I
If Your Grace would prepay your postage it would be a pleasant change. I
am not meaning to speak harshly, but only sorrowfully. My remark applies
to all my outland correspondents, and to everybody’s. None of them puts
on the full postage, and that is just the same as putting on none at
all: the foreign governments ignore the half postage, and we who are
abroad have to pay full postage on those half-paid letters. And as for
writing on thin paper, none of my friends ever think of it; they all use
pasteboard, or sole leather, or things like that. But enough of that
subject; it is painful.
I believe you have set me a hard task; for if it is true that you have
not been in the world for three hundred years, and have not received
into your establishment an educated person in all that time, I shall be
obliged to talk to you as if you had just been born and knew nothing at
all about the things I speak of. However, I will do the best I can, and
will faithfully try to put in all the particulars, trivial ones as well
as the other sorts. If my report shall induce Your Grace to come out of
your age-long seclusion and make a pleasure tour through the world in
person, instead of doing it by proxy through me, I shall feel that I
have labored to good purpose. You have many friends in the world; more
than you think. You would have a vast welcome in Paris, London, New
York, Chicago, Washington, and the other capitals of the world; if you
would go on the lecture platform you could charge what you pleased. You
would be the most formidable attraction on the planet. The curiosity to
see you would be so great that no place of amusement would contain the
multitude that would come. In London many devoted people who have seen
the Prince of Wales only fifteen hundred or two thousand times would be
willing to miss one chance of seeing him again for the sake of seeing
you. In Paris, even with the Tsar on view, you could do a fairly good
business; and in Chicago--Oh, but you ought to go to Chicago, you know.
But further of this anon. I will to my report, now, and tell you about
Lucerne, and how I journeyed hither; for doubtless you will travel by
the same route when you come.
I kept house a few months in London, with my family, while I arranged
the matters which you were good enough to intrust me with. There were no
adventures, except that we saw the Jubilee. Afterward I was invited to
one of the Queen’s functions, which was a royal garden party. A garden
is a green and bloomy countrified stretch of land which--But you
remember the Garden of Eden; well, it is like that. The invitation
prescribed the costume that must be worn: “Morning dress with trousers.”
I was intending to wear mine, for I always wear something at garden
parties where ladies are to be present; but I was hurt by this arbitrary
note of compulsion, and did not go. All the European courts are
particular about dress, and you are not allowed to choose for yourself
in any case; you are always told exactly what you must wear; and whether
it is going to become you or not, you are not allowed to make any
changes. Yet the court taste is often bad, and sometimes even
indelicate. I was once invited to dine with an emperor when I was living
awhile in Germany, and the invitation card named the dress I must wear:
“Frock coat and black cravat.” To put it in English, that meant
swallow-tail and black cravat. It was cold weather, too, the middle of
winter; and not only that, but ladies were to be present. That was five
years ago. By this time the coat has gone out, I suppose, and you would
feel at home there if you still remember the old Eden styles.
As soon as the Jubilee was fairly over we broke up housekeeping and went
for a few days to what is called in England “an hotel.” If we could have
afforded an horse and an hackney cab we could have had an heavenly good
time flitting around on our preparation errands, and could have finished
them up briskly; but the buses are slow and they wasted many precious
hours for us. A bus is a sort of great cage on four wheels, and is six
times as strong and eleven times as heavy as the service required of it
demands--but that is the English of it. The bus aptly symbolizes the
national character. The Englishman requires that everything about him
shall be stable, strong, and permanent, except the house which he builds
to rent. His own private house is as strong as a fort. The rod which
holds up the lace curtains could hold up an hippopotamus. The three-foot
flagstaff on his bus, which supports a Union Jack the size of a
handkerchief, would still support it if it were one of the gates of
Gaza. Everything he constructs is a deal heavier and stronger than it
needs to be. He built ten miles of terraced benches to view the Jubilee
procession from, and put timber enough in them to make them a permanent
contribution to the solidities of the world--yet they were intended for
only two days’ service.
When they were being removed an American said, “Don’t do it--save them
for the Resurrection.” If anything gets in the way of the Englishman’s
bus it must get out of it or be bowled down--and that is English. It is
the serene self-sufficient spirit which has carried his flag so far. He
ought to put his aggressive bus in his coat of arms, and take the gentle
unicorn out.
We made our preparations for Switzerland as fast as we could; then
bought the tickets. Bought them of Thomas Cook & Sons, of
course--nowadays shortened to “Cook’s,” to save time and words. Things
have changed in thirty years. I can remember when to be a “Cook’s
tourist” was a thing to be ashamed of, and when everybody felt
privileged to make fun of Cook’s “personally conducted” gangs of
economical provincials. But that has all gone by, now. All sorts and
conditions of men fly to Cook in our days. In the bygone times travel in
Europe was made hateful and humiliating by the wanton difficulties,
hindrances, annoyances, and vexations put upon it by ignorant, stupid,
and disobliging transportation officials, and one had to travel with a
courier or risk going mad. You could not buy a railway ticket on one day
which you purposed to use next day--it was not permitted. You could not
buy a ticket for _any_ train until fifteen minutes before that train was
due to leave. Though you had twenty trunks, you must manage somehow to
get them weighed and the extra weight paid for within that fifteen
minutes; if the time was not sufficient you would have to leave behind
such trunks as failed to pass the scales. If you missed your train, your
ticket was no longer good. As a rule, you could make neither head nor
tail of the railway guide, and if your intended journey was a long one
you would find that the officials could tell you little about which way
to go; consequently you often bought the wrong ticket and got yourself
lost. But Cook has remedied all these things and made travel simple,
easy, and a pleasure. He will sell you a ticket to any place on the
globe, or all the places, and give you all the time you need, and as
much more besides; and it is good for all trains of its class, and its
baggage is weighable at all hours. It provides hotels for you
everywhere, if you so desire; and you cannot be overcharged, for the
coupons show just how much you must pay. Cook’s servants at the great
stations will attend to your baggage, get you a cab, tell you how much
to pay cabmen and porters, procure guides for you, or horses, donkeys,
camels, bicycles, or anything else you want, and make life a comfort and
a satisfaction to you. And if you get tired of traveling and want to
stop, Cook will take back the remains of your ticket, with 10 per cent
off. Cook is your banker everywhere, and his establishment your shelter
when you get caught out in the rain. His clerks will answer all the
questions you ask, and do it courteously. I recommend Your Grace to
travel on Cook’s tickets when you come; and I do this without
embarrassment, for I get no commission. I do not know Cook. (But if you
would rather travel with a courier, let me recommend Joseph Very. I
employed him twenty years ago, and spoke of him very highly in a book,
for he was an excellent courier--then. I employed him again, six or
seven years ago--for a while. Try him. And when you go home, take him
with you.)
That London hotel was a disappointment. It was up a back alley, and we
supposed it would be cheap. But, no, it was built for the moneyed races.
It was all costliness and show. It had a brass band for dinner--and
little else--and it even had a telephone and a lift. A telephone is a
wire stretched on poles or underground, and has a thing at each end of
it. These things are to speak into and to listen at. The wire carries
the words; it can carry them several hundred miles. It is a time-saving,
profanity-breeding, useful invention, and in America is to be found in
all houses except parsonages. It is dear in America, but cheap in
England; yet in England telephones are as rare as are icebergs in your
place. I know of no way to account for this; I only know that it is
extraordinary. The English take kindly to the other modern conveniences,
but for some puzzling reason or other they will not use the telephone.
There are 44,000,000 people there who have never even seen one.
The lift is an elevator. Like the telephone, it also is an American
invention. Its office is to hoist people to the upper stories and save
them the fatigue and delay of climbing. That London hotel could
accommodate several hundred people, and it had just one lift--a lift
which would hold four persons. In America such an hotel would have from
two to six lifts. When I was last in Paris, three years ago, they were
using there what they thought was a lift. It held two persons, and
traveled at such a slow gait that a spectator could not tell which way
it was going. If the passengers were going to the sixth floor, they took
along something to eat; and at night, bedding. Old people did not use
it; except such as were on their way to the good place, anyhow. Often
people that had been lost for days were found in those lifts, jogging
along, jogging along, frequently still alive. The French took great
pride in their ostensible lift, and called it by a grand
name--_ascenseur_. An hotel that had a lift did not keep it secret, but
advertised it in immense letters, _“Il y a une ascenseur,”_ with three
exclamation points after it.
In that London hotel--But never mind that hotel; it was a cruelly
expensive and tawdry and ill-conditioned place, and I wish I could do it
a damage. I will think up a way some time. We went to Queenboro by the
railroad. A railroad is a--well, a railroad is a railroad. I will
describe it more explicitly another time.
Then we went by steamer to Flushing--eight hours. If you sit at home you
can make the trip in less time, because then you can travel by the
steamer company’s advertisement, and that will take you across the
Channel five hours quicker than their boats can do it. Almost everywhere
in Europe the advertisements can give the facts several hours’ odd in
the twenty-four and get in first.