Travelling Sketches

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Excerpt

That men and women should leave their homes at the end of summer and go somewhere,–though it be only to Margate,–has become a thing so fixed that incomes the most limited are made to stretch themselves to fit the rule, and habits the most domestic allow themselves to be interrupted and set at naught. That we gain much in health there can be no doubt. Our ancestors, with their wives and children, could do without their autumn tour; but our ancestors did not work so hard as we work. And we gain much also in general knowledge, though such knowledge is for the most part superficial, and our mode of acquiring it too often absurd. But the English world is the better for the practice. “Home-staying youths have ever homely wits,” and we may fairly suppose that our youths are less homely in this particular after they have been a day or two in Paris, and a week or two in Switzerland, and up and down the Rhine, than they would have been had they remained in their London lodgings through that month of September,–so weary to those who are still unable to fly away during that most rural of months.

Upon the whole we are proud of our travelling; but yet we must own that, as a nation of travellers, we have much to learn; and it always seems that the travelling English family which goes abroad because it’s the thing to do, with no clearly defined object as to the pleasure to be obtained or the delights to be expected,–with hardly a defined idea of the place to be visited, has, as a class, more to learn than any other class of tourists.

In such family arrangements daughters of course predominate. Sons can travel alone or with their own friends. This arrangement they generally prefer, and for it they are always able to give substantial reasons, in which their mammas may, or may not, put implicit confidence. Daughters can travel alone too occasionally, as I hope to be able to show by-and-by in a sketch of that much abused but invaluable English lady, the Unprotected Female Tourist. But such feminine independence is an exception to the rule, and daughters are generally willing to submit themselves to that paternal and maternal guidance from which the adult male tourist so stoutly revolts. Paterfamilias of course is there, paying the bills, strapping up the cloaks, scolding the waiters, obeying, but not placidly obeying, the female behests to which he is subject, and too frequently fretting uncomfortably beneath the burden of the day, the heat and the dust, the absence of his slippers, and the gross weight of his too-matured proportions. And he has, too, other inward grievances of which he can say nothing to any ear. Something of the salt of youth is left to him,–something of the spirit, though but little of the muscle,–and he thinks of his boys who are far afield, curtailed in their exploits by no petticoats, abridged by no stiff proprieties; and he wishes that he was with them, feeling that his trammels are heavy. The mother, of course, is there, kind to all her party, but too often stiff and hard to all beyond it, anxious that papa should have his comforts, anxious that her girls should see everything, but afraid to let them see too much, sometimes a little cross when the work becomes too hard or the pace of the pony is too rough, somewhat dowdy in her cotton dress, and ill-suited to the hat which she wears. She possesses every virtue under the sun. Of human beings she is the least selfish. Her heart is full of love, and all who know her dote upon her. At home she is charming, at home she is graceful and sweet to be seen. But on her travels things do not go easily with her, and her temper will sometimes become ruffled. The daughters are determined to do the thing well, to see everything, to be stopped by no English prejudices, to be at their ease, or at any rate look as though they were; to talk French boldly in spite of their little slips; to wear their dresses jauntily, and make the best of themselves; to have all their eyes open, and carry home with them something from every day’s work. Who will say that they are wrong? Nay, who will not declare that they are right in all this? But they overdo the thing in their intense desire to utilize every moment; they are, alas, sometimes a little ashamed of papa and mamma; and as they return down the Rhine, having begun in Switzerland, and done Baden Baden, Frankfort, and Homburg on their way, their dresses are not quite so jaunty, nor their gloves so neat, nor their hats in such perfect trim, as when those articles were inspected on the evening before they left home. That resolve to make the best of themselves has been somewhat forgotten during the stern realities of their journeys.