SALUBRITIES ABROAD.
("Is this the Hend?"—Miss Squeers.)
Skurrie puts us in the train, gives us our Cook's tickets all ready stamped and dated. No trouble. Then he insists on comparing his notes of our route with mine, to see that all is correct.
"Wednesday," he says, "that's to-day. Geneva dep. 12, Bâle arr. 7.45." He speaks a Bradshaw abbreviated language. "Change twice, perhaps three times, Lausanne, Brienne, Olten. Not quite sure; but you must look out." Oh, the trouble and anxiety of looking out for where you change! "Then," he goes on, "Thursday, Bâle dep. 9.2 A.M., Heidelberg arr. 1.55."
"Any change?" I ask, as if I wanted twopence out of a shilling.
"No; at least I don't think so. But you had better ask," he replies. Ah! this asking! if you are not quite well, and don't understand the language (which I do not in German Switzerland), and get hold of an austere military station-master, or an imbecile porter, and then have to carry that most inconvenient article of all baggage, a hand-bag, which you have brought as "so convenient to hold everything you want for a night," and which is so light to carry until it is packed! "Then," goes on the imperturbable Skurrie, "you'll 'do' Heidelberg, dine there, sleep there, and on Friday Heidelberg dep. 6 A.M.——"
Here I interrupt with a groan—"Can't we go later?"
"No," says Skurrie, sternly. "Impossible. You'll upset all the calculations if you do."
Jane says, meekly, that when one is travelling, and going to bed early, it is not so difficult to get up very early, and, for her part, she knows she shall be awake all night. Ah! so shall I, I feel, and already the journey begins to weigh heavily on me, and I do not bless Skurrie and his plan. "But," I say aloud, knowing he has done it all for the best, and that I cannot now recede, "go on."
He does so, at railroad pace:—"Heidelberg dep. 6. Mannheim arr. 7.5, dep. 7.15. Mayence arr. 8.22, in time for boat down the Rhine 8.55. Cologne arr. 4.30. And there you are."
"Yes," I rejoin, rather liking the idea of Cologne, "there we are—and then?"
"Well, you'll have a longish morning at Cologne; rest, see Cathedral, breakfast," and here he refers to his notes, "Cologne dep. 1.13 P.M., and Antwerp arr. 6.34."
"Change anywhere?" I inquire, helplessly. "Yes," he answers, meditatively. "At this moment I forget where, but you've got examination of baggage on the Belgian frontier, and you have two changes, I think. However, it's all easy enough."
"I'm glad of that," I say, trying to cheer up a bit, only somehow I am depressed: and Cousin Jane isn't much better, though she tries to put everything in the pleasantest possible light, and remarks that at all events "the travelling will soon be over."
Skurrie continues reading off his paper and comparing the details with my notes, "Sunday—Antwerp dep. 6.34 P.M. Rosendael arr. 7.45—yes—then Rosendael dep. 8.44, and catch the 10.10 P.M. boat at Flushing. Queenborough arr. 5.50, fresh as a lark, and up to town by 7.55."
"But we don't want to go up to town, we want to go to Ramsgate."
"Ha!" he says slowly, giving this idea as just sprung upon him his full consideration. "Ha!—let me see——" Then, as if by inspiration, he continues quickly—"sacrifice your London tickets, book luggage for Flushing, only then at Flushing re-book it for Queenborough, and once you're there you catch an early train to Ramsgate, and you'll be there nearly as soon as you would have arrived in London. Train just off. Wish you bon voyage."
I thank him for all his trouble, and ask, with some astonishment, if he is not going to accompany us?
"Can't—wish I could," returns Skurrie, "but I've got to go off to Petersburgh by night mail. Business. Should have been delighted to have looked after you and seen you through, but you've got it all down and can't make any mistake. Au plaisir!"
And he is off. So are we.
Oh, this journey!! Everything changes. My health, the scenery, the weather, all becoming worse and worse. Poor Cousin Jane, too.
Oh, the changes of carriage! The rushing about from platform to platform, carrying that confounded bag, and sticks, and umbrellas, and small things, of which Jane—poor Jane!—has her share, and, but for her sticking to every basket and package, I should, in despair, have surrendered to chance, left them behind me somewhere, and should have never seen them again. All aches and pains, and weariness! At last at Bâle, rattled over stones and bridge in a jolting omnibus, through pouring rain to the hotel of "The Three Kings."
Our treatment in the salle-à-manger of that Monarchical Hostelrie is enough to make the most loyal turn republican. A willing head-waiter with insubordinate assistants—and we are miserable.
Off early to Heidelberg. Delighted, at all events, to bid farewell to the worthy Monarchs. This trip seemed to invigorate us, and if civility, polite attention, good rooms, and an excellent cuisine could make any invalid temporarily better, then our short stay at the Prinz Karl Hotel—a really perfectly managed establishment—ought to have revived us both considerably. And so it did. A lovely drive to the heights among the pine woods and in the purest air went for something, but alas the knowledge that we had to rise at 5 A.M., to be off by six—it turned out to be a 6.30 train—drove slumber from our eyes, and only by means of a cold bath, the first thing on tumbling out of bed, could I brace myself for the effort. Then on we went, taking Skurrie's pre-arranged tour.
Let the remainder be a blank.
When abroad I had bought a French one-volume novel which I had seen praised in the Figaro. I will not give its name, nor that of its author. If it indeed portrays persons really living in Paris, and if these persons are not wholly exceptional (but, if so, why this novel, which implies the contrary and denounces them?) then is the latest state of Republican Paris worse than its former state in the days of the dégringolade of the Empire, and Paris must undergo a fearful purgation before she will once again possess mens sana in corpore sano. I read this disgusting novel half-way through until its meaning became quite clear to me, and then I proceeded by leaps and bounds, landing on dry places and skipping over the filth in order to see how the author worked out a moral and punished his infamous scoundrel of a chief personage. No. Moral there was none, except an eloquent appeal to Paris to rise and crush these reptiles and their brood. On the wretched night when feverish, ill, and sleepless, I lay miserably in the saloon of the Flemish steamer crossing to Queenborough, I opened the porthole above me and threw this infernal book into the sea. After this I bore the sufferings of that night with a lighter heart.
Suffice it that I arrived at home—and how glad I was to get there—broken down, prostrate and only fit for bed——where with railways running round and round my head, steamboats dashing and thumping about my brain, the shrieks of German and Flemish porters ringing in my ears, Skurrie always forcing me to travel on, on, on, against my will, I remained for about three weeks.
Advice gratis to all Drinkers of Waters.—"The story shows," as the Moral to the fables of Æsop used to put it, that when you have finished your cure, make straight by the easiest stages for the seaside at home. Avoid all exertion: and ask your medical man before leaving to tell you exactly what to eat, drink, and avoid, for the next three weeks at least after the completion of your cure.
While ill, but when beginning to crave for some amusement or distraction, I asked that my dear old Boz's Sketches should be read to me, to which in years gone by I had been indebted for many a hearty laugh. Alas! what a disappointment! Except for a little descriptive bit here and there, the fun of these Sketches sounded as wearisome and old-fashioned as the humours of the now forgotten "Adelphi screamers" in which Messrs. Wright and Paul Bedford used to perform, and at which, as a boy, I used to scream with delight, when the strong-minded mistress of the house, speaking while the comic servant was laying the cloth for dinner, would say of her husband, "When I see him I'll give him——" "Pepper," says the comic servant, accidentally placing that condiment on the table. "He shan't," resumes the irate lady, "come over me with any——" "Butter," interrupts the comic servant, quite unconsciously, of course, as he deposits a pat of Dorset on the table. And so on. Later on, I tried Thackeray's Esmond. How tedious, how involved, and full of repetitions! It is enlivened here and there by the introduction of such real characters as Dick Steele, Lord Mohun, Dean Atterbury, and others, and by the mysterious melodramatic appearances and disappearances of Father Holt, a typical Jesuit of the "penny dreadful" style of literature. But the work had lost whatever charm it ever possessed for me, and, indeed, I had always considered it an over-rated book, not by any means to be compared with Vanity Fair, Pendennis, or even with Barry Lyndon, which last is repulsively clever.
Then I asked for a book that I never yet could get through, and to which I thought that now, with leisure and a craving for distraction, I might take a liking. This was Little Dorrit. I tried hard, but it made my head ache even more than Esmond had done, and I laid it down, utterly unable to comprehend the mystery which takes such an amount of dreary, broken-up, tedious dialogue in the closing chapters to unravel.
I took down Washington Irving's Sketch-book, and read it with delight. Fresh as ever! It did me good. So did Charles Lamb's Essays. And then guess what moved me to laughter, to tears, and to real heartfelt gratitude that we should have had a writer who could leave us such an immortal work? What? It is a gem. It is very small, but to my mind, and not excepting any one of all he ever wrote, the most precious in every way for its true humour, for its natural pathos, and for its large-hearted Christian teaching, is The Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. Had this been his only book, it would have sufficed for his imperishable fame.
And then what made me chuckle and laugh? Why,Thackeray's Sultan Stork, which, somehow or other, I never remembered having read before this time of convalescent leisure. It is Thackeray in his most frolicsome humour, and, therefore, Thackeray at his best.
I am almost recovered, and am finding my "Salubrity at Home."