‘Being wi’ the palsy tribbled,
In liftin’ spoonfu’s aften dribbled;
Sae, to prevent the draps o’ broth,
Prinn’d to his breast the tablecloth.’
Some explanation of this ludicrous practice is perhaps to be found in the painful habit which the generality of Germans have—occasionally ladies as well as men—of eating with their knives. English people cannot witness this fearful and wonderful operation without a nervous dread of the result. But there is this to be said for the Germans, that although some of their customs be peculiar, and not to be copied, they are great linguists, and enter agreeably in English into conversation; and I only mention such little foibles, that they may ‘see themselves as others see them.’ In many places—Switzerland particularly—there is put down upon the table here and there a case of what turns out to be toothpicks. One would think that those who choose to injure their teeth by means of such instruments and perform an odious cleansing, would prefer to keep their private pick, as much as their private tooth-brush, and use it in their private room.
We found the Dutch people ceremoniously polite. They never sat down and never rose from the table, never entered a room and never left it, without bowing to all round. It always kept us in a fidget lest they should not receive like courtesy; but it is a very pleasant trait of character in a people whom we found to be not merely externally polite, but kind and cordial at heart.
At the hotels, unless they be what I have called English hotels, one usually meets with people of all countries. In one hotel in France, I was informed we had representatives of eight different nations, counting English, Scotch, and Irish as one. It has struck me, however, that although the French language is so generally spoken, the French themselves, while found travelling in every part of their own land, are very seldom seen in other countries. I was on one occasion sitting next a bright Parisian young lady, and rather wickedly, I fear, was exalting Edinburgh so as to suggest its taking the palm from Paris. She was astonished, and having asked her when she was coming to see Edinburgh, she replied very decidedly, though in the very bewitching way in which the French girls speak, ‘Jamais, ne-verre,’ which honestly meant there was no probability she would, although the emphasis no doubt was intended as a delicate rebuke to the heretical presumption of my thought. La belle France is tout le monde to Frenchmen; nor do they get much encouragement to cross the English Channel, for I have noticed that they are, as a rule, most unhappy sailors.
One meets with all peoples and tongues and sorts at the dinner table. Now, much of comfort at that interesting time depends upon who sit next you. Dining at a long table with a large company is never so genial as dining round a smaller table in a party of six or eight. Intercourse is almost limited to those on the right and left, unless you and those opposite have strong voices and be both remarkably socially inclined. This, bad enough at home, is intensified abroad, not merely among strangers, but strangers who are foreigners, with whose language you may not be particularly acquainted. Everything, then, turns on the question, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ and in this respect one is all but entirely at the mercy of the waiters, who have not the grimmest idea of social assortment; and it may be that you are for weeks together placed next to those with whom you have no rapport or fellow-feeling or congeniality of tastes—nay, with whom you may be unable to exchange a word. When it is otherwise, and people are social, intelligent, well read, and without necessarily being clever are cheerful, the dinner hour becomes a pleasant episode of the day.
But it is often otherwise. It is bad enough to get placed beside a foreigner whose language, perhaps, you can read, but whose oral pronunciation is perfectly unintelligible; or beside a very stout and important lady whose ideas, if she have any, run on subjects with which you have no possible sympathy—who is too ponderous, or whose composite capital, perhaps stuck tenderly on with pins, is—it may, from the steadiness of her carriage, be supposed—considered by her too fragile to bear the shaking and jolting of a joke—or really, to confess the truth, one whom, it may possibly be, you cannot be bothered to entertain; or beside a young lady who speaks so low and so timidly, that in the din of dinner it is literally impossible to hear what she says. Nor is it less distressing to be placed beside a very deaf person who not only does not catch what you say, but, as usual with deaf people, speaks indistinctly. Few have not had such an experience as this. You are seated beside what appears to you to be a very amiable, comfortable, benign old lady. The beverage before you is in a condition which it would not be safe to swallow for a little. You are both resting on your oars, or rather on your spoons. The moment is favourable for an opening speech. The subject you select is one of personal and common interest. The observation you hazard is such as would in no event occasion a division bell to ring. Quietly you say, ‘The soup is hot.’ She inclines her face as if she had just heard you were talking in her direction. ‘The soup is hot.’ An inquiring glance is directed to you. Again you repeat rather louder, ‘The soup is hot.’ ‘Sir,’ she replies. In an alto and rather excited pitch you proclaim, ‘The soup is hot.’ By this time everybody has been turning a listening ear. ‘Beg your pardon, sir; but I am rather deaf.’ ‘Madam’ (in an altissimo and crescendo style), ‘The soup is HOT.’ ‘Yes,’ she blandly replies, ‘the room is very hot.’ You are for ever and for ever shut up, and retire from the struggle hot enough yourself.
But sometimes the wet blanket comes in another form. I was at one place agreeably set on several occasions beside a lively young German lady, who spoke English fluently. At our first interview I asked, ‘What was their national dish? was it Sauer-kraut?’ ‘No, it was larks.’ ‘Oh, you barbarians,’ I replied; ‘do you eat canaries and parrots?’ at which the fair damsel was much shocked. ‘What’s that?’ obviously whispers the heavy German next her on her other side, and this and every other like passage of nonsense had to be translated word for word into this intensely philomathic alien, but withal kindly guide, philosopher, and friend of my young neighbour.
I was for a considerable time at another place seated next a most intelligent member of the French bar, whose bad health unfortunately added to a natural taciturnity. He could speak English, and liked to do so. We formed ourselves into a mutual instruction society—I to correct his good English, and he to correct my bad French. But as he preferred English conversation, and I was too lazy to bore him with my French, the educational advantages on my side were reduced to the minimum visible. However, we enjoyed to some extent rational conversation on subjects of interest, imparting information to each other, and discussing where we differed. Here was ‘the feast of reason.’ But, though my friend could enjoy all that creates a laugh, ‘the flow of soul’ would not have produced a deluge, or even turned a mill-wheel of moderate dimensions. There is nothing so difficult as to get merry with those who speak another language, into which everything has mentally and slowly to be translated, and the flashes of merriment often will neither brook translation nor abide deliberative meditation. The ball must be kept up. Any efforts in that direction were therefore of a ponderous kind. Sometimes I would, with all due and becoming gravity, put a case to him in French law. ‘If,’ for example, I would say to him; ‘if a Frenchman were to die, leaving an estate as large as this room (a tolerably big one), and twelve children?’ ‘Oh, but,’ he would interpose, smiling, ‘we have no estates so small,’ and perhaps he might have added, ‘No families so large.’
From him I was shifted for a time to the agreeable society of a blooming Swedish lady, who could speak no language but her own, and who was uncommonly ready to imagine others were laughing at her, and accordingly to take offence. In this fix, to make the best of it, I returned to school to remedy the neglects of early life, and being a docile and apparently a reverent pupil, I advanced with such rapid strides to proficiency in the Swedish tongue, that in not many days I learnt that in that hitherto supposed outlandish language chrystal is ‘chrystal’ and knife is ‘knife;’ and had my studies been prolonged, I doubt not that I should in time have come to know that the honest Swedish people do call a spade a spade.