trip abroad his
contempt was absolutely unutterable; he choked at the bare mention of
such a criminal's name and offense. You would hear him communing with
himself and a Scotch and soda.
"Bah!" he would say bitterly, addressing the soda-bottle. "These idiots
who've never been anywhere talking about this being rough weather! Rough
weather, mind you! Bah! People shouldn't be allowed to go to sea until
they know something about it. Bah!"
By the fourth day out his gums were as blue as indigo, and he was so
swelled up with his own venom he looked dropsical. I judged his bite
would have caused death in from twelve to fourteen minutes, preceded by
coma and convulsive rigors. We called him old Colonel Gila Monster or
Judge Stinging Lizard, for short.
There was the spry and conversational gentleman who looked like an
Englishman, but was of the type commonly denominated in our own land as
breezy. So he could not have been an Englishman. Once in a while there
comes along an Englishman who is windy, and frequently you meet one who
is drafty; but there was never a breezy Englishman yet.
With that interest in other people's business which the close communion
of a ship so promptly breeds in most of us, we fell to wondering who
and what he might be; but the minute the suspect came into the salon for
dinner the first night out I read his secret at a glance. He belonged to
a refined song-and-dance team doing sketches in vaudeville. He could not
have been anything else--he had jet buttons on his evening clothes.
There was the young woman--she had elocutionary talents, it turned
out afterward, and had graduated with honors from a school of
expression--who assisted in getting up the ship's concert and then took
part in it, both of those acts being mistakes on her part, as it proved.
And there was the official he-beauty of the ship. He was without a
wrinkle in his clothes--or his mind either; and he managed to maneuver
so that when he sat in the smoking room he always faced a mirror. That
was company enough for him. He never grew lonely or bored then. Only one
night he discovered something wrong about one of his eyebrows. He gave
a pained start; and then, oblivious of those of us who hovered about
enjoying the spectacle, he spent a long time working with the blemish.
The eyebrow was stubborn, though, and he just couldn't make it behave;
so he grew petulant and fretful, and finally went away to bed in a huff.
Had it not been for fear of stopping his watch, I am sure he would have
slapped himself on the wrist.
This fair youth was one of the delights of the voyage. One felt that if
he had merely a pair of tweezers and a mustache comb and a hand glass
he would never, never be at a loss for a solution of the problem that
worries so many writers for the farm journals--a way to spend the long
winter evenings pleasantly.