All who have travelled on the Continent are familiar with the railway arrangements; but as they differ in some particulars from those to which we are accustomed, and as this introductory chapter is mainly intended for the benefit of those who have not previously crossed the Channel, it may be useful to mention some of them.
Although in all leading respects foreigners have copied our railway system, yet their diverging peculiarities are not always calculated to reconcile an Englishman to Continental travel. He arrives at the station, which he finds he must do in France a full half-hour before the hour of starting; in Italy, in large towns, a full hour. And in France he must always, in the first instance, procure his ticket at a little wire-latticed window, falling into a queue of people to take his turn. Stooping to a small hole not six inches high on the table level, he has to shout through in French to the distributor of billets within, telling him what he wants, and from whom he receives in return mention of the amount to be paid. It is always well to know beforehand how much this is, which can be at least approximately calculated from the time-tables; but the exact price of tickets may usually be obtained from a board or table of fares near the ticket window, often most inconveniently placed and arranged, and so dirty and soiled as occasionally to be illegible. Without a previous knowledge of the probable cost, it is exceedingly difficult for a stranger to make out what the man says, owing to the narrowness of the aperture and the indistinctness of French pronunciation. In many places, particularly in Italy, an official is stationed (a most commendable practice) outside the window, to prevent inconvenient crowding, to tell the fares, to see that the correct billets are supplied, and to be a check on the ticket distributor giving the right change. I have been told of cases where, in Italy,—but it was some years ago,—there had been supposed attempts to cheat on the part of the distributor; but, except on one occasion, I never got wrong change. It happened at Bologna, where I received at the ticket office 1 lira too little, and at the luggage office some pence less than the correct change. In both cases it was at once rectified on my pointing out the mistakes, and I set them down to slips. At other times, on accidentally neglecting to take up small change at the window, such as a sou, I have been called back to get it. But there is an admirable check upon any attempt to cheat, or on mistakes, in the circumstance that commonly Continental tickets have marked upon them their cost—a system which might with great advantage be introduced into Great Britain.
And now the Englishman obtains a new experience of how they manage things abroad. His luggage was, on arrival at the station, deposited on a long table under the care of the conductor of the omnibus which brought him. This luggage, with the exception of such little things as he means to take with him into the carriage, has, when his turn arrives, to be carefully weighed. In France each traveller is allowed 30 kilogrammes, or about 65 lbs. weight. For every pound beyond this he is required to pay according to distance. The men engaged in weighing ask for the railway billets to show the destination, and then he goes to the luggage-ticket window, where he duly receives back his billets stamped as having been used, and gets a little scrap or morsel of thin paper, which is the receipt for his luggage, and for which he has in any case to pay 10 centimes (1d.) in addition to any charge for extra weight. This receipt bears the number of colis or packages and of persons, the united weight of the party’s luggage, the sum payable, the place of despatch and the place of destination, and a printed number; which number is also affixed to each article so registered, and is the means by which, on arriving at the journey’s end, it is identified. What is the exact method by which the officials in charge manage to secure that all the multiform boxes and bags arrive at their respective proper destinations, I do not know. I presume that, in addition to an invoice or list of some kind accompanying the train, the things for each station are separately stowed away in the waggons; but whatever may be the means adopted, they ensure the utmost regularity, although I have heard of persons losing small articles, which, as a rule, ought not to be so registered. On one occasion a rather curious circumstance happened to my luggage. I went from Interlachen to Paris, and the registration number on my portmanteau was 82. From Paris to London it was registered anew, and the number happened to be 282; but the passage across the Channel was very stormy, and I presume the Paris number had been washed off on the voyage. On presenting my receipt at London, and pointing out my portmanteau, it was found that it had not the number 282, but simply 82, and I had some difficulty in getting it; but as my key opened the lock, and nobody else appeared to claim the article, I got delivery.
In Italy, no allowance is made for luggage. Every pound which is registered must be paid for, and consequently it is not in general necessary previously to take out the railway billets. The expense is not, however, great, unless one’s luggage be heavy. Our luggage, which perhaps was less than many travel with, cost me, travelling nearly all over Italy, for railway charges, less than 30s. per person; but railway fares in Italy are cheaper than with us, so that the difference is thus made up.
Although the system of registration is attended by much security, and is one with which it might not be safe to dispense in travelling abroad, I do not think that, in its integrity, it could be introduced into busy England. We should never stand the minute weighing of our luggage, and, above all, the enormous loss of time which it entails. It has, besides, its disadvantages, because it results in travellers carrying and placing beside them articles which ought properly to be in the van. The luggage registered, too, suffers injury. Moreover, at the journey’s end a great detention is always occasioned. All have to wait till the vans are emptied, and the contents dragged about and arranged upon long tables in a closed room. When the entire collection is adjusted as far as possible according to the numbers affixed, the doors of this room are opened, after having had to wait wearily perhaps half an hour. It is, however, by no means necessary to attend personally, except where the luggage must be passed through the douane, and sometimes the hotel omnibus will take home the passengers and come back for the luggage; but personal attendance enables a more prompt recognition of it to be made, and ensures accuracy. In Italy it is reckoned safer not to leave luggage at a station. The Italians have not been credited with the greatest honesty, though probably this is a thing of the past. However, they themselves manifest the sense of insecurity by refusing to receive luggage for registration which is not properly locked or fastened, and boxes arriving in such condition are closed at the owner’s expense in his presence.
In travelling by steamboat, also, a charge is made for luggage according to weight. Thus, upon a little sail of about 10 miles on Lake Como, I had to pay 2½ francs for luggage. In diligences in Switzerland, 20 lbs. weight only is allowed. All weight beyond this is charged for—a fairly reasonable regulation.
Perhaps the most peculiar and striking of all the Continental travelling arrangements is the system of waiting-rooms. It introduces to English people a difference of method of a somewhat irritating description. The salle-d’attente is a species of sheep pen into which the traveller is driven after he has obtained his railway billets and had his luggage registered, and where he must remain helplessly shut up till the train by which he is to travel is about to leave. Generally a separate large room is provided for each of the three classes of travellers, and the rule is that nobody is allowed to enter without exhibition of the railway ticket appropriate to that particular class; and as this cannot be done till the luggage be registered and paid for, which seldom takes less than a quarter of an hour, if ladies be of the party, they must wait with all the patience possible, guarding the little articles to be taken into the railway carriage, in the large hall of the office, where ofttimes there is not a seat or a comfortable or clean one to be had. Once or twice, in breach of the regulations, I have got them passed into the waiting-room. In the salle-d’attente itself, penetrated under burden of all these little impedimenta (for it is rare good luck to get a porter to help), a crowd of people all similarly laden is found, and there the passengers have to wait sometimes for long periods till within four or five minutes of the starting of the train, when a man opens the door of the prison-house or menagerie and shouts out, ‘Messieurs les voyageurs, pour (naming the places) en voiture!’ It may happen that there are several such shouts for other trains before your own is announced, and your sudden preparations for departure are stopped by the discovery that your turn has not yet come, and you are not allowed to leave the place of confinement. When your turn does come, you gather up your things, which no porter helps you to carry, and rush pell-mell out with the crowd. There is no servant to tell you where to go, and your only security not to do wrong is to follow the multitude. When you reach the carriages, it is seldom they have any board or placard indicating their destination. If there should by any chance be an official about, he is not there for the purpose of directing people; and if you ask him, he gives about as slender information in answer as possible. It is folly, however, to stop to ask him in the first instance. The plan is, trudging on with wraps and bags and all the little things, to bundle into the first open carriage where there appears to be sufficient room, and secure seats as best you can, and then get out and make inquiries for certainty’s sake. If you do not do so, and a lady, to recover breath, halts an instant with foot on step before ascending, others will coolly mount before her and take possession, and there may be the utmost possible difficulty in procuring seat-room elsewhere, foreigners being just as selfishly guilty as English people of telling lies about a carriage being full. At all events, those who have got in first have probably secured all the available spaces for their goods and chattels, as well as the best seats for themselves. To avoid the expense of registration, or to escape detention on arrival, foreigners (by whom I mean natives of the Continent) almost invariably, as already mentioned, bring portmanteaus and other big articles into the carriages; and as the spaces below the seats are perhaps purposely narrow and confined, these things become very inconvenient, often occupying the places presumably intended for light articles, or they are placed on the seats or among the feet. If smoking disagrees, or you are averse to it, and desire a non-smoking carriage, the hunt for this in the scramble is an additional embarrassment; and frequently, after getting into a carriage and having everything arranged, the non-smokers discover that the compartment is a smoking one, and they have to tumble out at the last moment and endeavour to discover empty places elsewhere. The inconveniences attendant upon this method of arranging for the departure of travellers are such as would make it intolerable in Great Britain, where one walks leisurely to the train as he arrives and selects his seat, with the aid, it may be, of a porter or a guard. Free Britons will submit quietly till a next election to the imposition of heavy burdens in support of an unnecessary war, but a petty grievance like this would raise a storm which no board of directors could resist.
The Continental railways, however, have both porters and guards, who, like policemen, never seem to be present when most wanted. On arrival at a station from an hotel, there are always railway porters to carry the luggage to the registration table, for which they expect to be paid, and sometimes in expectation of a further fee they will carry the petits bagages to the door of the salle-d’attente—occasionally, though rarely, into the salle-d’attente itself; but where assistance is more needed, viz. in leaving the salle-d’attente in the rush for the train, porters are nowhere, and on arrival of the trains at their destination, it is by the merest chance (at least in France) one can be got to carry the unregistered articles—the number of which is aggravated by the circumstance that it seems to be part of the system of registration, that if luggage be forwarded to a station in advance of that at which stoppage is to be made for the night or longer, it is not possible to register separately to the stopping station what is required for immediate use. A similar difficulty happens if the heavy luggage is to be left at the railway station, to be got upon setting out upon the further journey next day—a circumstance constantly happening, we ourselves having travelled thus for days together. All must be taken or none. But at some of the larger town stations, there would now seem to be a left luggage room similar to our own, where luggage may be deposited on payment of usually two sous per package per night.
The railway porters always expect a fee (20 centimes per box, at most, will suffice in France) for moving the heavy luggage—even the registration weighers sometimes look for a copper. In Italy, however, the porters often state there is a tariff of charge, under which generally 25 centimes each package is paid, though the amount depends somewhat on the size of each. It is, however, a comfort to know in Italy, if you can, what exactly there is to pay; but although appeal has often been made to the tariff if it happened to be high, I never was gladdened with a sight of this mysterious document. I should make one exception, for the extortion was so great that I demanded to see it, though, as I might have foreseen, it was worse than useless to do so. It occurred at Geneva, where a porter exacted 3½ francs (3s.) from me for transporting on a barrow our luggage from the steamboat to our hotel close by, we being charged in the bill in addition 2½ francs for conveying two of us to the hotel, or 5s. for moving baggage little more than a hundred yards.
I recollect some years ago a system very equitable both for porters and passengers was in use at Cologne; a charge, I think, of 2d. for each package was made at the railway station for porterage, and the amount dropped into a box, the contents of which fell to be divided afterwards among all the porters.