These stringent regulations are doubtless very wise precautions, and they can be fulfilled without any great mental or physical suffering, provided, when you are on a journey, you remain in your hotel all day long waiting for the postman. Unfortunately I was not able to do so, and fell a victim to a series of misfortunes probably unprecedented in the history of registered letter addresses.
On the day that I expected my registered letter I made a little excursion from Bingen to Wiesbaden, and returned from Wiesbaden at seven in the evening. As I entered the portals of my hotel the manager, who speaks German to me, stepped forward and informed me that the postman had been there ‘mit einem eingeschriebenen Briefe’ for me. The porter, who is a Swiss, and addresses me in Italian, came up beaming with smiles, and told me that during my absence there had been ‘una lettera raccomandata’ for me. The chambermaid met me on the landing (she is from Alsace, and likes to keep up her French), and whispered confidentially that the postman had ‘une lettre chargée’ for me; and the head waiter, who speaks English on principle, even to the Germans, who can’t understand it, rushed at me when I came downstairs to dinner and exclaimed, ‘Sare, sare, de postmans, he bin here with wretcheder letter for you. He come again seven o’clock to-morrow mornings.’
Now, if there is one thing I abhor and abominate on the Continent it is the custom of the early postman banging at my bedroom door when I am fast asleep. I wake with a start, and wonder where I am. I travel rapidly, and so am one day in France, the next in Holland, the next in Germany, and perhaps the next in Italy. Under these circumstances, when first you open your eyes in a strange bedroom it takes you a few seconds to remember where you are and in what language it is necessary to reply to the person who is rapping, ‘rapping at your chamber door.’ As a rule, I generally start up, and exclaim, ‘Eh, what is it? Who are you? Come in! Entrez! Herein! Entrate!’ and wait for the reply.
Although I was hungry, I was careful to eat sparingly at supper in order to sleep lightly, and I retired to rest early. At six o’clock I rose and dressed myself carefully, got the ink in a safe place, put a new pen in the penholder, spread a clean sheet of blotting-paper on the table, and, assuming a dignified attitude, waited for the postman. He was to come at seven. At 9.15 I had to leave by the express for Cologne, en route for Amsterdam. I sat at the table patiently till eight; no postman. Then I went downstairs, and made inquiries. ‘Ah, the postman—yes,’ exclaimed the porter; ‘he came with your registered letter at seven; but he said you might be asleep, so he wouldn’t disturb. He’ll bring it with the second delivery, at ten.’
The remark that I made to that porter in reply conveyed a mixed feeling of rage and despair boiled down into a single word of four letters, of which the last is superfluous. All my preparations were made to depart from Bingen at 9.15. The postman was then about the town delivering letters. I sent after him in all directions to bid him return at once with my registered letter. Alas! my messengers found him not. I left word that the letter was to be sent on to Poste Restante, Amsterdam, and I went away without it.
At Amsterdam I went to the post-office and asked for my registered letter. ‘There is not one for you,’ was the reply. I fancied I had not given it time perhaps to get there, so I called again the next day. ‘No letter.’ I handed in my passport to show the name. The clerk looked in ‘S’ again. ‘No letter.’ I was in despair. At last an idea struck me. ‘Look in “G,” if you please,’ I said. The clerk looked in ‘G’ and produced my registered letter at once—it had been in ‘G’ for three days.
The gentleman who attends to my correspondence during my absence has a playful habit of running the initials of my front names right into the initial of my surname, and hence the mistake at the post-office. After all I got my registered letter, but it was a week’s hard work to obtain it. My earnest advice to travellers on the Continent is ‘never have a registered letter'; it may detain you in one place for months. If you have notes sent to you, let them be cut in half, and sent in separate envelopes to two addresses—one set of halves to your hotel, and the other to the Poste Restante. Only those who have experience of registered letters on the Continent and postal eccentricities abroad will appreciate the value of my little bit of advice.
Holland is to me one of the most interesting countries in Europe. Apart from the excitement of having to do a bit of Blondin, with the edge of a canal for your tight-rope, at intervals of a few minutes all day long, the Dutch themselves furnish you with never-ending study. I love to see the little Dutch boy of six smoking his clay-pipe or his cigar as he clings to his mamma’s skirts. There is something at once novel and startling in finding a Dutch cheese and a penny bun placed in front of every guest at the breakfast-table. In a land where a public company is a Maatschappij and nearly every house of restauration announces that the thirsty traveller can there obtain ‘tapperij, slitterij, and slemp,’ there is always something to amuse you. I had a wild desire to order ‘slitterij and slemp,’ but I couldn’t make up my mind to try and pronounce them, and I didn’t know what I should get.
Then, again, the names of the streets and the names over the shop-doors are eminently calculated to tie your eye up in a knot. You get puzzled when you turn down Wijk 1 and come to Wijk 2, and cross a canal and find yourself in Wijk 24, and you find some difficulty in telling the waiter that you want your ‘otbijt’ (breakfast), and your politeness is sorely tried by having to say ‘Als’ t’v beleft’ whenever you want to say ‘If you please.’ To come suddenly upon a dog-show and find it called a Rashondententoonstelling, and upon an announcement which reads ‘Rijnspoorwegmaalschappij aan den daartoe aangewesen vertegenwoordiger’ is calculated to stagger one; but, apart from a language which is trying alike to the eye and the tongue, Holland is a delightful place, and the Dutch are a splendid people.
There is a tremendous lot of the English character about the Dutch. Hoogstraat, Rotterdam, on Sunday night might be High Street, Islington, at the same time. The boys yell, the girls scream and rush about, and a dense black crowd surges and shoves up and down and sings and walks arm-in-arm a dozen wide, and generally comports itself with high spirits and low habits. A Dutch crowd is English in its rough unconcern for the delicate shades of etiquette. But individually the Dutch are kind, hospitable, and most courteous to strangers. The key to the Dutch character is given in one of their popular ballads;