TRAVEL

The October Season, of which I lately spoke, is practically over. "The misty autumn sunlight and the sweeping autumn wind" are yielding place to cloud and storm. In a week's time London will have assumed its winter habit, and already people are settling down to their winter way of living. The last foreigner has fled. The Country Cousins have finished their shopping and have returned to the pursuit of the Pheasant and the Fox. The true Londoners—the people who come back to town for the "first note of the Muffin-bell and retreat to the country for the first note of the Nightingale"—have resumed the placidity of their normal life. Dinner-parties have hardly begun, but there are plenty of little luncheons; the curtains are drawn about four, and there are three good hours for Bridge before one need think of going to dress for dinner. And now, just when London is beginning to wear once again its most attractive aspect, at once sociable and calm, some perverse people, disturbers of the public peace, must needs throw everything into confusion by going abroad.

Their motives are many and various. With some it is health: "I feel that I must have a little sunshine, I have been so rheumatic all this autumn," or "My doctor tells me that, with my tendency to bronchitis, the fogs are really dangerous." With some it is sheer restlessness: "Well, you see, we were here all the summer, except just Whitsuntide and Ascot and Goodwood; so we have had about enough of London. And our home in Loamshire is so fearfully lonely in winter that it quite gets on my nerves. So I think a little run will do us all good; and we shall be back by the New Year, or February at latest." With some, again, economy is the motive power; "What with two sons to allowance, and two still at school; and one girl to be married at Easter, and one just coming out, as well as a most expensive governess for the young ones, I assure you it is quite difficult to make two ends meet. We have got an excellent offer for Eaton Place from November to May, and some friends on the Riviera have repeatedly asked us to pay them a long visit; and, when that's done, one can live en pension at Montreux for next to nothing." Others are lured abroad by the love of gambling, though this is not avowed: "I do so love Monte Carlo—not the gambling, but the air, and, even if one does lose a franc or two at the tables, I always say that we should lose much more at home, with Christmas presents, and Workhouse Treats, and all those tiresome things one has to do."

It is not a joke—for I never joke about religion—it is a literal fact that in my youth the prophecy in the Book of Daniel that "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased" was interpreted as pointing to an enlargement of the human mind through increased facilities of travel. I do not guarantee the exegesis, but I note the fact. A hundred years ago, if parents wished to enlarge their son's understanding by sending him on the "Grand Tour" of Europe, they set aside twelve months for the fulfilment of their purpose. Young Hopeful set out in a travelling-carriage with a tutor (or Bear-Leader), a Doctor, and a Valet. The Bear-Leader's was a recognized and lucrative profession. In a diary for 1788, which lies before me as I write, I read: "Mr. Coxe, the traveller, has been particularly lucky as a Pupil-Leader about Europe. After Lord Herbert, he had Mr. Whitbred at £800 per ann., and now has Mr. Portman, with £1000 per ann." Patrick Brydone, scholar, antiquary, and virtuoso, whose daughter married the second Earl of Minto, was "Pupil-Leader" (or Bear-Leader) to William Beckford. Sydney Smith was dug out of his curacy on Salisbury Plain in order to act as Bear-Leader to the grandfather of the present Lord St. Aldwyn. Charles Richard Sumner, who, as last of the Prince-Bishops of Winchester, drew £40,000 a year for forty years, began life as Bear-Leader to Lord Mount-Charles, eldest son of that Lady Conyngham whom George IV. admired; and he owed his first preferment in the Church to the amiable complaisance with which he rescued his young charge from a matrimonial entanglement. That was early in the nineteenth century; but forty years later the Bear-Leader was still an indispensable adjunct to the Grand Tour of Illustrious Youth. The late Duke of Argyll has told us how he made his travels sandwiched inside his father's chariot between his preceptor and his physician. When the Marquis of Montacute made his pilgrimage to the Holy Land he was even more liberally attended; for, in addition to his Bear-Leader, Colonel Grouse, he took his father's doctor, Mr Groby, to avert or cure the fevers, and his father's chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Bernard, to guide his researches into the theology of Syria. Perhaps Lord Montacute existed only in Lord Beaconsfield's rich imagination; but Thackeray, who never invented but always described what he saw, drew a delightful portrait of "the Rev. Baring Leader," who, "having a great natural turn and liking towards the aristocracy," consented to escort Viscount Talboys when that beer-loving young nobleman made his celebrated journey down the Rhine.

But, though a special divinity always hedged, as it still hedges, the travels of an Eldest Son, the more modest journeyings of his parents were not accomplished without considerable form and fuss. Lord and Lady Proudflesh or Mr. and Mrs. Goldmore travelled all over Europe in their own carriage. It was planted bodily on the deck of the steamer, so that its privileged occupants could endure the torments of the crossing in dignified seclusion; and, when once the solid shore of the Continent was safely reached, it was drawn by an endless succession of post-horses, ridden by postillions, with the valet and maid (like those who pertained to Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock) "affectionate in the rumble." The inside of the carriage was a miracle of ingenuity. Space was economized with the most careful art, and all the appliances of travel—looking-glasses and luncheon-baskets, lamps and maps, newspapers and books—were bestowed in their peculiar and appropriate corners. I possess a "dining equipage" which made the tour of Europe not once but often in the service of a Diplomatist. It is shaped something like a large egg, and covered with shagreen. It contains a tumbler, a sandwich-box, and a silver-handled knife, fork, and spoon; the handle of each of these tools unscrews, and in their hollow interiors the Diplomatist carried his salt, sugar, and pepper. On the roof of the carriage was the more substantial luggage. A travelling-bath, though not unknown, was rather an exceptional luxury, and, according to our modern notions, it was painfully small. A silver tub which sufficed for the ablutions of the great Duke of Marlborough through the campaigns which changed the face of Europe now serves as a rose-bowl at the banquets of Spencer House.

The trunks, which were strapped to the roof of the travelling-carriage, were of a peculiar form—very shallow, and so shaped as to fit into one another and occupy every inch of space. These were called Imperials, and just now I referred to Tom Hughes's undeserved strictures on them. The passage fits neatly into our present subject: "I love vagabonds, only I prefer poor to rich ones. Couriers and ladies' maids, imperials and travelling-carriages, are an abomination unto me—I cannot away with them." To me, on the contrary, the very word "Imperial" (when divested of political associations) is pleasant. It appeals to the historic sense. It carries us back to Napoleon's campaigns, and to that wonderful house on wheels—his travelling-carriage—now enshrined at Madame Tussaud's. It even titillates the gastronomic instinct by recalling that masterly method of cooking a fowl which bears the name of Marengo. The great Napoleon had no notion of fighting his battles on an empty stomach, so, wherever he was, a portable kitchen, in the shape of a travelling-carriage, was close at hand. The cook and his marmitons travelled inside, with the appliances for making a charcoal fire at a moment's notice, while the Imperials on the roof contained the due supply of chickens, eggs, bread, and Bordeaux. In the preparation of a meal under such conditions time was money—nay, rather, it was Empire. The highest honours were bestowed on the most expeditious method, and the method called after Marengo took exactly twenty minutes.

Here is testimony much more recent. Lady Dorothy Nevill, in the volume of "Reminiscences" which she has lately given to the world, thus describes her youthful journeys between her London and her Norfolk homes: "It took us two long days to get to Wolterton, and the cost must have been considerable. We went in the family coach with four post-horses, whilst two 'fourgons' conveyed the luggage." But travelling abroad was a still more majestic ceremonial: "We were a large party—six of ourselves, as well as two maids, a footman, and French cook; nor must I forget a wonderful courier, covered with gold and braid. He preceded our cavalcade and announced the imminent arrival of a great English Milord and his suite. We had two fourgons to hold the batterie de cuisine and our six beds, which had to be unpacked and made up every night. We had, besides the family coach and a barouche, six saddle horses, and two attendant grooms."

Travel in those brave days of old was a dignified, a leisurely, and a comfortable process. How different is Travel in these degenerate times! For the young man rejoicing in his strength it means, as Tom Hughes said forty years ago, "getting over a couple of thousand miles for three-pound-ten; going round Ireland, with a return ticket, in a fortnight; dropping your copy of Tennyson on the top of a Swiss mountain, or pulling down the Danube in an Oxford racing-boat." For those who have reached maturer years it may mean a couple of nights in Paris, just to see the first performance of a new play and to test the merits of the latest restaurant, or it may mean a week in New York to study the bearings of the Presidential election and to gather fresh views of the Silver Question. Dr. Lunn kindly invites the more seriously minded to a Conference at Grindelwald, where we can combine the delights of Alpine scenery and undenominational religion; and "the son of a well-known member of the House of Lords" offers to conduct us personally through "A Lion and Rhinoceros Hunting Party in Somaliland," or "A Scientific Expedition to Central Africa, to visit the supposed cradle of the human race and the site of the Garden of Eden." Nothing of Travelling-carriages and Imperials here! No "maid and valet affectionate in the rumble." All the pomp and circumstance, all the ease and calm, of Travel have vanished, and with them all sense of independence and responsibility. The modern traveller is shot like a bullet through a tunnel, or hauled like a parcel up a hill. He certainly sees the world at very little cost, but he sees it under wonderfully uncomfortable conditions.