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A TRAVELERAT FORTY
A TRAVELERAT FORTY
A TRAVELER AT FORTY BY THEODORE DREISER Author of “Sister Carrie,” “Jennie Gerhardt,” “The Financier,” etc., etc. ILLUSTRATED BY W. GLACKENS NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1913 Copyright, 1913, by The Century Co. Published, November, 1913 TO “BARFLEUR” Copyright, 1913, by The Century Co. Published, November, 1913 TO “BARFLEUR”...
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CHAPTER I BARFLEUR TAKES ME IN HAND
CHAPTER I BARFLEUR TAKES ME IN HAND
I have just turned forty. I have seen a little something of life. I have been a newspaper man, editor, magazine contributor, author and, before these things, several odd kinds of clerk before I found out what I could do. Eleven years ago I wrote my first novel, which was issued by a New York publisher and suppressed by him, Heaven knows why. For, the same year they suppressed my book because of its alleged immoral tendencies, they published Zola’s “Fecundity” and “An Englishwoman’s Love Letters.
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CHAPTER II MISS X.
CHAPTER II MISS X.
It was ten o’clock the next morning when I arose and looked at my watch. I thought it might be eight-thirty, or seven. The day was slightly gray with spray flying. There was a strong wind. The sea was really a boisterous thing, thrashing and heaving in hills and hollows. I was thinking of Kipling’s “White Horses” for a while. There were several things about this great ship which were unique. It was a beautiful thing all told—its long cherry-wood, paneled halls in the first-class section, its hea
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CHAPTER III AT FISHGUARD
CHAPTER III AT FISHGUARD
While I was lying in my berth the fifth morning, I heard the room steward outside my door tell some one that he thought we reached Fishguard at one-thirty. I packed my trunks, thinking of this big ship and the fact that my trip was over and that never again could I cross the Atlantic for the first time. A queer world this. We can only do any one thing significantly once. I remember when I first went to Chicago, I remember when I first went to St. Louis, I remember when I first went to New York.
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CHAPTER IV SERVANTS AND POLITENESS
CHAPTER IV SERVANTS AND POLITENESS
Right here I propose to interpolate my second dissertation on the servant question and I can safely promise, I am sure, that it will not be the last. One night, not long before, in dining with a certain Baron N. and Barfleur at the Ritz in New York this matter of the American servant came up in a conversational way. Baron N. was a young exquisite of Berlin and other European capitals. He was one of Barfleur’s idle fancies. Because we were talking about America in general I asked them both what,
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CHAPTER V THE RIDE TO LONDON
CHAPTER V THE RIDE TO LONDON
At last the train was started and we were off. The track was not so wide, if I am not mistaken, as ours, and the little freight or goods cars were positively ridiculous—mere wheelbarrows, by comparison with the American type. As for the passenger cars, when I came to examine them, they reminded me of some of our fine street cars that run from, say Schenectady to Gloversville, or from Muncie to Marion, Indiana. They were the first-class cars, too—the English Pullmans! The train started out briskl
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CHAPTER VI THE BARFLEUR FAMILY
CHAPTER VI THE BARFLEUR FAMILY
I am writing these notes on Tuesday, November twenty-eighth, very close to a grate fire in a pretty little sitting-room in an English country house about twenty-five miles from London, and I am very chilly. We reached this place by some winding road, inscrutable in the night, and I wondered keenly what sort of an atmosphere it would have. The English suburban or country home of the better class has always been a concrete thought to me—rather charming on the whole. A carriage brought us, with all
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CHAPTER VII A GLIMPSE OF LONDON
CHAPTER VII A GLIMPSE OF LONDON
After a few days I went to London for the first time—I do not count the night of my arrival, for I saw nothing but the railway terminus—and, I confess, I was not impressed as much as I might have been. I could not help thinking on this first morning, as we passed from Paddington, via Hyde Park, Marble Arch, Park Lane, Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, Berkeley Square, Piccadilly and other streets to Regent Street and the neighborhood of the Carlton Hotel, that it was beautiful, spacious, cleanly,
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CHAPTER VIII A LONDON DRAWING-ROOM
CHAPTER VIII A LONDON DRAWING-ROOM
I recall the next day, Sunday, with as much interest as any date, for on that day at one-thirty I encountered my first London drawing-room. I recall now as a part of this fortunate adventure that we had been talking of a new development in French art, which Barfleur approved in part and disapproved in part—the Post-Impressionists; and there was mention also of the Cubists—a still more radical departure from conventional forms, in which, if my impressions are correct, the artist passes from any a
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CHAPTER IX CALLS
CHAPTER IX CALLS
It was one evening shortly after I had lunched with Mrs. W. that Barfleur and I dined with Miss E., the young actress who had come over on the steamer with us. It was interesting to find her in her own rather smart London quarters surrounded by maid and cook, and with male figures of the usual ornamental sort in the immediate background. One of them was a ruddy, handsome, slightly corpulent French count of manners the pink of perfection. He looked for all the world like the French counts introdu
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CHAPTER X SOME MORE ABOUT LONDON
CHAPTER X SOME MORE ABOUT LONDON
“London sings in my ears.” I remember writing this somewhere about the fourth or fifth day of my stay. It was delicious, the sense of novelty and wonder it gave me. I am one of those who have been raised on Dickens and Thackeray and Lamb, but I must confess I found little to corroborate the world of vague impressions I had formed. Novels are a mere expression of temperament anyhow. New York and America are all so new, so lustful of change. Here, in these streets, when you walk out of a morning o
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CHAPTER XI THE THAMES
CHAPTER XI THE THAMES
As pleasing hours as any that I spent in London were connected with the Thames—a murky little stream above London Bridge, compared with such vast bodies as the Hudson and the Mississippi, but utterly delightful. I saw it on several occasions,—once in a driving rain off London Bridge, where twenty thousand vehicles were passing in the hour, it was said; once afterward at night when the boats below were faint, wind-driven lights and the crowd on the bridge black shadows. I followed it in the rain
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CHAPTER XII MARLOWE
CHAPTER XII MARLOWE
After I had been at Bridgely Level four or five days Barfleur suggested that I visit Marlowe, which was quite near by on the Thames, a place which he said fairly represented the typical small country town of the old school. “You will see there something which is not so generally common now in England as it was—a type of life which is changing greatly, I think; and perhaps you had better see that now before you see much more.” I promised to go and Barfleur gave positive instructions as to how thi
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CHAPTER XIII LILLY: A GIRL OF THE STREETS
CHAPTER XIII LILLY: A GIRL OF THE STREETS
I stood one evening in Piccadilly, at the dinner hour, staring into the bright shop windows. London’s display of haberdashery and gold and silver ornaments interests me intensely. It was drizzling and I had no umbrella; yet that situation soon ceases to annoy one in England. I walked on into Regent Street and stopped under an arc light to watch the home-surging crowds—the clerks, men and women, the boys and girls. The thought was with me as I walked in the rain, “Where shall I dine? How shall I
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CHAPTER XIV LONDON; THE EAST END
CHAPTER XIV LONDON; THE EAST END
As interesting as any days that I spent in London were two in the East End, though I am sorry to add more drabby details to those just narrated. All my life I had heard of this particular section as grim, doleful, a center and sea of depraved and depressed life. “Nothing like the East End of London,” I have heard people say, and before I left I expected to look over it, of course. My desire to do so was whetted by a conversation I had with the poet, John Masefield, who, if I remember rightly, ha
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CHAPTER XV ENTER SIR SCORP
CHAPTER XV ENTER SIR SCORP
During all my stay at Bridgely Level I had been hearing more or less—an occasional remark—of a certain Sir Scorp, an Irish knight and art critic, a gentleman who had some of the finest Manets in the world. He had given Dublin its only significant collection of modern pictures—in fact, Ireland should be substituted for Dublin, and for this he was knighted. He was the art representative of some great museum in South Africa—at Johannesburg, I think,—and he was generally looked upon as an authority
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CHAPTER XVI A CHRISTMAS CALL
CHAPTER XVI A CHRISTMAS CALL
The Christmas holidays were drawing near and Barfleur was making due preparations for the celebration of that event. He was a stickler for the proper observance of those things which have national significance and national or international feeling behind them. Whatever joy he might get out of such things, much or little, I am convinced that he was much more concerned lest some one should fail of an appropriate share of happiness than he was about anything else. I liked that in Barfleur. It touch
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CHAPTER XVII SMOKY ENGLAND
CHAPTER XVII SMOKY ENGLAND
For years before going to England I had been interested in the north of England—the land, as I was accustomed to think, of the under dog. England, if one could trust one’s impression from a distance, was a land of great social contrasts—the ultimate high and the ultimate low of poverty and wealth. In the north, as I understand it, were all of the great manufacturing centers—Sheffield, Leeds, Nottingham, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester—a whole welter of smoky cities whence issue tons upon tons
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CHAPTER XVIII SMOKY ENGLAND (continued)
CHAPTER XVIII SMOKY ENGLAND (continued)
At Middleton the mills are majestically large and the cottages relatively minute. There is a famous old inn here, very picturesque to look upon, and Somebody of Something’s comfortable manor, but they were not the point for me. In one of its old streets, in the dark doorway of an old house, I encountered an old woman, very heavy, very pale, very weary, who stood leaning against the door post. “What do you burn here, gas or oil?” I asked, interested to obtain information on almost any topic and s
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CHAPTER XIX CANTERBURY
CHAPTER XIX CANTERBURY
It was not so long after this that I journeyed southward. My plan was to leave London two days ahead of Barfleur, visit Canterbury and Dover, and meet with him there to travel to Paris together, and the Riviera. From the Riviera I was to go on to Rome and he was to return to England. Among other pleasant social duties I paid a farewell visit to Sir Scorp, who shall appear often hereafter in these pages. During the Christmas holidays at Barfleur’s I had become well acquainted with this Irish knig
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CHAPTER XX EN ROUTE TO PARIS
CHAPTER XX EN ROUTE TO PARIS
One of the things which dawned upon me in moving about England, and particularly as I was leaving it, was the reason for the inestimable charm of Dickens. I do not know that anywhere in London or England I encountered any characters which spoke very forcefully of those he described. It is probable that they were all somewhat exaggerated. But of the charm of his setting there can be no doubt. He appeared at a time when the old order was giving way, and the new—the new as we have known it in the l
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CHAPTER XXI PARIS!
CHAPTER XXI PARIS!
There is something about the French nation which, in spite of its dreary-looking cities, exhibits an air of metropolitan up-to-dateness. I don’t know where outside of America you will find the snap and intensity of emotion, ambition, and romance which you find everywhere in French streets. The station, when we returned to it, was alive with a crowd of bustling, hurrying people, buying books and papers at news-stands, looking after their luggage in the baggage-room, and chattering to the ticket-s
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CHAPTER XXII A MORNING IN PARIS
CHAPTER XXII A MORNING IN PARIS
I shall never forget my first morning in Paris—the morning that I woke up after about two hours’ sleep or less, prepared to put in a hard day at sight-seeing because Barfleur had a program which must be adhered to, and because he could only be with me until Monday, when he had to return. It was a bright day, fortunately, a little hazy and chill, but agreeable. I looked out of the window of my very comfortable room on the fifth floor which gave out on a balcony overhanging the Rue St. Honoré, and
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CHAPTER XXIII THREE GUIDES
CHAPTER XXIII THREE GUIDES
It was only by intuition, and by asking many questions, that at times I could extract the significance of certain places from Barfleur as quickly as I wished. He was always reticent or a little cryptic in his allusions. In this instance I gathered rapidly however that this bar was a very extraordinary little restaurant presided over by a woman of a most pleasant and practical type. She could not have been much over forty—buxom, good-looking, self-reliant, efficient. She moved about the two rooms
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CHAPTER XXIV “THE POISON FLOWER”
CHAPTER XXIV “THE POISON FLOWER”
It was after this night that Barfleur took his departure for London for two weeks, where business affairs were calling him during which time I was to make myself as idle and gay as I might alone or with the individuals to whom he had introduced me or to whom I had introductions direct. There was so much that I wished to see and that he did not care to see over again with me, having seen it all before—the Musée de Cluny, for instance, the Louvre, the Luxembourg and so on. The next afternoon after
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CHAPTER XXV MONTE CARLO
CHAPTER XXV MONTE CARLO
All my life before going abroad I had been filled with a curiosity as to the character of the Riviera and Monte Carlo. I had never quite understood that Nice, Cannes, Mentone, San Remo in Italy and Monte Carlo were all in the same vicinity—a stone’s throw apart, as it were; and that this world is as distinct from the spirit of the north of France as the south of England is from the north of England. As Barfleur explained it, we went due south from Paris to Marseilles and then east along the coas
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CHAPTER XXVI THE LURE OF GOLD!
CHAPTER XXVI THE LURE OF GOLD!
Before I go a step further in this narrative I must really animadvert to the subject of restaurants and the haute cuisine of France generally, for in this matter Barfleur was as keen as the greatest connoisseurs are in the matter of pictures. He loved and remembered the quality of dishes and the method of their preparation and the character of the men who prepared them and the atmosphere in which they were prepared and in fact everything which relates to the culinary and gastronomic arts and the
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CHAPTER XXVII WE GO TO EZE
CHAPTER XXVII WE GO TO EZE
The charms of Monte Carlo are many. Our first morning there, to the sound of a horn blowing reveille in the distance, I was up betimes enjoying the wonderful spectacles from my balcony. The sun was just peeping up over the surface of an indigo sea, shooting sharp golden glances in every direction. Up on the mountains, which rise sharp and clear like great unornamented cathedrals back of the jeweled villages of this coast, it was picking out shepherd’s hut and fallen mementoes of the glory that w
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CHAPTER XXVIII NICE
CHAPTER XXVIII NICE
Not having as yet been in the Cirque privé at Monte Carlo, I was perhaps unduly impressed by the splendor of the rooms devoted to gambling in this amazingly large casino. There were eight hundred or a thousand people all in evening clothes, who had paid a heavy price for the mere privilege of entering, and were now gathered about handsome green-covered mahogany tables under glittering and ornate electroliers, playing a variety of carefully devised gambling games with a fervor that at times makes
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CHAPTER XXIX A FIRST GLIMPSE OF ITALY
CHAPTER XXIX A FIRST GLIMPSE OF ITALY
My days in Monte Carlo after this were only four, exactly. In spite of my solemn resolutions of the morning the spirit of this gem-like world got into my bones by three o’clock; and at four, when we were having tea at the Riviera Palace Hotel high above the Casino, I was satisfied that I should like to stay here for months. Barfleur, as usual, was full of plans for enjoyment; and he insisted that I had not half exhausted the charms of the place. We should go to some old monastery at Laghet where
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CHAPTER XXX A STOP AT PISA
CHAPTER XXX A STOP AT PISA
Baedeker says that Pisa has a population of twenty-seven thousand two hundred people and that it is a quiet town. It is. I caught the spell of a score of places like this as I walked out into the open square facing the depot. The most amazing botch of a monument I ever saw in my life I saw here—a puffing, swelling, strutting representation of Umberto I, legs apart, whiskers rampant, an amazing cockade, all the details of a gaudy uniform, a breast like a pouter-pigeon—outrageous! It was about twe
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CHAPTER XXXI FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ROME
CHAPTER XXXI FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ROME
As we approached Rome in the darkness I was on the qui vive for my first glimpse of it; and impatient with wonder as to what the morning would reveal. I was bound for the Hotel Continental—the abode, for the winter at least, of Barfleur’s mother, the widow of an Oxford don. I expected to encounter a severe and conservative lady of great erudition who would eye the foibles of Paris and Monte Carlo with severity. “My mother,” Barfleur said, “is a very conservative person. She is greatly concerned
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CHAPTER XXXII MRS. Q. AND THE BORGIA FAMILY
CHAPTER XXXII MRS. Q. AND THE BORGIA FAMILY
“I am going to introduce you to such a nice woman,” Mrs. Barfleur told me the second morning I was in Rome, in her very enthusiastic way. “She is charming. I am sure you will like her. She comes from America somewhere—New York, I think. Her husband is an author, I believe. I heard so.” She chattered on in her genial, talk-making way. “I don’t understand these American women; they go traveling about Europe without their husbands in such a strange way. Now, you know in England we would not think o
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CHAPTER XXXIII THE ART OF SIGNOR TANNI
CHAPTER XXXIII THE ART OF SIGNOR TANNI
The first Sunday I was in Rome I began my local career with a visit to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, that faces the Via Cavour not far from the Continental Hotel where I was stopping, and afterwards San Prassede close beside it. After Canterbury, Amiens, Pisa and St. Peter’s, I confess churches needed to be of great distinction to interest me much; but this church, not so divinely harmonious, exteriorly speaking, left me breathless with its incrustations of marbles, bronzes, carvings, and
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CHAPTER XXXIV AN AUDIENCE AT THE VATICAN
CHAPTER XXXIV AN AUDIENCE AT THE VATICAN
The remainder of my days in Rome were only three or four. I had seen much of it that has been in no way indicated here. True to my promise I had looked up at his hotel my traveling acquaintance, the able and distinguished Mr. H., and had walked about some of the older sections of the city hearing him translate Greek and Latin inscriptions of ancient date with the ease with which I put my ordinary thought into English. Together we visited the Farnese Palace, the Mamertine Prison, the Temple of Ve
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CHAPTER XXXV THE CITY OF ST. FRANCIS
CHAPTER XXXV THE CITY OF ST. FRANCIS
The Italian hill-cities are such a strange novelty to the American of the Middle West—used only to the flat reaches of the prairie, and the city or town gathered primarily about the railway-station. One sees a whole series of them ranged along the eastern ridge of the Apennines as one travels northward from Rome. All the way up this valley I had been noting examples on either hand but when I got off the train at Assisi I saw what appeared to be a great fortress on a distant hill—the sheer walls
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CHAPTER XXXVI PERUGIA
CHAPTER XXXVI PERUGIA
We returned at between seven and eight that night. After a bath I sat out on the large balcony, or veranda, commanding the valley, and enjoyed the moonlight. The burnished surface of the olive trees, and brown fields already being plowed with white oxen and wooden shares, gave back a soft glow that was somehow like the patina on bronze. There was a faint odor of flowers in the wind and here and there lights gleaming. From some street in the town I heard singing and the sound of a mandolin. I sle
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CHAPTER XXXVII THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE
CHAPTER XXXVII THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE
With all the treasures of my historic reading in mind from the lives of the Medici and Savonarola to that of Michelangelo and the Florentine school of artists, I was keen to see what Florence would be like. Mrs. Q. had described it as the most individual of all the Italian cities that she had seen. She had raved over its narrow, dark, cornice-shaded streets, its fortress-like palaces, its highly individual churches and cloisters, the way the drivers of the little open vehicles plied everywhere c
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CHAPTER XXXVIII A NIGHT RAMBLE IN FLORENCE
CHAPTER XXXVIII A NIGHT RAMBLE IN FLORENCE
Whatever the medieval atmosphere of Florence may have been, and when I was there the exterior appearance of the central heart was obviously somewhat akin to its fourteenth- and fifteenth-century predecessor, to-day its prevailing spirit is thoroughly modern. If you walk in the Piazza della Signoria or the Piazza del Duomo or the Via dei Calzaioli, the principal thoroughfare, you will encounter most of the ancient landmarks—a goodly number of them, but they will look out of place, as in the case
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CHAPTER XXXIX FLORENCE OF TO-DAY
CHAPTER XXXIX FLORENCE OF TO-DAY
It was while I was in Florence that a light was thrown on an industry of which I had previously known little and which impressed me much. Brooding over the almost endless treasures of the city, I ambled into the Strozzi Palace one afternoon, that perfect example of Florentine palatial architecture, then occupied by an exposition of objects of art, reproductions and originals purporting to be the work of an association of Italian artists. After I had seen, cursorily, most of the treasures in the
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CHAPTER XL MARIA BASTIDA
CHAPTER XL MARIA BASTIDA
In studying out my itinerary at Florence I came upon the homely advice in Baedeker that in Venice “care should be taken in embarking and disembarking, especially when the tide is low, exposing the slimy lower steps.” That, as much as anything I had ever read, visualized this wonder city to me. These Italian cities, not being large, end so quickly that before you can say Jack Robinson you are out of them and away, far into the country. It was early evening as we pulled out of Florence; and for a
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CHAPTER XLI VENICE
CHAPTER XLI VENICE
Aside from the cathedral of St. Mark’s, the Doge’s Palace and the Academy or Venetian gallery of old masters, I could find little of artistic significance in Venice—little aside from the wonderful spectacle of the city as a whole. As a spectacle, viewed across the open space of water, known as the Lagoon, the churches of San Giorgio Maggiore and Santa Maria della Salute with their domes and campaniles strangely transfigured by light and air, are beautiful. Close at hand, for me, they lost much r
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CHAPTER XLII LUCERNE
CHAPTER XLII LUCERNE
I entered Switzerland at Chiasso, a little way from Lake Como in Italy, and left it at Basle near the German frontier, and all I saw was mountains—mountains—mountains—some capped with snow and some without, tall, sharp, craggy peaks, and rough, sharp declivities, with here and there a patch of grass, here and there a deep valley, here and there a lonely, wide-roofed, slab-built house with those immense projecting eaves first made familiar to me by the shabby adaptations which constitute our “L”
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CHAPTER XLIII ENTERING GERMANY
CHAPTER XLIII ENTERING GERMANY
If a preliminary glance at Switzerland suggested to me a high individuality, primarily Teutonic but secondarily national and distinctive, all I saw afterwards in Germany and Holland with which I contrasted it, confirmed my first impression. I believe that the Swiss, for all that they speak the German language and have an architecture that certainly has much in common with that of medieval Germany, are yet of markedly diverging character. They struck me in the main as colder, more taciturn, more
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CHAPTER XLIV A MEDIEVAL TOWN
CHAPTER XLIV A MEDIEVAL TOWN
After Italy and Switzerland the scenery of the Rhine seemed very mild and unpretentious to me, yet it was very beautiful. The Hudson from Albany to New York is far more imposing. A score of American rivers such as the Penobscot, the New in West Virginia, the James above Lynchburg, the Rio Grande, and others would make the Rhine seem simple by comparison; yet it has an individuality so distinct that it is unforgetable. I always marvel over this thing—personality. Nothing under the sun explains it
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CHAPTER XLV MY FATHER’S BIRTHPLACE
CHAPTER XLV MY FATHER’S BIRTHPLACE
It was quite dark when I finally came across a sort of tap-room “restaurant” whose quaint atmosphere charmed me. The usual pewter plates and tankards adorned the dull red and brown walls. A line of leather-covered seats followed the walls, in front of which were ranged long tables. My arrival here with a quiet request for food put a sort of panic into the breast of my small but stout host, who, when I came in, was playing checkers with another middle-aged Mayener, but who, when I asked for food,
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CHAPTER XLVI THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT
CHAPTER XLVI THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT
Before leaving Frankfort I hurried to Cook’s office to look after my mail. I found awaiting me a special delivery letter from a friend of Barfleur’s, a certain famous pianist, Madame A., whom I had met in London. She had told me then that she was giving a recital at Munich and Leipzig and that she was coming to Frankfort about this very time. She was scheduled to play on Wednesday, and this was Monday. She was anxious to see me. There was a long account of the town outside Berlin where she resid
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CHAPTER XLVII BERLIN
CHAPTER XLVII BERLIN
Berlin, when I reached it, first manifested itself in a driving rain. If I laugh at it forever and ever as a blunder-headed, vainglorious, self-appreciative city I shall always love it too. Paris has had its day, and will no doubt have others; London is content with an endless, conservative day; Berlin’s is still to come and come brilliantly. The blood is there, and the hope, and the moody, lustful, Wagnerian temperament. But first, before I reached it, I suffered a strange mental revolt at bein
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CHAPTER XLVIII THE NIGHT-LIFE OF BERLIN
CHAPTER XLVIII THE NIGHT-LIFE OF BERLIN
During the first ten days I saw considerable of German night-life, in company with Herr A., a stalwart Prussian who went out of his way to be nice to me. I cannot say that, after Paris and Monte Carlo, I was greatly impressed, although all that I saw in Berlin had this advantage, that it bore sharply the imprint of German nationality. The cafés were not especially noteworthy. I do not know what I can say about any of them which will indicate their individuality. “Piccadilly” was a great evening
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CHAPTER XLIX ON THE WAY TO HOLLAND
CHAPTER XLIX ON THE WAY TO HOLLAND
I came near finding myself in serious straights financially on leaving Berlin; for, owing to an oversight, and the fact that I was lost in pleasant entertainment up to quite the parting hour, on examining my cash in hand I found I had only fifteen marks all told. This was Saturday night and my train was leaving in just thirty minutes. My taxi fare would be two marks. I had my ticket, but excess baggage!—I saw that looming up largely. It could mean anything in Europe—ten, twenty, thirty marks. “G
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CHAPTER L AMSTERDAM
CHAPTER L AMSTERDAM
Amsterdam I should certainly include among my cities of light and charm, a place to live in. Not that it has, in my judgment, any of that capital significance of Paris or Rome or Venice. Though greater by a hundred thousand in population than Frankfort, it has not even the forceful commercial texture of that place. The spirit of the city seemed so much more unbusinesslike,—so much slower and easier-going. Before I sent forth a single letter of introduction I spent an entire day idling about its
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CHAPTER LI “SPOTLESS TOWN”
CHAPTER LI “SPOTLESS TOWN”
At three o’clock I left these pleasant people to visit the Ryks Museum and the next morning ran over to Haarlem, a half-hour away, to look at the Frans Hals in the Stadhuis. Haarlem was the city, I remember with pleasure, that once suffered the amazing tulip craze that swept over Holland in the sixteenth century—the city in which single rare tulips, like single rare carnations to-day, commanded enormous sums of money. Rare species, because of the value of the subsequent bulb sale, sold for hundr
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CHAPTER LII PARIS AGAIN
CHAPTER LII PARIS AGAIN
Once I was in Paris again. It was delightful, for now it was spring, or nearly so, and the weather was pleasant. People were pouring into the city in droves from all over the world. It was nearly midnight when I arrived. My trunk, which I had sent on ahead, was somewhere in the limbo of advance trunks and I had a hard time getting it. Parisian porters and depot attendants know exactly when to lose all understanding of English and all knowledge of the sign language. It is when the search for anyt
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CHAPTER LIII THE VOYAGE HOME
CHAPTER LIII THE VOYAGE HOME
The following Wednesday Barfleur and I returned to London via Calais and Dover. We had been, between whiles, to the races at Longchamps, luncheons at Au Père Boivin, the Pré Catalan, and elsewhere. I had finally looked up Marcelle, but the concierge explained that she was out of town. In spite of the utter fascination of Paris I was not at all sorry to leave, for I felt that to be happy here one would want a more definite social life and a more fixed habitation than this hotel and the small circ
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