candles. One is lighting lamps; the other is setting brushwood and
logs in a blaze in a perfect cavern of a hearth. Where am I, now that
there is plenty of light to see by? Apparently in a banqueting-hall,
fifty feet long by forty wide. This is my private sitting-room, and I
am to eat my little bit of dinner in it all alone. Let me look about
observantly, while the meal is preparing. Above me is an arched
painted ceiling, all alive with Cupids rolling about on clouds, and
scattering perpetual roses on the heads of travellers beneath. Around
me are classical landscapes of the school which treats the spectator
to umbrella-shaped trees, calm green oceans, and foregrounds rampant
with dancing goddesses. Beneath me is something elastic to tread upon,
smelling very like old straw, which indeed it is, covered with a thin
drugget. This is humanely intended to protect me against the cold of
the stone or brick floor, and is a concession to English prejudices on
the subject of comfort. May I be grateful for it, and take no
unfriendly notice of the fleas, though they are crawling up my legs
from the straw and the drugget already!
What do I see next? Dinner on table. Drab-coloured soup, which will
take a great deal of thickening with grated Parmesan cheese, and five
dishes all round it. Trout fried in oil, rolled beef steeped in
succulent brown gravy, roast chicken with water-cresses, square pastry
cakes with mince-meat inside them, fried potatoes--all excellent. This
is really good Italian cookery: it is more fanciful than the English
and more solid than the French. It is not greasy, and none of the
fried dishes taste in the slightest degree of lamp oil. The wine is
good, too--effervescent, smacking of the Muscatel grape, and only
eighteen-pence a bottle. The second course more than sustains the
character of the first. Small browned birds that look like larks,
their plump breasts clothed succulently with a counterpane of fat
bacon, their tender backs reposing on beds of savoury toast,--stewed
pigeon,--a sponge-cake pudding,--baked pears. Where could one find a
better dinner or a pleasanter waiter to serve at table? He is neither
servile nor familiar, and is always ready to occupy any superfluous
attention I have to spare with all the small talk that is in him. He
has, in fact, but one fault, and that consists in his very vexatious
and unaccountable manner of varying the language in which he
communicates with me.
I speak French and Italian, and he can speak French also as well as
his own tongue. I naturally, however, choose Italian on first
addressing him, because it is his native language. He understands
what I say to him perfectly, but he answers me in French. I bethink
myself, upon this, that he may be wishing, like the rest of us, to
show off any little morsel of learning that he has picked up, or that
he may fancy I understand French better than I do Italian, and may be
politely anxious to make our colloquy as easy as possible to me.
Accordingly I humour him, and change to French when I next speak. No
sooner are the words out of my mouth than, with inexplicable
perversity, he answers me in Italian. All through the dinner I try
hard to make him talk the same language that I do, yet, excepting now
and then a few insignificant phrases, I never succeed. What is the
meaning of his playing this game of philological see-saw with me? Do
the people here actually carry the national politeness so far as to
flatter the stranger by according him an undisturbed monopoly of the
language in which he chooses to talk to them? I cannot explain it, and
dessert surprises me in the midst of my perplexities. Four dishes
again! Parmesan cheese, macaroons, pears, and green figs. With these
and another bottle of the effervescent wine, how brightly the evening
will pass away by the blazing wood fire! Surely, I cannot do better
than go to Austrian Italy again, after having met with such a first
welcome to the country as this. Shall I put down the cannel coal, and
determine without any more ado on paying a second visit to the land
that is cheered by my comfortable inn? No, not too hastily. Let me try
the effect of one or two more scenes from my past travelling
experience in this particular division of the Italian peninsula before
I decide.
Black Mirror! how did I end my evening at the comfortable inn?
The cloud passes again, heavily and thickly this time, over the
surface of the mirror--clears away slowly--shows me myself dozing
luxuriously by the red embers with an empty bottle at my side. A
suddenly-opening door wakes me up; the landlord of the inn approaches,
places a long, official-looking book on the table, and hands me pen
and ink. I inquire peevishly what I am wanted to write at that time of
night, when I am just digesting my dinner. The landlord answers
respectfully that I am required to give the police a full, true, and
particular account of myself. I approach the table, thinking this
demand rather absurd, for my passport is already in the hands of the
authorities. However, as I am in a despotic country, I keep my
thoughts to myself, open a blank page in the official-looking book,
see that it is divided into columns, with printed headings, and find
that I no more understand what they mean than I understand an assessed
tax-paper at home, to which by-the-bye, the blank page bears a
striking general resemblance. The headings are technical official
words, which I now meet with as parts of Italian speech for the first
time. I am obliged to appeal to the polite landlord, and, by his
assistance, I get gradually to understand what it is the Austrian
police want of me.
The police require to know, before they will let me go on peaceably
to-morrow, first, What my name is in full? (Answered easily enough.)
Second, What is my nation? (British, and delighted to cast it in the
teeth of continental tyrants.) Third, Where was I born? (In
London--parish of Marylebone--and I wish my native vestry knew how the
Austrian authorities were using me.) Fourth, where do I live? (In
London, again--and I have half a mind to write to the Times about this
nuisance before I go to bed.) Fifth, how old am I? (My age is what it
has been for the last seven years, and what it will remain till
further notice--twenty-five exactly.) What next? By all that is
inquisitive, here are the police wanting to know (Sixth) whether I am
married or single! Landlord, what is the Italian for Bachelor? "Write
Nubile, signor." Nubile? That means Marriageable. Permit me to remark,
my good sir, that this is a woman's definition of a bachelor--not a
man's. No matter, let it pass. What next? (O distrustful despots! what
next?) Seventh, What is my condition? (First-rate condition, to be
sure,--full of rolled beef, toasted larks, and effervescent wine.
Condition! What do they mean by that? Profession, is it? I have not
got one. What shall I write? "Write Proprietor, signor." Very well;
but I don't know that I am proprietor of anything except the clothes I
stand up in: even my trunk was borrowed of a friend.) Eighth, Where do
I come from? Ninth, Where am I going to? Tenth, When did I get my
passport? Eleventh, Where did I get my passport? Twelfth, Who gave me
my passport? Was there ever such a monstrous string of questions to
address to a harmless, idle man, who only wants to potter about Italy
quietly in a postchaise! Do they catch Mazzini, landlord, with all
these precautions? No: they only catch _me_. There! there! take your
Travellers' Book back to the police. Surely, such unfounded distrust
of my character as the production of that volume at my dinner-table
implies, forms a serious drawback to the pleasure of travelling in
Austrian Italy. Shall I give up at once all idea of going there, in my
own innocent character, again? No; let me be deliberate in arriving at
a decision,--let me patiently try the experiment of looking at one
more scene from the past.
Black Mirror! how did I travel in Austrian Italy after I had paid my
bill in the morning, and had left my comfortable inn?
The new dream-scene shows me evening again. I have joined another
English traveller in taking a vehicle that they call a calèche. It is
a frowsy kind of sedan-chair on wheels, with greasy leather curtains
and cushions. In the days of its prosperity and youth it might have
been a state-coach, and might have carried Sir Robert Walpole to
court, or the Abbé Dubois to a supper with the Regent Orleans. It is
driven by a tall, cadaverous, ruffianly postilion, with his clothes
all in rags, and without a spark of mercy for his miserable horses. It
smells badly, looks badly, goes badly; and jerks, and cracks, and
totters as if it would break down altogether--when it is suddenly
stopped on a rough stone pavement in front of a lonely post-house,
just as the sun is sinking and the night is setting in.
The postmaster comes out to superintend the harnessing of fresh
horses. He is tipsy, familiar, and confidential; he first
apostrophises the calèche with contemptuous curses, then takes me
mysteriously aside, and declares that the whole high road onward to
our morning's destination swarms with thieves. It seems, then, that
the Austrian police reserve all their vigilance for innocent
travellers, and leave local rogues entirely unmolested. I make this
reflection, and ask the postmaster what he recommends us to do for the
protection of our portmanteaus, which are tied on to the roof of the
calèche. He answers that unless we take special precautions, the
thieves will get up behind, on our crazy foot-board, and will cut the
trunks off the top of our frowsy travelling-carriage, under cover of
the night, while we are quietly seated inside, seeing and suspecting
nothing. We instantly express our readiness to take any precautions
that any one may be kind enough to suggest. The postmaster winks, lays
his finger archly on the side of his nose, and gives an unintelligible
order in the patois of the district. Before I have time to ask what he
is going to do, every idler about the posthouse who can climb, scales
the summit of the calèche, and every idler who cannot, stands roaring
and gesticulating below with a lighted candle in his hand.
While the hubbub is at its loudest, a rival travelling carriage
suddenly drives into the midst of us, in the shape of a huge
barrel-organ on wheels, and bursts out awfully in the darkness with
the grand march in Semiramide, played with the utmost fury of the
drum, cymbal, and trumpet-stops. The noise is so bewildering that my
travelling companion and I take refuge inside our carriage, and shut
our eyes, and stop our ears, and abandon ourselves to despair. After a
time, our elbows are jogged, and a string a-piece is given to us
through each window. We are informed in shouts, accompanied fiercely
by the grand march, that the strings are fastened to our portmanteaus
above; that we are to keep the loose ends round our forefingers all
night; and that the moment we feel a tug, we may be quite certain the
thieves are at work, and may feel justified in stopping the carriage
and fighting for our baggage without any more ado. Under these
agreeable auspices, we start again, with our strings round our
forefingers. We feel like men about to ring the bell--or like men
engaged in deep sea-fishing--or like men on the point of pulling the
string of a shower-bath. Fifty times at least, during the next stage,
each of us is certain that he feels a tug, and pops his head agitatedly
out of window, and sees absolutely nothing, and falls back again
exhausted with excitement in a corner of the calèche. All through the
night this wear and tear of our nerves goes on; and all through the
night (thanks, probably, to the ceaseless popping of our heads out of
the windows) not the ghost of a thief comes near us. We begin, at
last, almost to feel that it would be a relief to be robbed--almost to
doubt the policy of resisting any mercifully-larcenous hands stretched
forth to rescue us from the incubus of our own baggage. The morning
dawn finds us languid and haggard, with the accursed portmanteau
strings dangling unregarded in the bottom of the calèche. And this is
taking our pleasure! This is an incident of travel in Austrian Italy!
Faithful Black Mirror, accept my thanks. The warning of the two last
dream-scenes that you have shown me shall not be disregarded. Whatever
other direction I may take when I go out of town for the present
season, one road at least I know that I shall avoid--the road that
leads to Austrian Italy.
Shall I keep on the northern side of the Alps, and travel a little,
let us say, in German-Switzerland? Black Mirror! how did I get on when
I was last in that country? Did I like my introductory experience at
my first inn?
The vision changes, and takes me again to the outside of a house of
public entertainment; a great white, clean, smooth-fronted,
opulent-looking hotel--a very different building from my dingy,
cavernous Italian inn. At the street-door stands the landlord. He is a
little, lean, rosy man, dressed all in black, and looking like a
master undertaker. I observe that he neither steps forwards nor smiles
when I get out of the carriage and ask for a bedroom. He gives me the
shortest possible answer, growls guttural instructions to a waiter,
then looks out into the street again and, before I have so much as
turned my back on him, forgets my existence immediately. The vision
changes again, and takes me inside the hotel. I am following a waiter
up-stairs--the man looks unaffectedly sorry to see me. In the bedroom
corridor we find a chambermaid asleep with her head on a table. She is
woke up; opens a door with a groan, and scowls at me reproachfully
when I say that the room will do. I descend to dinner. Two waiters
attend on me, under protest, and look as if they were on the point of
giving warning every time I require them to change my plate. At the
second course the landlord comes in, and stands and stares at me
intently and silently with his hands in his pockets. This may be his
way of seeing that my dinner is well served; but it looks much more
like his way of seeing that I do not abstract any spoons from his
table. I become irritated by the boorish staring and frowning of
everybody about me, and express myself strongly on the subject of my
reception at the hotel to an English traveller dining near me.
The English traveller is one of those exasperating men who are always
ready to put up with injuries, and he coolly accounts for the
behaviour of which I complain, by telling me that it is the result of
the blunt honesty of the natives, who cannot pretend to take an
interest in me which they do not really feel. What do I care about the
feelings of the stolid landlord and the sulky waiters? I require the
comforting outward show from them--the inward substance is not of the
smallest consequence to me. When I travel in civilised countries, I
want such a reception at my inn as shall genially amuse and gently
tickle all the region round about my organ of self-esteem. Blunt
honesty which is too offensively truthful to pretend to be glad to see
me, shows no corresponding integrity--as my own experience informs me
at this very hotel--about the capacities of its wine-bottles, but
gives me a pint and charges me for a quart in the bill, like the rest
of the world. Blunt honesty, although it is too brutally sincere to
look civilly distressed and sympathetic when I say that I am tired
after my journey, does not hesitate to warm up, and present before me
as newly dressed, a Methuselah of a duck that has been cooked several
times over, several days ago, and paid for, though not eaten, by my
travelling predecessors. Blunt honesty fleeces me according to every
established predatory law of the landlord's code, yet shrinks from the
amiable duplicity of fawning affectionately before me all the way up
stairs when I first present myself to be swindled. Away with such
detestable sincerity as this! Away with the honesty which brutalises a
landlord's manners without reforming his bottles or his bills! Away
with my German-Swiss hotel, and the extortionate cynic who keeps it!
Let others pay tribute if they will to that boor in innkeeper's
clothing, the colour of my money he shall never see again.
Suppose I avoid German-Switzerland, and try Switzerland Proper?
Mirror! how did I travel when I last found myself on the Swiss side of
the Alps?
The new vision removes me even from the most distant view of an hotel
of any kind, and places me in a wild mountain country where the end of
a rough road is lost in the dry bed of a torrent. I am seated in a
queer little box on wheels, called a Char, drawn by a mule and a mare,
and driven by a jovial coachman in a blue blouse. I have hardly time
to look down alarmedly at the dry bed of the torrent, before the Char
plunges into it. Rapidly and recklessly we thump along over rocks and
stones, acclivities and declivities that would shake down the stoutest
English travelling-carriage, knock up the best-bred English horses,
nonplus the most knowing English coachman. Jovial Blue Blouse, singing
like a nightingale, drives a-head regardless of every obstacle--the
mule and mare tear along as if the journey was the great enjoyment of
the day to them--the Char cracks, rends, sways, bumps, and totters,
but scorns, as becomes a hardy little mountain vehicle, to overturn or
come to pieces. When we are not among the rocks we are rolling and
heaving in sloughs of black mud and sand, like a Dutch herring-boat in
a ground-swell. It is all one to Blue Blouse and the mule and mare.
They are just as ready to drag through sloughs as to jolt over rocks;
and when we do come occasionally to a bit of unencumbered ground, they
always indemnify themselves for past hardship and fatigue by galloping
like mad. As for my own sensations in the character of passenger in
the Char, they are not, physically speaking, of the pleasantest
possible kind. I can only keep myself inside my vehicle by dint of
holding tight with both hands by anything I can find to grasp at; and
I am so shaken throughout my whole anatomy that my very jaws clatter
again, and my feet play a perpetual tattoo on the bottom of the Char.
Did I hit on no method of travelling more composed and deliberate than
this, I wonder, when I was last in Switzerland? Must I make up my mind
to be half-shaken to pieces if I am bold enough to venture on going
there again?
The surface of the Black Mirror is once more clouded over. It clears,
and the vision is now of a path along the side of a precipice. A mule
is following the path, and I am the adventurous traveller who is
astride on the beast's back. The first observation that occurs to me
in my new position is, that mules thoroughly deserve their reputation
for obstinacy, and that, in regard to the particular animal on which I
am riding, the less I interfere with him and the more I conduct myself
as if I was a pack-saddle on his back, the better we are sure to get
on together.
Carrying pack-saddles is his main business in life; and though he saw
me get on his back, he persists in treating me as if I was a bale of
goods, by walking on the extreme edge of the precipice, so as not to
run any risk of rubbing his load against the safe, or mountain, side
of the path. In this and in other things I find that he is the victim
of routine, and the slave of habit. He has a way of stopping short,
placing himself in a slanting position, and falling into a profound
meditation at some of the most awkward turns in the wild
mountain-roads. I imagine at first that he may be halting in this
abrupt and inconvenient manner to take breath; but then he never
exerts himself so as to tax his lungs in the smallest degree, and he
stops on the most unreasonably irregular principles, sometimes twice
in ten minutes,--sometimes not more than twice in two hours--evidently
just as his new ideas happen to absorb his attention or not. It is
part of his exasperating character at these times, always to become
immersed in reflection where the muleteer's staff has not room to
reach him with the smallest effect; and where, loading him with blows
being out of the question, loading him with abusive language is the
only other available process for getting him on. I find that he
generally turns out to be susceptible to the influence of injurious
epithets after he has heard himself insulted five or six times. Once,
his obdurate nature gives way, even at the third appeal. He has just
stopped with me on his back, to amuse himself, at a dangerous part of
the road, with a little hard thinking in a steeply slanting position;
and it becomes therefore urgently necessary to abuse him into
proceeding forthwith. First, the muleteer calls him a Serpent--he
never stirs an inch. Secondly, the muleteer calls him a Frog--he goes
on imperturbably with his meditation. Thirdly, the muleteer roars out
indignantly, Ah sacré nom d'un Butor! (which, interpreted by the help
of my Anglo-French dictionary, means apparently, Ah, sacred name of a
Muddlehead!); and at this extraordinary adjuration the beast instantly
jerks up his nose, shakes his ears, and goes on his way indignantly.
Mule-riding, under these circumstances, is certainly an adventurous
and amusing method of travelling, and well worth trying for once in a
way; but I am not at all sure that I should enjoy a second experience
of it, and I have my doubts on this account--to say nothing of my
dread of a second jolting journey in a Char--about the propriety of
undertaking another journey to Switzerland during the present sultry
season. It will be wisest, perhaps, to try the effect of a new scene
from the past, representing some former visit to some other locality,
before I venture on arriving at a decision. I have rejected Austrian
Italy and German Switzerland, and I am doubtful about Switzerland
Proper. Suppose I do my duty as a patriot, and give the attractions of
my own country a fair chance of appealing to any past influences of
the agreeable kind, which they may have exercised over me? Black
Mirror! when I was last a tourist at home, how did I travel about
from place to place?
The cloud on the magic surface rises slowly and grandly, like the
lifting of a fog at sea, and discloses a tiny drawing-room, with a
skylight window, and a rose-coloured curtain drawn over it to keep out
the sun. A bright book-shelf runs all round this little fairy chamber,
just below the ceiling, where the cornice would be in loftier rooms.
Sofas extend along the wall on either side, and mahogany cupboards
full of good things ensconce themselves snugly in the four corners.
The table is brightened with nosegays; the mantel-shelf has a smart
railing all round it; and the looking-glass above is just large enough
to reflect becomingly the face and shoulders of any lady who will give
herself the trouble of looking into it. The present inhabitants of the
room are three gentlemen with novels and newspapers in their hands,
taking their ease in blouses, dressing-gowns, and slippers. They are
reposing on the sofas with fruit and wine within easy reach--and one
of the party looks to me very much like the enviable possessor of the
Black Mirror. They exhibit a spectacle of luxury which would make an
ancient Spartan shudder with disgust; and, in an adjoining apartment,
their band is attending on them, in the shape of a musical box which
is just now playing the last scene in Lucia di Lammermoor.
Hark! what sounds are those mingling with the notes of Donizetti's
lovely music--now rising over it sublimely, now dying away under it,
gently and more gently still? Our sweet opera air shall come to its
close, our music shall play for its short destined time and then be
silent again; but those more glorious sounds shall go on with us day
and night, shall still swell and sink inexhaustibly, long after we and
all who know and love and remember us have passed from this earth for
ever. It is the wash of the waves that now travels along with us
grandly wherever we go. We are at sea in a schooner yacht, and are
taking our pleasure along the southern shores of the English coast.