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By-gone Tourist Days Letters of Travel
By-gone Tourist Days Letters of Travel
By LAURA G. COLLINS Author of “Immortelles and Asphodels” ILLUSTRATED “I consider letters the most vital part of literature” — Elizabeth Barrett Browning CINCINNATI THE ROBERT CLARKE COMPANY 1900 Copyright, 1899, By The Robert Clarke Company. INSCRIPTION. Respectfully inscribed to the dear friends to whom the letters were written, and by them preserved....
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LETTER FROM ENGLAND.
LETTER FROM ENGLAND.
W HERE to begin? That is the question. The ideas, thoughts, feelings, come, not in battalions, but like the hosts of Alexander, or our own, in “the late unpleasantness,” or like the bubbles in the foam on the crests of the waves “a moment here, then gone forever.” I am wishing for the arms of Briareus, with their hundred hands, to help catch and fix them on the page. Such a trip! The Atlantic was never known to exhibit such a peculiar turbulence of waves and water generally. The steamer Adriatic
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LETTER FROM LONDON.
LETTER FROM LONDON.
I AM still in this grandest city of the globe. Every day seems a fresh era in life, each hour ushers in new and more delightful experiences. I am confirmed in my opinion that this “little island,” but mighty kingdom of the earth, is to be more to me than all the rest, and that my plan to spend “the season” in London was the very best I could have had. Indeed that was the one feature of this trip entirely clear to me. For the rest, I had a general outline to make headquarters of each of the great
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FROM LONDON TO EDINBURGH.
FROM LONDON TO EDINBURGH.
W E left London on the morning of the 14th, after a seven weeks’ sojourn, and, I must say it, one of perfect delight and satisfaction. Old Londoners could not remember a more charming “season;” the weather called forth rapturous comments, the city was full of attractions, the best and at their best, a most fortunate conjunction; and “all the world” seemed peopling its palaces, crowding its hotels, thronging its temples of art and pleasure, and pushing its way through the packed streets, to enjoy
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EDINBURGH.
EDINBURGH.
W E spend our days as usual, “sight-seeing.” The first place we sought was Holyrood Palace. It is not palatial compared to Windsor, Hampton Court, and the situation is not a cheerful one—low, in a kind of a hollow. I can imagine it oppressively gloomy to a young girl of nineteen, just from gay and sunny Paris, and one of the ornaments of its brilliant court. In the picture gallery there is a lovely, full-length portrait of Mary; but there is a still lovelier picture of her at the castle. I saw h
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HEIDELBERG.
HEIDELBERG.
I N Heidelberg. Think of it! What an energetic idler I am grown! The Neckar lies a pistol-shot from my windows; high hills rise on the thither side, looking so home-like—Maysville home, like Mr. W.’s, where you came once upon a time. When my glance darts out the windows and rests upon them, suddenly I catch my breath, and I am not sure whether it is pain or pleasure I feel. Half way up they are cultivated, but the tops are wooded. Just over my head the old castle looms up among the trees. “The G
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HEIDELBERG.
HEIDELBERG.
I AM just home, this is “home” for the present, from a week’s delight at Nuremberg. “Delight,” how feeble that sounds. Enchantment, fascination, the absorption that makes one lovingly linger and loth to come away. It is the quaintest, most charming old city, I verily believe, that the sun shines on. From its streets, sometimes wider, sometimes narrower, but always crookeder, to its curious houses with their high-peaked gables and red-tiled roofs, with regular rows of such funny hooded windows le
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BADEN-BADEN.
BADEN-BADEN.
A S a reward for your reformation I write to you on this precious sheet. You see I have come to be wonderfully attached to Heidelberg, the beautiful, the quaint, the historically poetic, learned and picturesque old town on the Neckar. It seems like another home. So I could not show my appreciation of you in a more complimentary way than by sending this little series of pictures. Have you ever been here, I wonder? You did not say, but you wrote as if you knew it by sight as well as by heart. As I
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FROM HEIDELBERG TO NUREMBERG.
FROM HEIDELBERG TO NUREMBERG.
J UST after I last wrote I left my companions to worry along over their “German lessons,” and ran away to Nuremberg. A very pleasant party was going there on the way to Vienna, and wished me to go along. Of all Germany, divided or united, Nuremberg was my objective point; for in addition to its special attraction as “the most perfect surviving specimen of mediaeval architecture in Europe,” it has a nearer interest to me in that it was the home of my father’s paternal ancestors, as far back as 15
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LETTER FROM MUNICH.
LETTER FROM MUNICH.
B ADEN was perfect in its way, and we left reluctantly. We “did” it quite thoroughly—had a six mile drive to the Old Schloss, a fine old ruin, on top of a high hill, with beautiful views of bergs, valleys, and the town. Then a visit to the New Schloss, one of the residences of the Grand Duke. We were shown through some noble apartments, which I’ll describe to you in detail when we meet. We went to the Trinkhalle and drank some of the streaming water. The others made faces, but I did not find it
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MÜNCHEN.
MÜNCHEN.
T HIS moment finished the second reading of yours of 22d. Ah! there are some things you don’t have any conception of; for instance, you don’t know how good it is to get a letter from home in a foreign land. I do. Oh! Oh! Oh! I came in from the opera, Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” in German, in a “rapt ecstasy,” and, in the act of seating myself at our “after the play little supper,” I saw your letter lying on my plate. I am intuitive; I knew it was from you. I picked it up and laid it down with the add
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MUNICH.
MUNICH.
S AY, how many copies have you of those foaming sheets you sent me from M—— for a letter? And to how many other addresses have they been sent? I am curious to know. They were never evoked by me—of that I am sure. Nor do I attribute their existence to the overwhelming influence of any other special feminine divinity; rather to one of those supreme intervals—his satanic majesty’s own—when You were alone; you were “in a state of mind;” you You summoned up “spirits of that vasty deep, red, white and
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MUNICH.
MUNICH.
Y OUR second Sunday letter just received and read “twice over.” You can’t realize the pleasure it gives me. No woman is material for a full-blooded Bohemian. Giving myself, as I am trying to do, wholly up to this life, few would believe what a homesick heart is nearly all the time beating beneath my vivacious words—a heart sick for the home broken up forever; for the dear ones that will meet me no more on any threshold this side the grave. Think how I must feel, reading your words about my lost
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MUNICH.
MUNICH.
“Y OU couldn’t do it again!” I never repeat myself. It would indeed lower my “crest of haught” to find such barrenness or stinginess of entertaining powers as that shows. “Madam, there be those more gifted who make a point of repetition; it is set quite above your contempt,” will you say? Do not I know that? I can quote you the prettiest kink in rhyme “o’ that side of the question.” Listen: And I could show you in the daintiest script where one “not all unknown to fame,” a latter-day writer of m
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MUNICH.
MUNICH.
J UST see what your last letter has done. You wished my “counterfeit presentment.” Here it is. Will you be pleased with it, I wonder? Had you called on Mrs. W——, as you should have done, you’d have seen a life-size crayon copy of “that same,” which Mrs. W—— had done in Washington. It is considered a superb picture and a perfect copy, which makes it a matter of inferior moment if it is no particular likeness. It was very well for Cromwell to insist, “Paint me as I am;” but for a woman, if the bea
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MUNICH.
MUNICH.
A LL the world has been at its busiest getting ready for Christmas, and the amount of knitting and embroidery is overwhelming. I pity eyes. Even the blind do the most wonderful knitting. I was at the Blind Asylum not long ago. There were drawers and drawers full of tidies, caps, stockings, drawers, etc. Some of their customs are rather startling just now. Sunday is never very different from other days, except in the church services. The shops are kept open till late in the afternoon. All the wor
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MUNICH.
MUNICH.
H ERE is your first letter in the new year. I have been giving you a rest. I did a little sum in arithmetic myself, and that addition of letters looked so formidable it drove me into sandwiching this interval. Has the experiment been satisfactory, do you ask? Only in proving to myself that I can be unselfish. I had a friend in Philadelphia once who had the scathingest tongue. He used to say: “All women like and seek more or less martyrdom.” Maybe and maybe. I know I said to myself: “He has to an
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MUNICH.
MUNICH.
I THINK I have written to you from this city before. Do you remember? Well, no need for alarm. I have no intention of treating you to a second dish of my raptures. Yours of September 8th came to hand some days ago. My promptness in reply is meant to point no moral. If people prefer being laggards, I have no objection; only I am not of that ilk, and must be taken in kind. You know I can’t tell a lie. I tried my best to fix up an innocent one—the kind that cheats oneself into thinking it not a lie
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PARIS.
PARIS.
W ELL, here I am at last in Paradise! I was a long time on the way, but I would not have back one moment. To paraphrase dear, simple-hearted, child-like Hans Christian Anderson, “My journey has been a lovely dream, happy, and full of incident.” I left Munich two weeks ago alone, for a twenty-four hours’ railway trip, in a mixture of foreign countries and a medley of foreign languages that would have swallowed me up in inextricable confusion, but for the wise precautions I had taken to fend it of
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PARIS.
PARIS.
O H, DEAR! I don’t know where to begin. It seems an age since I wrote; “in point of fact” it has been only—oh! I shan’t go into calculations and dates. Figures are such unmanageable little demons I cut them long ago. There is no such thing as getting round them. They are so fair and square and exact and relentless, I throw up my hands and give up without struggle when it comes to a contest with them. Let me see; I must make a beginning somewhere. Where did I leave off, I wonder? Does it matter?
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PARIS.
PARIS.
H ERE again, after six months’ absence—six months only! How to believe that! Why, I seem to have lived cycles and cycles; seem to be not one, just one small, insignificant I, but dozens and dozens of myself. Yes, even sometimes have an enormous delusion that the little nobody who went away suffered a not-sea, but an no, not-earth—What then? Ah! I have it: tourist change into something strange, grand, glorious (it must out), goddess-like! Was ever presumption so immense and so absurd? Well, I am
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PARIS.
PARIS.
You wrote the last day of the year and did not give me a wish for the New! Did you forget? Or do you think the custom puerile? I think I like it most heartily, even with its limitations, as are set forth in some simple lines I came across, and which you must read to make your conscience tender: I hardly think you deserve to know what kind of time I had. You should not, only I want to tell so much I can’t keep from it! I was invited to a friend’s Christmas Eve tree party. She has a lovely, cozy l
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PARIS.
PARIS.
H AVE been enjoying Paris to the last degree. Weather as near perfection as this sublunary sphere allows. “The season” in full blast. Opera, theater and concerts for ourselves, these and all kinds of social entertainments, balls, parties, dinners, etc., for those who belong here and are “to the manner born.” President Grevy gives jams and crushes; the remains of the aristocracy seem most given to the races , which occur almost daily somewhere in and around Paris; the ambassadors give their dinne
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PARIS.
PARIS.
W AS very glad to get your letter. It came several days ago, and I have been watching for that opportunity that never comes to those who have nothing to do to answer it. You know my trick of promptness. I never feel quite comfortable with the consciousness of a duty awaiting its performance. Consciousness or force of habit—which? N’importe ; the result is the same. And any way, are they not interchangeable? Yes, I am again a wandering star; or, if you will not let me go up into the empyrean, a g
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PARIS.
PARIS.
M Y return will be delayed a few weeks longer. It was a trial to feel I must submit to this at first, but since these dreadful storms have been raging on the ocean and coasts I have become reconciled. I have had my share of “old ocean’s buffetings.” I am here en route for home. Miss B—— came from Sweden to Berlin and remained there a week. She had never been there before. Then she came here, to join the lady with whom she had crossed and was to recross. On reaching here, our program had to be ch
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PARIS.
PARIS.
Y OURS of the 23d February came last night. I had spent the evening out. It was pleasant, indeed, to find letters and papers on my table awaiting me. Sorry I disappointed you about the Jerusalem trip. “It was not my fault,” you may be sure. That is one of the drawbacks of traveling in a party. The composing members are much given to pulling different ways and not making any sacrifice of individual preferences. This friction is trying, but the “kindly race of men” (Heaven save the mark!) is grega
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PARIS.
PARIS.
H ERE I am still. You will doubtless be surprised. I am. Day after to-morrow will be a birthday anniversary, and everybody has found it out! Ugh! Think what a nightmare the prospect of that tell-tale cake, with its little wax tapers to the number of my years! You don’t know about the cake. My dear good landlady will observe the birthdays of her guests with a grand dinner. This cake is the “grand pièce de résistance,” borne into the room and making the circuit of the table with its little tapers,
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PARIS.
PARIS.
A H! you good friend, both the letter and the book have come. If either had come by itself, I would have thanked you most for it; but as they came together, I—I thank you most for—both. How could I do less? “Fifty-two, did you say it was?” No, I did not say. I never meddle with figures. If I do, I am sure to get the worst of it. I do not like to get worsted. Do you? As for a woman’s telling her age, who expects it? The silly! As a matter of fact, I can say, in a general way, I am old enough, tho
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VENICE.
VENICE.
Y OURS of May 17th “just to hand.” Date of your previous one, April 23d—I mean its receipt. This is what I call a most unreasonable space to let slip between. So you see, if the letters come oftener, I complain (being conscience-stricken, thinking I am imposing on your good-nature), and if they lag a little, I complain of that. If you can, match me with a more telling illustration of the impossibility of satisfying a woman! I am writing with some qualms, I can tell you. You did not ask me to wri
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LUCERNE.
LUCERNE.
S ATURDAY, at Zurich, yours of June 26th “came to hand.” Here in the filtered waters of glacier torrents, I drink to the letters that are never written! Now for your response. Let it be brilliant as the dewdrops of early morning, alluring as was to our childhood that trip to find the end of the rainbow with its reward of a bag of gold, satisfying as his day to Longfellow’s “Blacksmith.” “Something attempted, something done.” Be sure it be of many simples “composed in all parts to perfection.” Se
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VIENNA.
VIENNA.
I SHALL make a beginning, but have no idea when I shall reach the finis. But I thank you beforehand not to say, “and the longest yet,” if it should be. All equipped and waiting for the opera hour in Vienna; a pale sunlight dropping from “a lambent sky;” windows wide open, an easy enough picture to make to the mind’s eye, if you are so “minded.” The opera hour is 6 o’clock. Isn’t that primitive for the “second Paris,” as this metropolis is fondly called by many? It strikes me it is absurdly so an
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SIENA.
SIENA.
F EBRUARY 22d, we took the train for Nice, via Lyons and Marseilles. Spent the first night at the former and remained long enough next morning for a drive that took in the best part of the busy, populous, prosperous city. It is ever so much larger than I was thinking of, and its situation is one of extreme beauty. It is situated at the confluence of the Rhone and the Saone. Those lovely rivers wind picturesquely through it, spanned by handsome bridges—the Rhone by eight and the Saone by thirteen
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ROME.
ROME.
I LEFT Paris four weeks ago this morning. I cannot for the life of me remember if I have written to you in that time. Seems to me, though, I wrote from Siena. Anyhow, I will make that my starting point. From there we—the lady who is traveling with me is an Ohioan from G—— originally, and the sister of H. H. B——, the historian of the tribes of the Pacific coast—went to Naples via here. We spent a night and a day driving about in the brilliant sunshine, seeing many points of interest by way of pre
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ROME.
ROME.
W E spent a day at Amalfi. From La Cava, a pretty town in an extensive vale shut in with the most picturesque chains of mountains, we took an open carriage for the three hours’ drive. It soon struck the seacoast and wound all the rest of the way around its headlands, doubling its promontories, retreating into its bays and inlets and dropping almost to the water’s edge, and presently mounting upward into almost Alpine heights. The headlands and cliffs were frequently broken into every imaginable
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ROME.
ROME.
Y OU see you did right about the address, sending the letter to care of Paris banker. I have it, and it came “on time,” good time, not loitering by the way or flying off at a tangent. The one point I object to is the soft rebuke to me for not having specified an address. I had given you all that I expected to. It is too much of a risk to change my address with the changes of place of such a vagrant. Now , stick to H. & Co., etc., till I write you to do otherwise. You will be a sharp, yes
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ROME.
ROME.
I N Rome still, but this is my last week. Were I to write many books, I could not get in the half of these wonder days in this queen city of the world. Yes, crowned so long ago, she still wears her royal diadem, and will wear it even as the old lines have it: I have made the rounds of the churches, that of the galleries and museums, that of the villas and palaces, and finally that of the—shops. Take notice, that of the studios, is omitted; not because it was not made, but because it was confined
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MAIORI.
MAIORI.
D O not trouble to tell me: I know I have been delinquent. But then that is not one of my “too many and too-tedious-to-make-mention of feelings.” So the one time can be blinked at. Especially if you remember the scripture injunction. If you are like me you never do unless you want to. Of course your letter came and I had my habitual “good intentions,” but well, to be honest, I am sure I do not know what became of them. I only realize that the days “shod with silver speech,” and muzzled with gold
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NAPLES.
NAPLES.
I THINK I told you Sicily was being talked of for our next objective point. Well, we had a beautiful drive to Salerno; from there by rail to Paestum, where I enjoyed the grand old temples for the second time, the others for the first time. We lunched in the temple of Neptune, and I gathered again the acanthus and wild flowers. The trip was charming, through a continuous garden with orchards and farm lands. At the temple, an incident occurred I do not like to recall. I was looking at some curios
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LAUTERBRUNNEN.
LAUTERBRUNNEN.
Y OURS of 15th received yesterday. May 17th was the date of receipt of your last previous favor. May 23d I mailed a reply from Florence. Yet you say you have had no letter for three months. What does this mean? I am “wrought up,” I can tell you; because that letter was the quintessence of myself. No use to go into details about it. You , who so adequately wreak me upon expression, “witty, wise, brilliant, great head and good heart”—dear me! were I the most egotistical instead of meek and lowly m
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ON THE NILE.
ON THE NILE.
Y OU will have to take jostle instead of penmanship; but I have a comforting conviction that will be preferred to nothing at all, especially as I am giving you my best. This is my third day’s steaming up the Nile. The most enthusiastic tourists consider this prosaic in the extreme, and that the dahabeah is the only method by which to take the Nile. As for me—is it my accumulating years, I wonder?—I am more than content to be prosaic. We are about 125 or 130 miles from Cairo. Such a strange, kale
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EGYPT (FROM PARIS).
EGYPT (FROM PARIS).
N OTHING like agreeable surprises, is there? I ought to be on the broad Atlantic, but am not. Let Miss B—— go without me several days ago. I am going to linger here for several weeks longer. There is the woman for you! I wonder if I can go back to where I left off. What did I tell you? I wish I could recall. But don’t you call my young naval officers “infernal.” I cannot allow that. If only you could have seen and known them, you would go down on your knees to take that back. You cannot even kno
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CUBA.
CUBA.
Y ES, I went to Cuba, and it was a ravishing experience. Not quite an Eden, but so near to being! There was not an American ( i. e. , a Yankee) of us all who did not fully believe it would be , once “Uncle Sam” held it in his sturdy grip. To the last man and woman and the best, we defiantly broke the commandment and coveted our neighbor’s possession with our whole hearts. It is the most unreal reality, the most dream-like substantiality, the most vision-like, sure-enough scrap of earth imaginabl
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A VISION OF FATIGUE.
A VISION OF FATIGUE.
W E were a party of nine or ten, making a summer of it. Put-in-Bay came first on the list of places to be visited. It was unusually crowded and brilliant that season. All the hotels were full. The weather was enchanting; the temperature exhilarating. Even the wines for which it was so celebrated were not more so. Day after day sped in a kind of intoxication till we felt we could bear it no longer, and to the last one of us voted to go home for a rest! That trip was one to be remembered. It was S
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