Europe Unvisited

IT is a matter of self-gratulation with me that I am at one and the same time an American, and not a millionaire. Because of the first I may go to Europe ; because of the second, I have n’t been there already.

But I find two fears menacing my airship fancies. Do I know enough to go to Europe ? When I am ready to see Europe, will there be a Europe there to see ? For I am densely, deeply ignorant. That is all very well in America, where I am only one among a nation of bluffers ; but would not Europe see through me, find me out, refuse to shake hands ? I fear that the Grandmother Past would not take me on her lap and tell me stories if I could n’t recite my English sovereigns, if I proved hazy on architecture, and imperfect in geography. Would the dead come forth debonair out of their crypts to welcome me, if I could furnish no dates by way of credentials ? I knowing no Italian, would the gondoliers sing into my heart all the gayety of Venice ? My French being rusted, would Paris pass with me the merry time of day ? I am afraid Europe will say to me, Out of my palaces, away from my pictures, don’t lay finger on my cathedrals, — no ignoramus wanted here ! — But I have no time to study all these matters, nor patience either. Nor am I minded to do Europe by Baedeker ; I am right gypsy with the lust for strange faces and beckoning byways, and with no nose whatsoever to be buried in a guidebook. I mentioned these my doubts and fears to a fellow worker, who had scraped and saved and bought herself a summer, and returned as one likes to see travelers return — shabby - coated, shining - eyed, speaking little, with do-it-again-as-soon-as-possible writ large over all her plans and purposes. She answered promptly, “ It is much better to study about it after you have seen it than before.” Perhaps it is ; I will leave it that way, I think. Europe must take me just as I am ; if it does n’t, so much the worse for Europe.

Yet when I take stock of my knowledge of that various other side, what a small parcel it is, and how shakily done up ! London, for instance. In London there are the Tower, and Westminster, and the Temple, and lodgings, — streets and streets of lodgings. In the Tower are beef-eaters, — a sort of mediæval policemen carrying halberds ; and crown jewels in glass cases, — I never did care much for things in glass cases ; and then there are bloodstains; but I am afraid to appreciate bloodstains ; I should have gone abroad younger, Westminster is a great dim place where you may stay all day, like a Mr. Addison or a Mr. Harding, or poking about the Poets’ Corner, feeling the ashes of the great mouldering genially all about you, — only it would be just my luck to be thrilled by a cenotaph.

The Temple is a name of magic. I ’ve no notion of its appearance. There is an Inner Temple, — that implies, I suppose, a building like an American apartment house built around a court. But it is the Temple, the Inner Temple that I want to see in London, because he lived there, had chambers there, held his Wednesday evenings there, — the saddest, merriest soul that ever chuckled in print.

Those London lodgings, — I should have to live in lodgings in London, poor lodgings, because they are cheap and I am cheap, — frowzy lodgings, savored with frying, garnished at intervals with a slatternly landlady and a little slavey. In lodgings they furnish candles and toast and tea, a diet which would have to be washed down with plentiful draughts from that cask I carry with me, that wine called Traveler’s Delight.

My Continental itinerary is delightfully vague; my imagination supplies a map of the everywhere, marked with bright red crosses where are the Alps, Paris, Rome, Venice. My general impression of the Continent is that, as a whole, it suffers from a lack of the great American bathtub, and does not supply ice water. Dirty and thirsty and happyhearted shall I make my pilgrimage. Paris first, where you can sit — sit on what ? — and see all the world drive by, see all the world out pleasuring ; Paris, that performs all manner of naughtiness so prettily that nobody cares, because it’s Paris, — should I dare to sip the tiniest sip of absinthe myself ? Paris, — where I should be cheated of my hard-wrung dollars with shrugs so picturesque and smiles so ready that I would gladly pay the price. But I have heard that in Paris strange men speak to young girls on the street. I am not a young girl, but a man might speak to me, and being an American, I should n’t like it.

Posting southward, I shall find my Italy, with its sunshine, its brown, carefree beggars, its old gardens, its old palaces, its old statues, all its grace of beautiful decay. I want to see Rome, Horace’s Rome, Hawthorne’s Rome, Crawford’s Rome ; I want to see the Pope, and St. Peter’s, and the Faun, and Miriam. And I want to see the catacombs. How do you get to them ? I picture myself running about the streets hunting diligently for a stairway down, just as I hunt for the basement in a department store. How damp and shivery and fearsome and Poe-ish! Let no man cheat me of my catacombs.

Venice is the next red spot on my map, Venice by day and Venice by night, with the music over the water, the rhythmic dip of oars, the lights of palace windows, and the gliding through moonlight into shadow. But my American soul rises up in query, as thus, — if Venice were in America, what a clatter it would make in the press with its typhoid and its malaria ! what in the world does Venice do about microbes and mosquitoes ? This is irreverence. Let me here admonish myself betimes, — look ’ee, miss, when you go to Europe, do not carry the skeleton of a microbe with you to spoil the feast.

But even as I dream of my red crosses, and the brave unknown roads that lead to them, that other fear of mine comes knocking, knocking, — will Europe wait for me ? Even now it shows signs of impatience at my delay, says, “ Hurry up ! ” and knocks down a Campanile in dudgeon. It is causing its cathedrals to crumble, it is girdling its Alps with trolley lines, it is undressing its peasants to trick them out in ugly clothes like ours, it is even muttering threats of household sanitation. If it would only wait a little while!

Such titles as “Vanishing London” alarm me. I had not supposed that London would be vulgar enough to vanish. I thought they did things better over there ; Henry James gave me so to understand. I should have thought John Ball would thrust forward his jaw as who should say, “ Pooh, pooh. Don’t talk to me about vanishing ! ”

Not long since there appeared a series of articles showing forth the commercial conquest of Europe by America. I did not read the articles; the illustrations made me sufficiently sick at heart. They represented glaring American dollar signs hung out all over the landscape from Labrador to the boot-toe of Italy, from Portugal to Siberia! Matter of apprehension, indeed, to the wanderer held at home!

You travelers who are setting out ahead of me, who are even now shouldering scrip and taking up staff for the pilgrimage, carry my message over the seas, — tell Europe to wait for me, pray Europe to sit down hard and hold on to itself with both hands to keep from vanishing, for I am surely coming, — I, the great American wage-earner — tramp, tramp ! — I am coming !