But, in Rome, if you escape from one voluble tormentor you fall into the hands of a dozen worse, and there are the reverent, industrious sight-seers with red books, mixed up among the irreverent ones with walking-sticks.
“On the right hand, and a little to the left, are the famous baths of Caracalla,” may be heard from behind one pillar. “Note the exquisite workmanship of the masonry, and the height of the columns leading to the Peplon or outer court of the Vestal Virgins.”
From the other side of the same pillar comes a voice like a saw cutting through wood.
“Here, you, Sparghetti, Antonio, what’s your name? Was there any charge, can you tell me, for mixed bathing in those days? Bagno melange, Caracalla’s time, how much, eh?”
James understands pictures, and enjoys them. I tested my own taste in these matters, but did not force the experiment in any way. As soon as I became quite certain that I did not like pictures, I waited for him outside, dabbling my fingers in the water (it was in Venice that I definitely made up my mind), and enjoying the smells. Perhaps it was indigestion from eating too much Italian food, but the Tintorettos got on my nerves from their invariable suggestion of vermicelli. There were acres of canvas representing nude figures falling in hundreds from great heights. Some of them may have been climbing up, but the places were so dark that it was not easy to see the difference; anyhow, vermicelli being thrown into the air or vermicelli falling into a pan look pretty much alike. So I stayed outside and forgot all about the Day of Judgment.
The longer I live, the more I believe in Adam and Eve. Good gains nothing by comparison with evil. There is no pleasure like ignorance in fine weather, and the most illuminating conversation is no gain to those who are able to “go into a field and make a noise like a turnip.”
I know few people with whom I can go abroad without bringing on an attack of Mrs. Simpson. From the guides with their “You want spik English, you come with me,” and the waiters who seek favour with promises of “Rosbif” or “Nice hammonekks,” to our kind foreign friends who ask us whether we are not missing the fog and would we like brandy in our tea?—it is evident that Mrs. Simpson has set her mark upon every continent. Mrs. Simpson abroad is different from the furniture-remover’s goddess. She is timid to the verge of idiocy, and bold where reticence would be more graceful; she is always unmarried, except in such cases where she has a male creature attached to her by such a tie as unites a pair of frogs. She is fabulously rich, and so devoid of discrimination in what she buys that it would be ill-bred in shopkeepers to practise deception on her were it not that she does not believe in God; and, therefore, it is right that good persons should have her money before she is removed to hell.
People of other countries, who have lived or stayed in England or have made English friends abroad, know nothing of this Mrs. Simpson; she is a product of the foreign railways and hotels, like the American whom we all know by sight and hearsay but who is unrecognised by his own countrymen. All the same, it was a long time before I could enjoy myself anywhere out of England without feeling the spell cast upon my spirit by the dreary, woebegone, helpless mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, who wandered away to their bedrooms in single file between meals, were always blocking up the bureau, asking questions about baths and the English services, and who stared at one another in the lifts, and talked in undertones at their little tables. There was one couple, in an hotel in Rome, who made conversation to each other for a week on what I judged from their faces to be such subjects as mausoleums, dentists, cold cream, and muffins. At last the husband said something really amusing—I heard it with great pleasure—to which his wife made a grimace and said: “Really, dear, you are quite beyond me altogether.”
Henry—I remember that was his name—ought not to have stood it, but he did. He ought to have slapped her, and kicked over the table and left the room for ever. I should have rejoiced, more than I can say, on account of the blow that it would have given, in every town in Baedeker, to the continental Mrs. Simpson.
I paid dearly for my rashness in leaving the shores of England. When I returned the sword had fallen.