Europe Revised Part 16

Morgan had been in bestowing gratuities on parting.

Our first experience with guides was at Westminster Abbey. As it happened, this guide was one of the Mark Twain survivors. I think, though, he was genuine; he had doc.u.ments of apparent authenticity in his possession to help him in proving up his t.i.tle. Anyhow, he knew his trade. He led us up and down those parts of the Abbey which are free to the general public and brought us finally to a wicket gate, opening on the royal chapels, which was as far as he could go. There he turned us over to a severe-looking dignitary in robes--an archbishop, I judged, or possibly only a canon--who, on payment by us of a shilling a head, escorted our party through the remaining inclosures, showing us the tombs of England's queens and kings, or a good many of them anyway; and the Black Prince's helmet and breastplate; and the exquisite chapel of Henry the Seventh, and the ancient chair on which all the kings sat for their coronations, with the famous Scotch Stone of Scone under it.

The chair itself was not particularly impressive. It was not nearly so rickety and decrepit as the chairs one sees in almost any London barber shop. Nor was my emotion particularly excited by the stone. I would engage to get a better-looking one out of the handiest rock quarry inside of twenty minutes. This stone should not be confused with the ordinary scones, which also come from Scotland and which are by some regarded as edible.

What did seem to us rather a queer thing was that the authorities of Westminster should make capital of the dead rulers of the realm and, except on certain days of the week, should charge an admission fee to their sepulchers. Later, on the Continent, we sustained an even more severe shock when we saw royal palaces--palaces that on occasion are used by the royal proprietors--with the quarters of the monarchs upstairs and downstairs novelty shops and tourist agencies and restaurants, and the like of that. I jotted down a few crisp notes concerning these matters, my intention being to comment on them as evidence of an incomprehensible thrift on the part of our European kins-people; but on second thought I decided to refrain from so doing.

I recalled the fact that we ourselves are not entirely free from certain petty national economies. Abroad we house our emba.s.sies up back streets, next door to bird and animal stores; and at home there is many a public inst.i.tution where the doormat says WELCOME! in large letters, but the soap is chained and the roller towel is padlocked to its little roller.

Guides are not particularly numerous in England. Even in the places most frequented by the sightseer they do not abound in any profusion. At Madame Tussaud's, for example, we found only one guide. We encountered him just after we had spent a mournful five minutes in contemplation of ex-President Taft. Friends and acquaintances of Mr. Taft will be shocked to note the great change in him when they see him here in wax. He does not weigh so much as he used to weigh by at least one hundred and fifty pounds; he has lost considerable height too; his hair has turned another color and his eyes also; his mustache is not a close fit any more, either; and he is wearing a suit of English-made clothes.

On leaving the sadly altered form of our former Chief Executive we descended a flight of stone steps leading to the Chamber of Horrors.

This department was quite crowded with parents escorting their children about. Like America, England appears to be well stocked with parents who make a custom of taking their young and susceptible offspring to places where the young ones stand a good chance of being scared into connipshun fits. The official guide was in the Chamber of Horrors. He was piloting a large group of visitors about, but as soon as he saw our smaller party he left them and came directly to us; for they were Scotch and we were Americans, citizens of the happy land where tips come from. Undoubtedly that guide knew best.

With pride and pleasure he showed us a representative a.s.sortment of England's most popular and prominent murderers. The English dearly love a murderer. Perhaps that is because they have fewer murderers than we have, and have less luck than we do in keeping them alive and in good spirits to a ripe old age. Almost any American community of fair size can afford at least two murderers--one in jail, under sentence, receiving gifts of flowers and angel cake from kind ladies, and waiting for the court above to reverse the verdict in his case because the indictment was shy a comma; and the other out on bail, awaiting his time for going through the same procedure. But with the English it is different.

We rarely hang anybody who is anybody, and only occasionally make an issue of stretching the neck of the veriest n.o.body. They will hang almost anybody Haman-high, or even higher than that. They do not exactly hang their murderer before they catch him, but the two events occur in such close succession that one can readily understand why a confusion should have arisen in the public mind on these points. First of all, though, they catch him; and then some morning between ten and twelve they try him. This is a brief and businesslike formality. While the judge is looking in a drawer of his desk to see whether the black cap is handy the bailiffs shoo twelve tradesmen into the jury box. A tradesman is generally chosen for jury service because he is naturally anxious to get the thing over and hurry back to his shop before his helper goes to lunch. The judge tells the jurors to look on the prisoner, because he is going away shortly and is not expected back; so they take full advantage of the opportunity, realizing it to be their last chance. Then, in order to comply with the forms, the judge asks the accused whether he is guilty or not guilty, and the jurors promptly say he is. His Worship, concurring heartily, fixes the date of execution for the first Friday morning when the hangman has no other engagements. It is never necessary to postpone this event through failure of the condemned to be present.

He is always there; there is no record of his having disappointed an audience. So, on the date named, rain or shine, he is hanged very thoroughly; but after the hanging is over they write songs and books about him and revere his memory forevermore.

Our guide was pleased to introduce us to the late Mr. Charles Pease, as done in paraffin, with creped hair and bright, shiny gla.s.s eyes. Mr.

Pease was undoubtedly England's most fashionable murderer of the past century and his name is imperishably enshrined in the British affections. The guide spoke of his life and works with deep and sincere feeling. He also appeared to derive unfeigned pleasure from describing the accomplishments of another murderer, only slightly less famous than the late Mr. Pease. It seemed that this murderer, after slaying his victim, set to dismembering the body and boiling it. They boil nearly everything in England. But the police broke in on him and interrupted the job.

Our attention was directed to a large chart showing the form of the victim, the boiled portions being outlined in red and the unboiled portions in black. Considered as a murderer solely this particular murderer may have been deserving of his fame; but when it came to boiling, that was another matter. He showed poor judgment there. It all goes to show that a man should stick to his own trade and not try to follow two or more widely dissimilar callings at the same time. Sooner or later he is bound to slip up.

We found Stratford-upon-Avon to be the one town in England where guides are really abundant. There are as many guides in Stratford as there are historic spots. I started to say that there is at least one guide in Stratford for every American who goes there; but that would be stretching real facts, because nearly every American who goes to England manages to spend at least a day in Stratford, it being a spot very dear to his heart. The very name of it is a.s.sociated with two of the most conspicuous figures in our literature. I refer first to Andrew Carnegie; second to William Shakspere. Shakspere, who wrote the books, was born here; but Carnegie, who built the libraries in which to keep the books, and who has done some writing himself, provided money for preserving and perpetuating the relics.

We met a guide in the ancient schoolhouse where the Bard--I am speaking now of William, not of Andrew--acquired the rudiments of his education; and on duty at the old village church was another guide, who for a price showed us the identical gravestone bearing the identical inscription which, reproduced in a design of burnt wood, is to-day to be found on the walls of every American household, however humble, whose members are wishful of imparting an artistic and literary atmosphere to their home.

A third guide greeted us warmly when we drove to the cottage, a mile or two from the town, where the Hathaway family lived. Here we saw the high-backed settle on which Shakspere sat, night after night, wooing Anne Hathaway. I myself sat on it to test it. I should say that the wooing could not have been particularly good there, especially for a thin man. That settle had a very hard seat and history does not record that there was a cushion. Shakspere's affections for the lady must indeed have been steadfast. Or perhaps he was of stouter build than his pictures show him to have been.

Guides were scattered all over the birthplace house in Stratford in the ratio of one or more to each room. Downstairs a woman guide presided over a battery of gla.s.s cases containing personal belongings of Shakspere's and doc.u.ments written by him and signed by him. It is conceded that he could write, but he certainly was a mighty poor speller. This has been a failing of many well-known writers. Chaucer was deficient in this regard; and if it were not for a feeling of personal modesty I could apply the ill.u.s.tration nearer home.

Two guides accompanied us as we climbed the stairs to the low-roofed room on the second floor where the creator of Shylock and Juliet was born--or was not born, if you believe what Ignatius Donnelly had to say on the subject. But would it not be interesting and valued information if we could only get the evidence on this point of old Mrs. Shakspere, who undoubtedly was present on the occasion? A member of our party, an American, ventured to remark as much to one of the guides; but the latter did not seem to understand him. So the American told him just to keep thinking it over at odd moments, and that he would be back again in a couple of years, if nothing happened, and possibly by that time the guide would have caught the drift of his observation. On second thought, later on, he decided to make it three years--he did not want to crowd the guide, he said, or put too great a burden on his mentality in a limited s.p.a.ce of time.

If England harbors few guides the Continent is fairly glutted with them.

After nightfall the boulevards of Paris are so choked with them that in places there is standing room only. In Rome the congestion is even greater. In Rome every other person is a guide--and sometimes twins.

I do not know why, in thinking of Europe, I invariably a.s.sociate the subject of guides with the subject of tips. The guides were no greedier for tips than the cabmen or the hotel helpers, or the railroad hands, or the populace at large. Nevertheless this is true. In my mind I am sure guides and tips will always be coupled, as surely as any of those standard team-word combinations of our language that are familiar to all; as firmly paired off as, for example, Castor and Pollux, or Damon and Pythias, or Fair and Warmer, or Hay and Feed. When I think of one I know I shall think of the other. Also I shall think of languages; but for that there is a reason.

Tipping--the giving of tips and the occasional avoidance of giving them--takes up a good deal of the tourist's time in Europe. At first reading the arrangement devised by the guidebooks, of setting aside ten per cent of one's bill for tipping purposes, seems a better plan and a less costly one than the indiscriminate American system of tipping for each small service at the time of its performance. The trouble is that this arrangement does not work out so well in actual practice as it sounds in theory. On the day of your departure you send for your hotel bill. You do not go to the desk and settle up there after the American fashion. If you have learned the ropes you order your room waiter to fetch your bill to you, and in the privacy of your apartment you pore over the formidable doc.u.ment wherein every small charge is fully specified, the whole concluding with an impressive array of items regarding which you have no prior recollection whatsoever. Considering the total, you put aside an additional ten per cent, calculated for division on the basis of so much for the waiter, so much for the boots, so much for the maid and the porter, and the cashier, and the rest of them. It is not necessary that you send for these persons in order to confer your farewell remembrances on them; they will be waiting for you in the hallways. No matter how early or late the hour of your leaving may be, you find them there in a long and serried rank.

You distribute bills and coins until your ten per cent is exhausted, and then you are pained to note that several servitors yet remain, lined up and all expectant, owners of strange faces that you do not recall ever having seen before, but who are now at hand with claims, real or imaginary, on your purse. Inasmuch as you have a deadly fear of being remembered afterward in this hotel as a piker, you continue to dip down and to fork over, and so by the time you reach the tail end of the procession your ten per cent has grown to twelve or fifteen per cent, or even more.

As regards the tipping of guides for their services, I hit on a fairly satisfactory plan, which I gladly reveal here for the benefit of my fellow man. I think it is a good idea to give the guide, on parting, about twice as much as you think he is ent.i.tled to, which will be about half as much as he expects. From this starting point you then work toward each other, you conceding a little from time to time, he abating a trifle here and there, until you have reached a happy compromise on a basis of fifty-fifty; and so you part in mutual good will.

The average American, on the eve of going to Europe, thinks of the European as speaking each his own language. He conceives of the Poles speaking Polar; of the Hollanders talking Hollandaise; of the Swiss as employing Schweitzer for ordinary conversations and yodeling when addressing friends at a distance; and so on. Such, however, is rarely the case. Nearly every person with whom one comes in contact in Europe appears to have fluent command of several tongues besides his or her own. It is true this does not apply to Italy, where the natives mainly stick to Italian; but then, Italian is not a language. It is a calisthenic.

Between Rome and Florence, our train stopped at a small way station in the mountains. As soon as the little locomotive had panted itself to a standstill the train hands, following their habit, piled off the cars and engaged in a tremendous confab with the a.s.sembled officials on the platform. Immediately all the loafers in sight drew cards. A drowsy hillsman, m.u.f.fled to his back hair in a long brown cloak, and with buskins on his legs such as a stage bandit wears, was dozing against the wall. He looked as though he had stepped right out of a comic opera to add picturesqueness to the scene. He roused himself and joined in; so did a bearded party who, to judge by his uniform, was either a Knight of Pythias or a general in the army; so did all the rest of the crowd. In ten seconds they were jammed together in a hard knot, and going it on the high speed with the m.u.f.fler off, fine white teeth shining, arms flying, shoulders shrugging, spinal columns writhing, mustaches rising and falling, legs wriggling, scalps and ears following suit. Feeding hour in the parrot cage at the zoo never produced anything like so noisy and animated a scene. In these parts acute hysteria is not a symptom; it is merely a state of mind.

A waiter in soiled habiliments hurried up, abandoning chances of trade at the prospect of something infinitely more exciting. He wanted to stick his oar into the argument. He had a few pregnant thoughts of his own craving utterance, you could tell that. But he was handicapped into a state of dumbness by the fact that he needed both arms to balance a tray of wine and sandwiches on his head. Merely using his voice in that company would not have counted. He stood it as long as he could, which was not very long, let me tell you. Then he slammed his tray down on the platform and, with one quick movement, jerked his coat sleeves back to his elbows, and inside thirty seconds he had the floor in both hands, as it were. He conversed mainly with the Australian crawl stroke, but once in a while switched to the Spencerian free-arm movement and occasionally introduced the Chautauqua salute with telling effect.

On the Continent guides, as a cla.s.s, excel in the gift of tongues--guides and hotel concierges. The concierge at our hotel in Berlin was a big, upstanding chap, half Russian and half Swiss, and therefore qualified by his breeding to speak many languages; for the Russians are born with split tongues and can give cards and spades to any talking crow that ever lived; while the Swiss lag but little behind them in linguistic apt.i.tude. It seemed such a pity that this man was not alive when the hands knocked off work on the Tower of Babel; he could have put the job through without extending himself. No matter what the nationality of a guest might be--and the guests were of many nationalities--he could talk with that guest in his own language or in any other language the guest might fancy. I myself was sorely tempted to try him on Coptic and early Aztec; but I held off. My Coptic is not what it once was; and, partly through disuse and partly through carelessness, I have allowed my command of early Aztec to fall off pretty badly these last few months.

All linguistic freakishness is not confined to the Continent. The English, who are popularly supposed to use the same language we ourselves use, sometimes speak with a mighty strange tongue. A great many of them do not speak English; they speak British, a very different thing. An Englishwoman of breeding has a wonderful speaking voice; as pure as a Boston woman's and more liquid; as soft as a Southern woman's and with more attention paid to the R's. But the c.o.c.kney type--Wowie!

During a carriage ride in Florence with a mixed company of tourists I chanced to say something of a complimentary nature about something English, and a little London-bred woman spoke up and said: "Thenks!

It's vurry naice of you to sezzo, 'm sure." Some of them talk like that--honestly they do!

Though Americo-English may not be an especially musical speech, it certainly does lend itself most admirably to slang purposes. Here again the Britishers show their inability to utilize the vehicle to the full of its possibilities. England never produced a Billy Baxter or a George Ade, and I am afraid she never will. Most of our slang means something; you hear a new slang phrase and instantly you realize that the genius who coined it has. .h.i.t on a happy and a graphic and an illuminating expression; that at one bound he rose triumphant above the limitations of the language and tremendously enriched the working vocabulary of the man in the street. Whereas an Englishman's idea of slinging slang is to scoop up at random some inoffensive and well-meaning word that never did him any harm and apply it in the place of some other word, to which the first word is not related, even by marriage. And look how they deliberately misp.r.o.nounce proper names. Everybody knows about Cholmondeley and St. John. But take the Scandinavian word fjord. Why, I ask you, should the English insist on p.r.o.nouncing it Ferguson?

At Oxford, the seat of learning, Magdalen is p.r.o.nounced Maudlin, probably in subtle tribute to the condition of the person who first p.r.o.nounced it so. General-admission day is not the day you enter, but the day you leave. Full term means three-quarters of a term. An ordinary degree is a degree obtained by a special examination. An inspector of arts does not mean an inspector of arts, but a student; and from this point they go right ahead, getting worse all the time. The droll creature who compiled the Oxford glossary was a true Englishman.

When an Englishman undertakes to wrestle with American slang he makes a fearful hash of it. In an English magazine I read a short story, written by an Englishman who is regarded by a good many persons, competent to judge, as being the cleverest writer of English alive today. The story was beautifully done from the standpoint of composition; it bristled with flashing metaphors and whimsical phrasing. The scene of the yarn was supposed to be Chicago and naturally the princ.i.p.al figure in it was a millionaire. In one place the author has this person saying, "I reckon you'll feel pretty mean," and in another place, "I reckon I'm not a man with no pull."

Another character in the story says, "I know you don't cotton to the march of science in these matters," and speaks of something that is unusual as being "a rum affair." A walled state prison, presumably in Illinois, is referred to as a "convict camp"; and its warden is called a "governor" and an a.s.sistant keeper is called a "warder"; while a Chicago daily paper is quoted as saying that "larrikins" directed the attention of a policeman to a person who was doing thus and so.

The writer describes a "mysterious mere" known as Pilgrim's Pond, "in which they say"--a prison official is supposed to be talking now--"our fathers made witches walk until they sank." Descendants of the original Puritans who went from Plymouth Rock, in the summer of 1621, and founded Chicago, will recall this pond distinctly. Cotton Mather is buried on its far bank, and from there it is just ten minutes by trolley to Salem, Ma.s.sachusetts. It is stated also in this story that the prairies begin a matter of thirty-odd miles from Chicago, and that to reach them one must first traverse a "perfect no man's land." Englewood and South Chicago papers please copy.

Chapter XIX

Venice and the Venisons

Getting back again to guides, I am reminded that our acquaintanceship with the second member of the Mark Twain brotherhood was staged in Paris. This gentleman wished himself on us one afternoon at the Hotel des Invalides. We did not engage him; he engaged us, doing the trick with such finesse and skill that before we realized it we had been retained to accompany him to various points of interest in and round Paris. However, we remained under his control one day only. At nightfall we wrested ourselves free and fled under cover of darkness to German soil, where we were comparatively safe.

I never knew a man who advanced so rapidly in a military way as he did during the course of that one day. Our own national guard could not hold a candle to him. He started out at ten A.M. by being an officer of volunteers in the Franco-Prussian War; but every time he slipped away and took a nip out of his private bottle, which was often, he advanced in rank automatically. Before the dusk of evening came he was a corps commander, who had been enn.o.bled on the field of battle by the hand of Napoleon the Third.

He took us to Versailles. We did not particularly care to go to Versailles that day, because it was raining; but he insisted and we went. In spite of the drizzle we might have enjoyed that wonderful place had he not been constantly at our elbows, gabbling away steadily except when he excused himself for a moment and stepped behind a tree, to emerge a moment later wiping his mouth on his sleeve. Then he would return to us, with an added gimpiness in his elderly legs, an increased expansion of the chest inside his tight and shiny frock coat, and a fresh freight of richness on his breath, to report another deserved promotion.

After he had eaten luncheon--all except such portions of it as he spilled on himself--the colonel grew confidential and chummy. He tried to tell me an off-color story and forgot the point of it, if indeed it had any point. He began humming the Ma.r.s.eillaise hymn, but broke off to say he expected to live to see the day when a column of French troops, singing that air, would march up Unter den Linden to stack their arms in the halls of the Kaiser's palace. I did not take issue with him. Every man is ent.i.tled to his own wishes in those matters. But later on, when I had seen something of the Kaiser's standing army, I thought to myself that when the French troops did march up Unter den Linden they would find it tolerably rough sledding, and if there was any singing done a good many of them probably would not be able to join in the last verse.

Immediately following this, our conductor confided to me that he had once had the honor of serving Mr. Clemens, whom he referred to as Mick Twine. He told me things about Mr. Clemens of which I had never heard.

I do not think Mr. Clemens ever heard of them either. Then the brigadier--it was now after three o'clock, and between three and three-thirty he was a brigadier--drew my arm within his.

"I, too, am an author," he stated. "It is not generally known, but I have written much. I wrote a book of which you may have heard--'The Wandering Jew.'" And he tapped himself on the bosom proudly.

I said I had somehow contracted a notion that a party named Sue--Eugene Sue--had something to do with writing the work of that name.

"Ah, but you are right there, my friend," he said. "Sue wrote 'The Wandering Jew' the first time--as a novel, merely; but I wrote him much better--as a satire on the anti-Semitic movement."

I surrendered without offering to strike another blow and from that time on he had his own way with us. The day, as I was pleased to note at the time, had begun mercifully to draw to a close; we were driving back to Paris, and he, sitting on the front seat, had just attained the highest post in the army under the regime of the last Empire, when he said:

"Behold, m'sieur! We are now approaching a wine shop on the left. You were most gracious and kind in the matter of luncheon. Kindly permit me to do the honors now. It is a very good wine shop--I know it well. Shall we stop for a gla.s.s together, eh?"

It was the first time since we landed at Calais that a native-born person had offered to buy anything, and, being ever desirous to a.s.sist in the celebration of any truly notable occasion, I accepted and the car was stopped. We were at the portal of the wine shop, when he plucked at my sleeve, offering another suggestion:

"The chauffeur now--he is a worthy fellow, that chauffeur. Shall we not invite the chauffeur to join us?"

I was agreeable to that, too. So he called the chauffeur and the chauffeur disentangled his whiskers from the steering gear and came and joined us. The chauffeur and I each had a small gla.s.s of light wine, but the general took brandy. Then ensued a spirited dialogue between him and the woman who kept the shop. a.s.suming that I had no interest in the matter, I studied the pictures behind the bar. Presently, having reduced the woman to a state of comparative silence, he approached me.