Vacation Rambles
CONTENTS
Dear C——- So you want me to hunt up and edit all the “Vacuus Viator” letters which my good old friends the editors of The Spectator have been kind enough to print during their long and beneficent ownership of that famous journal! But one who has passed the Psalmist’s “Age of Man,” and is by no means enamoured of his own early lucubrations (so far as he recollects them), must have more diligence and assurance than your father to undertake such a task. But this I can do with pleasure-give them to you to do whatever you like with them, so far as I have any property in, or control over them.
How did they come to be written? Well, in those days we were young married folk with a growing family, and income enough to keep a modest house and pay our way, but none to spare for menus plaisirs , of which “globe trotting” (as it is now called) in our holidays was our favourite. So, casting about for the wherewithal to indulge our taste, the “happy thought” came to send letters by the way to my friends at 1 Wellington Street, if they could see their way to take them at the usual tariff for articles. They agreed, and so helped us to indulge in our favourite pastime, and the habit once contracted has lasted all these years.
How about the name? Well, I took it from the well-known line of Juvenal, “Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator,” which may be freely rendered, “The hard-up globe trotter will whistle at the highwayman”; and, I fancy, selected it to remind ourselves cheerfully upon what slender help from the Banking world we managed to trot cheerfully all across Europe.
I will add a family story connected with the name which greatly delighted us at the time. One of the letters reached your grandmother when a small boy-cousin of yours (since developed into a distinguished “dark blue” athlete and M.A. Oxon.) was staying with her for his holidays. He had just begun Latin, and was rather proud of his new lore, so your grandmother asked him how he should construe “Vacuus Viator.” After serious thought for a minute, and not without a modest blush, he replied, “I think, granny, it means a wandering cow”! You must make my peace with the “M.A. Oxon.” if he should ever discover that I have betrayed this early essay of his in classical translation.
Thomas Hughes
VACATION RAMBLES
London: Macmillan And Co.
1895
PREFACE
THOS. HUGHES.
VACATION RAMBLES
EUROPE—1862 to 1866
Foreign parts, 14th August 1862.
Bonn, 22nd August 1862.
Munich, 29th August 1862.
The Tyrol, 2nd September 1862.
Vienna, 10th September 1862.
The Danube, 13th September 1862.
Constantinople, 34th September 1862.
Constantinople, 30th September 1862.
Athens, 1st October 1862.
Athens, 4th October 1862.
The Run Home, October 1862.
Dieppe, Sunday, 13th September 1863.
Bathing at Dieppe, 17th September 1863.
Normandy, 20th September 1863.
Gleanings from Boulogne
Blankenberghe
Belgian Bathing
Belgian Boats
AMERICA
Peruvian, 6.45 p.m.
8.45 p.m.
8 a.m., Friday.
9.30 a.m., Friday.
On board the Peruvian.
9.30 p.m., Saturday.
Monday.
Peruvian, 9th August 1870.
Wednesday.
Tuesday evening.
Friday.
Mouth of the St. Lawrence.
Sunday 14th.
Wednesday.
Montreal, 19th August 1870.
Montreal, 20th August 1870.
Tuesday morning, 23rd August 1870.
Elmwood, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 25th August 1870.
Elmwood Avenue, Cambridge, 31s£ August 1870.
Cambridge, 2nd September 1870.
New York.
Garrison’s Landing, opposite West Point, Friday, 9th September 1870.
Clifton Hotel, opposite Niagara Falls, 11th September 1870.
Storm Lake, 13th. September 1870.
Fort Dodge, 13th September 1870.
Chicago, September 1870.
Continental Hotel, Philadelphia, 23rd September 1870.
Washington, Friday.
St. Mark’s School, Southborough, Mass., Tuesday, 9th October.
Ithaca, N.Y., 16th October 1870.
New York, Tuesday.
AMERICA—1880 to 1887
The Cumberland Mountains
East Tennessee, 1st September 1880.
Rugby, Tennessee, 10th September 1880.
Rugby, Tennessee.
A Forest Ride, Rugby, Tennessee.
The Natives, Rugby, Tennessee.
Our Forester, Rugby, Tennessee.
The Negro “Natives”, Rugby, Tennessee, 30th October 1880.
The Opening Day, Rugby, Tennessee.
Life in an American Liner
Life in Texas, Ranche on the Rio Grande, 16th September 1884.
Crossing the Atlantic, 4th September 1885.
Notes from the West, Cincinnati, 24th September 1886.
Westward Ho! 2nd April 1887.
The Hermit, Rugby, Tennessee, 19th September 1887.
American Opinion on the Union, SS. Umbria, 5th October 1887.
EUROPE—1876 to 1895
A Winter Morning’s Ride
Southport, 22nd March.
A Village Festival
The “Victoria,” New Cut.
Whitby and the Herring Trade, 30th August 1888.
Whitby and the Herring Trade, 31st August 1888.
Sunday by the Sea, Whitby, 7th September 1888.
Singing-Matches in Wessex, 28th September 1888.
The Divining-Rod, 21st September 1889.
Sequah’s “Flower of the Prairie,” Chester, 26th March 1890.
French Popular Feeling, 15th August 1890.
Royat les Bains, 23rd August 1890.
Royat les Bains, 30th August 1890.
Auvergne en Fête, 6th September 1890.
Scoppio Del Carro, Florence, Easter Eve, 1891.
A Scamper at Easter, 8th April 1893.
Lourdes, 15th April 1893.
Fontarabia, 22nd April 1893.
Echoes from Auvergne, La Bourboule, 2nd July 1893.
La Bourboule, 10th July 1893.
Comité des Fêtes. 17th July 1893.
Dogs and Flowers, La Bourboule, 24th July.
Dutch Boys, The Hague, 1st May 1894.
“Poor Paddy-Land!”—I—6th Oct. 1894.
“Poor Paddy-Land!”—II
“Panem et Circenses”, Rome, 21 st April 1895.
Rome—Easter Day
JOHN TO JONATHAN
THE END
