Some eminent Victorians: Personal recollections in the world of art and letters

by J. Comyns Carr

Two youthful representatives of the race were seated in a compartment of a corridor carriage adjoining my own, and in the compartment beyond them were three or four young ladies travelling alone.

We had not gone very far from Calais, perhaps some twenty miles or more, when the train was brought to a sudden stop, and looking out of the window I saw several officials of the railway running up and down the permanent way in evident surprise and alarm.

Suddenly their attention was concentrated upon the Scotsmen’s compartment, where the indicator thrust out from the side of the carriage betokened that the alarm-bell had been sounded by them. A swift altercation, the purport of which I scarcely gathered, ended in the peremptory demand on the part of the officials for the surrender of the travellers’ tickets, combined with a menacing intimation that the matter would be further investigated on our arrival at Amiens.

At Amiens it seemed as though all the staff of the Nord were gathered upon the platform, and the force of this official affray was concentrated upon the compartment occupied by the two sturdy travellers from the North. With scant ceremony these gentlemen were commanded to descend from the carriage amid a fierce war of words, in which I fancy neither party had the smallest understanding of what was uttered by the other.

Alighting from my own compartment, I caught, rising above the angry objurgations of the French officials, the repeated assurances of the Scotsmen that they admitted their fault, and were eager to apologise for its consequences.

“I admit that I did it,” said the elder of the two, with a broad Scotch accent, “and I am sorry.”

But this reiterated expression of guilt and regret only seemed to incense the Frenchmen the more, until, in his despair, the Scotsman turned to me and in tones of almost pitiful entreaty inquired if I could speak a little French. On my replying in the affirmative, he supplied me with an explanation of his conduct, which he begged me to translate for the benefit of the chef de gare.

“Will you tell them,” he replied, “that we admit we did it, and are sorry, but it occurred in this way? On entering the compartment my friend and I observed that there were two small windows connected with the adjoining carriage, where, as we happened to know, a party of ladies were seated, and more for their sake than ours,” he continued, “and with a view to securing the privacy which we knew they would desire, my friend and I thought that we would pull down the blinds over these windows, and so leave the ladies in the full assurance that they were unobserved. But when I pulled the ring in the small window nearest to me the blind did not come down, and then my friend tried, with the same result, and then I said, ‘Maybe if we both pull together it will be better.’ And so we both pulled together, and yet the blind did not come down, but the train stopped, and we are sorry.”

These poor gentlemen had been totally unaware that the rings at which they had been tugging so vigorously were attached to no blinds, but directly communicated with the guard of the train. They were, in fact, the alarm-signals which had brought us to so sudden a halt outside Calais.

This was the story which he implored me to relate to the chef de gare and his assembled subordinates, and I shall not easily forget the mingled incredulity and amusement with which my narrative was received.