From Mayfair to Marathon

Front matter

FROM MAYFAIR TO MARATHON. ' ' I roam from land to land, I sail from sea to sea : Some day more kind I Fate may find- Some night, kiss thee !" LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET ; OLIVER & BOYD, EDINBURGH; HODGES & SMITH, DUBLIN; AMD TO BE HAD OF ALL BOOKSELLERS, AND AT ALL THE RAILWAY STATIONS. 1853. p3inted by hakkison and sons, London Gazette Office, St. Martin's L.*ne. TO THE GENTLEST AND THE FAIREST OP WOMEN, AND THE BEST OF WIVES. PEEFACE. I have only time to say a word to you at parting, my Public. Something which it is not necessary for you to know took me from May Fair to Malta ; and as the road was rough, the weather wintry, I took you with me. I have hardly, indeed, spoken a word to you through the journey, but have allowed you to see, hear, and judge for yourself. Be thankful.

I know you have been often a little huffy at my laughing when those dear old musty opinions of yours were shocked : but let us part friends ; and if you feel yourself any wiser or better for the trip, undo your purse-strings. Don't say, Pooh ! Pooh ! my Public, and that you did not want to go. It is too late to think of this, now that we are in New VI

Preface

. Burlington Street. I can't frank you. So, faith, if you put your muffiny fingers at tea-time over these pages, you must pay for it; you must, indeed, my Public. Decembeb 8, 185& CONTENTS. Chapter Page I. Thoughts on the Road, and Crossing the Channel . 1 II. Calais considered as a School oe Ethics 12 III. French Agriculture — Politics — Predictions . 27 IV. The Modern Frenchman 45 V. Public Life 51 VI. Traditions oe Montforet 57 VII. VIII. A Boar Hunt 6*3 The Count's Story 75 IX. Contemporary Statesmen Portrait oe a Religieuse A Glance at the Empire 82 X. 90 XI. XII. 98 Passages in the Life, of a. Village Priest 104 XIII. Leave-taking. Revelation of the Cure's Secret 116 The Return to the Capital. A Court Ball. French Literature XIV. 123 XV. The French Drama. A Sunday in Paris 140 XVI. The Marseilles Route and the "Great Do" . 16*3 XVII.

Italy CONTENTS. Chapter Page XVIII. A Lost Chapter XIX. Theatres . 216 224 XX Balæ. — Naples 233 XXI. A Masked Ball at San Carlo XXII. Pompeii 240 247 XXIII. The Museo Borbonico XXIV. Vesuvius 258 262 XXV. A Peep at Diplomacy XXVI. The Academy . 272 281 XXVII. We'll Sup before we go XXVIII. The Post-Ofpice in Naples 290 305 XXIX. From Naples to Rome XXX. Naples to Rome 311 323 XXXI. A Talk with my Public XXXII. The Carnival at Rome XXXIII. Rome 330 337 343 XXXIV. Letters from Home 348 XXXV. " A Race over Rare Ground " XXXVI. The Road Again 357 367 XXXVII. A True Story 383 XXXVIII. The Austrian Lloyd XXXIX. "A Canter to Corinth" . 402 408 XL. Marathon FKOM MAY-FAIR TO HAEATHON.

Chapter I

thoughts on the road, and crossing the channel. I have been abroad a good many times, my public, and am getting a little tired of it. Tra veding has lost for me its early charms of possible adventure and undefined hopes, its dash and ex citement, and I see it in its true light, a weary succession of dusty, headachy, rattling, roaring, hissing, hooting, shrieking railroads and steamers ; weary, old, drowsy, cold diligences, bullying cab men, and thieving landlords. Do I see it in its right light, or am I simply in an ill-humour ? Is my head only sore from my having knocked it so hard against the lamp of a first-class carriage as I rose in startled obedience to the stern demands of a gruff official for my ticket as we drew near Dover ? Am I angry at having subsequently tumbled down some stairs of a platform, which seemed B RETROSPECTION. specially constructed to break people's shins, at the Dover terminus ?

Do I feel indignant at having been charged fourteen-pence for the porterage of luggage which would only have cost me a shilling in a cab, and so carried have kept my boots dry this rainy weather ? Do I feel a secret pique at the waiter of the Ship when he teds me, in aggrieved tone (surprised that anybody who goes there should think of economy), that " Them people is all a tax, Sir " ? Or does it hurt my back-bone, as travelling will ? and has the rattle and rumble of it put me, therefore, out of humour, as it would at last make me mad, and has made many more than knew the reason why ? How is it now that I, who scarcely know what low spirits are, feel so down-hearted, as I talk to the captain on the deck of the rakish little steamer which is dashing me over to Calais at twelve knots an hour, to say the least of it?

Faith ! who shall say ? But so it is : all at once a love for muffins and crumpets has sprung up within me ; a liking for tea and toast ; an enthu siasm about chops and steaks. I do really think, at this moment, that I could almost drink a fine glass of old English port wine without making a wry face at it. I wonder whether we have any of us any real power of choosing our own fate in life, or any THOUGHTS ON THE ROAD. 3 control at ad over it. "When we begin to think at all rationally about it, and know what we would like and what we would not, it has been chosen long ago. Our bed is made and we must lie upon it : we have chosen and must hold for better or worse. Well, well ! anything is better than looking back. I wonder, though, in no bitter or carping spirit, if I should have been happier or better had I chosen differently when the time of choosing was.

Should I have been happier in cloth boots and an odd-looking hat, trotting down to my office at noon-day, full of some news that was not true ; wise in greatcoats, curious in umbrellas, shaven and shorn, and waterproofed and gutta-perchaed ? Should I have been happier with a wife and children three, in Eaton Square or Camberwell, as the case may be, giving a dinner once a-week or once a-year, watching the little patch on my head grow larger and larger and my butler's nose grow redder? Should I have been happier if I had been great in ' little chestnut mares,' and been known at the ' corner ;' if I had ridden the Liverpool Steeple-chase, curled my whiskers, and had my trousers made by Mr. Hammond ? Should I have been happier in a garrison-town, dancing and flirting with minc ing misses, sidling, bridling, faded, jaded beauties, with dyed dresses and impossible coiffures ?

Could I ever have done my duty as a country B VOGUE LA GALERE ! 4 parson (as they wished to make me), and led a life, calm, uncomplaining, hoping, wed-doing, and never throwing back a carnal glance after the flesh-pots of Egypt, the vulgar joys of sensual men, till piety grew into a habit and good the aim of all my thoughts ? I have given up peace and comforts gentle com panionship, friends, and kindred, I have severed all the rosy ties of the home-land, and — and for what ? Let me light another cigar; I hate whining and winners, besides they are apt to be sea-sick. I have a pitiless sort of contempt for men who would do this, and do that. I have chosen, and if I had not it would be all the same. Here I am with a deep moustache and a com plexion that does not look much like that of a fair islander.

What a rabble rout of hotel touters. Halloo ! stop, my fine friend Dessins, if you please ! pull that fellow back who has run off with my cocked hat to Quillac's ? What ! Quil lac's is quite as good? What do you know about it, my railway director, fat and pursy? come to look after your French shares ? You are thinking about your omelette and soubise, or perhaps your noisy, greasy, abominable, table d'hote, little thinking that I am running after the memory of Sterne, the most sentimental of CROSS THE CHANNEL. 5 all the sad vagabonds who have had tender minds and hard hearts since the world began. I have not had a pleasant run across, though it has only lasted one hour and fifty minutes, as my friend the railway director assures me, with a green and yellow grin. I am, indeed, the only person on board who has not been abominably sea-sick, though it has rained hard ; however, I took care to keep clear of the cabin, and preferred getting wet through a dozen times over than go within hail of it.

I should be very much puzzled to say, however, if I were asked, why it is so cunningly contrived to be ill-ventilated and uncomfortable ; why the railway director's feet rested upon his neighbour's head, from necessity, during the voyage ; and why the cabin was not kept generally fresher, and cleaner, and more wholesome. Why should it smell of stale biscuits and the passengers of the day before yesterday, and damp coats, and British brandy, and fermented porter, and frowsy horsehair? Why is the stewardess's comb left in a plate with the remains of that sandwich of stringy, underdone meat, which so surprised the Frenchman, who, being hungry, asked for it as a British delicacy, out of his little book of easy phrases ? What did that coil of old rope do in the corner there, ad tar and rotting with salt water ?

And why is the hour and fifty minutes one must spend A NEW RECEIPT. in crossing the channel to be passed in such an undeniable purgatory ? For my part, I confess I do not understand why carriages, and railways, and steamboats, should not be rendered much plea santer places than they are. A great many of us pass too much time in such places to be always catching the cramp and the back-ache in them, so I fancy I see a good time coming, a sort of portable garden of Eden for commercial 'gents' and queen's messengers. What do you say, too, my public? I mean ye great unwashed. What do you say to a little more gilding and fresh paint in such places ? the former could not cost much now we have found out California, and the putting on of the latter might perhaps get a bit of cheese to Mr. Cobden's cheap bread for some of you.

Let me give you a receipt, my public, to make a pleasant conveniency to travel in : R. Of cleanliness, as much as possible. Of fresh air, ditto ditto. Of fusty hay for cushions, none at all. Let the cabins of all ships be not only well venti lated after a voyage, but well fumigated, to get thoroughly rid of unpleasant smells lingering about in corners and crevices. Let the wood work be varnished as much as possible, and washed frequently, as well as the oil-cloth floors. WHY NOT? 7 Fit up too generally, oh my public, in a less lugubrious manner. A pretty white marble oil cloth would look much prettier than that detes table conglomeration of patterns and colours it makes one's head turn round to look at, and which seems to have been designed as an especial aid and suggester of sea-sickness.

Go to Mr. Gye and take a lesson in decoration, and open your eyes wide, my public, and your ears wider, while he tells you how much can be done with a very little money and a great deal of good taste. Why should not conveyances of all kinds be fitted up as well as the rooms of a house ? Mr. Screw (great firm of Screw and Driver, the bankers), who has a season ticket on the Brigh ton Railway, passes more of his time in its first class carriages than he does in any room of his house, except his bed-room, which is fitted up charmingly, with a pleasant sense of the apt, for going to sleep in.

Suppose Screw and his friends Jowler and Hunks were to agitate for a little liveliness and gaiety in the interior of carriages ; a little cedar -wood, rather more springy seats, or eome material less obstinately hot in summer and cold in winter, and slippery at all times, than leather; for first-class carriages with only three places on each side instead of four (in conse quence of which arrangement Hunks has the NEW PROPOSITIONS. cramp every day at Reigate) ; for more comfortable and better contrived places to repose one's head ; for tin cases full of hot water laid along the bottoms of the carriages to keep the feet warm in winter ; for oil-cloth to keep them cool in summer, for roofs not made to crack one's crown (Jowler has every summer a chronic bump on his forehead from this reason) ; for proper places to hang their hats (a patent was invented five years ago for this purpose, which not one railway has had the courage or the liberality to use) ; for better con trived steps to railway carriages, that people may break their legs less frequently in getting in and out ; for better lamps at night, so that it may be possible, by a great effort, to read the " E' vning pa — pah!" which has been so perseveringly ad vertized by the boy at the station ; for some means of opening the door from inside ; for a little looking-glass, that those who put faith in ringlets and whiskers may just see that they are in the right place before falling into the expectant arms of dear Harry or sweet Jane, at the station, and being whisked away in the broughams.

In fact, Jowler and Hunks, and even Screw, though he is only fifty-three, would feel much less stiff, and rheumatic, and ill-tempered, and weary ; would know less of backache, and nausea, and indigestion, if they would think over these things ; and, indeed, if I dared make a suggestion LOVELY WEATHER. 9 to men so wise, I should say the whole interior arrangement of carriages might be improved ; we might have shifting backs to our seats, so as to be able to change position, or even, I tremble at the boldness of the idea, to lay down at night. How strangely hot it is ! The climates of Europe are certainly changing. A friend of mine told me he could walk about last winter in Russia without a greatcoat, while the winter throughout the East was colder than had been ever known. Only five years ago, I saw folks skating along the streets of sweet Coblentz ; this year they have not seen a flake of snow and I am writing in January — writing in January, with the window thrown wide open and glad to get a gasp or two of cool air on any terms.

Let them say what they will about foreign climates, I will maintain against Knight and Squire that England has the best after all in the long run. I remember once passing a summer, a weary summer, in an out of the way German principality, where it rained perpetually and without ceasing the whole time. I hope I was too well bred to complain to the natives, and inform them plainly that I looked upon their climate as altogether a delusion and a snare ; so I ate my black puddings, smoked my pipe, and grew metaphysical in peace. Meantime an old lady (an indigenous production of the place) paid a visit to England, and returned. I BEAU BRUMMEL. asked her, in a short pause between sausages and goose and prunes at dinner, how she liked it. " Oh z'est sharmong ; zeulemong le glimad, il a blu dout le dems, je sous assure."

" Mais ici aussi madame — foi d'honneur," said I, perceiving she looked incredulous. " Non non, monsieur ; sous sous moguez de moi — bas bossible — il ne bleut chamais trois chours de zuite en Allemagne." And that was all I could get out of her, and was obliged to take the pro nunciation into the bargain, and swallow the insult and the injury how I could; for had I not been obliged to buy a red cotton umbrella with a fringe round it, the only thing I could get to pro tect me in the pitiless rains of her lacrymose land, and did not every article of wearing apparel I had ever ventured out in feel like a dried sponge always after, shrivelled and crinkled. Well I know what I know, so let me have a little fricandeau, — they make the best frican deau in the world at Dessin's, — and a glass of curacoa and water, and forget my indignation ; I will then go out and think about Brummel, writing to his friends to say he had not bread — " Not bread, sir, by God ;" and giving a thousand pounds to the conducteur of a diligence for bringing nick-nacks and nonsenses to ornament his lodgings.

On my word there must be many kind hearts in the world, that not even anger and con- NO BREAD, BY G — ! 11 tempt can harden, or Master Brummel had come badly off. Poor, wretched, shrivelled old man, as I call up your picture, oiling your wigs and keeping your pomatum in your love-letters, a debtor and an outlaw. I think your story about as stern and useful a moral as was ever written to those who read it aright. The Regent was a bad man ; a coarse, sensual, vulgar bad man; half cook, half tailor ; but he was not bound to help you when you had ruined your self by gambling and snuff-boxes, and mocked and insulted him. You forgot youself, my buckskinned acquaintance, and suffered for it ; but how kindly and brightly those gay men of the world appear to us, who assisted you to the last, the anonymous giver ofthe £1000, Lord Stuart de Rothsay, the Duke of Beaufort, and Lord Palmerston ; who, when his high consciousness of public duty made him take away your place, sent you £200. TOO LATE FOR THE TRAIN.

Chapter II. Calais Considered As

A SCHOOL OF ETHICS. " Too late for the train to Paris?" " Oui, M'sieur," said an officious commission aire, who had followed me about like a shadow since my landing. " M'sieu veut sans doute diner. Ces Messieurs veulent-ils que je leur commande a diner ? " " None for me," growled a cross old gentleman, included in the latter part of this brisk address. "Too late for the train to Paris? Why that means that we must wait here tdl two o'clock in the morning." " Oui, M'sieu," replied the Commissionaire with that wonderful shrug of the shoulders Frenchmen only can give, and which once seen it is as impos sible to forget as to imitate. And a very funny little game they are all carry ing on here, I see; and one which must pay DOVER IN THE OLDEN TIME. 13 uncommonly well. I arrived at Dover on Saturday afternoon, there was no boat to meet the train : it would not suit the hotels, and the railway company are themselves erecting a new one.

The boat which ought to have left Dover at eleven, paddled out of the harbour at six, and lay off somewhere, but it did not suit the hotels that I should know this, and when I went down to the pier at eleven, they hoisted signals to prevent the steamer from coming alongside. I wished to go off in a boat ; but that did not suit the railway company, who contract to put you on board the steamer free of expense, so they said the sea was too rough, which was not true. The same again on Sunday ; and so, having paid my fare in London last Saturday to a company which contracted to convey me to Paris in twelve hours, I find myself at five o'clock on Monday afternoon in Calais, with a prospect of being obliged to wait till Tuesday morning before I can get on. They agreed to take me under three pounds and have obliged me to spend more than six.

"Lord love you, sir," returned a red-faced old gentleman, with a pleasant roll in his voice, who now joined us, attended by a whole posse of re tainers, and was evidently a man of rank, who aped, as men of rank often do, a certain vulgarity of manner, " Lord love you, sir, you should have known Dover five and twenty or thirty year ago, M. DESSIN. it was the most pestilent little den of thieves under the sun. You complain of being delayed a few days, why when I first went to Paris, in the year— well perhaps we had better not talk about the year — I was kept there a fortnight. Dover in that day was ruled by two kings as potent as the coalition now existing between the railway company and hotel-keepers. These two men kept the first hotel, and contrived, somehow or other, to keep the whole place in subjection, especially the boatmen : and get off if you could !"

Some travellers will grumble : well, let them, they only spoil their journey, and really, if you do not set out with a robust good humour, and hold fast by it all the way, you will be pretty considerably bored and bothered. So my new acquaintances railed on all through the story, first, because they had been charged a franc each for carrying the smallest parcels from the steamboat to the custom-house ; then at M. Dessin's charges, which were, to say the least, fifty per cent, higher than they ought to have been; then at the two commis sionaires, who came to do nothing, and required to be paid nevertheless ; then at the system of charging for the servants of an hotel in the bill and allowing them to demand gratuities neverthe less; then at the prices of the wax lights that were not used, and, finally, at hotels and hotel-keepers generally.

AN OLD SCHOOLFELLOW. 15 I lit a cigar and sauntering out, determined to look up a man I had once known very well ; but who I heard had afterwards fallen from May Fair and St. James-street into difficulties and Calais. I should never have thought of him, I dare say, if it had not been for this; but one has no right to give up a man in adversity if you think, and you always may think so, that there is any chance of helping him, if only by a cheerful word and a grasp of the hand. It is pleasant, too, for a man on whom the world, which does not know him, looks coldly, to find some old friend who knew him well un changed, and at all events it is worth turning out of one's way in the mere hoj>e of doing a kindness. He was not at home, and I was returning to whence I came, when the figure of a man who did not seem altogether unknown to me, and who was walking thoughtfully on just before me, attracted my attention.

I looked again, closer and more earnestly, and at last saw that it was my friend — a man I had known all his life, an old schoolfellow. He had entered the army young in life, and soon tiring of it, had sold his commission and gone to the bar. A man of undeniable ability, and a harder worker than he seemed, he was succeeding fast and everything seemed hopeful and promis ing. He was rising rapidly in the estimation of the profession, and making a fair income, enough TIMES ARE CHANGED. for a cab and a club, a cutlet and a glass of claret, from £800 to £1,000 a-year. Unluckily he fell in love, or rather unluckily he fell in love with the wrong person, a pretty girl, with a sly old rogue of a father, a colonel, a baronet, a man who had all sorts of baits to catch gudgeons. Barlow was caught ; indeed he rose freely and took the hook in a manner that must have afforded keen delight to the angler, and, alas, to the angler's daughter, who, after having drawn him into ad sorts of securities for her aristocratic family, jilted and left him in the lurch ; writing a little letter that was quite charming when she dissmissed him, blotted with her — eau de Cologne, and assuring him that her heart would be a ruin evermore, after which she went to the opera in a box given her by young Hunks.

Poor Barlow ! the light airy stride he had learnt in the army, so full of grace and vigour, the head thrown back, the chest out, the gallant lofty bearing, the foot that spurned the earth with a step free as a king's? Gone, ad gone ! And the light open blue eye so clear and joyous, the frank fair forehead, the laughing lip? Gone too! His walk had become a sham bling shuffle, his head had fallen almost upon his chest, and his face was sad and stern — oh, so sad and so stern. There was something to me very touching in our meeting, and we spent the remainder of the OLD RECOLLECTIONS. 17 day and evening together. But when I pressed assistance on him, I hope delicately and consider ately, he refused it at once. "No, Frank," said he, with a smile which changed the whole expression of his face, hag gard as it was, into a grave and manly beauty, "No, henceforth I will rely on myself alone.

As for you, I will not say what I think of your offer, now ; enough, that you are the only one of many friends — for you know I was popular — who has stretched out even a finger to me, when, perhaps, I would have accepted it. Now I will work my way clear unaided. Sorrow has its uses too, Frank; believe me, if you do not pass the time in idly whining over what cannot be helped. I have worked so hard at law since I have been here, that I am now going to try and teach others. Come home (home !), and I'll show you a pile of manuscripts a foot high." " Well," he continued, seeing I listened to him with a sympathy not unmingled with something, which if not admiration, was near akin to it. "Well, the end of it is that I shall be able to get away. My creditors see I mean honestly by them, and that they will gain nothing by keeping me here.

They are powerless, and have accepted terms. I confess I can hardly get over the shame of having run away from them, but I could not help it, they got writs out against me, and exacted C HOPES FOR THE FUTURE. Jew's terms for even a few weeks' mercy. For you it would not have mattered ; you might have met them under the private arrangement Act, given up your property, and stayed in England without fear; but I could not, the rogues em ployed my own clients ; I had to meet the men every day and every hour who were suing me; they could carry the war into my own camp, and I had not the courage to plead poverty to a man from whom I had, perhaps, received a brief the day before in virtue of a champagne dinner." I was not quite sure about the virtue of the champagne dinner, and I am afraid I looked so.

" I see what you mean," pursued Barlow, who was young ; " you think the champagne dinners might have been left out, but you are wrong, you are indeed, nothing goes so far. The lawyers like being asked to dinner with us, brag of it, and give briefs for it. However, I shall give no more, for I have surrendered everything, even to giving a bill of sale on my law books, and now I may go again to my chambers without fear ; I shall go and set all to rights. Some good Samaritans have even kept together my connection, for it would have been perdition even to write a letter from this place, and next time we meet I hope it will be in Lincoln's Inn." " I hope not," returned I, rather hastily, remembering how the balance at my bankers shrunk the last time I went there. And Barlow laughed. A CALAIS PROMENADE.

He will return, too, to the upper world again, and do well in life ; a sound heart and a clear con science have made him escape the contagion of the place ; the sort of jail fever, and air heavy with sighs, which hangs over it. But what hope is there for that man — a disgraced politician, who has squandered everything, even to his pri vate honour and public faith? What hope for that mistaken wretch, who robbed his country in a place of trust, and thought that ill-gotten gold could buy happiness ? What hope for that poor gentleman who speculated in railroads with trust money, lost it, and tried to fly from disgrace and an guish? Hashedoneso? See howhis hand trembles as he balances his umbrella, and tries to talk uncon cernedly to some French officers who have stopped to speak to him and his daughters !