Europe Revised

by Irvin S. Cobb

Our attention was directed to a large chart showing the form of the victim, the boiled portions being outlined in red and the unboiled portions in black. Considered as a murderer solely this particular murderer may have been deserving of his fame; but when it came to boiling, that was another matter. He showed poor judgment there. It all goes to show that a man should stick to his own trade and not try to follow two or more widely dissimilar callings at the same time. Sooner or later he is bound to slip up.

We found Stratford-upon-Avon to be the one town in England where guides are really abundant. There are as many guides in Stratford as there are historic spots. I started to say that there is at least one guide in Stratford for every American who goes there; but that would be stretching real facts, because nearly every American who goes to England manages to spend at least a day in Stratford, it being a spot very dear to his heart. The very name of it is associated with two of the most conspicuous figures in our literature. I refer first to Andrew Carnegie; second to William Shakspere. Shakspere, who wrote the books, was born here; but Carnegie, who built the libraries in which to keep the books, and who has done some writing himself, provided money for preserving and perpetuating the relics.

We met a guide in the ancient schoolhouse where the Bard—I am speaking now of William, not of Andrew—acquired the rudiments of his education; and on duty at the old village church was another guide, who for a price showed us the identical gravestone bearing the identical inscription which, reproduced in a design of burnt wood, is to-day to be found on the walls of every American household, however humble, whose members are wishful of imparting an artistic and literary atmosphere to their home. A third guide greeted us warmly when we drove to the cottage, a mile or two from the town, where the Hathaway family lived. Here we saw the high-backed settle on which Shakspere sat, night after night, wooing Anne Hathaway. I myself sat on it to test it. I should say that the wooing could not have been particularly good there, especially for a thin man. That settle had a very hard seat and history does not record that there was a cushion. Shakspere's affections for the lady must indeed have been steadfast. Or perhaps he was of stouter build than his pictures show him to have been.

Guides were scattered all over the birthplace house in Stratford in the ratio of one or more to each room. Downstairs a woman guide presided over a battery of glass cases containing personal belongings of Shakspere's and documents written by him and signed by him. It is conceded that he could write, but he certainly was a mighty poor speller. This has been a failing of many well-known writers. Chaucer was deficient in this regard; and if it were not for a feeling of personal modesty I could apply the illustration nearer home.

Two guides accompanied us as we climbed the stairs to the low-roofed room on the second floor where the creator of Shylock and Juliet was born—or was not born, if you believe what Ignatius Donnelly had to say on the subject. But would it not be interesting and valued information if we could only get the evidence on this point of old Mrs. Shakspere, who undoubtedly was present on the occasion? A member of our party, an American, ventured to remark as much to one of the guides; but the latter did not seem to understand him. So the American told him just to keep thinking it over at odd moments, and that he would be back again in a couple of years, if nothing happened, and possibly by that time the guide would have caught the drift of his observation. On second thought, later on, he decided to make it three years—he did not want to crowd the guide, he said, or put too great a burden on his mentality in a limited space of time.

If England harbors few guides the Continent is fairly glutted with them. After nightfall the boulevards of Paris are so choked with them that in places there is standing room only. In Rome the congestion is even greater. In Rome every other person is a guide—and sometimes twins. I do not know why, in thinking of Europe, I invariably associate the subject of guides with the subject of tips. The guides were no greedier for tips than the cabmen or the hotel helpers, or the railroad hands, or the populace at large. Nevertheless this is true. In my mind I am sure guides and tips will always be coupled, as surely as any of those standard team-word combinations of our language that are familiar to all; as firmly paired off as, for example, Castor and Pollux, or Damon and Pythias, or Fair and Warmer, or Hay and Feed. When I think of one I know I shall think of the other. Also I shall think of languages; but for that there is a reason.

Tipping—the giving of tips and the occasional avoidance of giving them—takes up a good deal of the tourist's time in Europe. At first reading the arrangement devised by the guidebooks, of setting aside ten per cent of one's bill for tipping purposes, seems a better plan and a less costly one than the indiscriminate American system of tipping for each small service at the time of its performance. The trouble is that this arrangement does not work out so well in actual practice as it sounds in theory. On the day of your departure you send for your hotel bill. You do not go to the desk and settle up there after the American fashion. If you have learned the ropes you order your room waiter to fetch your bill to you, and in the privacy of your apartment you pore over the formidable document wherein every small charge is fully specified, the whole concluding with an impressive array of items regarding which you have no prior recollection whatsoever. Considering the total, you put aside an additional ten per cent, calculated for division on the basis of so much for the waiter, so much for the boots, so much for the maid and the porter, and the cashier, and the rest of them. It is not necessary that you send for these persons in order to confer your farewell remembrances on them; they will be waiting for you in the hallways. No matter how early or late the hour of your leaving may be, you find them there in a long and serried rank.

You distribute bills and coins until your ten per cent is exhausted, and then you are pained to note that several servitors yet remain, lined up and all expectant, owners of strange faces that you do not recall ever having seen before, but who are now at hand with claims, real or imaginary, on your purse. Inasmuch as you have a deadly fear of being remembered afterward in this hotel as a piker, you continue to dip down and to fork over, and so by the time you reach the tail end of the procession your ten per cent has grown to twelve or fifteen per cent, or even more.

As regards the tipping of guides for their services, I hit on a fairly satisfactory plan, which I gladly reveal here for the benefit of my fellow man. I think it is a good idea to give the guide, on parting, about twice as much as you think he is entitled to, which will be about half as much as he expects. From this starting point you then work toward each other, you conceding a little from time to time, he abating a trifle here and there, until you have reached a happy compromise on a basis of fifty-fifty; and so you part in mutual good will.

The average American, on the eve of going to Europe, thinks of the European as speaking each his own language. He conceives of the Poles speaking Polar; of the Hollanders talking Hollandaise; of the Swiss as employing Schweitzer for ordinary conversations and yodeling when addressing friends at a distance; and so on. Such, however, is rarely the case. Nearly every person with whom one comes in contact in Europe appears to have fluent command of several tongues besides his or her own. It is true this does not apply to Italy, where the natives mainly stick to Italian; but then, Italian is not a language. It is a calisthenic.