Guyed or Guided?
During our scientific explorations in the Eastern Hemisphere, we met two
guides who had served the late Samuel L. Clemens, one who had served
the late J. Pierpont Morgan, and one who had acted as courier to
ex-President Theodore Roosevelt. After inquiry among persons who were
also lately abroad, I have come to the conclusion that my experience
in this regard was remarkable, not because I met so many as four of the
guides who had attended these distinguished Americans, but because I met
so few as four of them. One man with whom I discussed the matter told of
having encountered, in the course of a brief scurry across Europe, five
members in good standing of the International Association of Former
Guides to Mark Twain. All of them had union cards to prove it too.
Others said that in practically every city of any size visited by them
there was a guide who told of his deep attachment to the memory of Mr.
Morgan, and described how Mr. Morgan had hired him without inquiring
in advance what his rate for professional services a day would be; and
how--lingering with wistful emphasis on the words along here and looking
meaningly the while at the present patron--how very, very generous Mr.
Morgan had been in bestowing gratuities on parting.
Our first experience with guides was at Westminster Abbey. As it
happened, this guide was one of the Mark Twain survivors. I think,
though, he was genuine; he had documents of apparent authenticity in
his possession to help him in proving up his title. Anyhow, he knew his
trade. He led us up and down those parts of the Abbey which are free to
the general public and brought us finally to a wicket gate, opening on
the royal chapels, which was as far as he could go. There he turned us
over to a severe-looking dignitary in robes--an archbishop, I judged,
or possibly only a canon--who, on payment by us of a shilling a head,
escorted our party through the remaining inclosures, showing us the
tombs of England's queens and kings, or a good many of them anyway; and
the Black Prince's helmet and breastplate; and the exquisite chapel of
Henry the Seventh, and the ancient chair on which all the kings sat for
their coronations, with the famous Scotch Stone of Scone under it.
The chair itself was not particularly impressive. It was not nearly so
rickety and decrepit as the chairs one sees in almost any London barber
shop. Nor was my emotion particularly excited by the stone. I would
engage to get a better-looking one out of the handiest rock quarry
inside of twenty minutes. This stone should not be confused with the
ordinary scones, which also come from Scotland and which are by some
regarded as edible.
What did seem to us rather a queer thing was that the authorities of
Westminster should make capital of the dead rulers of the realm and,
except on certain days of the week, should charge an admission fee to
their sepulchers. Later, on the Continent, we sustained an even more
severe shock when we saw royal palaces--palaces that on occasion
are used by the royal proprietors--with the quarters of the monarchs
upstairs and downstairs novelty shops and tourist agencies and
restaurants, and the like of that. I jotted down a few crisp notes
concerning these matters, my intention being to comment on them as
evidence of an incomprehensible thrift on the part of our European
kins-people; but on second thought I decided to refrain from so doing.
I recalled the fact that we ourselves are not entirely free from certain
petty national economies. Abroad we house our embassies up back streets,
next door to bird and animal stores; and at home there is many a public
institution where the doormat says WELCOME! in large letters, but the
soap is chained and the roller towel is padlocked to its little roller.
Guides are not particularly numerous in England. Even in the places
most frequented by the sightseer they do not abound in any profusion. At
Madame Tussaud's, for example, we found only one guide. We encountered
him just after we had spent a mournful five minutes in contemplation of
ex-President Taft. Friends and acquaintances of Mr. Taft will be shocked
to note the great change in him when they see him here in wax. He does
not weigh so much as he used to weigh by at least one hundred and fifty
pounds; he has lost considerable height too; his hair has turned another
color and his eyes also; his mustache is not a close fit any more,
either; and he is wearing a suit of English-made clothes.
On leaving the sadly altered form of our former Chief Executive we
descended a flight of stone steps leading to the Chamber of Horrors.
This department was quite crowded with parents escorting their children
about. Like America, England appears to be well stocked with parents who
make a custom of taking their young and susceptible offspring to places
where the young ones stand a good chance of being scared into connipshun
fits. The official guide was in the Chamber of Horrors. He was piloting
a large group of visitors about, but as soon as he saw our smaller party
he left them and came directly to us; for they were Scotch and we were
Americans, citizens of the happy land where tips come from. Undoubtedly
that guide knew best.
With pride and pleasure he showed us a representative assortment of
England's most popular and prominent murderers. The English dearly love
a murderer. Perhaps that is because they have fewer murderers than we
have, and have less luck than we do in keeping them alive and in good
spirits to a ripe old age. Almost any American community of fair
size can afford at least two murderers--one in jail, under sentence,
receiving gifts of flowers and angel cake from kind ladies, and waiting
for the court above to reverse the verdict in his case because the
indictment was shy a comma; and the other out on bail, awaiting his
time for going through the same procedure. But with the English it is
different.
We rarely hang anybody who is anybody, and only occasionally make an
issue of stretching the neck of the veriest nobody. They will hang
almost anybody Haman-high, or even higher than that. They do not exactly
hang their murderer before they catch him, but the two events occur in
such close succession that one can readily understand why a confusion
should have arisen in the public mind on these points. First of all,
though, they catch him; and then some morning between ten and twelve
they try him. This is a brief and businesslike formality. While the
judge is looking in a drawer of his desk to see whether the black cap is
handy the bailiffs shoo twelve tradesmen into the jury box. A tradesman
is generally chosen for jury service because he is naturally anxious to
get the thing over and hurry back to his shop before his helper goes to
lunch. The judge tells the jurors to look on the prisoner, because he is
going away shortly and is not expected back; so they take full advantage
of the opportunity, realizing it to be their last chance. Then, in
order to comply with the forms, the judge asks the accused whether he
is guilty or not guilty, and the jurors promptly say he is. His Worship,
concurring heartily, fixes the date of execution for the first Friday
morning when the hangman has no other engagements. It is never necessary
to postpone this event through failure of the condemned to be present.
He is always there; there is no record of his having disappointed
an audience. So, on the date named, rain or shine, he is hanged very
thoroughly; but after the hanging is over they write songs and books
about him and revere his memory forevermore.
Our guide was pleased to introduce us to the late Mr. Charles Pease,
as done in paraffin, with creped hair and bright, shiny glass eyes. Mr.
Pease was undoubtedly England's most fashionable murderer of the
past century and his name is imperishably enshrined in the British
affections. The guide spoke of his life and works with deep and sincere
feeling. He also appeared to derive unfeigned pleasure from describing
the accomplishments of another murderer, only slightly less famous than
the late Mr. Pease. It seemed that this murderer, after slaying his
victim, set to dismembering the body and boiling it. They boil nearly
everything in England. But the police broke in on him and interrupted
the job.
Our attention was directed to a large chart showing the form of the
victim, the boiled portions being outlined in red and the unboiled
portions in black. Considered as a murderer solely this particular
murderer may have been deserving of his fame; but when it came to
boiling, that was another matter. He showed poor judgment there. It all
goes to show that a man should stick to his own trade and not try to
follow two or more widely dissimilar callings at the same time. Sooner
or later he is bound to slip up.
We found Stratford-upon-Avon to be the one town in England where guides
are really abundant. There are as many guides in Stratford as there are
historic spots. I started to say that there is at least one guide
in Stratford for every American who goes there; but that would be
stretching real facts, because nearly every American who goes to England
manages to spend at least a day in Stratford, it being a spot very dear
to his heart. The very name of it is associated with two of the most
conspicuous figures in our literature. I refer first to Andrew Carnegie;
second to William Shakspere. Shakspere, who wrote the books, was born
here; but Carnegie, who built the libraries in which to keep the books,
and who has done some writing himself, provided money for preserving and
perpetuating the relics.
We met a guide in the ancient schoolhouse where the Bard--I am speaking
now of William, not of Andrew--acquired the rudiments of his education;
and on duty at the old village church was another guide, who for a price
showed us the identical gravestone bearing the identical inscription
which, reproduced in a design of burnt wood, is to-day to be found on
the walls of every American household, however humble, whose members are
wishful of imparting an artistic and literary atmosphere to their home.
A third guide greeted us warmly when we drove to the cottage, a mile
or two from the town, where the Hathaway family lived. Here we saw the
high-backed settle on which Shakspere sat, night after night, wooing
Anne Hathaway. I myself sat on it to test it. I should say that the
wooing could not have been particularly good there, especially for a
thin man. That settle had a very hard seat and history does not record
that there was a cushion. Shakspere's affections for the lady must
indeed have been steadfast. Or perhaps he was of stouter build than his
pictures show him to have been.
Guides were scattered all over the birthplace house in Stratford in the
ratio of one or more to each room. Downstairs a woman guide presided
over a battery of glass cases containing personal belongings of
Shakspere's and documents written by him and signed by him. It is
conceded that he could write, but he certainly was a mighty poor
speller. This has been a failing of many well-known writers. Chaucer was
deficient in this regard; and if it were not for a feeling of personal
modesty I could apply the illustration nearer home.
Two guides accompanied us as we climbed the stairs to the low-roofed
room on the second floor where the creator of Shylock and Juliet was
born--or was not born, if you believe what Ignatius Donnelly had to say
on the subject. But would it not be interesting and valued information
if we could only get the evidence on this point of old Mrs. Shakspere,
who undoubtedly was present on the occasion? A member of our party,
an American, ventured to remark as much to one of the guides; but the
latter did not seem to understand him. So the American told him just to
keep thinking it over at odd moments, and that he would be back again
in a couple of years, if nothing happened, and possibly by that time the
guide would have caught the drift of his observation. On second thought,
later on, he decided to make it three years--he did not want to crowd
the guide, he said, or put too great a burden on his mentality in a
limited space of time.
If England harbors few guides the Continent is fairly glutted with them.
After nightfall the boulevards of Paris are so choked with them that
in places there is standing room only. In Rome the congestion is even
greater. In Rome every other person is a guide--and sometimes twins.
I do not know why, in thinking of Europe, I invariably associate the
subject of guides with the subject of tips. The guides were no greedier
for tips than the cabmen or the hotel helpers, or the railroad hands, or
the populace at large. Nevertheless this is true. In my mind I am
sure guides and tips will always be coupled, as surely as any of those
standard team-word combinations of our language that are familiar to
all; as firmly paired off as, for example, Castor and Pollux, or Damon
and Pythias, or Fair and Warmer, or Hay and Feed. When I think of one
I know I shall think of the other. Also I shall think of languages; but
for that there is a reason.
Tipping--the giving of tips and the occasional avoidance of giving
them--takes up a good deal of the tourist's time in Europe. At first
reading the arrangement devised by the guidebooks, of setting aside ten
per cent of one's bill for tipping purposes, seems a better plan and a
less costly one than the indiscriminate American system of tipping for
each small service at the time of its performance. The trouble is that
this arrangement does not work out so well in actual practice as it
sounds in theory. On the day of your departure you send for your hotel
bill. You do not go to the desk and settle up there after the American
fashion. If you have learned the ropes you order your room waiter to
fetch your bill to you, and in the privacy of your apartment you
pore over the formidable document wherein every small charge is fully
specified, the whole concluding with an impressive array of items
regarding which you have no prior recollection whatsoever. Considering
the total, you put aside an additional ten per cent, calculated for
division on the basis of so much for the waiter, so much for the boots,
so much for the maid and the porter, and the cashier, and the rest of
them. It is not necessary that you send for these persons in order to
confer your farewell remembrances on them; they will be waiting for you
in the hallways. No matter how early or late the hour of your leaving
may be, you find them there in a long and serried rank.
You distribute bills and coins until your ten per cent is exhausted, and
then you are pained to note that several servitors yet remain, lined up
and all expectant, owners of strange faces that you do not recall
ever having seen before, but who are now at hand with claims, real or
imaginary, on your purse. Inasmuch as you have a deadly fear of being
remembered afterward in this hotel as a piker, you continue to dip
down and to fork over, and so by the time you reach the tail end of the
procession your ten per cent has grown to twelve or fifteen per cent, or
even more.
As regards the tipping of guides for their services, I hit on a fairly
satisfactory plan, which I gladly reveal here for the benefit of my
fellow man. I think it is a good idea to give the guide, on parting,
about twice as much as you think he is entitled to, which will be about
half as much as he expects. From this starting point you then work
toward each other, you conceding a little from time to time, he abating
a trifle here and there, until you have reached a happy compromise on a
basis of fifty-fifty; and so you part in mutual good will.
The average American, on the eve of going to Europe, thinks of the
European as speaking each his own language. He conceives of the Poles
speaking Polar; of the Hollanders talking Hollandaise; of the Swiss
as employing Schweitzer for ordinary conversations and yodeling when
addressing friends at a distance; and so on. Such, however, is rarely
the case. Nearly every person with whom one comes in contact in Europe
appears to have fluent command of several tongues besides his or her
own. It is true this does not apply to Italy, where the natives
mainly stick to Italian; but then, Italian is not a language. It is a
calisthenic.
Between Rome and Florence, our train stopped at a small way station in
the mountains. As soon as the little locomotive had panted itself to a
standstill the train hands, following their habit, piled off the cars
and engaged in a tremendous confab with the assembled officials on the
platform. Immediately all the loafers in sight drew cards. A drowsy
hillsman, muffled to his back hair in a long brown cloak, and with
buskins on his legs such as a stage bandit wears, was dozing against the
wall. He looked as though he had stepped right out of a comic opera to
add picturesqueness to the scene. He roused himself and joined in; so
did a bearded party who, to judge by his uniform, was either a Knight of
Pythias or a general in the army; so did all the rest of the crowd. In
ten seconds they were jammed together in a hard knot, and going it on
the high speed with the muffler off, fine white teeth shining, arms
flying, shoulders shrugging, spinal columns writhing, mustaches rising
and falling, legs wriggling, scalps and ears following suit. Feeding
hour in the parrot cage at the zoo never produced anything like so noisy
and animated a scene. In these parts acute hysteria is not a symptom; it
is merely a state of mind.
A waiter in soiled habiliments hurried up, abandoning chances of trade
at the prospect of something infinitely more exciting. He wanted to
stick his oar into the argument. He had a few pregnant thoughts of his
own craving utterance, you could tell that. But he was handicapped into
a state of dumbness by the fact that he needed both arms to balance a
tray of wine and sandwiches on his head. Merely using his voice in that
company would not have counted. He stood it as long as he could, which
was not very long, let me tell you. Then he slammed his tray down on the
platform and, with one quick movement, jerked his coat sleeves back to
his elbows, and inside thirty seconds he had the floor in both hands, as
it were. He conversed mainly with the Australian crawl stroke, but once
in a while switched to the Spencerian free-arm movement and occasionally
introduced the Chautauqua salute with telling effect.
On the Continent guides, as a class, excel in the gift of
tongues--guides and hotel concierges. The concierge at our hotel in
Berlin was a big, upstanding chap, half Russian and half Swiss, and
therefore qualified by his breeding to speak many languages; for the
Russians are born with split tongues and can give cards and spades to
any talking crow that ever lived; while the Swiss lag but little behind
them in linguistic aptitude. It seemed such a pity that this man was not
alive when the hands knocked off work on the Tower of Babel; he could
have put the job through without extending himself. No matter what
the nationality of a guest might be--and the guests were of many
nationalities--he could talk with that guest in his own language or in
any other language the guest might fancy. I myself was sorely tempted to
try him on Coptic and early Aztec; but I held off. My Coptic is not what
it once was; and, partly through disuse and partly through carelessness,
I have allowed my command of early Aztec to fall off pretty badly these
last few months.
All linguistic freakishness is not confined to the Continent. The
English, who are popularly supposed to use the same language we
ourselves use, sometimes speak with a mighty strange tongue. A great
many of them do not speak English; they speak British, a very different
thing. An Englishwoman of breeding has a wonderful speaking voice; as
pure as a Boston woman's and more liquid; as soft as a Southern woman's
and with more attention paid to the R's. But the Cockney type--Wowie!
During a carriage ride in Florence with a mixed company of tourists
I chanced to say something of a complimentary nature about something
English, and a little London-bred woman spoke up and said: "Thenks!
It's vurry naice of you to sezzo, 'm sure." Some of them talk like
that--honestly they do!
Though Americo-English may not be an especially musical speech, it
certainly does lend itself most admirably to slang purposes. Here again
the Britishers show their inability to utilize the vehicle to the full
of its possibilities. England never produced a Billy Baxter or a George
Ade, and I am afraid she never will. Most of our slang means something;
you hear a new slang phrase and instantly you realize that the genius
who coined it has hit on a happy and a graphic and an illuminating
expression; that at one bound he rose triumphant above the limitations
of the language and tremendously enriched the working vocabulary of the
man in the street. Whereas an Englishman's idea of slinging slang is to
scoop up at random some inoffensive and well-meaning word that never did
him any harm and apply it in the place of some other word, to which
the first word is not related, even by marriage. And look how
they deliberately mispronounce proper names. Everybody knows about
Cholmondeley and St. John. But take the Scandinavian word fjord. Why, I
ask you, should the English insist on pronouncing it Ferguson?
At Oxford, the seat of learning, Magdalen is pronounced Maudlin,
probably in subtle tribute to the condition of the person who first
pronounced it so. General-admission day is not the day you enter, but
the day you leave. Full term means three-quarters of a term. An ordinary
degree is a degree obtained by a special examination. An inspector of
arts does not mean an inspector of arts, but a student; and from
this point they go right ahead, getting worse all the time. The droll
creature who compiled the Oxford glossary was a true Englishman.
When an Englishman undertakes to wrestle with American slang he makes a
fearful hash of it. In an English magazine I read a short story, written
by an Englishman who is regarded by a good many persons, competent to
judge, as being the cleverest writer of English alive today. The story
was beautifully done from the standpoint of composition; it bristled
with flashing metaphors and whimsical phrasing. The scene of the yarn
was supposed to be Chicago and naturally the principal figure in it was
a millionaire. In one place the author has this person saying, "I reckon
you'll feel pretty mean," and in another place, "I reckon I'm not a man
with no pull."
Another character in the story says, "I know you don't cotton to the
march of science in these matters," and speaks of something that is
unusual as being "a rum affair." A walled state prison, presumably in
Illinois, is referred to as a "convict camp"; and its warden is called a
"governor" and an assistant keeper is called a "warder"; while a Chicago
daily paper is quoted as saying that "larrikins" directed the attention
of a policeman to a person who was doing thus and so.
The writer describes a "mysterious mere" known as Pilgrim's Pond, "in
which they say"--a prison official is supposed to be talking now--"our
fathers made witches walk until they sank." Descendants of the original
Puritans who went from Plymouth Rock, in the summer of 1621, and founded
Chicago, will recall this pond distinctly. Cotton Mather is buried on
its far bank, and from there it is just ten minutes by trolley to Salem,
Massachusetts. It is stated also in this story that the prairies begin a
matter of thirty-odd miles from Chicago, and that to reach them one must
first traverse a "perfect no man's land." Englewood and South Chicago
papers please copy.