Kitabı oku: «My Life», sayfa 12
CHAPTER XIV
SOME LONDON ACQUAINTANCES
As the years have gone by I have tried, whenever I have been in London, to look up the Guards that I knew during my first visit, as well as to make acquaintance with the new members. On one of my later visits a young English journalist accompanied me to the "Tavern." I told him what interesting times I had had there, and pointed out to him some of the men I knew.
"They're hacks, you know," he whispered. "Penny-a-liners. Gissing did them in 'New Grub Street.'" The young man liked neither his old companions nor the place, but he did not hesitate to borrow ten bob that he can hand back, if he wishes to, at his earliest convenience.
Call the Guards hacks, penny-a-liners or what you will; as a friend of mine once said about them, they know how to spell the word gentleman, anyhow, and that is more than many do who poke fun at them. They helped to make my first visit to London incomparably amusing at times, and for this I cannot help feeling grateful.
I have spoken of Arthur Symons' interest in my first efforts to describe tramp life. I think it was he and the magazine editors who abetted me in my scribblings, rather than the university and its doctrines of "Inquiral research," who are to blame for all tramp trips made by me in Europe. Of course, the inevitable Wanderlust was probably behind them to some extent, but all of them were undertaken with articles, and probably a book, as the ultimate object in view.
This can hardly be said of the earlier wanderings at home, and yet when eventually writing about them, they have interested me more than the tramps abroad. My vagabond days in foreign parts have received pretty much their just due in other books of mine and my wish here is more to explain what effect they had upon me as a student, and in leading on to other work here at home, than to tell what befell me on the highways. There are a few episodes and anecdotes, however, that were overlooked when making my reports from the field which may not be out of place now.
The most entertaining experience I had in Great Britain during the three weeks or so that I tramped there in 1893, concerns a well meaning professor in Edinburgh. My companion in this venture is now also a professor at one of our universities; at the time he was a fellow-student of mine in Berlin.
One of our "stops" in the itinerary planned by me was Edinburgh. We were to land at Leith from New Castle, anyhow, so why not see Edinburgh, whether we were real tramps or not?
A local professor, a friend of my family, a guest in my Berlin home at one time, was a man who believed greatly in religious things, and I guess tried to act according to his beliefs. He was noted also for his interest in the students. My friend and I thought it might be interesting to see how far the old gentleman's benevolence stretched when it came to giving charity to an American student in distress. A boyish curiosity, no doubt, but I have found in later life that such curiosity is worth while in a number of ways – when it comes to quizzing "public-spirited men," for instance, as to how far they will go into their pockets to finance investigations and prosecutions in municipal affairs.
With my friend the question was, "What story shall I tell?" I could not undertake the adventure because the professor would have recognized me. We rummaged over my basket of "ghost stories," and finally determined that the best thing was the truth with a slight change in names.
So while I waited in a coffee house near a railway station, my friend went up to the fashionable house in Queen Street with a tale of woe about being stranded in Scotland, and needing the price of a railway ticket to Glasgow that he might again get in touch with friends. Not much of a story, but quite enough for my companion – a man who had never before in his life been on tramp, and whose whole bearing was as near that of a non-sinning person as can be imagined.
He could not even use a strong expletive with a sincere ring. His face and general innocent air pieced out this linguistic purity. He was just the man I thought to test the professor's charity. I had waited in the coffee house over half an hour when my tall friend loomed up in the distance. Pretty soon he held up five fingers, and I could see that he was chuckling. "Well, fivepence, anyhow," I thought. "He might not have done any better at home – the way he's dressed." In a minute he was upon me gasping "Five bob – five bob."
I asked him for details, and he told me how he had been met at the door by a "buttons," who ushered him into the professor's study, where the "ghost story" was told and listened to. "Finally," concluded my friend, "the old gentleman reached down into his jeans and handed me the five shillings, saying, 'Well, my good man, I sincerely trust that this money will not find its way into the next public house.'"
I laughed prodigiously. "The idea," I exclaimed, "of a medical man picking you out as a person likely to go near a public house."
The next day I did not laugh so much. My people in Berlin had written the good professor that my friend and I were on a trip in Scotland and might call on him. He divined that I was getting my mail at the general post office and wrote me this note:
"Dear Friend – Your friend called here yesterday and I did not realize who he was. Had I known I would not have been so hard on him. Come and see us."
How tramps in general leave Edinburgh on a hurry-up call I cannot say, but after that note had been read two student tramps "hiked" out of that city double-quick. I took the Linlithgow road and my friend another – both, however, leading to the general post office in Glasgow, in front of which we agreed to meet thirty-six hours later. The five shillings were most punctiliously returned from this point, which also we left soon. The way that Edinburgh professor connected things was too Scotch for us.
CHAPTER XV
TWO TRAMPING EXPERIENCES
Two experiences in Germany stand out very distinctly in my recollections of my tramp life there. The first occurred in Berlin, where, although I was officially still a student in the university, I had taken a vacation and secluded myself in the Arbeiter Colonie, on the outskirts of the city near Tegel, Humboldt's old home. There are two workingmen's colonies in Berlin, one in the city proper, the other at Tegel. I chose residence in the Tegel resort because the superintendent of the city colony was afraid that some of the colonists there might have recognized me during my various visits to the place, and would know me when I applied for admission as an out-of-work.
My purpose in becoming a colonist was to learn from personal observation what good the Arbeiter Colonien were accomplishing for bona fide out-of-works, and also as corrective institutions for vagrants. All told, there are not over fifty of these places in Germany. Their aim is to furnish temporary shelter to the worthy unemployed men who apply for admission and are willing to remain a month under the strict régime. The colonists work at such industries as the different colonies take up, and receive about eighteen cents a day for their labor. Each colony keeps in close touch with the labor market, and tries to secure outside positions for the inmates as far as possible. In winter, of course, they are much more heavily patronized than in summer, but they are open the year round. I think they do good in so far as they winnow the willing from the unwilling, the genuine worker from the tramp. They also help an honest man over temporary difficulties, which, without the assistance of the colonies, might make him a vagabond. But I hardly think they are necessary in the United States, except possibly as places where the professionally unemployed could be made to support themselves.
My work in the Tegel colony was a strange one indeed for such a place – sewing together straw coverings for champagne bottles. For about eight hours out of the twenty-four I had to tread the machine, and divide the straw for the needle. I hope somebody got the benefit of the champagne we colonists were merely permitted to dream about.
The daily routine was about as follows: All hands up, and beds made at 5:30 in the morning, breakfast at six, prayers at half-past six, and work at seven. After two hours there was the inevitable second breakfast – one of the silliest time-consumers in German industrial life. At twelve there was dinner, at six supper, at eight prayers again, and by nine all lights had to be out.
One day, with two companions, I was sent on a unique errand – unique for me at least, in spite of all my former varied activities and employments. We were ordered to wheel a hogshead of swill into Berlin – or perhaps it was grease. Whatever it was, it had to be delivered in the Chaussee-Strasse, and we were the chosen cart horses. The big barrel was put on a four-wheeled hand wagon, such as one sees so often in Berlin drawn by dogs – sometimes women – and away we started for town, my German companions teasing me (an American, so, of course, a millionaire!) about having to push a swill cart in Germany. I retaliated by doing just as little pushing as possible. I suppose it would have amused my friends in the city to have surprised me at this task, but fortunately our journey did not take us into their part of town. I have never had quite the same feeling of humility as that which possessed me during this experience. Indeed it preyed on my mind so that I soon arranged to have word sent to the colony that work awaited me outside, and that I should be released. I was given an honorable discharge as champagne protector and defender of that which makes soap.
The other occurrence deals with the German police. It is worth telling, if only to show how painfully stupid some of Germany's policemen can be.
Before starting out on the trip which brought me in contact with the police, I received from the late William Walter Phelps, our Minister to Germany at the time, a second passport, not wanting to take the other one away from the university. I expected to return to my lectures the next semester, and to take away my passport would later have involved re-matriculation, or other formalities worth while avoiding. Mr. Phelps very kindly entered into my plan, gave me another passport, and told me to let him know if I got into trouble at any time. A former tramp trip had taken me pretty well over North Germany, so I determined to explore the southern provinces on the second journey. I was out for six weeks, getting as far south as Strassburg. In Marburg, the old university town, where I learned that tramps could earn fifty pfennigs an hour, when the professors of physiology wanted to have human specimens for their illustrations, I had my tiff with the omnipotent police. With several other roadsters I went about nightfall to a Herberge, or lodging house, where supper and bed can be found at very reasonable prices. Soon after supper, while we were all sitting together chatting in the general dining and waiting room, a Schutzmann came in. His appearance did not in the least disconcert me, because I knew that my passport was in order, and had been through the pass-inspection ordeal on a number of previous occasions. In fact, I was a little forward in getting my pass into his hands, feeling proud of its menacing size. "That'll fetch him," I said to myself. "I wonder what will be made out of it this time." The pompous official took the sheet of paper, "star-gazed" at it fully three minutes by the clock, and then in a surprisingly mild voice said to me: "Sie sind ein Oesterreicher, nicht wahr?" (You are an Austrian, I take it.) I declared boldly enough that I was an American, as my pass proved. Some more "star-gazing" on the part of the policeman – then, as if he would explode unless he gave vent to his vulgar officiousness, and throwing the passport in my face, he bellowed: "American! American! Well, you go double-quick to your consul in Frankfort, and get a German pass. That big thing won't go," and away he stalked as if he were the whole German army bundled into one uniform. When he had left, the other Kunden gathered about me and told me not to mind the "old fool." But all that night I could not get over the feeling that the man had spat upon my flag. I suppose, however, that the poor ignoramus was simply ruffled because he had shown to the Herberge that he did not know the difference between an Austrian and an American pass, and did not mean any real insult.
CHAPTER XVI
SWITZERLAND AND ITALY
Perhaps the pleasantest break in my university studies came in the summer of 1894, when I went to Switzerland, and, later in the year, to Italy. My writings had begun to bring me in a small income by this time, and I had learned how to make a dollar do valiant service when it came to paying traveling expenses.
My companion in Switzerland was a fellow-student at the university. I understand he is now spending his days and nights trying to write a new history of Rome. We did the usual things on our trip together, some things that were unusual, and we saw, on comparatively little money, the greater part of Switzerland. We also climbed a mountain; and thereby hangs a tale.
Both of us had been diligently reading Mark Twain's "A Tramp Abroad" – particularly the chapters on Switzerland. Eventually we got into the Rhone Valley, and at Visp, or rather at St. Nicholas, midway between Visp and Zermatt, we stumbled upon our ideal of a mountain guide, or, rather, on the ideal that the "Tramp Abroad" book had conjured up for us. We had seen other guides before, dozens of them, but there was something in the "altogether" about the St. Nicholas discovery that captured us completely. We drew the guide into conversation. Yes, he knew of a mountain at Zermatt that we could climb.
"Roped together?" said the present historian of Rome. Somehow, unless we could be attached to a rope and dangle over precipices, the ascent presented no great charms. Yes, we could even be roped together, could march in single file, spend hours in the snow, and have a wonderful aussicht.
"And the price?" A sudden return of everyday sense prompted me to ask. By this time our funds were getting pretty low, and neither one of us was sure when his next remittance would arrive. My friend's, by the way, never did arrive when we most needed it.
The guide told us the prices for the Matterhorn and the other "horns" in and about Zermatt.
"Three hundred francs to go up the Matterhorn!" the historian gasped. "Why, we haven't over a hundred in the outfit."
"Ah, but the Breithorn!" the guide went on, readjusting his coil of rope and ax, as if he knew that it was these very things that were tempting us and leading us into bankruptcy. Never before or since have ropes and axes possessed such fascinating qualities as they did that day. The guide told us that the Breithorn was ours for thirty francs – "Sehr billig, sehr billig," he added. The historian and I took stock of our resources. We finally concluded that, if the hotel bill at Zermatt didn't exhaust our means, we could just barely hire the guide, climb the mountain, pay railroad fare back to Brieg, and have a few francs left over for incidentals until fresh funds arrived. We knew a hotel man in Brieg who would trust us – at least we thought he would – and the main thing just then was going up the Breithorn. At a pinch we knew that we could go "on tramp," or rather I did. The historian just guessed that he could.
We stopped by the wayside to rest and think. Foolishly, I pulled the "Tramp Abroad" book out of my pocket by way of reference. I wanted to make sure that our guide was the real thing, a la "A Tramp Abroad." Then I glanced at his rope and ax. That decided the matter for me.
"Up the Breithorn we go," I cried, and the guide was formally engaged.
In ascending this mountain from Zermatt the average traveler, I believe, stops over night at the Theodule Pass, continuing the journey early in the morning. Our guide, for some foolish reason, decided that we were not average travelers, that it would be a mere bagatelle for us to sleep in Zermatt until early morning, and then do the whole thing in one gasp. My clothes – a light summer outfit from head to feet – were about as suitable for such an adventure as for the North Pole. The historian was a little more warmly clad, but not much. However, perhaps we should never pass that way again, as Heine sighs in his "Harzreise," and then – what regrets we might suffer! The time came when, for a moment, we regretted that we had ever passed that way at all – but I anticipate.
At three o'clock in the morning we got away, the guide carrying ropes, ax and lunch. At five or thereabouts we reached the pass. Thus far everything was delightful – landscape, atmosphere, temperament and intentions. The view that morning from the Theodule Pass, over the glacier below, was the most wonderful I have ever enjoyed. The clouds were tossing about over the glacier like stormy waves at sea, and the morning sun threw over the scene a most beautiful medley of colors. At our right was the Matterhorn, but that represented three hundred francs, and inspired covetousness. Pretty soon we were off again, and when we struck the snow my delight was climaxed. We were roped together! Never before or since in my life have I felt the sense of personal responsibility in such an exalted degree. I thought of the historian, and what I should do if he tumbled into a crevice. I even pictured myself hauling the stalwart guide out of a hole. These thrilling notions of possible valor did not last long, however. In an hour my light summer shoes were wet through, my face had begun to burn, my hands had got cold, and the top of the world looked all awry. "Get your money's worth," the historian encouraged me, and I plodded on to the top. There we stood, and were supposed to enjoy life. My feet ached, and I said "d – ." An Englishman, brother of a well-known novelist, whom I took to be a clergyman, said, "Tut, tut!" I repeated my expression, and he and his party crossed over to the Little Breithorn, to be alone. I said a number of other things before the day was over, but we managed to get back to Zermatt without interference. As we paid the guide off before going into the village, I asked him whether he would not like to have us write a recommendation for him in his book. He smiled. "Oh, I can go up that hill backwards," he said, "but I am much obliged." This is the way he left us: bankrupt practically, wet, tired, and with the humiliating inference that had we been real sportsmen we could have climbed the "Breithorn" heels foremost. I have never read "A Tramp Abroad" since that experience.
Of our impoverished condition on reaching Breig there is little to say except that it was whole-hearted and genuine. We could hardly have had over two francs between us. The hotel man insisted that we were honest, however, and would pay him when we could. So for ten days we settled down upon him to wonder why we had ever attempted the "Breithorn." There was a stone wall, or abutment, near the town, about sixty feet high. Climbing it was like going up a New England stone fence to the same height – there was not a particle of difference. If one lost his footing, there was nothing to do but fall to the bottom and think things over. A fall from near the top, which nearly happened to me, could only have stopped all things, because there was nothing but bowlders to light on.
For two hours, every day of our stay in Brieg, we fools risked our limbs and necks in finding new ways to climb the wall. Perhaps the Matterhorn presents more difficult problems in climbing to solve than those of our wall, but I doubt it. At any rate, I should want to be paid, and not pay, three hundred francs before I would attempt either wall or mountain to-day.
The journey into Italy was made alone. One bright afternoon in October, I left Poschiavo, in the Italian Engadine, where I had spent several weeks in calm retreat, writing, studying Italian, and climbing mountains, by eyesight, and made off for Venice. I had, perhaps, sixty dollars in my pocket, a sum quite sufficient, in those days, to have emboldened me to tackle Africa, had it seemed the next thing to do. Italy was nearest to hand just then, and I wanted to experiment with my Italian on the Venetians. Learning German had given me a healthy appetite for other languages, and I had dreams of becoming a polyglot in course of time. I also had a notion that I could learn to write better in a warm climate. Berlin seemed to warp my vocabulary when I felt moved to write, and I persuaded myself that words would come more readily in a sunny clime.
A genuine seizure of Wanderlust was probably the predominant motive in the southern venture, but I was determined that it should be attended with good resolutions. Indeed, at this time, I was so far master of Die Ferne that, although temptations to wander were numerous enough, I was able to beat them off unless the wandering promised something useful in return, either in study or money-making.
Besides the intention to scribble and learn the language, I furthermore contemplated a course of study with Lombroso at Turin. My collateral reading at the University of Berlin had got me deeply interested in criminology, and Lombroso's writings, of course, had been included. From the very beginning I disagreed with his main thesis, and I do yet, as far as professional crime is concerned. However, I thought it would be valuable to come in contact with such a man, and I expected to learn much from his experimental apparatus. This plan fell through in the end. I found there was quite enough criminology for my purposes in watching the Italian people in the open, and I invented some apparatus of my own for experimentation, which, under the circumstances, probably revealed as much to me as would have that of Lombroso. Nevertheless, I regret now that I did not make the professor's acquaintance, for, say what one will, of the men that I know about he has done the most in recent times to awaken at least scientific interest in crime as a social disorder.
My first ride down the Grand Canal in Venice, from the railway station to the Riva, was my initial introduction to the Venetian wonderland. As a boy, I had read my "Arabian Nights" and had had, I suppose, dreams of Oriental things, but on no occasion that I can recall had anything Eastern ever taken hold of me sufficiently to inveigle me into a trip outside of my own country. That was wonderful enough for me then, and it becomes more wonderful to me every day that I grow older.
But that first ride in Venice! As the gondola bore me down the canal to the Riva where my lodgings had been secured in advance, it seemed to me as if I were gliding into a new world, a world, indeed, that hardly belonged to our world at all. The mere strangeness of things did not impress me so much as their soft and gentle outlines. I thought then of the city, as I do still, more as a lovely, breathing creature, truly as a bride of the Adriatic, than as a dwelling place of man. I walked from my lodgings to the Piazza. As I turned into the Piazzetta, and the glory of that wonderful square flashed upon me in the glow of the bright afternoon sun, I came suddenly to a halt. Such moments mean different things to different men. I remember now what passed through my mind, as if it were yesterday:
"If to come to this entrancing spot, young man, is your payment for pulling out of the slough that you once let yourself into, then your reward is indeed sweet."
For four most enjoyable months I lingered near that fascinating Piazza reluctant to leave it. Lord Curzon thinks that the Rhigistan in Samarcand, considering all things, is the most beautiful square in the world. Perhaps, had I seen the Rhigistan first, and at the time I saw the Piazza, I might have been similarly impressed. As it happened, when, in 1897, I first beheld the Rhigistan I thought inevitably of the Piazza, and then and there renewed my allegiance to her superior charm over me.
Of my life in and about this square there is much that I would like to tell if I could tell it to my satisfaction, for I believe that Venice is a mistress to whom all admirers, without distinction of color, race or previous incarnation, should offer some artistic tribute either in prose or verse.
My most intimate friend, while in Venice, was Horatio Brown, a gentleman who knows the city probably better than any other foreigner, and much more intimately than many of the Venetians themselves. His book, "Life on the Lagoons," is the best book about the town that I know, and I have rummaged through a number. Mr. Howell's "Venetian Life," like everything he writes, is very artistic and instructive, but I was never able to find the Venice that he knows.
I must thank Arthur Symons for persuading Brown to be kind to me, and I fancy that he told him the truth – that I was a young Wanderlust victim. The result was that, although I had to live pretty scrimpingly, Brown's home on the Zattere became a magnificent retreat, where, at least once a week, I could brush up my manners a little, and enjoy an Anglo-Saxon atmosphere and undisguised comfort.
I think it was Monday evenings that Brown generally received his friends. There were many interesting persons to meet on these occasions, literary and otherwise, but a good illustration of the vagaries of fancy and memory is the fact that an Austrian admiral stands out strongest in my recollections of the Monday evenings that I recall. I suppose it was because he had been through a great many adventures out of my line, and was not quite my height. Any one smaller than I am who has projected his personality into more alluring wanderings than I have becomes immediately to me a person to look up to. Tall men and their achievements, fiendish or angelic, are so out of my range of vision that I have never tried to wonder much about them. Napoleon I could have listened to by the month without a murmur; Bismarck would have made me look dreamily at the ceiling at times.
The admiral told me how Garibaldi once gave him a scare, when the Italians were freeing themselves of Austrian rule. It seems that Garibaldi kept the enemy guessing at sea quite as much as on shore, and the admiral received word, one day, that Garibaldi was coming up the coast toward Venice with a formidable force. As a matter of fact, he was doing nothing of the kind, being busy in very different quarters. "But how was I to know?" the admiral said to me. "He was jumping about from place to place like a frog, and I had no reason to believe that the rumor might not be true. I decided to take no chances, and commandeered two Austrian-Lloyd steamers and sunk them in the Malamocco Strait. I felt able to guard the other end of the Lido. But Garibaldi fooled me, as he did a great many others, and the two steamers were sunk for nothing."
During a part of my stay in and about Venice, I lived alone in an empty house at San Nicoletto on the Lido. Within a stone's throw was the military prison, dreaming about which, in the empty house, after a luxurious gratuitous dinner, sometimes made night life rather gloomy. I got my non-gratuitous meals at an osteria near-by. I wonder whether the asthmatic little steamer that used to run from the Riva to San Nicoletto is still afloat? It was owned and captained by a conte, who also collected the fares. I patronized his craft for a while, and then in partnership with a corporale, stationed at the San Nicoletto marine signal station, invested in a canoe.
The adventures that we had with this canoe were many and varied. On one occasion, for instance, the canoe and I were suspected of being spies, and came very near being bombarded. I had spent the afternoon in Venice, leaving the canoe near the Giardino Pubblico. It was darker than usual when I was ready to return to the Lido, and I carried no light; but I set out for home undaunted. I had been paddling along serenely enough for fifteen minutes or so, when, on nearing the powder magazine island, or whatever it is between Venice and San Nicoletto that is guarded by a sentry, I was partly awakened from my dreaming by a strenuous "Chi va la?" on my left. I say partly awakened advisedly, because I paid no attention to the challenge, and paddled on. It seemed impossible that anybody could want to learn who I was out there on the water. Again the words rang out, clear and sharp, and again I failed to heed them. The third time the challenge was accompanied by an ominous click of a gun. I came out of my dream like a shot. Why I should be challenged was absolutely unintelligible to me, but that suggestive click jogged my work-a-day senses back into action.
"Amico! Amico!" I yelled.
"Well, draw up here to the landing and let me look at you."
I put about and paddled over to the island, where the sentry detained me nearly half an hour, making me explain how harmless and innocent I was. I must needs tell him who my landlord was on the Lido, which room I occupied in the empty house, why in the name of Maria I lived on the Lido at all, and by what maladetto right I dared cruise in those waters without lights. He finally let me pass on, with the warning that my craft stood a good chance of being sent to the bottom if she passed that way again at night without the proper illumination.
One day this canoe foundered near the Giardino Pubblico, and the accident brought to light a typical Italian trait in the corporale. I thought that it was an exhibition of simple stubbornness at the time, but Brown assured me later that I was mistaken. I was trying to manage things when the canoe put her nose into the mud bank, and the corporale was in the garden, I think, looking on. He was slicked up in his best uniform and looked very fine, but, as a sailor and part owner of the canoe, I thought he should come to her aid in such a case of signal distress. At first he also thought that he ought to bestir himself in the matter, and carefully looked about to see if anybody was watching. Then he picked his way more like a woman with fine lace skirts on than like a man, let alone a sailor, to a dry spot within perhaps thirty feet of the canoe. There he spent himself utterly in telling me how to do what he could do a hundred times better from the shore. All the canoe needed was a good, big shove, which he could have given her without any great inconvenience. I urged him in spotless Italian to get a real genuine move on and send me seaward.
