INVOLUNTARY TRAVELLING-COMPANIONS.
• with our fellow-travellers. Under no other conceivable circum- stances should we enter a room nine feet by five, or whatever may be the exact dimensions, and pass a whole day or a whole night there with half-a-dozen total strangers. Yet every holiday season we do this without even the consciousness that we are doing anything odd. But though we may not realise very clearly the anomalous social relations produced by occupying for many hours a living-room in common with a band of men and women who are both strangers to us and -strangers to each other, we all feel a sense of relief when we discover that our involuntary travelling-companions—persons whose society we have not sought, and who have not sought ours, and who yet associate with us for so long a time—aro pleasant and agreeable.
It is often not a little amusing to note how the people who have done everything they dared, to keep you out of "their carriage," who have placed luggage all over the seats to repre- sent fictitious passengers, who have shammed illness, who have pat up both the windows and breathed on the glass to make the compartment look stuffy, who have talked gloomily about its perhaps being too soon to travel after such high-fever, develop the communal sense the moment you actually enter the carriage. When once you have forced your way in and taken your seat, you become a member of the community settled in the middle compartment of the fifth coach of the 4.30 express, have the full citizenship conferred upon you, and are entitled to the loyal help and succour of your fellow- burghers. The men and women who at Paddington most meanly tried to " jockey " you out of your seat, will at Swindon fight to preserve it for you with the utmost devotion. This sense that a compartment is a community, the members of which have certain rights and duties as regards each other, grows as the journey proceeds, until, after eight or nine hours, it becomes an exceedingly close tie,—one, for example, in- finitely more binding than that which is created between the travellers in the same train. No doubt, as in all com- munities, it frequently happens that there is one member, if not more, with whom one would gladly dispense, and to whom one would like to address the remark which M. Dupuy is said to have longed to address to M. Clemenceau. "In twelve minutes I expect you to have disappeared," is a remark one would often give anything to be able to make with authority to a travelling-companion. Again, there are some people who resent being made members of a community in this involuntary way, and who, though they are aware that it is inevitable, still kick against the pricks, and try to ignore their fellow-passengers, or to make them feel that they are in the way. That is a very stupid proceeding. It has never in the whole history of railway travelling been known to clear a carriage, and it therefore only uselessly irritates and annoys one's fellow-travellers. The wiser man makes the best of the fortuitous concourse of social atoms which has taken place in the compartment, and gets as mach amuse- ment as he can out of his involuntary companions. And pro- perly approached, they are capable of affording a very great deal of entertainment. They may be used in either of two ways. In the first place, you can talk to your fellow-travellers just as if they were fellow-guests in a country-house, and try to amuse and to be amused, or, again, you may keep quiet and, maintaining a benevolent neutrality, treat the rest of the occu- pants of the carriage as if they were actors in a play which was being represented at very close quarters, and listen to their talk among themselves. Each plan has its advantages, and only circumstances can decide which to adopt. The plan of conversation may elicit some very curious and amusing talk. For example, the best and " straightest " talk the pre- sent writer ever had about the condition of the interior of China was held with an involuntary companion, in a third- class carriage on the Great Western Railway. Accident may in this way put you en rapport with exactly the expert you have been longing to consult for the last six years. If, how- ever, the rest of the party previously know each other, the best and most satisfactory plan is to efface yourself behind a newspaper, and to listen to the dialogue of the real play which is going on before your eyes. It was once the good fortune of the present writer to assist at the representation of what was in effect a scene from an unwritten dramatic sketch by Mr. Rudyard Kipling. A party of young soldiers were travelling up to London from Aldershot. Enter to them " a time-expired man" who had just returned from India, and quitted the troop-ship at Portsmouth. The man was just such a lean, bard-conditioned, long-limbed, quick-eyed, slow- tongued Yorkshireman as Learoyd, and he looked at the " recruities" with what Lear's nonsense-book calls so aptly "affection mingled with contempt "—a state of mind by no means confined to the friends and parents of the little children who went round the world with a pussy-cat and a quangle- wangle. Very soon the men began to talk, and the time- expired one to tell the youngsters what sort of a place India was. No doubt one • would rather have had the Indian
Empire sketched in by the generous, the ingenuous, the high- souled Terence Mulvaney, but as he was not in the train that day, one was only too delighted to hear about it from Learoyd. And very well he told his tale, with a wink in his eye all the time. It was a terrible place for the young British soldier, and yet there was a fascination about it which made the " recruities" long to be there in spite of themselves. Not being a Boswell, the present writer can only recall speci- fically a very humorous description of a supposed surprise- visit to an important station made by " Bobbs "—the affec- tionate if irreverent name bestowed on Lord Roberts by the soldiers. The General, according to the speaker, had not been able to keep his intention a secret, and there was plenty of time to get things ship-shape before he came. Learoyd in real life, as we must call him, described how he was just strolling out of the recreation and reading room when a breathless serjeant forced him back with a "Sit down, you
in that chair !" Learoyd expostulated. He did not want to sit down, and he wouldn't. This only brought a fresh volley of language; a paper was shoved into his hand upside-down with a " Read that, you fool, and hold your jaw: " The next moment the General and his Staff, accompanied by the Colonel, entered the recreation-room and looked round to see that there was plenty of light and plenty to read. When they had gone, Learoyd inquired of the excited serjeant, " What's up now ? " It appeared that what was up was this. The Commander-in-Chief was exceedingly "gone" over recrea- tion and reading rooms for the soldiers, and Learoyd had been hastily pressed as a necessary piece of furniture for the room —i.e., a real live private reading a newspaper. How useful would have been a phonograph to catch more of this barrack- room talk ! Without question, a carriage full of soldiers is an .excellent place in which to sit quiet and bear some of the humours of soldiering, especially when you get a handful of ."recruities," and a time-expired man determined to make their blood curdle over the horrors of India.
Those who are now travelling in France and Germany will have excellent opportunities for comparing the ways of involuntary travelling-companions on the Continent and in England. On the whole, we believe that the balance for politeness and amiability will be found to swing in favour of the English. There is more manner about your fellow- traveller abroad, but less manners. The foreigner raises his hat when he enters the carriage, but that done, he shows very little consideration for the feelings of the little community. The Englishman, on the other hand, is shy and silent, but often extraordinarily attentive to the rights of his fellow- -travellers. It is the commonest thing in England for a tra- veller who, on getting out, has to open a closed window, to stop and put it up from the outside, in. order to save trouble to those who remain inside. The present writer has seen this -done constantly in England, and done for men and not merely for ladies,, but never in France. The Frenchman descends with a how, but leaves the window down and the door open. We admit that the popular notion on the Conti- nent is that English travellers are rude ; but we believe this notion to be ill-founded. There are, of course, a great many French Joe Millers to show the taciturn ferocity of the Britisher. One of them tells of a dispute between a German who wanted a window shut and a Frenchman who wanted it open. While the dispute raged, a Briton -sat silent and self-possessed in the corner. At last the 'German prevailed, and the window remained closed. Then, but not till then, did the Englishman intervene. He had noticed that the German, the moment the window was put -down, put it up again, and he did not wish to pass the whole day at this game. Accordingly, he produced a large red silk- -handkerchief, wound it carefully round his hand, and then, without a syllable, drove his fist through the window-pane. 'This settled the matter for good and all, and built an ever- lasting monument to British phlegm. Another traveller's tale of British phlegm is told in the following terms :—A Frenchman was seated in a smoking-carriage and had for his companion a "milord Anglais." Enter a British Miss,—of course with a plaid and protruding teeth and a. skye-terrier. She sat opposite the milord. He politely informed her that she had by mistake got into a smoking-carriage. She made not the slightest answer, but sat grimly on. The milord threw away his cigar, much to the astonishment of the Frenchman, who, according to the story, sat watching what would happen. When they reached the next station the milord said, with the cold dignity of his race and caste : "Madam can now change into a non-smoking carriage. If she does not I shall assume that she does not mind smoke and shall light another cigar." Madam said never a word, but stared in front of her. The train went on again, and the milord lighted up. When his cigar was well alight, and the train in motion, the lady bent forward, took the cigar out of the milord's mouth, and threw it out of the window. The milord not only did not make any remark, but he did not even seem disturbed. All he did was to wait a minute, and then to bend over the lady, seize the skye-terrier, which was lying in her lap, and fling it out of the window. Of this act, the lady, to the complete astonishment of the French spectator, took no notice whatever. At the next station, both the lady and the milord got out, but without exchanging a word in regard to the cigar-and-dog incident ; while the Frenchman turned over in his head an elude on the subject of " Les Anglais taciturnes." In a recent number of Truth, this view of the disagreeableness of the Englishman is insisted on. We are told that foreigners do not love us because we are by no means a loveable race. "We are," according to Truth, "aggressive, self-assertive, purse-proud, and hypocritical." This is, no doubt, the conven- tional view of the Englishman; but is it the true one ? Ask a Swiss inn-keeper, who is as likely as not a man of birth and education, what be thinks of the various guests who fre- quent his house. He will tell you that the English are by far the most pleasant and agreeable; and if you know him well, he may burst forth into a frenzy of indignation against the Germans, who enter his house, browbeat him, and treat him as if he were the dirt under their feet. " They treat us as if they had already conquered us," is the thought in his mind. No doubt the French, as fellow-travellers, are lighter in hand than the English ; but they often show a crass indifference to English feelings which is essentially rude. It once happened to the present writer to be travelling during the night in a railway-carriage with a middle-aged Frenchman and an English friend. The Frenchman very soon, and with a great show of politeness, asked us not to talk any more in English. " C'est si dur," ho remarked. Besides, a foreign tongue always distracted him. "Si c'etait l'allernand, je senile oblige de quitter la voiture." One would hardly think it polite to tell two French travellers that French was such a screaming language and so distracting, that they would he doing a kind act by not talking it. No, the English are not now a disagreeable race. Perhaps they were once ; but they are eminently a teachable people, and they have taken the good advice so liberally tendered them to heart, and have broken themselves of the habit. The reaction has made them the race of all others which tries to be polite. No doubt their essential shyness and sensitiveness makes com- plete success difficult, for to appear polite one must not be shy. Still, it is the merest piece of conventionalism to say that we are a rude and disagreeable people. Nobody who fairly compares his experiences "on the cars" abroad and in England—a very good test—will, we think, come to any other conclusion than that, in essentials, English people are more truly kind and polite than their neighbours.
Previous page
