My Friend B.--Invitation to the Theatre.--A Most Unpleasant
Regulation.--Yearnings of the Embryo Traveller.--How to Make the Most of
One's Own Country.--Friday, a Lucky Day.--The Pilgrimage Decided On.
My friend B. called on me this morning and asked me if I would go to a
theatre with him on Monday next.
"Oh, yes! certainly, old man," I replied. "Have you got an order, then?"
He said:
"No; they don't give orders. We shall have to pay."
"Pay! Pay to go into a theatre!" I answered, in astonishment. "Oh,
nonsense! You are joking."
"My dear fellow," he rejoined, "do you think I should suggest paying if
it were possible to get in by any other means? But the people who run
this theatre would not even understand what was meant by a 'free list,'
the uncivilised barbarians! It is of no use pretending to them that you
are on the Press, because they don't want the Press; they don't think
anything of the Press. It is no good writing to the acting manager,
because there is no acting manager. It would be a waste of time offering
to exhibit bills, because they don't have any bills--not of that sort.
If you want to go in to see the show, you've got to pay. If you don't
pay, you stop outside; that's their brutal rule."
"Dear me," I said, "what a very unpleasant arrangement! And whereabouts
is this extraordinary theatre? I don't think I can ever have been inside
it."
"I don't think you have," he replied; "it is at Ober-Ammergau--first
turning on the left after you leave Ober railway-station, fifty miles
from Munich."
"Um! rather out of the way for a theatre," I said. "I should not have
thought an outlying house like that could have afforded to give itself
airs."
"The house holds seven thousand people," answered my friend B., "and
money is turned away at each performance. The first production is on
Monday next. Will you come?"
I pondered for a moment, looked at my diary, and saw that Aunt Emma was
coming to spend Saturday to Wednesday next with us, calculated that if I
went I should miss her, and might not see her again for years, and
decided that I would go.
To tell the truth, it was the journey more than the play that tempted me.
To be a great traveller has always been one of my cherished ambitions. I
yearn to be able to write in this sort of strain:--
"I have smoked my fragrant Havana in the sunny streets of old Madrid, and
I have puffed the rude and not sweet-smelling calumet of peace in the
draughty wigwam of the Wild West; I have sipped my evening coffee in the
silent tent, while the tethered camel browsed without upon the desert
grass, and I have quaffed the fiery brandy of the North while the
reindeer munched his fodder beside me in the hut, and the pale light of
the midnight sun threw the shadows of the pines across the snow; I have
felt the stab of lustrous eyes that, ghostlike, looked at me from out
veil-covered faces in Byzantium's narrow ways, and I have laughed back
(though it was wrong of me to do so) at the saucy, wanton glances of the
black-eyed girls of Jedo; I have wandered where 'good'--but not too
good--Haroun Alraschid crept disguised at nightfall, with his faithful
Mesrour by his side; I have stood upon the bridge where Dante watched the
sainted Beatrice pass by; I have floated on the waters that once bore the
barge of Cleopatra; I have stood where Caesar fell; I have heard the soft
rustle of rich, rare robes in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair, and I have
heard the teeth-necklaces rattle around the ebony throats of the belles
of Tongataboo; I have panted beneath the sun's fierce rays in India, and
frozen under the icy blasts of Greenland; I have mingled with the teeming
hordes of old Cathay, and, deep in the great pine forests of the Western
World, I have lain, wrapped in my blanket, a thousand miles beyond the
shores of human life."
B., to whom I explained my leaning towards this style of diction, said
that exactly the same effect could be produced by writing about places
quite handy. He said:--
"I could go on like that without having been outside England at all. I
should say:
"I have smoked my fourpenny shag in the sanded bars of Fleet Street, and
I have puffed my twopenny Manilla in the gilded balls of the Criterion; I
have quaffed my foaming beer of Burton where Islington's famed Angel
gathers the little thirsty ones beneath her shadowing wings, and I have
sipped my tenpenny _ordinaire_ in many a garlic-scented salon of Soho.
On the back of the strangely-moving ass I have urged--or, to speak more
correctly, the proprietor of the ass, or his agent, from behind has
urged--my wild career across the sandy heaths of Hampstead, and my canoe
has startled the screaming wild-fowl from their lonely haunts amid the
sub-tropical regions of Battersea. Adown the long, steep slope of One
Tree Hill have I rolled from top to foot, while laughing maidens of the
East stood round and clapped their hands and yelled; and, in the
old-world garden of that pleasant Court, where played the fair-haired
children of the ill-starred Stuarts, have I wandered long through many
paths, my arm entwined about the waist of one of Eve's sweet daughters,
while her mother raged around indignantly on the other side of the hedge,
and never seemed to get any nearer to us. I have chased the
lodging-house Norfolk Howard to his watery death by the pale lamp's
light; I have, shivering, followed the leaping flea o'er many a mile of
pillow and sheet, by the great Atlantic's margin. Round and round, till
the heart--and not only the heart--grows sick, and the mad brain whirls
and reels, have I ridden the small, but extremely hard, horse, that may,
for a penny, be mounted amid the plains of Peckham Rye; and high above
the heads of the giddy throngs of Barnet (though it is doubtful if anyone
among them was half so giddy as was I) have I swung in highly-coloured
car, worked by a man with a rope. I have trod in stately measure the
floor of Kensington's Town Hall (the tickets were a guinea each, and
included refreshments--when you could get to them through the crowd), and
on the green sward of the forest that borders eastern Anglia by the
oft-sung town of Epping I have performed quaint ceremonies in a ring; I
have mingled with the teeming hordes of Drury Lane on Boxing Night, and,
during the run of a high-class piece, I have sat in lonely grandeur in
the front row of the gallery, and wished that I had spent my shilling
instead in the Oriental halls of the Alhambra."
"There you are," said B., "that is just as good as yours; and you can
write like that without going more than a few hours' journey from
London."
"We will discuss the matter no further," I replied. "You cannot, I see,
enter into my feelings. The wild heart of the traveller does not throb
within your breast; you cannot understand his longings. No matter!
Suffice it that I will come this journey with you. I will buy a German
conversation book, and a check-suit, and a blue veil, and a white
umbrella, and suchlike necessities of the English tourist in Germany,
this very afternoon. When do you start?"
"Well," he said, "it is a good two days' journey. I propose to start on
Friday."
"Is not Friday rather an unlucky day to start on?" I suggested.
"Oh, good gracious!" he retorted quite sharply, "what rubbish next? As
if the affairs of Europe were going to be arranged by Providence
according to whether you and I start for an excursion on a Thursday or a
Friday!"
He said he was surprised that a man who could be so sensible,
occasionally, as myself, could have patience to even think of such
old-womanish nonsense. He said that years ago, when he was a silly boy,
he used to pay attention to this foolish superstition himself, and would
never upon any consideration start for a trip upon a Friday.
But, one year, he was compelled to do so. It was a case of either
starting on a Friday or not going at all, and he determined to chance it.
He went, prepared for and expecting a series of accidents and
misfortunes. To return home alive was the only bit of pleasure he hoped
for from that trip.
As it turned out, however, he had never had a more enjoyable holiday in
his life before. The whole event was a tremendous success.
And after that, he had made up his mind to _always_ start on a Friday;
and he always did, and always had a good time.
He said that he would never, upon any consideration, start for a trip
upon any other day but a Friday now. It was so absurd, this superstition
about Friday.
So we agreed to start on the Friday, and I am to meet him at Victoria
Station at a quarter to eight in the evening.