IF a student of life will only take his stand in the hall of one of
those Swiss caravansaras which receives a trainful of Britons about
six o'clock some evening in August and despatches them on their way by
Diligence next morning, he will not lose his time, for he will have an
opportunity of studying the foreign manners of his nation. The arrival
of an Englishman of the John Bull type is indeed an event, and the place
is shaken as by a whirlwind. A loud, clear, strident voice is heard
sounding in the English tongue to the extremities of the hall, demanding
that its owner be instantly taken to the rooms--“First floor,” I said,
“with best view, according to the telegram sent yesterday,” refusing
every explanation as to there being none disengaged, insisting that,
somehow or other, rooms of that very kind be offered, and then grumbling
its way upstairs, with an accompaniment in the minor key from a
deprecating landlord, till a distant rumble dying away into the silence
closes the incident. The landlord has reluctantly admitted that he has
rooms on the second floor, better than any other in the house, which are
being kept for a Russian prince, and if Monsieur will accept them for
the night--and then Monsieur calls his wife's attention to the fact
that when he put his foot down he gets his way. One does not, of course,
believe that the landlord said what was absolutely true, and one would
have been delighted had he plucked up courage and shown our compatriot
to the door. But nothing is easier (and more enjoyable) than to point
out how other people ought to conduct their affairs, and no doubt,
were we Swiss innkeepers, needing to make a year's profit out of three
months, we also would have taken rampant Englishmen by guile, as bulls
are lassoed with ropes. Your heart would be adamant if you did not
pardon the poor little device when our national voice is again raised in
the dining-room ordering away a plate on account of an invisible smut,
complaining of the wine because of a bit of cork, comparing the beef
with the home roasts, and enlarging on a dozen defects in bedroom
service to sympathetic spirits right and left, and, for that matter,
as far as the voice can reach. In England that voice will give it to
be understood that it could not be heard amid the chatter of noisy
foreigners “gabbling away goodness knows what,” but as a matter of
fact no combination of German, French, and Italian could resist the
penetrating, domineering, unflinching accent. When that host bows the
voice into an omnibus next morning with great politeness, then one
has an illustration of the spread of the Christian spirit enough to
reinforce the heart in the hours of blackest pessimism.
Would a foreigner believe that the owner of this terrible voice is
really one of the best? He is the soul of honour, and would cut off his
hand rather than do a mean deed; his servants adore him, though he gives
them what he calls a round of the guns once a week; and the last thing
he did before leaving home was to visit an old gamekeeper who taught
him to shoot the year he went to Harrow. When a good man preaches the
charity sermon, this unsympathetic Englishman is quite helpless, and
invariably doubles the sum set aside in his waistcoat pocket. Upon
the bench he is merciless on poachers and tramps; in private he is the
chosen prey of all kinds of beggars. In fact, he is in one way just what
he specially detests--a sham--being the most overbearing, prejudiced,
bigoted, the most modest, simple-minded, kind-hearted of men; and, in
spite of that unchastened voice, a gentleman from the crown of his head
to the sole of his foot. Certainly he ordereth over much, but he will
take care that every servant has a reward before he leaves--going back
from the omnibus to tip “that fellow with the green apron” who did
some trifle for him last night--and if the landlord had only had the
discernment to have described that accident to him, the driver's widow
would have been richer by fifty francs.
The blame of our foreign manners is partly geographical. We happen to
be bom in an island, and our amazing ideas about continentals are being
very slowly worn away by travel. It is just breaking on the average
Briton that, although a foreigner does not splash in his bath of
a morning so that neighbouring rooms can follow the details of his
toilette, he may not be quite uncleanly; that one need not hide all
his valuables beneath his pillow because the other three men in his
compartment of the wagon lit do not speak English; that an Italian
prince is not always a swindler, but may have as long a pedigree as
certain members of the House of Lords; and that the men who constructed
the Mont Cenis and St. Gothard tunnels must at least have understood
the rudiments of engineering science. The puzzled expression on our
countryman's face when he discovers that the foreigner can give us
points--in conveyance of luggage, for instance, or the making of coffee,
or in the small agriculture--goes to your heart. It seems to him a
surprise on the part of Providence, and a violation of the favoured
nation's clause.
Perhaps it ought also to be said in our defence that we are afflicted by
the infirmities of a ruling people. We are not only profoundly conscious
that we are an invincible nation ourselves, but also are saturated
with the belief that we have a commission to govern other nations. Our
talents are mostly exercised in India and Africa, but if one reigns
absolutely anywhere, he carries himself as a king everywhere, and the
ordinary Englishman annexes any place he fancies in holiday time because
his fathers have been appropriating provinces from time immemorial. One
sometimes falls a prey to the Philistine that is in us all, and begins
also to despise what our friend pleasantly calls “all this scraping and
bowing,” by which he means a Frenchman's politeness in little things,
and is tempted to think that it would be better if local government on
the Continent were relieved of a burden of petty rules and a host
of gorgeous officials, and were reinforced by a strong infusion of
downright common sense. One means, in plain words, that if a foreign
district were handed over to an English stipendiary magistrate and a
score of London policemen, its people would learn for the first time the
scope and meaning of good government.
Many well-doing Englishmen cannot unto this day achieve a single
grammatical sentence in any language except their own, and are free
from all pretensions. Our rector stoutly declares that in his popular
lecture, “To Paris and back, or a Glimpse of French Life,” he did not
cite the familiarity of Parisian children with French as a proof of
the precocity of foreigners, but he can never watch two Frenchmen
in conversation without innocent enjoyment. The sounds they make are
marvellous, but it is beyond question that they mean something, and it
is pleasant to know that persons who cannot speak English are not left
without means of communication. Foreigners, an Englishman remembers,
labour under hopeless disabilities. Little can be expected from a people
whose language permits a sentence--in a scientific book too--to end with
“zu, ab,” and one may not be Pharisaic and yet have gloomy views--this
illustration can be used in the pulpit--about a nation that has no word
for home. One of our French class at school, a stout gentleman now, and
worth £100,000, declares he would never demean himself by any attempt
at foreign tongues, and demands that foreigners should learn English,
“which will yet be the language of the world.” He was recently boasting
that he had travelled a month by the aid of signs, although he does
himself less than justice, for on sight of the railway station he will
say “Bannhof, eh?” to the driver in quite a jocular way, as one by way
of pleasing a four-footed pet.
Tittups, on the other hand, who reached the confines of the future tense
with Moossy, and who affects culture, is understood to have an easy
acquaintance with at least three Continental tongues in their more
literary forms--colloquialisms he firmly refuses--and is worth hearing
in a Florentine shop. “Avete voi” (Tittups is a little man, with a
single eyeglass, and a voice three sizes too large for him); “ah... what
you call... ah, papier und... ah, ein, that is eine Feder,” goes through
a panto-mine of writing, and finally obtains what he wants by pointing
it out with his stick. He is fond of enlarging on the advantage of
reading Italian, and insists that no translation has ever conveyed the
grander ideas of Dante, although Tittups admits that the ancient Italian
tries him. “Have to work at it, you know; but the modern, a boy who knows
his grammar can manage it. Seen the _Giomate di Roma_ to-day?” Italians
have a keener insight into character than any people in Europe, and
one could almost pardon the attendant in the Mediterranean sleeper who
insisted that Tittups must be a native-born Tuscan from the way he said
“baga-glia.”
“Gli,” Tittups mentioned casually to a friend, is a test in Italian
pronunciation, and he presented the discerning critic with a five-franc
piece at Calais.
But why should the average man laugh at Tittups, as if he had never had
experiences? Has he never been asked by his companion, to whom he has
been an oracle on German literature, to translate some utterly absurd
and unnecessary piece of information posted on the carriage, and been
humbled in the dust?
“Oh,” he said, quite carelessly, “something about not leaving the train
when it is in motion--zug, you know.”
“Pardon, mein Herr” (voice from the opposite side--what business had he
to interfere?) “but the rule, when it has into English been translated,
shall read------” and it turns out to be a warning not to stop the
train without “plausible” reasons. Nothing is more disconcerting (and
offensive) than to discover that the two imperturbable Germans in your
carriage understand English perfectly, after you have been expressing
your mind on German habits with that courtesy and freedom which are the
prerogative of the Briton abroad. And can anything be more irritating
and inexplicable than to find one's painfully accumulated store of
foreign words ooze away in the crisis of travel, so that a respectable
British matron, eager to be driven by the sea road at Cannes, is
reduced to punching cocher in the small of the back with her parasol and
shouting “eau de vie”--“and he drew up at a low public-house, as if we
had been wanting a drink”--while her husband just escapes an apoplectic
seizure, utilizing the remnants of three languages to explain his
feelings as a Custom-house officer turns the contents of his portmanteau
upside down.
It is not wise, however, for avaricious foreigners to trade upon our
simplicity, for there is always a chance that they may catch a Tartar.
Never have I seen a more ingenuous youth (in appearance) than one who
travelled with me one night from Geneva to Paris. His unbroken ignorance
of Continental ways, which opposed (successfully) the introduction of
more than four persons into our second; his impenetrable stupidity,
which at last saved him from the Customs; his unparalleled atrocities
on the French language, seemed to precede him on the line and suggest
opportunities of brigandage. They charged him eighteen francs for his
supper at a place where we stopped for nearly twenty minutes, and would
likely have appropriated the remaining two francs out of the Napoleon
he offered, but the bell sounded, and he bolted, forgetting in his
nervousness that he had not paid. The garçon followed, whom he failed to
understand, and three officials could not make the matter plainer.
When the public meeting outside our door reached its height there were
present the station-master, seven minor officials, two gendarmes
in great glory, a deputation of four persons from the buffet, an
interpreter whose English was miraculous, and a fringe of loafers.
Just as the police were about to do their duty our fellow passenger
condescended on French--he had preferred English words with foreign
terminations up to that point. His speech could not have exceeded three
minutes, but it left nothing to be desired. It contained a succinct
statement of facts--what he had eaten, and how much each dish cost;
what he was charged, and the exact difference between the debt and the
demand; an appeal to the chef de gare to investigate the conduct of the
buffet where such iniquities were perpetrated on guileless Englishmen;
and lastly a fancy sketch of the garçon's life, with a selection
of Parisian terms of abuse any two of which were enough to confer
distinction for a lifetime. He concluded by offering three francs,
forty-five cents, as his just due to the manager of the buffet, and his
thanks to the audience for their courteous attention.
“I am an Englishman by birth,” he explained to a delighted compartment,
“but Parisian by education, and I think this incident may do good.”
Certainly it has often done one man good, and goes excellently with
another where imagination reinforces memory with happy effect. One had
a presentiment something was going to happen when two devout ladies
secured their places in the Paris express at Lourdes, and before they
entered placed the tin vessel with water from the sacred well on the
floor of the compartment. It was certainly unfortunate that they did not
keep it in their arms till the precious treasure could be deposited in
the rack. Lourdes pilgrims would recognize the vessel even in its state
of temporary humiliation, but there was a distinct suggestion of humbler
uses, and an excited Englishman must not be hardly judged.
“Here you are, dear,” he shouts to his wife, guarding the rugs; “plenty
of room, and a hot water pan for your feet.”
They all got in together--two Parisian ladies, who (likely) could not
speak a word of English, and our fellow patriot, who was (likely) as
ignorant of French. And the tin vessel.
Did they lift it with reverence and fold it in many wraps, and did he
fight for its possession? Are they still describing the wanton impiety
of this heretic? and has he a conclusive illustration of the incredible
folly of our neighbours? Perhaps, after all, they knew each other's
tongues, and then nothing happened; but surely there must have been
circumstances, and I, with a spare moment at my disposal occasionally,
refused to be robbed of that interior.