TRAVAIL IN TRAVEL

BY RUTH S. BROOKS

JUST as untold numbers of us, due to some inexplicable urge, begin to thumb the garden catalogues when they make their midwinter debut, so others of us, equally buoyant, pore over the fair promises of the travel bureaus and steamship companies, weighing the inviting tours depicted there alongside our bank account, attempting to find one somewhere near the balance. (The European tour is, I think, the only known commodity-call it necessity or luxury as you like-which is not sold on the instalment plan; five dollars down and so much a month for the rest of one's natural life. An oversight surely!) One glance at their gala covers, their alluring headlines, and my mind plays truant, winging off to take a bird's eye view of previous travels and fellow travellers. It compels me to admit, whether I would or no, that as a nation, travelling is not our forte.

It is a proverb, of somewhat doubtful accuracy, to be sure, that whatever Americans undertake they believe in doing with all their might, in accordance with the Biblical injunction. It is so with travelling. For the most part, we make a business of it; but that, too, is typically American, for we make a business of all our pleasures! We apply rules of business efficiency to our travel, and we discover in the end that what was undertaken for pleasure has turned out close akin to hard work. We are so afraid we may miss something! If there is anything to see, we want to see it no matter how tired we are or how short the time. There are many forms of gluttony in the world beside the one usually connoted by the term. The gluttonous sight-seer is just as intemperate as the glutton of food and drink.

The personally conducted parties are of course much to blame for the general pace, but the individuals cannot pass scathless, for we feel that we are not getting our money's worth unless we visit every church and museum from the North Sea to the Mediter

ranean, regardless of the time at our disposal. We are blind to the advantages of knowing a few places well, of staying long enough to find our way about and to feel at home in some European town. Nine out of ten of us make the return passage freighted with banal purchases and hotch-potch of kaleidoscopic impressions which will never come clear. Such travelling as elicited the following answer when I asked an acquaintance if she had seen the Holbein Gallery when she was in Basle. She looked a bit blank for a moment, then brightened and said, "It was there and I was there, so I must have seen it."

If only the verb "do" might be stricken from the traveller's lexicon! We "do" the hill towns of Italy, the châteaux of France, the cathedrals of England! Motors have only increased the possibilities of "doing". Nowadays we run quickly from one cathedral to another, "doing" perhaps three or four in a day, a pace easily possible in England and in northern France. The result is much the same as when two exposures are made on one film-a blur. We so constantly rush from city to city and from sight to sight that it recalls the remark a small boy once made to me about his mother, little realizing what a damning phrase he used. "Mother," he said, "always wants to be where she isn't!" If one wished to generalize on Americans as travellers, that seems an apt description!

While we were lunching one day last summer at the old Inn in Glastonbury, a prosperous looking limousine pulled up, disgorging a family of five-father, mother, and three children. They were shown to a table next us, so that we could not help hearing the conversation. The son, a lad of twelve or thirteen, said, with a groan, "We've seen every blooming cathedral in England!” "Yes," his mother replied blandly, "and you'll have to see every one in France before the summer is over." I confess, in spite of a decided penchant for cathedrals on my own part, to a downright sympathy for the boy!

This sort of thing almost convinces one of the advantages of the now old-fashioned mode of travelling by train. In fact, there is much to be said in its favor. In the first place you do not attempt so much in twenty-four hours, there being finite limitations such as railroad time-tables to which you must submit. Let us

suppose, for example, that you wish, while in Paris, to run down to Chartres for the day, granted it is all too short a time. If you have a motor at your disposal you reach your destination after a delightful ride across the plains of La Beauce, driving directly to the Cathedral, since that is what you have come to see. You go in, you walk about, you "oh!" and "ah!" over the glass and discover that it is nearly time for luncheon! Someone (perhaps it is yourself) suggests that now that you have seen Chartres, it really is a pity not to take in Rambouillet on the way back, and that possibly, if you had luncheon a bit early, you could "do” Mantes too.

You have seen Chartres, you say! But have you really seen her? Have you, by any chance, distilled a drop of her rare essence, caught a spark from her fire? Did you, perhaps, on your way to the Cathedral, stop at a little inn, where the peasants were gathering, it being market day, and have a bowl of café au lait and a brioche to reinforce the café au lait and crescent with which you started the day? Did you sit awhile in the open air, dazzling bright-(one chooses a sunny day for Chartres and her glass)—waited on by a bashful little maid, listening to the chatter and gesticulations (for one can almost hear them) of the market people as they unload their produce from the high, two-wheeled carts; or help some dignified grand'mère to alight from her lofty seat? All this while those two so beautiful spires nearby speak of what is still in store! And, once inside, did you pause long enough to lose yourself in the jeweled mystery of the windows, so that, literally, you came away breathing a sigh of gratitude and reverence for the miracle of their loveliness (proof tangible that miracles are!) and with a burning admiration for the age which could will such beauty into being? Did you feel some comprehension of Henry Adams when he said that Chartres was the finest thing left in this world?

Steep and narrow streets to wander in! Old, old houses, here and there, helping us, almost like a lightning flash, to picture what it was when the Cathedral was young! The overwhelming view of the spires, from the river far below, as it flows serenely between its fringes of decrepit buildings and cottage gardens! One wants more, in these towns which have such marvels for their hearts,

than to see just the heart itself—just the Cathedral. It is necessary to see something of its surroundings, sense something of the spirit which long ago created it.

Probably, you who motored, did have the indescribably good luncheon at the marvelous little café, where such touches were given the spinach as took it out of the realm of the mundane and where omelettes were things to dream on! For us who came by train, the time-table prevented any sudden telescoping rearrangement of plans in order to include another sight or two on the way home. We were free until five o'clock to explore such treasures as the Fifteenth Century Maison du Saumon, and that gem of mediæval carpentry, the outside stair built for la Reine Berthe, with still an unhurried last hour for the Cathedral, when every line of our earlier impression was etched deeper and made per

manent.

One day in February, I was walking briskly up and down the platform of the little station at Pæstum, revelling in that wonderful setting, the blue of the Mediterranean, and the encircling mountains, waiting for the only train back to Naples, when a man -an Englishman-started a conversation. It was plain he wanted to talk, wanted someone to whom he could pour out his feelings. He fell into step with me and began: "I'm jumpy," he said, "jumpy. I didn't want to come to Pæstum today, but I had to get away from my hotel. I was staying at S― in a delightfully quiet place. Yesterday the Berengaria, or some such, docked for a few days in Naples, with a lot of rich Americans on board for a cruise; sixty of them with forty guides invaded my hotel. The guides made so much confusion, trying to prove how necessary they were, examining the rooms, the food, putting their charges to bed and getting them up, that I fled-any place to get away." I sympathized with the poor man, well knowing the propensities of my countrymen when they come in swarms!

No, there's no doubt that as a nation we don't know how to travel. We know how to get the things that money will buy (as a rule), but beyond that we do not go. There is little comprehension of travelling as a fine art-of seeking effects of contrast as you would in any good picture, or, to use the language of the cookbook, of seeking a balanced ration. The great majority of

travellers feel that they have only time for the so-called important things, museums, galleries and the like. They have a ghastly sort of over-conscientiousness, deeming it a waste of time to follow any frivolous bent. By frivolous, I mean such wholly nice things as the patisseries, the antique shops, the markets, the unhurried saunterings into any inviting street that offers; the fascination of shop-windows. They are really far more important than they seem, these things and others of kindred sort; for how can one picture the life of the people without some understanding of their surroundings? And, as a matter of fact, they give excellent opportunities for improving one's taste. At the moment I am not referring to the cake shops! Antique shops invariably offer a jumble of good and bad. Try training your eye by this process of selection (taste after all is selection), so that you can separate at a glance the gold from the dross and learn, at the same time, no end of history and something of its setting. If you are told that a piece of silver is Louis Quinze, a bit of tapestry Louis Quatorze, a table Jacobean, the chances are that you will be interested enough to acquaint yourself with their approximate dates against further need. It is a fair game, this study of antique shops, even when you are not intending to buy, for you never know what may turn up. By doing only the cut-and-dried and usual things all chance of adventure is practically eliminated, for adventure still waits in the most unexpected places!

Only last summer we were spending a fortnight in Canterbury. To be sure, we might have visited a dozen cathedral towns in that time, but what an adventure we should have missed! From the Cathedral we drifted into the public market. Anything in the guise of a market is always fascinating! Flower markets-I can smell them as I write; "Spanish Steps" banked high, little stalls in Siena with their flame wild tulips and fragrant stocks, the Marche de la Madelaine-all as vivid in color and perfume as the day I last saw them! We sauntered through the Canterbury market, examining the flower booths with envy for the number of things which they grow and we do not, passing by the meat and vegetable stalls with an interested glance, feeling sure that whatever the dinner joint might be, we were certain to make the acquaintance of one of the cabbages, and came upon a lot of used

VOL. CCXXVI.-NO. 845