'On This Spot Occurred...' Tales for Tourists

I

Guidebooks. — Nowadays guidebooks are compiled with the idea of making culture easy. Before the necessity of being cultured had entered anyone’s head except Ruskin’s and Matthew Arnold’s, the guidebooks were full of stories, good stories. But now they are mostly made up of information like this: —

‘The E. half of the nave is Norm., the W. half Trans.; and on the S. side are slender detached columns. The clerestory is E.E. The choir is Dec. work, with stone altar-screens, ambries, and sedilia, and a great East Window containing Flowing tracery and restored 14th Cent. glass (Tree of Jesse). The so-called Lady Chapel or retrochoir, likewise, is in the Dec. style, the arcades in the choir-aisles and sacristy noteworthy. The S. transept and the central tower have been rebuilt.’

This is a description of Selby Abbey, but Selby Abbey did n’t look like that to me. I could dream in Selby Abbey for a year without ever knowing that half the nave is Norm. and the other half Trans.

Guides. — I am glad to report, however, that the guides do not read the guidebooks — not even the ones they sell. They have not looked into a guidebook for fifty years. They know that, although the American tourist thinks he comes to Europe to acquire culture, he really comes to be told stories. What he wants is romance. And they also know that a tale gains enormously in effectiveness if told on the spot, with actual castles, cliffs, gardens, ravines, mountains, scattered about, where one can see them, looking exactly as they did at the time when the story did not occur. The most talented novelist cannot lie half so successfully as the humblest guide, because the latter has only to point to this or that to prove that he is telling the truth.

And maybe he is telling the truth, even though he may not be telling the facts.

In Edinburgh Castle, the guide conducts you to a little paneled room in which, he says, Mary Queen of Scots bore James VI, and from the window of which she lowered him in a basket by a rope to friends waiting below, who took him off to be baptized in the Catholic faith. This is a very good story. You look from the window and picture the baby swinging down, while the beautiful distracted mother pays out the line. You measure the distance with your eye. You hope the baby will arrive safe. And then you go back to your hotel and read in the guidebook (which you bought at the Castle) that Queen Mary never occupied that room at all and certainly never let her baby down in a basket.

But what of it? Whether Mary of Scotland ever did it or not, letting her baby down on the end of a rope was just the sort of thing she would have done if she had thought of it. What is a prosy old guidebook, anyway, compared with a paneled room in an old castle? Is not a significant fiction always to be preferred to an insignificant fact? And were not ‘history’ and ‘story’ originally the same word?

Guide Psychology. — ‘I say it once,’ says the Captain, in the Hunting of the Snark. ‘I say it twice. What I say three times is true.’ Any guide would perceive the logic of that. He says it three hundred, three thousand times, until for him it is truer than the truth. But he is not peculiar in this. If I wanted to be philosophical, I might go on to show how many of our own religious, political, patriotic beliefs were arrived at by the same method.

When the guide has memorized three or four good stories, he is fully equipped for his profession. He need know nothing else. But one at least of his stories must be blood-curdling. In every German castle the caretakers, like the Fat Boy, are doing their best to give us pleasure by making our flesh creep. In Italian museums they keep one room always locked, to be opened only with a golden key; within is some wax model of a city stricken by the plague, or other creation equally enlivening. Nothing is more popular in the Tower of London than the headsman’s block and axe. At the Carnavalet, in Paris, they exhibit not only the baby clothes of Louis XVI, but a neat little model of the guillotine. And in every English baronial hall and manor house they keep a ghost. All this is done so that the guide may have at least one story certain to be popular.

II

Anonymous Fictionists. — In an old castle in Germany, on the Bodensee, the guide points out a deep pit in a corner of the dining hall as the place in which the twelfth-century proprietor used to confine captives whom he particularly disliked, ‘so that they could smell the food and listen to the sounds of eating while they starved.’ This is a strangely effective story. You shudder to think of the poor pale wretch at the bottom of the dank well, holding up his open mouth, like a little bird at feeding time, hoping that some crust or crumb might fall into it. It is true that, like as not, some learned but officious professor will tell you next day that the pit was merely an artless mediæval means for disposing of garbage. This is not a pleasant thought either, but it lacks the romantic tone that gets stories into the repertory of castle guides. I must admit that for once I hope the professor is right. But think of the unknown Poe who first saw the possibilities of that hole in the floor!

As I traveled about Europe, sedulously collecting misinformation, I was gradually filled with admiration for the host of anonymous fictionists of talent who apparently no sooner saw a place than they knew exactly what story ought to have occurred there. These humble folk have received no praise. Their names are not blazoned on the tablets of fame. They lied simply, or simply lied, and sank into oblivion. They made thousands laugh, or weep, or shudder, and they gave employment to whole generations of guides and makers of guidebooks. They made countless castles and ruins worth visiting. But nobody thinks of them. They are totally forgotten.

However, their pleasing inventions are not. The guides all memorize them. The tourists all swallow them. They give the historian a pain, but they give the poets poems; and that is much more important.

Guides’ Pride. — Especially ingratiating is the guide who loves his gallery, museum, church, or ruin; who feels a stronger sense of proprietorship in it than its owner.

‘Mon,’ said a guide in Edinburgh, with a wave of the hand toward the War Memorial, ‘gang in and ha’ a luke; and if you don’t think it the bonniest war meemorial ever you saw, coom oot. and say so, and I ’ll geeve you a shillin’.’

I do not see how a Scotchman could make a more sporting offer than that.

‘And where be ye goin’ next?’ asked the ruddy old gatekeeper at Warwick Castle.

‘Oh, to Kenilworth, of course,’ said I.

‘Ow,’ said he. ‘What do ye want to go to Kenil’orth for? That’s aonly an aold blaown-daown sort o’ plice!’

And he turned proudly to survey his castle, so portly and well preserved.

III

Giorgio Vasari. — In Florence they still tell you that when Cimabue had finished his Madonna the entire city turned out to escort it and him from his house in the Borgo Allegri to Santa Maria Novella. What a fine story that is! Only the guidebooks say that the famous Madonna was not painted by Cimabue, but by Duccio, and that it never was carried through the streets in spontaneous processional, to the acclamations of the populace. Here once more, if this story is not true, it ought to be; because it indicates just how thirteenth-century Florentines might have acted. And surely that is more important than how they did act.

I think that is what Lamb meant by the remark Hazlitt ascribes to him. Hazlitt tells how, when Holcroft and Coleridge were ‘ disputing fiercely which was the best — Man as he was, or man as he is to be, “ Give me,” said Lamb, “man as he is not to be.”’

Most of the best stories about Florence originated with Giorgio Vasari, who put them down in his lives of the painters without bothering too much to inquire whether they were true. By doing so he gave many an editor the hobby of industriously correcting his statements. But we should never forget that it is much easier to prove that a story is not true than to make it up in the first place. In making up stories that ought to be true, old Giorgio was something of a genius.

Time, Place, and Man. — I think that he was gifted with the ability to see that in history the time, the place, and the man seldom meet in perfect comity, but that for them to do so is the very essence of what is called ‘romance.’ His trick, then, was to correct the carelessness of history. Given the time and the place, or the time and the man, or the place and the man, he supplied the missing term of the equation, with the result that his stories have been snapped up by the poets, dramatists, and novelists, even though the historians have viewed them and him with a lacklustre eye.

But once in a blue moon history does quite as well as Vasari. One pleasant afternoon, across the river in Santa Maria del Carmine, as I stood looking at the frescoes of Masaccio, a small boy, with whom I was sharing some tangerines, — or mandarini, as they call them there, — told me a story. He was a guide in embryo, so to speak, and he was practising on me. He told me that on that very spot Michelangelo’s nose was broken in a quarrel with Torrigiano, a fellow student, over those very pictures. I liked this story so much that I wanted to believe it; and when I looked it up in the encyclopædia I was astonished to find that it was true. For once history was equal to fiction. For once Clio agreed with Calliope.

If one had to choose among all the places where Michelangelo ought to have had his nose broken, one could find none so appropriate as this. I mean that, if he was to bear that disfigurement to his dying day, then this was the place to receive it: here, in the Brancacci Chapel, fighting about those pictures which may have first shown him the path his own genius was to tread. The only trouble is that we do not know what he and Torrigiano were arguing about; but I am sure he was on the side of the moderns. Anyhow it is a fine story, as fine as that other they tell in the Cathedral at Pisa (and this also is true), of how Galileo caught his first hint of the theory of the pendulum while watching, during divine service, the swaying of the chandelier. Such authentic anecdotes furnish a gauge for the travelers’ tales of the guides, by showing what may happen when the time, the place, and the man happen to meet.

IV

Ghosts. — In Warwick Castle you are shown a room which is haunted by the ghost of Fulke Greville, who, I believe, is still stabbed on certain evenings by the ghost of the servant who killed him. Now there is one good thing about a ghost story: it can never be disproved, even by the compiler of a guidebook. That which exists only in the spiritual world can be dealt with only by spiritual means. All a scientist can say about any particular ghost is, ‘It did n’t appear when I was there.’

You might go and sleep in the Fulke Greville room every night for a year undisturbed, and then write a letter to the Society for Psychical Research denouncing the ghost as a fraud; but you would not have proved that the ghost did not exist. It might have decided not to walk while you were there, because it did not like your looks, or did not like the Society for Psychical Research, or did not like people who write skeptical letters. The night after you moved out, it might walk and scare somebody else out of a year’s growth.

I pressed the personable young man who escorted me to the room to admit whether he had ever seen the ghost, but he only looked mysterious and ‘smiling waved the question by.’ I saw at once that he had not, because, if he had, nothing would have restrained him from telling me all about it. One is like that about ghosts. But I also saw that he did not want to hurt the business in ghosts, which is one of the most flourishing industries in England.

I tell myself that I do not believe in ghosts, and yet I should not care to sleep in that room. It is one of the peculiarities of ghost stories that one can rationalize about them with complete conviction in broad daylight, and yet become entirely irrational about them at dead of night in a wainscoted room in an old castle. When we listen to such stories there is always a margin of hesitation in our minds about them. One might as well believe in ghosts as to be afraid of them without believing. And there is always the chance that, even if we do not believe, one may come walking through the wainscot after all.

Guides and Guides. — To have a good lively ghost in one’s castle must be a great help to any industrious guide; but even without one most guides do pretty well if they have a murder, a hanging, a premature burial, a torture chamber, a monk’s hole, or an oubliette. All they need to charm the tourist is some little fillip to fancy.

On the whole, the more ignorant a guide is, the more amusing he is. Of course there are guides and guides, and some are intelligent, learned, and instructive. These have a strong pedagogic bent and are probably men who for some reason failed to become teachers; otherwise how can we account for their willingness to say the same thing over and over, year in and year out? The trouble with them is, however, that they are inclined to ‘ say an undisputed thing in such a solemn way.’ The guide who says a preposterous thing with a straight face is much better.

Guides Unofficial. — Everywhere in Europe one meets travelers who ought to have been guides. The showman’s instinct in them is highly developed. During the soup, in a Florentine pensione, you hear a feminine voice asking in tones unmistakably American, ‘Have you been to Sant’ Apollonia yet?’

Suddenly becoming aware that the question is addressed to you, you strangle for a moment, at the same time trying to remember whether you have ever heard of Sant’ Apollonia before. Then you ask politely, ‘What is Sant’ Apollonia?’

‘Oh,’ says the lady at the second table on your right, ‘you must n’t miss Sant’ Apollonia! It used to be a nunnery, and in the refectory is the cenacolo of Andrea del Castagno, his masterpiece. Mrs. Puddleford-Hicks and I were there to-day, and we think it the nicest cenacolo in Florence.’

‘How interesting!’ you reply. ‘But what is a cenacolo? I am very ignorant.’

Chorus, from several tables: ‘Cenacolo is the Italian for “ Last Supper.”’

First voice: ‘You go along the Via San Gallo to the Church of Jesus Pilgrim, and right opposite, at the corner of Via XXVII Aprile, is Sant’ Apollonia.’

Another voice, from a far corner: '‘I like the cenacolo of Fuligno still better.’

There is a dead silence. Nobody else has seen the cenacolo of Fuligno. And so with a sigh you continue your soup.

The official guide still tells you the very nice story of how Michelangelo, sitting in the sun in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, chatting with a friend (my guide told me it was Donatello; but that seems hardly possible, since Michelangelo was not born till nine years after Donatello had died), reached over his shoulder and drew a profile on the wall behind him, ‘almost without thinking of what he was doing.’ I find that the guidebooks also repeat this story. But one of the unofficial guides, an English gentleman I happened to meet there one morning, pooh-poohed it with all the decision we associate with the English character. I gradually discovered that such voluntary guides make it their business to tell you what you ought to know and to prove to you that everything you do know is wrong. But the official guides are eager to make you comfortable.

Therefore no professional guide will ever leave this Michelangelo story out of his repertory. It is one more story that ought to be true, whether it is or not. There is the grim gray castle, there is the place behind the statue of Hercules and Cacus, there is the hot sunshine, and there, sure enough, is the profile on the wall. Could an entire book about Michelangelo which omitted this incident bring before us so brightly the everyday life of that aweinspiring man? Because nothing is more perfectly Florentine than sitting on a palace bench in the crowded piazza and chatting about this and that; and nothing is more characteristic of the nervous fingers of a Renaissance artist than the absent-minded sketching of a face on the only wall handy, even if it was behind him.

V

Touching Attentions. — Europeans find the inoffensive American tourist, with his anxious pursuit of culture, amusing — and lucrative. Every year they set the stage for him, dusting off the literary shrines and hanging out more and yet more tablets for his edification. They should remember, however, that he only thinks he is seeking culture. He is really seeking romance.

Simple folk, like guides and villagers, long since discovered this fact and do their best to make him happy. They know that he would much rather look at a dungeon than read about naves, transepts, ambries, and sedilia; would much rather see gorse, heather, hawthorns, wallflowers, and cowslips; would much rather listen to larks, nightingales, and cuckoos. But the polite European cannot get over his feeling that the sentimental traveler is funny.

One May evening my daughter and I went out from the Swan at Newby Bridge for a row on Lake Windermere. Below Newby Bridge the lake is no wider than a small river and it winds its way, like a river, for fifteen miles down to Ulverston. On both sides are low hills. The place that evening was so quiet that the ripple and drip of the oars seemed noisy. We stopped rowing every now and then to listen to the stillness. I suppose the landscape was no more attractive than a hundred we had seen in America, but the time of night, the setting sun, the musical names we had been reading in the guidebook, together with a multitude

of hazy memories and snatches of poetry, put us in a mood of sentiment.

We had drifted perhaps a mile when over a little hill floated the unmistakable call of a cuckoo.

That is the only time I have ever heard the European cuckoo, except once, a week later, when we were climbing the hill — Craigmore, I think it is called — where the Trossachs begin behind Aberfoyle. It was during the twilight, which lasted till eleven o’clock. I had just discovered a pretty waterfall, attracted by its roar among the rocks and bushes, and was calling to my wife to come and see it, when again there came floating over a hillock the triple call of a cuckoo. We were glad to have heard it, because we knew that within a month this most mysterious of birds would either fall silent or migrate. The call seemed to provide a moving commentary upon the multitude of references to it in English poetry, from ‘Sumer is icumen in’ to the present. Naught ‘but a wandering voice’ —

A few days later, in Edinburgh, I came upon a note in a London newspaper, and read it to the family: —

‘This is the season when the oldest inhabitant of our villages hides behind a tree and imitates the call of the cuckoo for the gratification of the American tourist.’