rooms, have had a cup of tea, and have washed away some of the dirt of
travel. There is only light enough left for a short stroll; and this
first walk through a strange city is one of my principal pleasures
in traveling. I love to find myself amid the unfamiliar streets; to
slip into quiet churches; to stare in shop-windows; to wander, with no
other clue than Baedeker, through narrow byways, and stumble unaware
upon some open court, with its fine old fountain splashing lazily over
the worn stones. Filled with these agreeable anticipations, we steal
downstairs, and see our guide standing like a sentinel at the door. He
is prepared to accompany us, but we decline his services, explaining
curtly that we are only going out for a walk, and need no protection
whatever. It sounds decisive--to us--and we congratulate one another
upon such well-timed firmness, until, glancing back, we perceive our
determined guardian following us on the other side of the street. Now,
as long as we keep straight ahead, pretending to know our way, we are
safe; but the trouble is we don’t know our way, and in a few minutes
it is necessary to consult Baedeker and find out where we are. We do
this as furtively as possible, gathering around the book to hide it,
and moving slowly on while we read. But such foolish precautions are in
vain. The guide has seen us pause. He knows that we are astray, that we
are trying to right ourselves,--a thing he never permits,--and he is
by our side in an instant. If the ladies desire to see the cathedral,
they must turn to the left. It is very near,--not more than a few
minutes’ walk,--and it is open until six o’clock. We think of saying
that we don’t want to see the cathedral, and of turning to the right;
but this course appears rather too perilous. The fact is, we do want
to see it very much; and we should like, moreover, to see it without
delay, and alone. So we thank Brocconi,--that is the guide’s name,--and
say we can find our way now without any trouble. And so we could, if
we were left to ourselves; but the knowledge that we are still being
pursued at a respectful distance, and that we dare not pause a moment
for consideration, flusters us sadly. We come to a point where two
streets meet at an acute angle, hesitate, plunge down the nearer, and
hear Brocconi’s warning voice once more at our elbows. The ladies have
taken a wrong turning. With their permission, he will point them out
the road. So we surrender at discretion, feeling all further resistance
to be useless, and are conducted to the cathedral in a pitiable state
of subjection; are marched dolorously around; are shown old tombs, and
faded pictures, and beautiful bits of mosaic; and then are led back to
the hotel, and dismissed with the assurance that we will be waited on
early the next morning, and that a carriage will be ready for us by ten.
Perhaps our conduct may appear pusillanimous to those whose resolution
has never been so severely tested. We feel this ourselves, and
deplore the cowardly strain in our natures, as we trail meekly and
disconsolately upstairs. There is a little cushioned bench just
outside my bedroom door, and I know that when I go to breakfast in
the morning Brocconi will be sitting there, waiting for his prey.
I know that when I come back from breakfast Brocconi will be still
sitting there, and that I can never leave my room without seeing him
in unquestioned and ostentatious attendance upon me. He stands up,
hat in hand, to salute me, every time I pass him; and after a while
I take to lurking, I might almost say to skulking within my chamber,
rather than encounter his disappointed and reproachful gaze. With the
natural tendency of a woman to temporize, I buy my freedom one day by
engaging his services for the next. If he will permit me to go alone
and in peace to the Greek theatre, to sit on the grassy hill amid the
wild flowers, to look at the charming view and breathe the delicious
air for a long, lazy afternoon, I will drive with him the following
morning over the dusty glaring road to Fort Euryelus, and be marched
submissively through the endless intricacies of its subterranean
corridors, and have every tiresome detail pointed out to me and
explained with merciless prolixity.
On the same lamentably weak principle, I purchase--we all
purchase--his faded and crumpled photographs, so as to be let off from
buying his “antiquities,” a forlorn collection of mouldy coins and
broken bits of terra cotta, which he carries around in a handkerchief
and hands down to us, one by one, when we are prisoners in our
carriage, and cannot refuse to look at them. He is so pained at our
giving them back again that we compromise on the photographs, though
they are the most decrepit specimens I have ever beheld; almost as worn
and flabby as the little letters of recommendation which are lent to us
for perusal, and which state with monotonous amiability that the writer
has employed Domenico Brocconi as guide and interpreter during a three
days’ stay in Syracuse, and has found him intelligent, capable, and
obliging. I know I shall have to write one of these letters before I
go away. Indeed, my conscience aches remorsefully when I think of the
number of such testimonials I have strewn broad-cast over the earth
to be a delusion and a snare to my fellow man. It never occurred to
me that any one would regard them seriously, until an acquaintance
informed me, with some asperity, that he had employed a guide on
my recommendation, and had been cheated by him. I felt very sorry
for this; for, beyond a little overcharging in the matter of fees or
carriages, which is part of the recognized perquisites of the calling,
no guide has ever cheated me. On the contrary, he has sometimes saved
me money. My aversion to him is based exclusively on the fact that he
strikes a discordant note wherever he appears. He has always something
to tell me which I don’t want to hear, and his is that leaden touch
which takes all color and grace from every theme he handles.
Constantinople, as the chosen abode of insecurity, is perhaps the
only city within the tourist’s beaten track where a guide or dragoman
is necessary for personal safety, as well as for the information
he imparts. Baedeker has ignored Constantinople, or perhaps the
authorities of that curiously misgoverned municipality have forbidden
his profane researches into their august privacy. Labor-saving devices
find scant favor with the subjects of the Sultan. Vessels may not
approach the docks to be unloaded, though there is plenty of water to
float them, because that would interfere with the immemorial privileges
of the boatmen. There is no delivery of city mail, but a man can always
be hired to carry your letter from Pera to Stamboul. Guide-books are
unknown, but a dragoman is attached to your service as soon as you
arrive, and is as inseparable as your shadow until the hour you leave.
The rivalry among these men is of a very active order, as I speedily
discovered when I stepped from the Oriental Express into that scene of
mad confusion and tumult, the Constantinople station. It was drizzling
hard. I was speechless from a heavy cold. We were all three worn out
with the absurd and fatiguing travesty of a quarantine on the frontier.
Twenty Turkish porters made a wild rush for our bags the instant the
train stopped, and fought over them like howling beasts. A tall man
with a cast in his eye, handed me a card on which my own name was
legibly written, and said he was the dragoman sent by the hotel to take
us in charge. A little man with a nervous and excited manner handed me
a card on which also my name was legibly written, and said _he_ was
the dragoman sent by the hotel to take us in charge. It was a case for
the judgment of Solomon; and I lacked not only the wisdom to decide,
but the voice in which to utter my decision. There was nothing for
it but to let the claimants fight it out, which they proceeded to do
with fervor, rolling over the station floor and pounding each other
vigorously. The tall man, being much the better combatant, speedily
routed his rival, dragged him ignominiously from the carriage when
he attempted to scale it, and carried us off in triumph. But the
race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. The
little dragoman was game enough not to know when he was beaten. He
followed us in another carriage, and made good his case, evidently,
with the hotel landlord; for we found him, placid and smiling, in
the corridor next morning, waiting his orders for the day. I never
ventured to ask how this change came about, lest indiscreet inquiries
should bring a second dragoman upon my devoted head; so Demetrius
remained our guide, philosopher, and friend for the three weeks we
spent in Constantinople. He was not a bad little man, on the whole;
was extremely patient about carrying wraps, and was honestly anxious
we should suffer no annoyance in the streets. But his knowledge upon
any subject was of the haziest character. He had a perfect talent for
getting us to places at the wrong time,--but that may have been partly
our fault,--and if there ever was anything interesting to tell, he
assuredly never told it. On the other hand, he considered that, to
our Occidental ignorance, the simplest architectural devices needed
an explanation. He would say, “This is a well,” “That is a doorway,”
“These are columns supporting the roof,” with all the benevolent
simplicity of Harry and Lucy’s father enlightening those very
intelligent and ignorant little people.
The only severe trial that Demetrius suffered in our service was the
occasional attendance of the two Kavasses from the American Legation,
whose protection was afforded us twice or thrice, through the courtesy
of the ministry. These magnificent creatures threw our poor little
dragoman so completely into the shade, and regarded him with such
open and manifest contempt, that all his innocent airs of importance
shriveled into humility and dejection. It is but honest to state that
the Kavasses appeared to despise us quite as cordially as they did
Demetrius; but we sustained their scorn with more tranquillity for the
sake of the splendor and distinction they imparted. One of them was a
very handsome and very supercilious Turk, who never condescended to
look at us nor to speak to us; the other a Circassian, whose pride
was tempered by affability, and who was good enough to hold with us
the strictly necessary intercourse. I hear it is said now and then
by censorious critics that American women are the most arrogant of
their sex, affecting a superiority which is based upon no justifiable
claim. But I candidly admit that all such airy notions, born of the
New World and of the nineteenth century, dwindled rapidly away before
the disdainful composure of those two lordly Mohammedans. The old
primitive instincts are never wholly eradicated; only overlaid with the
acquired sentiments of our time and place. I have not been without my
share of self-assertion; but my meekness of spirit in Constantinople,
the perfectly natural feeling I had in being snubbed by two ignorant
Kavasses blazing with gold embroidery, will always remain one of the
salutary humiliations of my life.
I think there must be some secret system of communication by which
the guides of one city consign you to the guides of another; for I
know that when we reached Piræus at five o’clock in the morning, an
olive-skinned, low-voiced, mysterious-looking person, who reminded
me strikingly of Eugene Aram, boarded the ship, knocked at my cabin
door, and gave me to understand, in excellent English, that we were
to be his property in Athens. He said he was not connected with any
hotel, but would be happy to wait on us wherever we went; and he had
all three of our names neatly written in a little book. I responded as
firmly as I could that I did not think we should require his services;
whereupon he smiled darkly, and hinted that we would find it difficult,
and perhaps dangerous, to go about alone. In reality, Athens is as
well conducted as Boston, and very much easier to traverse; but I did
not know this then, so, after some hesitation, I promised to employ
my mysterious visitor if I had any occasion for a guide. It was a
promise not easily forgotten. Morning, noon, and night he haunted us,
always with the same air of mingled secrecy and determination. As it
chanced, I was ill for several days, and unable to leave my room.
Regularly after breakfast there would come a low, resolute knock at my
door, and Eugene Aram, pallid, noiseless, authoritative, would slip
in, and stand like a sentinel by my bed. It was extremely depressing,
and always reminded me of the presentation of a _lettre de cachet_.
I felt that I was wronging my self-elected guide by not getting well
and going about, and his civil inquiries anent my health carried with
them an undertone of reproach. Yet with returning vigor came a firm
determination to escape this melancholy thraldom; and it is one of
my keenest pleasures to remember that on the golden afternoon when I
first climbed the Acropolis, and looked through the yellow columns
of the Parthenon upon the cloudless skies of Greece, and saw the sea
gleaming like a silver band, and watched the glory of the sunset from
the terrace of the temple of Nike, no Eugene Aram was there to mar my
absolute contentment. This was the enchanted hour, never to be repeated
nor surpassed, and this hour was mine to enjoy. When I am setting forth
my trials with all the wordy eloquence of discontent, let me “think of
my marcies,” and be grateful.
Thanks to the protecting hand of England, Cairo, which once was little
better than Constantinople, is now as safe as London. On the Nile,
it is hardly possible to leave one’s boat, save under the care of
a dragoman. Even at Luxor and Assuân, the attentions of the native
population are of a rather overpowering character. But at Cairo,
whether amid the hurrying crowds in the bazaars or on the quiet road
to the Gézirah, there is no annoyance of any kind to be apprehended.
Nevertheless, a little army of guides is connected with every hotel,
and troups of irregulars line the streets, and press their services
upon you as you pass. I noticed that while a great many Americans
had a dragoman permanently attached to their service, and never went
out unaccompanied, the English and Germans resolutely ignored these
expensive and irritating inutilities. If by chance they desired
any attendant, they employed in preference one of the ruminating
donkey-boys who stand all day, supple and serious, alongside of their
melancholy little beasts. Upon one occasion, an Englishwoman was
just stepping into her carriage, having engaged a boy to accompany
her to the mosque of the Sultan Hassan, when a tall and turbaned
Turk, indignant at this invasion of his privileges, called out to her
scornfully, “Do you think that lad will be able to explain to you
anything you are going to see?” The Englishwoman turned her smiling
face. I fancied she would be angry at the impertinence, but she was
not. She had that absolute command of herself and of the situation
which is the birthright of her race. “It is precisely because I know he
can explain nothing that I take him with me,” she said. “If I could be
equally sure of your silence, I should be willing to take you.”
Local guides are as numerous and as systematic in Cairo as in more
accessible cities, and they have the same curious tendency to multiply
themselves around any object of interest, and to subdivide the scanty
labor attendant on its exhibition. When we went to the Coptic church,
for example, a heavy wooden door was opened for us by youth number one,
who pointed out the enormous size of the venerable key he carried,
and then consigned us to the care of youth number two, who led the
way through a narrow, picturesque lane to the church itself, and gave
us into the charge of youth number three, a handsome, bare-legged boy
with brilliant eyes, who lit a taper and kindly conducted us around.
When we had examined the dim old pictures, and the faded missals, and
the beautiful screens of inlaid wood, and the grotto wherein the Holy
Family is piously believed to have found shelter, this acute child
presented us to a white-haired Coptic priest, and explained that it
was to him we were to offer our fee. I promptly did as I was bidden,
and the boy, after carefully examining and approving the amount,--the
priest himself never glanced at it nor at us,--requested further
payment for his own share of work. I gave him three piastres, being
much pleased with his businesslike methods, whereupon he handed us
back to youth number two, who had been waiting all this time at the
church door, and whom I was obliged to pay for leading us through the
lane. Then, after satisfying youth number one, who mounted guard at the
gate, we were permitted to regain our carriage and drive away amid a
clamorous crowd of beggars. It was as admirable a piece of organized
work as I have ever seen, and would have done credit to a labor union
in America.
On precisely the same principle, we often find the railed-off chapels
of an Italian church to be each under the care of a separate sacristan,
who jingles his keys alluringly, and does his best to beguile us into
his own especial inclosure. I have suffered a good deal in Sicily and
in Naples from sacristans who could not be brought to understand that I
had come to church to pray. The mark of the tourist is like the brand
of Cain, recognizable to all men. Even one’s nationality is seldom a
matter of doubt, and an Italian sacristan who cherishes the opinion
that English-speaking people stand self-convicted of heresy, can see
no reason for my entering the sacred edifice save to be shown its
treasures with all speed. So he beckons to me from dark corners, and
waves his keys at me; and, finding me unresponsive to these appeals, he
sidles through the little kneeling throng to tell me in a loud whisper
that Domenichino’s picture is over the third altar on the left, or that
forty-five princes of the house of Aragon are buried in the sacristy.
By this time devout worshipers are beginning to look at me askance, as
if it were my fault that I am disturbing them. So I get up and follow
my persecutor, and stare at the forty-five wooden sarcophagi of the
Aragonese princes, draped with velvet palls, and ranged on shelves like
dry goods. Then, mass being over, I slip out of St. Domenica’s, and
make my way to the cathedral of St. Januarius, where another sacristan
instantly lays hands on me, and carries me down to the crypt to see the
reliquary of the saint. He is a stout, smiling man, with an unbounded
enthusiasm for all he has to show. Even the naked, fat, Cupid-like
angels who riot here as wantonly as in every other Neapolitan church
fill him with admiration and delight. He taps them on their plump
little stomachs, and exclaims, “Tout en marbre! Tout en marbre!”
looking at me meanwhile with wide-open eyes, as if marble angels
were as much of a rarity in Italy as in Greenland. By the time his
transports have moderated sufficiently to allow me to depart, a tall,
grim sacristan, with nothing to show, is locking up the cathedral, and
I am obliged to go away with all my prayers unsaid.
It is possible to be too discursive when a pet grievance has an airing.
Therefore, instead of lingering, as I should like to do, over a still
unexhausted subject; instead of telling about a dreadful one-eyed man
who pursued me like a constable into the cathedral of Catania, and
fairly arrested me at St. Agatha’s shrine, whither I had fled for
protection; instead of describing an unscrupulous fraud at Amalfi who
led me for half a mile in the dripping rain through a soaked little
valley, under pretense of showing me a macaroni factory, and then
naïvely confessed we had gone in the opposite direction because the
walk was so charming,--instead of denouncing the accumulated crimes of
the whole sinful fraternity, I will render tardy justice to one Roman
guide whose incontestable merits deserve a grateful acknowledgment.
He was a bulky and very dirty man in the Castle of St. Angelo, to
whose care fourteen tourists, English, French, and Germans, were
officially committed. He spoke no language but his own, and he set
himself resolutely to work to make every visitor understand all he had
to tell by the help of that admirable pantomimic art in which Italians
have such extraordinary facility. It was impossible to misapprehend
him. If he wished to show us the papal bed-chamber, he retired into
one corner and snored loudly on an imaginary couch. When we came to
the dining-room, he made a feint of eating a hearty meal. With amazing
agility he illustrated the manner of Benvenuto Cellini’s escape, and
the breaking of his ankles in the fall. He decapitated himself without
a sword as Beatrice Cenci, and racked himself without a rack as another
unhappy prisoner. He lowered himself as a drawbridge, and even tried
to explode himself as a cannon, in his efforts to make us better
acquainted with the artillery. He was absolutely serious all this time,
yet never seemed flustered nor annoyed by the peals of irresistible
laughter which greeted some of his most difficult representations.
He had but one object in view,--to be understood. If we were amused,
that did not matter; and if we were a little rude, that was merely the
manner of foreigners. I do not wish to close a chapter of fault-finding
without one word of praise for this clever and conscientious actor,
whose performance was limited to the ignoble task of conducting
travelers through a dilapidated fortress, but whom I cannot consent to
look upon as a guide.
LITTLE PHARISEES IN FICTION.
In that accurate and interesting study of Puritanism which Alice Morse
Earle has rather laboriously entitled “Customs and Fashions in Old New
England,” there is a delightful chapter devoted to the little boys
and girls who lived their chastened lives under the uncompromising
discipline of the church. With many prayers, with scanty play, with
frequent exhortations, and a depressing consciousness of their own
sinful natures, these children walked sedately in the bleak atmosphere
of continual correction. By way of pastime, they were taken to church,
to baptisms, and to funerals, and for reading they had the “Early
Piety Series,” “Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes,” “The Conversion and
Exemplary Lives of Several Young Children,” and a “Particular Account
of Some Extraordinary Pious Motions and Devout Exercises observed of
late in Many Children in Siberia,”--a safe and remote spot in which
to locate something too “extraordinary” for belief. To this list
Cotton Mather added “Good Lessons for Children in Verse,” by no means
a sprightly volume, and “Some Examples of Children in whom the Fear of
God was remarkably Budding before they died; in several parts of New
England.”
Small wonder that under this depressing burden of books, little boys
and girls, too young to know the meaning of sin, were assailed with
grievous doubts concerning their salvation. Small wonder that Betty
Sewall, an innocent child of nine, “burst into an amazing cry” after
reading a page or two of Cotton Mather, and said “she was afraid she
should goe to Hell, her sins were not pardon’d.” It is heart-rending
to read Judge Sewall’s entry in his diary: “Betty can hardly read
her chapter for weeping. Tells me she is afraid she is gone back”
(at nine). “Does not taste that sweetness in reading the Word which
once she did. Fears that what was upon her is worn off. I said what I
could to her, and in the evening pray’d with her alone.” It is scant
comfort for us, recalling the misery of this poor wounded child, and
of many others who suffered with her, to know that Phebe Bartlett
was ostentatiously converted at four; that Jane Turell “asked many
astonishing questions about divine mysteries,” before she was five;
and that an infant son of Cotton Mather’s “made a most edifying end in
praise and prayer,” at the age of two years and seven months. We cannot
forget the less happy children who, instead of developing into baby
prodigies or baby prigs, fretted out their helpless hearts in nightly
fears of Hell.