Do people enjoy Europe as much now? I doubt it! It has become too much a matter of course, a necessary part of the routine of life. Much of the bloom is brushed from foreign scenes by descriptive books and photographs, that St. Mark’s or Mt. Blanc has become as familiar to a child’s eye as the house he lives in, and in consequence the reality now instead of being a revelation is often a disappointment.
In my youth, it was still an event to cross. I remember my first voyage on the old side-wheeled Scotia, and Captain Judkins in a wheeled chair, and a perpetual bad temper, being pushed about the deck; and our delight, when the inevitable female asking him (three days out) how far we were from land, got the answer “about a mile!”
“Indeed! How interesting! In which direction?”
“In that direction, madam,” shouted the captain, pointing downward as he turned his back to her.
If I remember, we were then thirteen days getting to Liverpool, and made the acquaintance on board of the people with whom we travelled during most of that winter. Imagine anyone now making an acquaintance on board a steamer! In those simple days people depended on the friendships made at summer hotels or boarding-houses for their visiting list. At present, when a girl comes out, her mother presents her to everybody she will be likely to know if she were to live a century. In the seventies, ladies cheerfully shared their state-rooms with women they did not know, and often became friends in consequence; but now, unless a certain deck-suite can be secured, with bath and sitting-room, on one or two particular “steamers,” the great lady is in despair. Yet our mothers were quite as refined as the present generation, only they took life simply, as they found it.
Children are now taken abroad so young, that before they have reached an age to appreciate what they see, Europe has become to them a twice-told tale. So true is this, that a receipt for making children good Americans is to bring them up abroad. Once they get back here it is hard to entice them away again.
With each improvement in the speed of our steamers, something of the glamour of Europe vanishes. The crowds that yearly rush across see and appreciate less in a lifetime than our parents did in their one tour abroad. A good lady of my acquaintance was complaining recently how much Paris bored her.
“What can you do to pass the time?” she asked. I innocently answered that I knew nothing so entrancing as long mornings passed at the Louvre.
“Oh, yes, I do that too,” she replied, “but I like the ‘Bon Marché’ best!”
A trip abroad has become a purely social function to a large number of wealthy Americans, including “presentation” in London and a winter in Rome or Cairo. And just as a “smart” Englishman is sure to tell you that he has never visited the “Tower,” it has become good form to ignore the sight-seeing side of Europe; hundreds of New Yorkers never seeing anything of Paris beyond the Rue de la Paix and the Bois. They would as soon think of going to Cluny or St. Denis as of visiting the museum in our park!