At the present moment probably the dearest bed of its size in the world
is that to be obtained on the Calais-Mediterranean express, which leaves
Calais at 1.05 every afternoon and gets to Monte Carlo at 9.39 the
next morning. This bed costs you between £4 and £5 if you take it from
Calais, and between £3 and £4 if you take it from Paris (as I did), in
addition to the first-class fare (no bagatelle that, either!), and, of
course, in addition to your food. Why people should make such a terrific
fuss about this train I don’t know. It isn’t the fastest train between
Paris and Marseilles, because, though it beats almost every other train
by nearly an hour, there is, in February, just one train that beats
_it_--by one minute. * And after Marseilles it is slow. And as for
comfort, well, Americans aver that it “don’t cut much ice, anyway” (this
is the sort of elegant diction you hear on it), seeing that it doesn’t
even comprise a drawingroom! car. Except when you are eating, you must
remain boxed up in a compartment decidedly not as roomy as a plain,
common, ordinary, decent Anglo-Saxon first-class compartment between
Manchester and Liverpool.
* In 1904.
However, it is the train of trains, outside the Siberian express,
and the Chicago and Empire City Vestibule Flyer, Limited, and
if decorations, silver, rare woods, plush, silk, satin, springs,
cut-flowers, and white-gloved attendants will make a crack train, the
International Sleeping Car Company (that bumptious but still useful
association for the aggrandisement of railway directors) has made one.
You enter this train with awe, for you know that in entering you enrol
yourself once and for ever among the élite. You know that nobody in
Europe can go one better. For just as the whole of the Riviera coast has
been finally specials ised into a winter playground for the rich idlers,
dilettanti, hypochondriacs, and invalids of two or three continents, and
into a field of manouvres for the always-accompanying gilded riff-raff
and odalisques, so that train is a final instance of the specialisation
of transit to suit the needs of the aforesaid plutocrats and
adventurers. And whether you count yourself a plutocrat or an
adventurer, you are correct, doing the correct thing, and proving every
minute that money is no object, and thus realising the ideal of the age.
[Illustration: 0483]
*****
French railway platforms are so low that in the vast and resounding Gare
de Lyon when the machine rolled magnificently in I was obliged to look
up to it, whether I wanted to or not; and so I looked up reverently. The
first human being that descended from it was an African; not a negro,
but something nobler. He was a very big man, with a distinguished mien,
and he wore the uniform, including the white gloves, of the dining-car
staff. Now, I had learnt from previous excursions in this gipsy-van of
the élite that the proper thing to do aboard! it is to display a keen
interest in your stomach. So I approached the African and demanded the
hour of dinner. He enveloped me in a glance of courteous but cold and
distant disdain, and for quite five seconds, as he gazed silently down
at me (I am 5ft.-8 3/4in.), he must have been saying to himself: “Here’s
another of ’em.” I felt inclined to explain to him, as the reporter
explained to the revivalist who inquired about his soul, that I was on
the Press, and therefore not to be confused with the general élite. But
I said nothing. I decided that if I told him that I worked as hard as
he did he would probably take me for a liar as well as a plutocratic
nincompoop.
Then the train went off, carrying its cargo of human parcels all wrapped
up in pretty cloths and securely tied with tapes and things, and plunged
with its glitter and meretricious flash down through the dark central
quietudes of France. I must say that as I wandered about its shaking
corridors, looking at faces and observing the deleterious effects of
idleness, money, seasickness, lack of imagination, and other influences,
I was impressed, nevertheless, by the bright gaudiness of the train’s
whole entity. It isn’t called a train _de luxe_; it is called a train
_de grand luxe_; and though the artistic taste displayed throughout is
uniformly deplorable, still it deserves the full epithet. As an example
of ostentation, of an end aimed at and achieved, it will pass muster.
And, lost in one of those profound meditations upon life and death and
luxury which even the worst novelists must from time to time indulge
in, I forgot everything save the idea of the significance of the
train rushing, so complete and so self-contained, through unknown and
uncared-for darkness. For me the train might have been whizzing at large
through the world as the earth whizzes at large through space. Then that
African came along and asserted with frigid politeness that dinner was
ready.
*****
And in the highly-decorated dining-car, where vines grew all up the
walls, and the table-lamps were electric bulbs enshrined in the metallic
curves of the _art nouveau_, and the fine cut flowers had probably
been brought up from Grasse that morning, it happened that the African
himself handed me the menu and waited on me. And when he arrived
balancing the elaborate silver “contraption” containing ninety-nine
varieties of _hors-d’oeuvres_, but not the particular variety I wanted,
I determined that I would enter the lists with him. And, catching his
eye, I said with frigid politeness: ‘_N’y a-t-il pas de sardines?_’
He restrained himself for his usual five seconds, and then he replied,
with a politeness compared to which mine was sultry:
“_Non, monsieur_.”
And he went on to say (without speaking, but with his eyes, arms, legs,
forehead, and spinal column): “Miserable European, parcel, poltroon,
idler, degenerate, here I offer you ninety-and-nine _hors d’ouvres_,
and you want the hundredth! You, living your unnatural and despicable
existence! If I cared sufficiently I could kill every man on the train,
but I don’t care sufficiently! Have the goodness not to misinterpret my
politeness, and take this Lyons sausage, and let me hear no more about
sardines.”
Hence I took the sausage and obediently ate it. I gave him best. Among
the few men that I respected on that train were the engine-driver, out
there in the nocturnal cold, with our lives in his pocket, and that
African. He really could have killed any of us. I may never see him
again. His circle of eternal energy just touched mine at the point where
a tin of sardines ought to have been but was not. He was emphatically a
man. He had the gestures and carriage of a monarch. Perhaps he was one,
_de jure_, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Timbuctoo. For practical
European, Riviera, plutocratic purposes he was a coloured waiter in the
service of the International Sleeping Car Company.