In France, 1848, we are told that Englishmen ‘have a reputation for pugnacity in France: let them therefore be especially cautious not to make use of their fists, however grave the provocation, otherwise they will rue it. No French magistrate or judge will listen to any plea of provocation; fine and imprisonment are the offender’s inevitable portion.’
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, in her Journal of a Six Weeks Tour, gives this stricture some point when she relates an event at the beginning of her journey with Shelley down the Rhine in 1816:
Our companions in this voyage were of the meanest class, smoked prodigiously, and were exceedingly disgusting. After having landed for refreshment in the middle of the day, we found that our former seats were occupied; we took others, when the original possessors angrily, and almost with violence, insisted upon our leaving them. Their brutal rudeness to us, who did not understand their language, provoked Shelley to knock one of the foremost down: he did not return the blow, but continued his vociferations until the boatmen interfered, and provided us with other seats.
The handbooks of John Murray and Karl Baedeker became the two chief rivals out of many guidebook series, but Baedeker produced the cheaper item which sold therefore in greater numbers. Less durable, and printed on thinner paper, the maps and plans were mostly coloured and easy to read, while the black and white maps in the early Murray’s books, sometimes without scale, were more difficult to follow.
The Baedeker series is still going, though the quality has deteriorated since the introduction of glossy photographs; the only remaining Murray is a handbook to India. In France Adolphe Joanne began his series of travel guides in 1841, which in 1916 were renamed Les Guides Bleus, published in English only after the Great War. Although the Blue Guides of today, with the Guides Bleus in France, are perhaps the best both for detail and cartography, the prize for the best maps and plans of all time must be shared between Murray’s last edition of Switzerland, and Baedeker’s United States, 1909.
In the nineteenth century such books guided travellers to all parts of Europe, and sometimes to places beyond. With a Baedeker one could travel as far as Peking, or across Canada and the United States, while Murray even published handbooks to Japan and New Zealand.
Trawling through the various titles and editions enables one to confect a fair picture of what it was like to travel in the century up to the Great War of 1914, of the pleasures, dangers, traps and rare experiences which the tourist was warned against but no doubt often encountered.
The flood of tourists had a civilizing influence on some parts of the Mainland, in that the money spent was an economic blessing. The disadvantages have often been pointed out, but English gold helped to finance modern infrastructures, giving employment on all levels, and sustaining those inn owners who were to become a solid part of the middle class. As Murray writes in France, 1848: ‘By official returns it appears that there are at present in France 66,000 English residents. Supposing the average expenditure of each to be 5 francs a day, the sum total will amount to about 4,820,000 pounds per annum.’
From Switzerland, 1892, we learn that: ‘The great annual influx of strangers is of the same importance as some additional branch of industry or commerce would be. It has been estimated that in 1880 there were over a thousand inns in Switzerland especially built for the use of travellers, the capital value of the buildings and their contents and sites being put at nearly 13 million pounds sterling.’
The death of an officer in the bear pit at Berne was not the only accident which befell a tourist during that century up to 1914, when the days were good if you had the money to travel. Before going on to chronicle others I will refer to The Tourist’s India by Eustace Reynolds Ball (1907 edition). This tells of an incident which had a happier outcome than the one at Berne.
The great sight of Karachi is the sacred Crocodile Preserve at Magar Pir, some seven miles off. There are hot springs here which feed a shallow tank containing nearly a hundred crocodiles …
The story, usually thought to be fictitious, of the Englishman who for a bet crossed the tank by jumping successively from the backs of these crocodiles is, it seems, based on fact. The hero of this foolhardy feat was a certain Lieutenant Beresford, a friend of R. F. Burton. When Burton and his companion were visiting the crocodiles’ tank they noticed that these reptiles and certain islets of reeds happened to make an almost continuous bridge across the tank. This prompted the daring subaltern to hazard the feat of crossing by hopping from one crocodile to another. To the amazement of the spectators he succeeded in this apparently mad attempt. Sir Richard Burton had already successfully performed an equally daring feat. He managed to muzzle a crocodile by means of a lasso, and then jumped on the reptile’s back and enjoyed a somewhat zigzag ride.
Reading these guidebooks has for many years been a pleasurable pastime for me, and I shall lead the reader through their combined maze, picking out whatever illuminates the larger picture of travel in a bygone age.
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.’