CHAPTER I
A RUN ACROSS FRANCE
To leave London one day and to arrive in Marseilles the next would have been deemed impossible – the dream of a madman – in the age in which I was born, when steamships and railways were unknown. Yet it is a fact, to the truth of which I can testify. Half a century has elapsed since the fair fields, leafy woodlands, and breezy chalk downs of Kent were invaded by a band of navvies, who, under the skilful direction of the late Sir William Cubitt, built up the main line of the South-Eastern Railway. The next thing was to connect France and Europe, which was done by means of steamers running between Calais and Dover, and thence by rail to all the chief Continental cities and health resorts.
I leave London by the Continental express at eight in the morning one cold day in October; in eight hours I am in Paris, passing Calais and Abbeville, both of which places, especially the former, are, I believe, pretty well known in these days of universal restlessness and travel. It is little we see of Paris, the gay and beautiful. We have to dine – for man must dine, if possible, once a day – and to Paris we turn for its cooks and cookery. It is there that the art of dining is carried to perfection. ‘Unquiet meals make ill digestions.’ There is no fear of that as I sit down to my well-prepared repast at the handsome buffet attached to the French Northern Railway, and yet there my troubles begin. As a barbarous Englander, I ask why in Paris, the centre, as it deems itself, of civilization and refinement, I am compelled to help myself to salt by putting my knife into the saltcellar. Then, again, it seems curious to me, and what I am not accustomed to, to eat my fish without a fitting knife and fork. Surely one may expect to find in Paris the refinement one is accustomed to in one’s native land! As to being cheated with one’s eyes open, one does not complain – you expect it, and it is not worth while losing your temper merely for the sake of a few paltry centimes; and yet I felt that I had been done unfairly when, on asking a waiter for a cup of coffee noir, and giving him an English shilling, and particularly calling his attention to the value of the coin, he coolly treats it as a franc, and gives me change accordingly. That was rather a dear cup of coffee, I calculate; but, then, the fault was mine, and mine alone. I ought to have provided myself with French money before I started.
I am going on what Dr. Lunn calls an educational tour on the Continent. It seems to me I shall get a good deal of education of some kind or other before I return to my native land again. There are about 112 on board from London and the provinces. As we are bound for Jerusalem, we have, as was to be expected, a large proportion of the clerical element. Ladies are not so numerous as one would expect from what one knows of the curiosity and fondness for adventure of lovely woman. The worst part of the trip is the long, wearying ride from Paris to Marseilles, where we found peace and plenty on board the Midnight Sun. We saw but little of the country on leaving Paris; but when we reached Lyons, where we were refreshed with delicious coffee and bread-and-butter, and were provided with a handsome lunch, to be eaten in the course of our journey, consisting of a bottle of claret, beef and fowl, bread-and-butter, and cheese and fruit – a handsome meal, to which we all did justice – the day broke on us clear and fine.
But I pause to make another little grumble. In barbarous England the lunch would have been neatly packed away in a basket specially provided for the purpose, and a knife and fork would have been included. On the Lyons railway a brown paper bag was deemed all that was necessary, and instead of a knife and fork we had to use our fingers. As there was no convenience for washing – at any rate, as regards second-class passengers, quorum pars fui; I recommend the traveller to go first-class on such a long ride – you can imagine our disgusting state. It seems to me that the rule that they do things better in France is one to which there are several exceptions. But in some respects France beats us. It will be hard to find anywhere in England a prettier ride than that we enjoyed from Lyons to Marseilles. The white houses, with their green blinds and red tiles, nestling in and among the trees, always make a French landscape bright and gay. Their great industrial and manufacturing centres also always look cleaner and less forbidding in their dreariness than ours at home; and if the little narrow plots you see suggest peasant farming, rather than the high and costly farming patronized at home, you feel that the peasant of gay and sunny France – for such France undoubtedly is – has a happier lot than with us. But as you travel you have no time to think of such things. It is all one can do to watch the fairy panorama of rock and river, of waving woods and smiling plains, as you glide by. At all times the Loire is a grand river, but to-day it is flooded, and seems to be made up of lakes and seas, in which struggle haystacks, farmhouses, barns, the everlasting poplars, and, what is worse, the poor man’s garden, and I think, in one or two cases that met my pitying eye, his vinefields as well.
One word before I have done with the Midnight Sun. ‘In the new yachting,’ writes Sir Morell Mackenzie, ‘there is no unpleasantness as to the change of places to be visited, nor are carefully-arranged plans to be disarranged at the last moment by the thoughtlessness or unpunctuality of friends. You have the pleasure of companionship, without any of the responsibilities of a host or the obligations of a guest. You can enjoy the sea and the air charged with ozone, which is the champagne of the lungs, and free from any taint of animal or vegetable corruption, just as freely as if you were an Alexander Selkirk on a floating island; and you have many comforts which cannot be had even on the largest and best-appointed yachts.’ Such were the results of the great physician’s experience on board one of the fine excursion steamers of the Orient line. ‘I felt,’ he writes, ‘like Faust after his great transformation scene from age to youth.’
I am not on an Orient steamer, but I am on the Midnight Sun, and to that Sir Morell Mackenzie’s testimony is equally applicable. The Midnight Sun is a grand steamer of 3,178 tons, and she was especially fitted out for yachting purposes. She may be said to be the best of the class. For instance, take the sleeping cabins. They contain no upper sleeping berths – a boon most acceptable to passengers who have had to pass many nights, as I have done, in cabins overcrowded with passengers and luggage. An idea of the magnificent proportions of the Midnight Sun may be gathered from the fact that seven times round her deck is equal to one mile. The upper deck forms a promenade over the entire length of the ship, with uninterrupted views on either side. She has been engaged by Dr. Lunn for his co-operative educational cruises, which become more popular every year. I note especially the smoking-room on the upper deck, capable of accommodating nearly 100 persons. There is a crew of 110 on board for the purpose of ensuring our safety and supplying our comforts and wants. Truly, if one cannot enjoy himself on such a trip, and with such a company of gentlemen and ladies as Dr. Lunn succeeds in drawing around him, he must be hard to please. Dr. Lunn, who is not on board, is in himself a host, and so is his popular brother, who supplies his place. We are now approaching Corsica. I will spare you my feelings as I gaze on the land that gave birth to a Napoleon Bonaparte, and that sheltered Seneca in his dreary exile, but which in modern times Lady Burdett Coutts finds to be a very beneficial health resort. They are all that should inspire the virtuous emotions of a true-born Englishman.
CHAPTER II
OFF TO NAPLES
I left off my last letter opposite Corsica. Since then – and this is the charm of coming to Naples in the Midnight Sun– we have passed quite a cluster of isles more or less renowned in history – such as Caprera, the rocky home of the great Italian, Garibaldi – of which, alas! we see nothing. In old times Caprera derived its name from the wild goats, its original inhabitants. Later on it was colonized by monks. ‘The whole island,’ says a contemporary writer quoted by Gibbon, ‘is filled, or, rather, defiled by men, who fly from the light. They call themselves monks, or solitaries, because they choose to live alone, without any witnesses of their actions. They fear the gifts of fortune from the apprehension of losing them, and, lest they should be miserable, they embrace a life of voluntary wretchedness.’ Elba, however, is visible, which the wiseacres whom Providence, for mysterious reasons of its own, at one time permitted to rule over European affairs, fixed on as the residence of the Corsican adventurer, in the childish belief that he who had aimed almost at universal empire, and had in vain attempted to grapple with and overthrow the pride and power of England, would be content to remain