Europe and elsewhere

by Mark Twain

LETTERS TO SATAN
(1897)

SWISS GLIMPSES

I

If Your Grace would prepay your postage it would be a pleasant change. I am not meaning to speak harshly, but only sorrowfully. My remark applies to all my outland correspondents, and to everybody’s. None of them puts on the full postage, and that is just the same as putting on none at all: the foreign governments ignore the half postage, and we who are abroad have to pay full postage on those half-paid letters. And as for writing on thin paper, none of my friends ever think of it; they all use pasteboard, or sole leather, or things like that. But enough of that subject; it is painful.

I believe you have set me a hard task; for if it is true that you have not been in the world for three hundred years, and have not received into your establishment an educated person in all that time, I shall be obliged to talk to you as if you had just been born and knew nothing at all about the things I speak of. However, I will do the best I can, and will faithfully try to put in all the particulars, trivial ones as well as the other sorts. If my report shall induce Your Grace to come out of your age-long seclusion and make a pleasure tour through the world in person, instead of doing it by proxy through me, I shall feel that I have labored to good purpose. You have many friends in the world; more than you think. You would have a vast welcome in Paris, London, New York, Chicago, Washington, and the other capitals of the world; if you would go on the lecture platform you could charge what you pleased. You would be the most formidable attraction on the planet. The curiosity to see you would be so great that no place of amusement would contain the multitude that would come. In London many devoted people who have seen the Prince of Wales only fifteen hundred or two thousand times would be willing to miss one chance of seeing him again for the sake of seeing you. In Paris, even with the Tsar on view, you could do a fairly good business; and in Chicago--Oh, but you ought to go to Chicago, you know. But further of this anon. I will to my report, now, and tell you about Lucerne, and how I journeyed hither; for doubtless you will travel by the same route when you come.

I kept house a few months in London, with my family, while I arranged the matters which you were good enough to intrust me with. There were no adventures, except that we saw the Jubilee. Afterward I was invited to one of the Queen’s functions, which was a royal garden party. A garden is a green and bloomy countrified stretch of land which--But you remember the Garden of Eden; well, it is like that. The invitation prescribed the costume that must be worn: “Morning dress with trousers.” I was intending to wear mine, for I always wear something at garden parties where ladies are to be present; but I was hurt by this arbitrary note of compulsion, and did not go. All the European courts are particular about dress, and you are not allowed to choose for yourself in any case; you are always told exactly what you must wear; and whether it is going to become you or not, you are not allowed to make any changes. Yet the court taste is often bad, and sometimes even indelicate. I was once invited to dine with an emperor when I was living awhile in Germany, and the invitation card named the dress I must wear: “Frock coat and black cravat.” To put it in English, that meant swallow-tail and black cravat. It was cold weather, too, the middle of winter; and not only that, but ladies were to be present. That was five years ago. By this time the coat has gone out, I suppose, and you would feel at home there if you still remember the old Eden styles.

As soon as the Jubilee was fairly over we broke up housekeeping and went for a few days to what is called in England “an hotel.” If we could have afforded an horse and an hackney cab we could have had an heavenly good time flitting around on our preparation errands, and could have finished them up briskly; but the buses are slow and they wasted many precious hours for us. A bus is a sort of great cage on four wheels, and is six times as strong and eleven times as heavy as the service required of it demands--but that is the English of it. The bus aptly symbolizes the national character. The Englishman requires that everything about him shall be stable, strong, and permanent, except the house which he builds to rent. His own private house is as strong as a fort. The rod which holds up the lace curtains could hold up an hippopotamus. The three-foot flagstaff on his bus, which supports a Union Jack the size of a handkerchief, would still support it if it were one of the gates of Gaza. Everything he constructs is a deal heavier and stronger than it needs to be. He built ten miles of terraced benches to view the Jubilee procession from, and put timber enough in them to make them a permanent contribution to the solidities of the world--yet they were intended for only two days’ service.

When they were being removed an American said, “Don’t do it--save them for the Resurrection.” If anything gets in the way of the Englishman’s bus it must get out of it or be bowled down--and that is English. It is the serene self-sufficient spirit which has carried his flag so far. He ought to put his aggressive bus in his coat of arms, and take the gentle unicorn out.

We made our preparations for Switzerland as fast as we could; then bought the tickets. Bought them of Thomas Cook & Sons, of course--nowadays shortened to “Cook’s,” to save time and words. Things have changed in thirty years. I can remember when to be a “Cook’s tourist” was a thing to be ashamed of, and when everybody felt privileged to make fun of Cook’s “personally conducted” gangs of economical provincials. But that has all gone by, now. All sorts and conditions of men fly to Cook in our days. In the bygone times travel in Europe was made hateful and humiliating by the wanton difficulties, hindrances, annoyances, and vexations put upon it by ignorant, stupid, and disobliging transportation officials, and one had to travel with a courier or risk going mad. You could not buy a railway ticket on one day which you purposed to use next day--it was not permitted. You could not buy a ticket for any train until fifteen minutes before that train was due to leave. Though you had twenty trunks, you must manage somehow to get them weighed and the extra weight paid for within that fifteen minutes; if the time was not sufficient you would have to leave behind such trunks as failed to pass the scales. If you missed your train, your ticket was no longer good. As a rule, you could make neither head nor tail of the railway guide, and if your intended journey was a long one you would find that the officials could tell you little about which way to go; consequently you often bought the wrong ticket and got yourself lost. But Cook has remedied all these things and made travel simple, easy, and a pleasure. He will sell you a ticket to any place on the globe, or all the places, and give you all the time you need, and as much more besides; and it is good for all trains of its class, and its baggage is weighable at all hours. It provides hotels for you everywhere, if you so desire; and you cannot be overcharged, for the coupons show just how much you must pay. Cook’s servants at the great stations will attend to your baggage, get you a cab, tell you how much to pay cabmen and porters, procure guides for you, or horses, donkeys, camels, bicycles, or anything else you want, and make life a comfort and a satisfaction to you. And if you get tired of traveling and want to stop, Cook will take back the remains of your ticket, with 10 per cent off. Cook is your banker everywhere, and his establishment your shelter when you get caught out in the rain. His clerks will answer all the questions you ask, and do it courteously. I recommend Your Grace to travel on Cook’s tickets when you come; and I do this without embarrassment, for I get no commission. I do not know Cook. (But if you would rather travel with a courier, let me recommend Joseph Very. I employed him twenty years ago, and spoke of him very highly in a book, for he was an excellent courier--then. I employed him again, six or seven years ago--for a while. Try him. And when you go home, take him with you.)

That London hotel was a disappointment. It was up a back alley, and we supposed it would be cheap. But, no, it was built for the moneyed races. It was all costliness and show. It had a brass band for dinner--and little else--and it even had a telephone and a lift. A telephone is a wire stretched on poles or underground, and has a thing at each end of it. These things are to speak into and to listen at. The wire carries the words; it can carry them several hundred miles. It is a time-saving, profanity-breeding, useful invention, and in America is to be found in all houses except parsonages. It is dear in America, but cheap in England; yet in England telephones are as rare as are icebergs in your place. I know of no way to account for this; I only know that it is extraordinary. The English take kindly to the other modern conveniences, but for some puzzling reason or other they will not use the telephone. There are 44,000,000 people there who have never even seen one.