THE BONÂ-FIDE TRAVELLER.
This thirsty gentleman is threatened with extinction. His Sabbatical pint is in danger. He has been reported against by a Royal Commission. Threatened men, I know, live long, and it is not for me to raise false alarms, but though the end of the bonâ-fide traveller may be not yet, his glory has departed. His more than Sabbath-day journeys in search of the liquor that he loves, extended though they are by statute over three dreary, dusty miles of turnpike, have been ridiculed, and, worse than that, his bonâ-fide character—hitherto his proud passport to intoxication—has been roughly condemned as pleonastic. A pretty pleonasm, truly, which has broached many a barrel. The Commissioners say, ‘We think it would be advisable to eliminate the words bonâ-fide. No sensible person could suppose that the Legislature in using the word “traveller” meant to include persons who make a pretence only of being such, and are not travellers really and in fact.’ At present there are two classes of Sunday travellers: there is the real traveller and there is the bonâ-fide traveller. It is the latter whose existence is menaced. The sooner he dies the better, for, in plain English, he is a drunken dog.
The Report of the Royal Commission as to the operation of the Welsh Sunday Closing Act of 1881 has been published, and, as the phrase runs, will repay perusal. It is full of humanity and details about our neighbours, their habits and customs. However true it may have been, or still may be, that one half of the world does not know how the other half lives, it is a libel upon the curiosity of mankind to attribute this ignorance to indifference. No facts are more popular, than those which relate to people’s lives. Could it be discovered how many people prefer tea without sugar, the return would be printed in every newspaper of Great Britain, and be made the text of tens of thousands of leading articles. We are all alike in this respect, though some of us are ashamed to own it. We are by no means sure that the man answered badly who, when asked which of George Eliot’s characters was lodged most firmly in human memories, replied boldly, Mrs. Linnet. Everybody remembers Mrs. Linnet, and grins broadly at the very mention of her name. ‘On taking up the biography of a celebrated preacher, she immediately turned to the end to see what disease he died of; and if his legs swelled as her own occasionally did, she felt a stronger interest in ascertaining any earlier facts in the history of the dropsical divine; whether he had ever fallen off a stage-coach, whether he had married more than one wife, and, in general, any adventures or repartees recorded of him prior to the epoch of his conversion. Then she glanced over the letters and diary, and wherever there was a predominance of Zion, the River of Life, and notes of exclamation, she turned over to the next page; but any passage in which she saw such promising nouns as “small-pox,” “pony,” or “boots and shoes,” at once arrested her.’ How inimitable it is! And yet Mr. Oscar Browning prefers ‘Daniel Deronda.’ It is a comforting reflection that whether you write well or whether you write ill, you have always an audience.
But Mrs. Linnet’s deep-rooted popularity proves how fond we all are of escaping from abstractions and predictions, and seizing hold of the things about which we really feel ourselves entitled to an opinion. Mrs. Linnet would have read a great part of the Report to which I have referred with much interest. It is full of most promising nouns. Mrs. Linnet’s opinion as to a bonâ-fide traveller would be quite as valuable as Lord Balfour of Burleigh’s.
But who is a bonâ-fide traveller? He is a person who seeks drink on Sunday during hours when by law public-houses are closed. He has therefore to make out a special case for being supplied with drink. The fact that he is thirsty counts for nothing. Everybody is thirsty on Sunday. His special case is that he is not a resident, but a traveller, and wants refreshment to enable him to go on travelling. But here the law steps in, ‘big-wigged, voluminous-jawed,’ and adds this qualification—that nobody shall be considered a bonâ-fide traveller who is not three miles away from his last bed. An attorney’s clerk of three months’ standing could have foretold what has happened, namely, that everybody who is three miles from home becomes at once and ipso facto a bonâ fide traveller. You rap with your knuckles at the door of the shut inn; it is partially opened, and the cautious publican or his spouse inquires of you where you come from; you name a city of the plain four miles off, and the next moment finds you comfortably seated in the bar-parlour. Falsely to represent yourself as a bonâ-fide traveller is a misdemeanor, but assuming you are three miles away from home, how can such a representation be made falsely? We are all pilgrims in this world. If my sole motive for walking three miles on Sunday is to get a pint of beer at the Griffin, doubtless I am not a bonâ-fide traveler, but if my motive be to get both the walk and the beer, who dare asperse my good faith? Should I have taken the walk but for the beer, or should I have taken the beer but for the walk? are questions far too nice to be made the subject of summary process.
The Commissioners cannot be accused of shirking this difficult question. They brace up their minds to it, and deliver themselves as follows. There is, say they, in language of almost Scriptural simplicity, first the traveler who makes a journey either by railway or otherwise, on business or for some other necessary cause. His case, in the opinion of the Commissioners, is a simple one. He is entitled to drink by the way. But next, proceed the Commissioners in language of less merit, ‘there is the individual who leaves his place of residence in the morning, or it may be later in the day, intending to be absent for some hours, inclusive perhaps, but not necessarily, of his mid-day meal, his object being primarily change of air and scene, exercise, relaxation of some kind, a visit to friends, or some reasonable cause other than merely to qualify for entrance into a licensed house.’ This is the mixed-motive case already hinted at. Then, thirdly, there is the bold bad man ‘who goes from his home to a point not less than three miles distant, either on foot or by wheeled vehicle by road or rail, primarily if not solely to procure the drink which the Act denies him within three miles of where he lodged the previous night.’ This gentleman is the genuine bonâ-fide traveler known to all policemen and magistrates, and it is he who is threatened with extinction. But how is he to be differentiated from the individual who leaves his place of residence in the morning and goes to a place, not in search of drink, but where, for all that, drink is? For example, it appears from this Report that near Swansea is a place of resort called the Mumbles. A great many people go there every Sunday, and a considerable number return home drunk at night; but, say the Commissioners, and we entirely believe them, ‘it is impossible for us to say what proportion of them go for change and exercise and what proportion for the sake of drink.’ But if it be impossible, how is the distinction between the individual who leaves his place of residence in the morning, and the bold bad man, to be maintained?
There are those who would abolish the exemption in favour of travellers altogether. Let him who travels on Sunday take his liquor with him in a flask. There are others who would allow his glass to the traveller who is not on pleasure bent, but would refuse it to everybody else. A third party hold that a man who takes exercise for his health is as much entitled to refreshment as the traveller who goes on business. No one has been found bold enough to say a word for the man who travels in order that he may drink.
The Commissioners, after the wont of such men, steer a middle course. They agree with the Rev. Dr. Parry, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Calvinistic Methodists of Wales, who declared that he would not exclude from reasonable refreshment ‘a man who goes from his place of residence on Sunday to see the country’! I confess I should like to have both Dr. Parry’s and a Welsh collier’s opinion as to what is reasonable refreshment. Then, again, ‘to see the country’ is a vague phrase.
The Commissioners suggest a new clause, to run as follows:
‘No person shall be deemed to be within the exception relating to travellers unless he proves that he was actually engaged in travelling for some purpose other than that of obtaining intoxicating liquor, and that he has not remained on the licensed premises longer than was reasonably required for the transaction of his necessary business or for the purpose of necessary rest, refreshment, or shelter from the weather.’
This is nothing but a repeal of the three-mile limit. How is a wayfaring man to prove that he is travelling for some purpose other than that of obtaining intoxicating liquor? He can only assert the fact, and unless he is a notorious drunkard, both the publican and the magistrate are bound to believe him. Were the suggestion of the Commissioners to be carried out, it probably would be found that our old friend the bonâ-fide traveller could get his liquor and curtail his walk.
I should like Mrs. Linnet’s opinion; but failing hers, can only express my own, which is that Sunday drinking is so bad a thing that if it can be stopped it ought to be so, even though it were to follow as a consequence that no traveller could get drink from Saturday night till Monday morning except at the place where he spent the night.