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31 chapters
INTRODUCTION.
INTRODUCTION.
WHEN I began the MS. of this book, it was with the intention of including it in the “Common Sense in the Household Series,” in which event it was to be entitled, “ Familiar Talks from Afar .” For reasons that seemed good to my publishers and to me, this purpose was not carried out, except as it has influenced the tone of the composition; given to each chapter the character of experiences remembered and recounted to a few friends by the fireside, rather than that of a sustained and formal narrati
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LOITERINGS IN PLEASANT PATHS. CHAPTER I. The Average Briton.
LOITERINGS IN PLEASANT PATHS. CHAPTER I. The Average Briton.
SUNDAY in London: For the first time since our arrival in the city we saw it under what passes in that latitude and language for sunshine. For ten days we had dwelt beneath a curtain of gray crape resting upon the chimney-tops, leaving the pavements dry to dustiness. “Gray crape” is poetical—rather—and sounds better than the truth, which is, that the drapery, without fold or shading, over-canopying us, was precisely in color like very dirty, unbleached muslin, a tint made fashionable within a ye
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CHAPTER II. Olla Podrida.
CHAPTER II. Olla Podrida.
IN one week we had been twice to Westminster Abbey, once to the Tower; had seen St. Paul’s, Hyde Park, Tussaud’s Wax Works, Mr. Spurgeon, the New Houses of Parliament, Billingsgate, the Monument, Hyde Park, the British Museum, and more palaces than I can or care to remember. In all this time we had not a ray of sunshine, but neither had a drop of rain fallen. We began to leave umbrellas at home, and to be less susceptible in spirits to the glooming of the dusky canopy upborne by the chimneys. Th
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CHAPTER III. Spurgeon and Cummings.
CHAPTER III. Spurgeon and Cummings.
MR. SPURGEON and his Tabernacle are “down” in guide-books among the lions of the metropolis. But, in engaging a carriage to take us to the Tabernacle on Sabbath morning, we had to clarify the perceptions of our very decent coachman by informing him that it was hard by the “Elephant and Castle.” Nothing stimulates the wit of the average Briton like the mention of an inn or ale-house, unless it be the gleam of the shilling he is to spend therein. In anticipation of a crowd, Caput had provided hims
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CHAPTER IV. The Two Elizabeths.
CHAPTER IV. The Two Elizabeths.
IF the English autumn be sad, and the English spring be sour, the smiling beauty of the English summer should expel the memory of gloom and acerbity from the mind of the tourist who is not afflicted with bronchitis. In England they make the ch very hard, and pronounce the i in the second syllable as in kite . They ought to know all about bronchitis, for it lurks in every whiff of east wind, and most of the vanes have rusted upon their pivots in their steadfast pointing to that quarter. The east
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CHAPTER V. Prince Guy.
CHAPTER V. Prince Guy.
LEAMINGTON is in, and of itself, the pleasantest and stupidest town in England. It is a good place in which to sleep and eat and leave the children when the older members of the party desire to make all-day excursions. It is pretty, quiet, healthy, with clean, broad “parades” and shaded parks wherein perambulators are safe from runaway horses and reckless driving. There are countless shops for the sale of expensive fancy articles, notably china and embroidery; more lodging-houses than private dw
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CHAPTER VI. Shakspeare and Irving.
CHAPTER VI. Shakspeare and Irving.
WE had “Queen’s weather” for most of our excursions in England, and no fairer day than that on which we went to Stratford-on-Avon. The denizens of the region give the first sound of a to the name of the quiet river—as in fate . I do not undertake to decide whether they, or we are correct. Their derelictions upon the H question are so flagrant as to breed distrust of all their inventions and practice in pronunciation. (Although we did learn to say “Tems”—very short—for “T’ames.”) I wish, for the
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CHAPTER VII. Kenilworth.
CHAPTER VII. Kenilworth.
WE never decided whether it was to our advantage or disappointment that we all re-read the novel of that name before visiting Kenilworth. It is certain that we came away saying bitterly uncharitable things of Oliver Cromwell, to whose command, and not to Time, is due the destruction of one of the finest castles in the realm. Caput, who, after the habit of amateur archæologists, never stirs without an imaginary surveyor’s chain in hand, had studied up the road and ruins in former visits, and acte
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CHAPTER VIII. Oxford.
CHAPTER VIII. Oxford.
IMPRIMIS! we put up at the Mitre Tavern in Oxford. Nota Bene: never to do it again. It is an interesting rookery to look at—and to leave. Stuffiness and extortion were words that borrowed new and pregnant meaning from our sojourn in what we were recommended to try, as “a chawming old place. Best of service and cookery, you know, thoroughly respectable and—ah—historic and arntique, and all that, you know!” Dux, who had noted down the recommendation, proposed at our departure, to add: “Mem.: Never
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CHAPTER IX. Sky-larks and Stoke-Pogis.
CHAPTER IX. Sky-larks and Stoke-Pogis.
THE only really hot weather we felt in the British Isles fell to our lot at Brighton. The fashionable world was “up in London.” The metropolis is always “up,” go where you will. “The season” takes in July, then everybody stays in the country until after Christmas, usually until April. Benighted Americans exclaim at the unreason of this arrangement, and are told—“It is customary.” “But you lose the glory of Spring and Summer; and muddy ( Anglicé , ‘dirty’) roads and wintry storms must be a seriou
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CHAPTER X. Our English Cousins.
CHAPTER X. Our English Cousins.
WE had seen the Carnevale at Rome, and the wild confusion of the moccoletti , which is its finale; festas , in Venice, Milan, and almost every other Italian town where we had stayed overnight. There are more festas than working-days in that laughter-loving land. In Paris we had witnessed illuminations, and a royal funeral, or of such shreds of royalty as appertained unto the dead King of Hanover,—the Prince of Wales, very red of face in the broiling sun, officiating as chief mourner in his mothe
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CHAPTER XI. Over the Channel.
CHAPTER XI. Over the Channel.
I LAUGHED once on the route from Dover to Calais. The fact deserves to be jotted down as an “Incident of Travel.” For the boat was crowded, the wind brisk, and we had a “chopping sea” in the Channel. Words of woe upon which we need not expatiate to those who have lost sight of Shakspeare’s Cliff in like circumstances. The voyage was filled with disgust as Longfellow’s Night with music, and with untold misery to all of our party excepting Caput, to whom smooth and turbulent seas are as one. If
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CHAPTER XII. Versailles—Expiatory Chapel—Père Lachaise.
CHAPTER XII. Versailles—Expiatory Chapel—Père Lachaise.
THE guide-books say that the visitor to the palace of Versailles is admitted, should he desire it, to five different court-yards. We cared for but one—the cour d’honneur whose gates are crowned with groups emblematical of the victories of le grand Monarque . It is an immense quadrangle, paved with rough stones, and flanked on three sides by the palace and wings. The central château, facing the entrance, was built by Louis XIII., the wings by Louis XIV. The prevailing color is a dull brick-red; t
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CHAPTER XIII. Southward-Bound.
CHAPTER XIII. Southward-Bound.
“DO NOT go to Rome!” friends at home had implored by letter and word of mouth, prior to our sailing from the other side. English acquaintances and friends caught up the cry. In Paris, it swelled into impassioned adjuration, reiterated in so many forms, and at times so numerous and unseasonable that we nervously avoided the remotest allusion to the Eternal City in word. But sleeping and waking thoughts were tormented by mental repetitions that might, or might not be the whispers of guardian angel
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CHAPTER XIV. Pope, King, and Forum.
CHAPTER XIV. Pope, King, and Forum.
I WAS sorry to leave the hotel, the name of which I withhold for reasons that will be obvious presently. Not that it was in itself a pleasant caravansary, although eminently respectable, and much affected by Americans and English. Not that the rooms were ever warm, although we wasted our substance in fire-building; or that the one dish of meat at luncheon, or the principal dessert at dinner, always “went around.” We had hired a commodious and sunny “ appartamento ” of seven well-furnished room
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CHAPTER XV. On Christmas-Day.
CHAPTER XV. On Christmas-Day.
ON Christmas-Day, we went, via the Coliseum, for a long drive in the Campagna. The black cross, at the foot of which many prayers have been said for many ages, has disappeared from the centre of the arena. It was necessary to take it down in the course of the excavations that have revealed the subterranean cells whose existence was unsuspected until lately. These are mere pits unroofed by the removal of the floor of the amphitheatre, and in winter are half-full of water left by the overflow of t
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CHAPTER XVI. L’Allegro and Il Penseroso.
CHAPTER XVI. L’Allegro and Il Penseroso.
THERE is music by the best bands in Rome upon the Pincian Hill on Sabbath afternoons. Sitting at the window of our tiny library, affecting to read or write, my eyes wandered continually to the lively scene beyond. My fingers were beating time to the waltzes, overtures, and marches that floated over the wall and down the terraces—over the orange and camellia-trees, the pansy and violet-beds, and lilac-bushes in the court-yard, the pride of our handsome portiere’s heart—up to my Calvinistic ears.
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CHAPTER XVII. With the Skeletons.
CHAPTER XVII. With the Skeletons.
IN the Piazza Barberini is the Fountain of the Triton by Bernini, one of the least objectionable of his minor works. A chubby, sonsie fellow is the young Triton, embrowned by wind, water and sun, seated in a shell, supported by four dolphins and blowing into a conch with a single eye to business that should, but does not act as a salutary example to the tribe of beggars, models and gossips who congregate around him. From the right of the spacious square leads the street on which stands the Palac
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CHAPTER XVIII. “Paul—a Prisoner.”
CHAPTER XVIII. “Paul—a Prisoner.”
JUST outside of the Ostian Gate is the pyramid of Caius Cestius—Tribune, Prætor and Priest, who died thirty years before Christ was born, and left a fortune to be expended in glorification of himself and deeds. The monument is one hundred and twenty feet high, nearly one hundred feet square at the base, built of brick and overlaid with marble slabs. Modeled after the Egyptian mausoleums, and unaccountably spared by Goth and Pope, it stands to-day, after the more merciful wear and tear of twenty
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CHAPTER XIX. Tasso and Tusculum.
CHAPTER XIX. Tasso and Tusculum.
THE church and convent of S. Onofrio crown the steepest slope of the Janiculan. Our cocchieri always insisted, more or less strenuously, that we should alight at the bottom of the short Salita di S. Onofrio , and ascend on foot while the debilitated horses followed at their ease. Our first drive thither was upon a delicious morning in February, when the atmosphere was crystalline to the Sabine Hills. The terrace before the church-portico was clean and sunny, the prospect so enchanting, that we h
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CHAPTER XX. From Pompeii to Lake Avernus.
CHAPTER XX. From Pompeii to Lake Avernus.
WE were at Naples and Pompeii in the winter, and again in the spring. The Romans aver that most of the foreigners who die in their city with fever, contract the disease in Naples. We credited this so far that we preferred to make short visits to the latter place, and, while there, passed much time in the open air. It is our conviction, moreover, that little is to be apprehended from malaria in the worst-drained city of Italy if visitors will stipulate invariably for bed-room and parlor fires. Th
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CHAPTER XXI. “A Sorosis Lark.”
CHAPTER XXI. “A Sorosis Lark.”
WHEN we left Naples in January the snow lay whitely upon the scarred poll of Vesuvius. Yet, as we drove to the station, we were beset by boys and girls running between the wheels of our carriage and ducking under the horses’ heads, clamorously offering bouquets of roses, violets and camellias that had blossomed in the open gardens. To save the bones, for which they showed no regard, each of us loaded herself with an immense bunch of flowers she was tempted, a dozen times before night, to throw o
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CHAPTER XXII. In Florence and Pisa.
CHAPTER XXII. In Florence and Pisa.
FLORENCE in May is a very different place from Florence in November. Still it rained every day, or night, of the month we passed there; showers that made the earth greener, the air clearer. We were homesick for Rome, too, although our lodgings with Madame Giotti, then in Via dei Serragli—now in Piazza Soderini, were the next best thing to the sunny appartimento No. 8, Via San Sebastiano, that had been home to us for almost six months. Madame Bettina Giotti, trim and kindly, who speaks charmingly
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CHAPTER XXIII. “Beautiful Venice.”
CHAPTER XXIII. “Beautiful Venice.”
FROM Florence we went to Venice—eight days thereafter, to Bologna. We “did” Venice leisurely and with great delight. “The one place on the Continent that bored me!” I once heard a young lady declare at an American watering-place;—a sentiment heartily seconded by several others. “You can do everything there in two days!” continued the critic. “After that, it is the stupidest old hole in creation. I thought I should have died!” Our friend, Miss M—- had been in Venice in December, and described the
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CHAPTER XXIV. Bologna.
CHAPTER XXIV. Bologna.
I HAVE recorded the Traveled American girl’s experience in the Venice we mourned at leaving after eight days’ sojourn. In the parlor of the Hôtel Brun, in Bologna, we met the Average Briton, a spinster of linguistic and botanical tastes—artistic too, as presently appeared—who was “stopping overnight,” in the city. “Where there’s nothing to be seen, me dear,” she asserted to a countrywoman of her own, in our hearing, “unless one has a fondness for sausage. You remarked that they made a course o
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CHAPTER XXV. “Non é Possibile!”
CHAPTER XXV. “Non é Possibile!”
“ NON é possibile! ” said Boy, turning his flushed face to the pillow, and away from me. “But it is arrow-root jelly, dear! Try to eat a little!” “ Non é possibile! ” murmured the little fellow, dreamily, and fell into a feverish doze. We were detained ten days in Milan, waiting for letters and to collect luggage. Coolness was not to be had in the city except in the Cathedral, and among the streams, fountains and trees of the Public Gardens. The older members of the party haunted the former plac
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CHAPTER XXVI. Lucerne and The Rigi.
CHAPTER XXVI. Lucerne and The Rigi.
PHOTOGRAPHS, casts and carvings of the Lucerne Lion are well-nigh as plentiful as copies of the Beatrice of the Palazzo Barberini. All—even the best of these—fall lamentably short of expressing the simple grandeur of Thorwaldsen’s boldest work. The face of a perpendicular sandstone cliff was hewn roughly,—not smoothed nor polished in any part. Half-way up was quarried a niche, and in this, as in his lair, lies a lion, nearly thirty feet long. The splintered shank of a lance projects from his sid
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CHAPTER XXVII. Personal and Practical.
CHAPTER XXVII. Personal and Practical.
I HAVE alluded to the intense blaze of the sun upon the day of our tryst with the newly-arrived travelers. Until then we had not suffered from heat in Switzerland. Our pension was a stone building, with spacious, high-ceiled rooms, in which the breeze from lake and icy mountains was ever astir, and we were rarely abroad excepting at morning and evening. On our way home the next afternoon, after a delightful sail to Fluelen and back, and a visit to Altorf, we met Boy and nurse at the gate of th
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CHAPTER XXVIII. Home-life in Geneva—Ferney.
CHAPTER XXVIII. Home-life in Geneva—Ferney.
OUR German experiences, sadly curtailed as to time by Boy’s sickness, scarcely deserve the title of “loiterings.” We passed two days in Strasburg; as many in Baden-Baden, a day and night at Schaffhausen; a week in Heidelberg; a few hours at Basle, etc., etc., too much in the style of the conventional tourist to accord with our tastes or habits. At Heidelberg our forces were swelled by the addition of another family party, nearly allied to ours in blood and affection. There, we entered upon a thr
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CHAPTER XXIX. Calvin—The Diodati House—Primroses.
CHAPTER XXIX. Calvin—The Diodati House—Primroses.
THE house in which Calvin lived and died has never been photographed. “Madame does not reflect how narrow is the street!” pleaded the picture-dealer to whom I expressed my surprise at this. But the camera would have been set up in one of the windows across the way had there been a lively demand upon the thrifty Swiss for mementoes of the Reformer. John Calvin is out of fashion on the Continent, and Geneva is not an exception to the prevalent obsoleteness of reverence for his character and doctri
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CHAPTER XXX. Corinne at Coppet.
CHAPTER XXX. Corinne at Coppet.
THE sail of nine miles up the lake to Coppet, the residence, for so long, of Madame de Staël, is one of the pleasantest short excursions enjoined by custom upon the traveler sojourning for a few days in Geneva. The village is nothing in itself;—a mere appanage, in olden days, of the Neckar estate. The château is reached by a short walk up a quiet street—or road—for there is neither side-walk nor curbing. The house-front is lake-ward, but entrance is had from the street through a paved court-yard
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