No. 1.
THE philosophic traveller leaves his native country in order to study the manners of "our volatile neighbours." At the London Bridge Station he finds a crowd of excited persons, evidently bent on the same object. Every man has a passport in his breast-pocket, and is encumbered with much unnecessary luggage, including the plate-chest, so indispensable to the English gentleman's toilet. A foretaste of foreign sights is given by groups of Frenchmen in beards and moustachios, wrapped in furred garments of strange fashion, and overcome by nervousness at the varied dangers which they are about to encounter. Your correspondent, with proper indifference, reads Punch and the evening papers all the way to Dover. His companions are two anxious Gauls, a boy and his tutor, and a party of exceedingly gay appearance and manners, who has no uniform rule for the introduction or suppression of his h's. He is perhaps a traveller in the button or hook-and-eye line.
At Dover the tourist is turned out into the dark with his companions, and finds himself in the power of a band of bravoes, who share the luggage between them, thrust us, the helpless owners, into narrow and filthy dungeons on wheels, and then, reckless of prayers and menaces, hold a council upon our fate. We are at length hurried off into deeper gloom, and the plash of the ocean awakens indefinable apprehensions in the breasts of all. But we wrong the band—they are honest as things go, and will take ransom. A shilling, under pretence of an omnibus ride of a hundred yards, satisfies one ruffian; a second shilling stays the wrath of another, who in return mildly slides your portmanteau down a board into the steamer. This vessel is fuming in great excitement at everybody's confounded stupidity and slowness. "What on earth are you waiting for?" it seems to say. "How can you possibly expect me to take the letters in time? It's all very well for you, you know, but I'm a public character, and have got a reputation to keep up. Don't stand loitering there about those things. Pitch 'em in anyhow. Hang the luggage. What's luggage to letters? You have no idea how important the mail-service is. I know I'm very passionate, and if you don't come at once I shall scream."
Ah! the last carpet-bag is in; the bell rings, the bad language partially ceases, the mooring ropes are cast off, and the fussy old animal is allowed to have her own way. The philosophic tourist finds his companions of the train. The tutor is curled up under the table in the cabin, which is full of sleepers, lying about in every direction like great flies who have over-eaten themselves. The distinguished foreigners have already become pale even at the tranquil heaving of the harbour tide. The hook-and-eye man and the boy are smoking infamous cheroots, drinking neat cognac, and making pointless jokes in a loud voice to the steward. We are outside the pier. Your correspondent has no emotions. He sees the cliffs of Albion diminish without a sigh—a regret. He does not feel the poetry of the situation. He omits to quote Childe Harold to a gentleman's servant who kindly helps him on with a third great-coat. He is perhaps brutal; yet he is not without some remains of human sentiment. The greatest pleasure man can enjoy is to contemplate the misfortunes of others. Accordingly, he visits the sick. The cabin has become a hospital—a Pandemonium. To stay there is impossible, he returns to the deck. Alas! the furry exiles are paying a bitter tribute to the ocean. The happier ancients could propitiate Neptune with a horse. Now-a-days he has a fancy for human sacrifices, and will only lie appeased by a portion of ourselves. Hooks-and-eyes has lost his disposition to joke, regrets the brandy, curses the cheroot, and sits down in gloomy silence. The youngster is jollier than ever, and chaffs his discomfited friend, whom he pronounces in private an awful snob.
Meanwhile the swift steamship cuts through the hissing waves. A south wind springs up, and we enjoy a pleasant variety of motion. To the original regular dip and rise which tried so many, is now added a jerking roll, occasionally amounting to a lurch. "Ah ciel!" gasp the expiring Gauls. "Steward, steward!" yells Hooks-and-eyes, as he flies across the deck seemingly by some supernatural impulse, and clings convulsively to the lee bulwarks. "And they said we should have a good passage," complain half a dozen other wretched beings, who make up a party to occupy the same position. The philosopher and his young friend pace the deck as well as they can, and hold sweet conversation. The artless lad details his ancient lineage, his past at Eton, his future at Oxford, and the Continental tour which, illustrated by the mild wisdom of Jenkins, M.A., is to fill up the interval between the two. These pleasant words make short the voyage. "Mark, my youthful acquaintance," says the philosopher, "mark the abject misery of these men. There are Britons among them, but the first, the feeblest of them all are French. Rejoice, therefore, for this malady is the Guardian Genius of our shores. Here are coast-defences more stubborn than Martello towers, more terrible than militia men, more vigilant even than a Channel fleet. Figure to yourself an army of red-trowsered invaders in this state offering to land on English shore, and bless the beneficent dispensations of nature. And now, perhaps, you will do me the favour of whistling Rule Britannia. Thank you."
The lights of Calais become rapidly visible, the seas abate, the groaning invalids recover their legs, the poor sick ladies come up from the cabin; we glide into smooth water listening to strange cries from the pier, and finally grate along the quay. We are welcomed to the strand of France by douaniers in green with round caps, and policemen in blue with cocked hats and yellow shoulder-belts. We must try to admire and love these men, for as long as we remain, they are fated to be our constant companions. The dilapidated troop of travellers is marched into a sort of condemned cell, whence a detachment disappears from time to time to undergo the examination of their passports and luggage. Here comes the first need of the French tongue. The miserable foreigners recover something of their importance, and the Britons, proud of their exemption from the troubles of the sea, begin to find that they are mortal. Hooks-and-eyes, emboldened by excessive draughts of brandy, which make him blink and walk unsteadily, becomes a public character by the wonderful volubility with which he talks an idiom of his own, perfectly unintelligible to the officials. He fancies, it would seem, that he is speaking some Continental language. An hour—two hours—are thus cheerfully spent, and we ultimately settle into a train which ultimately starts. Sleep is rendered impossible by a tin box full of hot water laid at the bottom of the carriage, which, though it certainly warms your feet, brings your knees up to your chin, and at last amounts to an instrument of torture.
The chill of dawn penetrates through voluminous wrappings, and the grey light, as it gradually strengthens, renders visible the dreary face of the country and the haggard unshaven countenances of the travellers. Our young friend, however, is as fresh as a rose and as airy as a lark. "Why, the sunrise is just like the sunrise in England, only not so fine. My eye, look at those pigs! what tremendous legs they've got! That black one is just like a greyhound; he might go for the Derby if he was in condition. Look, there's a clod in wooden shoes. Ah! none of the labourers in Leicestershire wear wooden shoes. That's what my governor said at the last election, when we licked the Freetraders so. Nothing like the British peasantry, their country's pride, when once—I forget how it goes on. Why, they have not got any hedges, just fancy. That isn't good farming, is it, Mr. Jenkins?" That Master of Arts, who, under happier circumstances, might have here given a quotation from Virgil's Georgics, was meekly prostrate beneath the vicissitudes of travel, and quite unable to reply. As we stop at occasional stations we see groups of happy country people, the women in jackets and white caps, the men in blouses, mounted in open cars, and laughing and jabbering without end. Houses become more frequent—tall, slim, chilly-looking white structures, with Venetian blinds outside each window. More careful cultivation marks the proximity of a great market. Finally, we pass deep ditches, low massive walls, not visible till you are close to them when you see how enormous they are, a ragged suburb, and we are in Paris. A fresh searching of luggage, a light one this time, for butter, eggs, and cabbages, I believe, sets us free—that is, as free as any one can be out of dear Old England.
The philosophic traveller here makes one reflection. What assurance a man must have to bore the British public with the description of a journey that every one has made, and knows as well as he does the Greenwich Railway, or the route from Chelsea to the Bank!