THE PREFACES OF BAEDEKER
By ANTHONY BLUNT
IN the nineteenth century improVed methods of locomotion changed travel from a lukury mainly indulged in by mad English • gentlemen of wealth and taste into the habitual recreation of those who are only occasionally idle and never rich. But if trains and motor-cars have increased the possibilities of travel, nothing has added to the conveniences of it so much as the works connected with the name of Karl Baedeker.
Baedeker is essentially and avowedly a writer for the new kind of traveller. The object of his handbooks, he says, is to render the traveller " as independent as possible of the service of guides and valets-de-place" and " to protect him against extortion," both matters of little interest to travellers like Beckford, who never stirred without a full suite, including a chef, and pre- sumably never noticed extortion. Baedeker is in fact whole-heartedly democratic and caters for the modern traveller whose aims are less ostentatious than the elegant entertainment sought by those who undertook the Grand Tour in the eighteenth century.
Karl Baedeker was born in 1801 at Essen and belonged to a family of publishers. In 1839 he bought up, revised and republished a little guide-book called Klein's Rheinreise. In the same year he published a new guide to Belgium and Holland, and before his death in 1859 he produced three more volumes. Owing to their reliability and accuracy these guides were immediately successful, and have remained so ever since. But they have other qualities less generally- recognized. For in addition to being accurate and efficient, Baedeker is a great writer.
His achievement in this field is best seen in his prefaces. In the earlier editions these are Simple and unpretentious, but soon after 1880 they begin to.show definitely literary tendencies. This may be due to the appearance of a new English translator, for I have not been able to detect the same beauties in either the French or the German editions. The first signs of the true Baedeker style appear in the Southern Italy of 1883, in which there occurs the following advice to those choosing rooms : " Iron bedsteads should if possible be selected as being less infested by the enemies of repose," a phrase beautiful in its delicacy but definitely improved in the Central Italy of 1904, where the latter part of it reads " as being less likely to harbour the enemies of repose." Polishings of style such as these are everywhere to be found. For instance, it is not till the Southern France of 1914 that, after floundering about with adjectives like unpleasant and tiresome, the translator hit upon the phrase irksome detention to describe what one may have to suffer in the Customs House. In the same-volume only—perhaps stylistically the high-water mark of the whole series— there is to be found among the hints to walkers the sublime sentence : " Heavy and complicated knapsacks should be eschewed." Indeed, walking tours are a subject which always rouse Baedeker to some unexpected feat.. What a light, for instance, it throws on con- temporary manners to find hide in 1914 recommending the walker to carry with him amongst many other things a pocket-lantern, a portable telescope and a stout um- brella.
But Baedeker is not only a turner of phrases and a mirror of fashion ; he is a master of many styles. He can begin a paragraph reflectively : " Over all the movements of the walker the weather holds despotic sway " ; continuing it poetiCally "The blowing down of the wind in the valleys in the eVening, the melting away of. the clouds," and so on ; and finishing tersely and scientifically : " West winds also usually bring rain." He can also be prettily facetious, particularly at the expense of waiters, and at moments he can use shock tactics, as when he suddenly remarks, in the middle of a discussion about lodgings : " Landlords sometimes make exorbitant demands on the death of one of their guests, in which case the aid of the authorities should be invoked." What a consolation ! Baedeker guides us even to the end, and there is nothing further to demand but a Baedeker's Handbook to Heaven.
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