Leading the Blind

CHAPTER TWO HURDLES

Before going abroad in the first half of the nineteenth century, a passport was needed, the price for which was four shillings and sixpence. By 1913 it had gone down to two shillings. Regarding the indignity of having to carry such a document John Murray wrote, in 1848: ‘Of all the penalties at the expense of which the pleasure of travelling abroad is purchased, the most disagreeable and most repugnant to English feelings is that of submitting to the strict regulations of the continental police, and especially to the annoyance of bearing a passport. As this, however, is a matter of necessity, from which there is no exemption, it is better to submit with a good grace.’

A visa was also called for, at the cost of five francs, a process which had to be gone through before every journey. ‘Beyond this the new regulations present no impediment to well-intending and respectable travellers.’

What people should take with them, and how they were to dress when they got to wherever they were going, was the subject of much advice from Murray. ‘The warning cannot be too often repeated, or too emphatically enforced upon the traveller, that, if he value money, temper, comfort, and time, he will take with him as little luggage as possible. In cases, however, where the travelling party is large it is a great mistake to distribute it in many small packages. Three large portmanteaus are infinitely better than six small ones: they are more easily found on arrival, more quickly opened at the custom-house, cost the same when you are charged by weight, and of course half when you are charged by package.’

Walking was more in vogue than it is today, and you were advised to: ‘Provide yourself with a pair of shooting-boots with cloth or leather tops in England, where alone they can be procured good, with a pair of thin boots for dress. This arrangement will prevent the necessity of loading yourself with a large stock of boots, boot-trees, and boot-cases.’ He goes on to say that for the walker the buttoned boots should be double-soled and provided with hobnails: ‘The experienced pedestrian never commences a journey with new shoes, but with a pair that have already been conformed to the shape of the feet.’

With regard to wearing-apparel, the best rule was ‘to choose that which is not conspicuous or unusual — a light loose morning coat for travelling, which will keep off dust and rain: even the English shooting-jacket has of late become familiar to foreigners.’ While a better and cheaper knapsack could be acquired abroad: ‘Portmanteaus are better in England than anywhere else.’

The ablutions of Englishmen were of prime importance: ‘Soap is indispensable, being a rare article in Continental inns.’ Another necessity was: ‘A portable india-rubber bath, with a bellows to distend it, packing into the compass of about a foot square, an immense comfort in summer in a hot and dusty climate.’

A flask for brandy or kirschwasser would be useful on mountain excursions, but ‘it should be remembered that spirits ought to be resorted to less as a restorative than as a protection against cold and wet, and to mix with water, which ought never to be drunk cold or unmixed during a walk. The best restorative is tea …’

Carey, an optician with a shop on the Strand, was said to make excellent pocket telescopes, ‘about four inches long, combining, with a small size, considerable power and an extensive range … Spectacles are almost indispensable in railway travelling, for those who ride in 3rd class carriages, to protect the eyes from dust and cinders. Those ladies who take an interest in mountain scenery, or excursions from the high road, will find great advantage in a saddle constructed by Mr. Whippy, in North Audley Street. The crutch is separable, for the convenience of packing.’

The first obstacle in the path of the British traveller was of course the sea, whether it was twenty miles wide as at the Channel, several hundred across the North Sea (German Ocean, in those days) or a week’s voyage to Spain and Portugal. Paddle-wheeled steamers were soon crossing to all major ports of the Continent, their fore-decks packed with carriages. Boats left from St Katharine’s Wharf on the Thames, but there were two rapid-return crossings every day from Folkestone. English steamboats from Dover took about two hours to Calais, the fare for a pedestrian being ten shillings, and the cost of transporting a carriage two guineas. On this route Murray says that the French steamers were ‘very bad’, though without giving the reason.

If you needed to wait a day or two at Folkestone, for a calmer sea perhaps, you could get bed and breakfast at the South-Eastern Hotel for six shillings. A cup of tea cost sixpence, a slice of sponge cake one penny, and a pork pie a shilling. For service, the advertisement says, ‘one shilling per day will be charged to each Visitor, who, if staying only a portion of a day will have to pay accordingly’.

Few guidebooks mention the torments of seasickness, a topic which rarely appeared in their pages till the advent of air travel in the 1920s. The subject was not, however, neglected in Baedeker’s Travellers Manual of Conversation, 1856, which tells one how to express in four languages the following degrees of sickness: ‘The wind increases. See that great wave which is coming to break against our vessel. I fear we shall have a storm; the sky is very dark towards the west.’

‘The rolling of the vessel makes me sick.’

‘Steward, will you assist this lady to go on deck; she is very unwell.’

‘Smell some eau de Cologne, it will do you good.’

‘I am very much inclined to vomit.’

‘Drink some Gin; it will strengthen your stomach, and you will feel relieved.’

‘I must lie down in my hammock.’

Certain guidebooks helped to pay their way with an advertisement section, though it was never the case with Baedeker, who was thus able to claim impartiality for any deleterious comments. An advertisement against the dreaded mal de mer appeared, later in the century, in Ward Lock’s Guide to Sherwood Forest, though why there is impossible to imagine. The effect of Roach’s Seasick Draughts was bolstered by a testimonial from a lady: ‘And here I have something to say which I expect all voyagers to accept with grateful joy. A distinguished physician advised me to get for a young friend who was going out to Gibraltar, some of ROACH’S celebrated draughts for the prevention of seasickness. The remedy had never been known to fail in its effects. The young lady who took them last year found them perfectly efficacious both on the journey out and home … Sold in boxes, containing Six, for 4/6; or 12 Draughts, 8/6.’

An extensive consideration of seasickness was found, as it should have been, in the invalid’s guide Winter and Spring on the Shores of the Mediterranean, 1875, by James Henry Bennet, MD, who claimed to have discovered the perfect means of avoiding the malady:

The stomach should be absolutely empty before going on board, but to avoid exhaustion a good meal should be taken three, four, or five hours before, according to the nature of the digestion. Then, one or two hours before embarking, some very strong coffee, tea, or spirits and water, should be taken, without milk or other food. This is to tonify the nervous system …

Once on board, repose should be enjoined, the recumbent position is best, and nothing whatever, solid or fluid, should be taken for twelve hours or more, even then very little. As there is nothing left in the stomach, or given it to digest, it remains quiescent under difficulty. The reason that medicines given in sickness do no good is that they are not absorbed. Once even nausea commences the stomach refuses to absorb liquids or to digest solids, and the more there is in it the worse it behaves. The best stimulant in my experience is very strong black coffee. Scores and scores of my friends and patients have escaped sea-sickness in the short passages by observing these rules, and have diminished suffering in long ones.

Brown’s Madeira, Canary Islands, and Azores agrees with the above advice, adding that: ‘When attacked by vomiting the greatest comfort is to be found in lying down. A belt drawn tightly round the stomach is at times a relief. As a remedy a solution containing bicarbonate of soda, chloroform, or bromide of potash and sal volatile is of great assistance. Efforts should be made to keep the digestive organs at work. For this purpose a few apples and dry biscuits are in every way most convenient. It is rarely that sickness gives much trouble the second day.’

Our traveller could put his sorrows in their place should all these seasickness remedies fail, by taking in Murray’s comments on the exigencies of the French police and their passport system, which emphasized that as soon as he stepped ashore at Calais every man’s hand would be against him:

In France, more than in any other country in Europe at the present time, the passport is liable to be demanded at all times and places, and should always be carried about the person. The gendarmes are authorised to call for it not only in frontier and fortified towns, but in remote villages: they may stop you on the highway, or waylay you as you descend from the diligence — may force themselves into the salle à manger or enter your bedroom, to demand a sight of this precious document. It is needless to expatiate on this restraint, so inconsistent with the freedom which an Englishman enjoys at home, or to show that the police are a pest to the harmless and well conducted, without being a terror to evil-doers; it is the custom of the country, and the stranger must conform, or he has no business to set his foot in it. It must be allowed that the police perform their duty with civility, so as to render it as little vexatious as possible.

Woe to the traveller who loses his passport, or leaves it behind. Those who do so ‘are liable to be marched off to the judge de paix, or préfet, often a distance of 10, 15, or 20 miles, on foot, unless they choose to pay for a carriage for their escort as well as themselves; and if no satisfactory explanation can be given, may at last be deposited in prison.’

In the epilogue to An Inland Voyage Robert Louis Stevenson relates in his fey yet charming manner that he was arrested by a gendarme during a pedestrian tour of France soon after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. The vital paper had been left behind in his valise, and neither charm nor argument prevented him being incarcerated, albeit for less than an hour, in the damp cellar of a police station. He was uncertain as to whether or not he would be detained for trial, but was released on the arrival of his more appropriately dressed companion, who vouched for him as a bona fide traveller. Even so, neither of them was allowed to continue their walk, being put on the next train for Paris.

The nineteenth century became comparatively peaceful and tolerant towards its end, but an intense spy mania nevertheless surrounded a country’s defence installations. Guidebooks frequently contained the following warning, as in Baedeker’s Northern France, 1909: ‘Sketching, photographing, or making notes near fortified places sometimes exposes innocent travellers to disagreeable suspicions or worse, and should therefore be avoided.’

In the same author’s Russia, 1914, we are told that ‘even in less important places the guardians of the law are apt to be over-vigilant. In order to escape molestation the photographers should join the Russian Photographic Society.’ In no guidebook to Britain was the traveller given similar warnings regarding arsenals and naval bases.

Such rules have of course remained in force during much of the present century. In 1967 my Finnish publisher, to whom I showed the detailed military maps I intended using to motor my way around the USSR, warned me not to take them or I would be sure to get into trouble. While driving in the Ukraine my Russian friend was plainly worried when I stopped to photograph the landscape, though neither bridges nor fortresses were visible, and he was even more harassed when I levelled my camera at the streets of Czernowitz.

Travellers have always been fair game for the secret police. In 1954 I was arrested in Barcelona and detained for a day, though not in a cell. I never knew for what reason, and after lengthy questioning and a close examination of my passport I was released.

One hopes that our Victorian traveller did not suffer too much from seasickness, having taken his luck on the weather. The boats were much smaller than they are today, and wrecks were not uncommon in the Channel. During a violent storm in January 1857 the steamer Violet foundered off the Goodwins. She had left Ostend the previous night, and hit the sands at two in the morning, going down with all passengers and crew.

The most agreeable crossings to the Continent must have been those enjoyed by J. P. Pearson, recounted in his three-volume magnum opus Railways and Scenery. In 1901 he took the ship from Grimsby to Hamburg, having bought a year’s season ticket for the amazingly low price, even then, of sixty shillings. ‘The state rooms were spacious, and almost invariably each passenger (so few used this route) could have one of them all to himself. The open fire in the dining saloon was most cheery, and the writer recalls some pleasant evenings sitting around it on his trips across the North Sea.’