Chapter X. Modes of the Moment; a Fashion Article
Among the furbearing races the adult male of the French species easily excels. Some fine peltries are to be seen in Italy, and there is a type of farming Englishman who wears a stiff set of burnishers projecting out round his face in a circular effect suggestive of a halo that has slipped down. In connection with whiskers I have heard the Russians highly commended. They tell me that, from a distance, it is very hard to distinguish a muzhik from a bosky dell, whereas a grand duke nearly always reminds one of something tasty and luxuriant in the line of ornamental arborwork. The German military man specializes in mustaches, preference being given to the Texas longhorn mustache, and the walrus and kitty-cat styles. A dehorned German officer is rarely found and a muley one is practically unknown. But the French lead all the world in whiskers—both the wildwood variety and the domesticated kind trained on a trellis. I mention this here at the outset because no Frenchman is properly dressed unless he is whiskered also; such details properly appertain to a chapter on European dress.
Probably every freeborn American citizen has at some time in his life cherished the dream of going to England and buying himself an outfit of English clothes—just as every woman has had hopes of visiting Paris and stocking up with Parisian gowns on the spot where they were created, and where—so she assumes—they will naturally be cheaper than elsewhere. Those among us who no longer harbor these fancies are the men and women who have tried these experiments.
After she has paid the tariff on them a woman is pained to note that her Paris gowns have cost her as much as they would cost her in the United States—so I have been told by women who have invested extensively in that direction. And though a man, by the passion of the moment, may be carried away to the extent of buying English clothes, he usually discovers on returning to his native land that they are not adapted to withstand the trying climatic conditions and the critical comments of press and public in this country. What was contemplated as a triumphal reentrance becomes a footrace to the nearest ready-made clothing store.
English clothes are not meant for Americans, but for Englishmen to wear: that is a great cardinal truth which Americans would do well to ponder. Possibly you have heard that an Englishman's clothes fit him with an air. They do so; they fit him with a lot of air around the collar and a great deal of air adjacent to the waistband and through the slack of the trousers; frequently they fit him with such an air that he is entirely surrounded by space, as in the case of a vacuum bottle. Once there was a Briton whose overcoat collar hugged the back of his neck; so they knew by that he was no true Briton, but an impostor—and they put him out of the union. In brief, the kind of English clothes best suited for an American to wear is the kind Americans make.
I knew these things in advance—or, anyway, I should have known them; nevertheless I felt our trip abroad would not be complete unless I brought back some London clothes. I took a look at the shop-windows and decided to pass up the ready-made things. The coat shirt; the shaped sock; the collar that will fit the neckband of a shirt, and other common American commodities, seemed to be practically unknown in London.
The English dress shirt has such a dinky little bosom on it that by rights you cannot refer to it as a bosom at all; it comes nearer to being what women used to call a guimpe. Every show-window where I halted was jammed to the gunwales with thick, fuzzy, woolen articles and inflammatory plaid waistcoats, and articles in crash for tropical wear—even through the glass you could note each individual crash with distinctness. The London shopkeeper adheres steadfastly to this arrangement. Into his window he puts everything he has in his shop except the customer. The customer is in the rear, with all avenues of escape expertly fenced off from him by the proprietor and the clerks; but the stock itself is in the show-window.
There are just two department stores in London where, according to the American viewpoint, the windows are attractively dressed. One of these stores is owned by an American, and the other, I believe, is managed by an American. In Paris there are many shops that are veritable jewel-boxes for beauty and taste; but these are the small specialty shops, very expensive and highly perfumed.
The Paris department stores are worse jumbles even than the English department stores. When there is a special sale under way the bargain counters are rigged up on the sidewalks. There, in the open air, buyer and seller will chaffer and bicker, and wrangle and quarrel, and kiss and make up again—for all the world to see. One of the free sights of Paris is a frugal Frenchman, with his face extensively haired over, pawing like a Skye terrier through a heap of marked-down lingerie; picking out things for the female members of his household to wear—now testing some material with his tongue; now holding a most personal article up in the sunlight to examine the fabric—while the wife stands humbly, dumbly by, waiting for him to complete his selections. So far as London was concerned, I decided to deny myself any extensive orgy in haberdashery. From similar motives I did not invest in the lounge suit to which an Englishman is addicted. I doubted whether it would fit the lounge we have at home—though, with stretching, it might, at that. My choice finally fell on an English raincoat and a pair of those baggy knee breeches such as an Englishman wears when he goes to Scotland for the moor shooting, or to the National Gallery, or any other damp, misty, rheumatic place.
I got the raincoat first. It was built to my measure; at least that was the understanding; but you give an English tailor an inch and he takes an ell. This particular tailor seemed to labor under the impression that I was going to use my raincoat for holding large public assemblies or social gatherings in—nothing that I could say convinced him that I desired it for individual use; so he modeled it on a generous spreading design, big at the bottom and sloping up toward the top like a pagoda. Equipped with guy ropes and a centerpole it would make a first-rate marquee for a garden party—in case of bad weather the refreshments could be served under it; but as a raincoat I did not particularly fancy it. When I put it on I sort of reminded myself of a covered wagon.
Nothing daunted by this I looked up the address of a sporting tailor in a side street off Regent Street, whose genius was reputed to find an artistic outlet in knee breeches. Before visiting his shop I disclosed my purpose to my traveling companion, an individual in whose judgment and good taste I have ordinarily every confidence, and who has a way of coming directly to the meat of a subject.
"What do you want with a pair of knee breeches?" inquired this person crisply.
"Why—er—for general sporting occasions," I replied.
"For instance, what occasions?"
"For golfing," I said, "and for riding, you know. And if I should go West next year they would come in very handy for the shooting."
"To begin with," said my companion, "you do not golf. The only extensive riding I have ever heard of your doing was on railway trains. And if these knee breeches you contemplate buying are anything like the knee breeches I have seen here in London, and if you should wear them out West among the impulsive Western people, there would undoubtedly be a good deal of shooting; but I doubt whether you would enjoy it—they might hit you!"
"Look here!" I said. "Every man in America who wears duck pants doesn't run a poultry farm. And the presence of a sailor hat in the summertime does not necessarily imply that the man under it owns a yacht. I cannot go back home to New York and face other and older members of the When-I-Was-in-London Club without some sartorial credentials to show for my trip. I am firmly committed to this undertaking. Do not seek to dissuade me, I beg of you. My mind is set on knee breeches and I shan't be happy until I get them."
So saying I betook myself to the establishment of this sporting tailor in the side street off Regent Street; and there, without much difficulty, I formed the acquaintance of a salesman of suave and urbane manners. With his assistance I picked out a distinctive, not to say striking, pattern in an effect of plaids. The goods, he said, were made of the wool of a Scotch sheep in the natural colors. They must have some pretty fancy-looking sheep in Scotland!
This done, the salesman turned me over to a cutter, who took me to a small room where incompleted garments were hanging all about like the quartered carcasses of animals in a butcher shop. The cutter was a person who dropped his H's and then, catching himself, gathered them all up again and put them back in his speech—in the wrong places. He surveyed me extensively with a square and a measuring line, meantime taking many notes, and told me to come back on the next day but one.
On the day named and at the hour appointed I was back. He had the garments ready for me. As, with an air of pride, he elevated them for my inspection, they seemed commodious—indeed, voluminous. I had told him, when making them, to take all the latitude he needed; but it looked now as though he had got it confused in his mind with longitude. Those breeches appeared to be constructed for cargo rather than speed.
With some internal misgivings I lowered my person into them while he held them in position, and when I had descended as far as I could go without entirely immuring myself, he buttoned the dewdabs at the knees; then he went round behind me and cinched them in abruptly, so that of a sudden they became quite snug at the waistline; the only trouble was that the waistline had moved close up under my armpits, practically eliminating about a foot and a half of me that I had always theretofore regarded as indispensable to the general effect. Right in the middle of my back, up between my shoulder blades there was a stiff, hard clump of something that bored into my spine uncomfortably. I could feel it quite plainly—lumpy and rough.
"Ow's that, sir?" he cheerily asked me, over my shoulder; but it seemed to me there was a strained, nervous note in his voice. "A bit of all right—eh, sir?"
"Well," I said, standing on tiptoe in an effort to see over the top, "you've certainly behaved very generously toward me—I'll say that much. Midships there appears to be about four or five yards of material I do not actually need in my business, being, as it happens, neither a harem favorite nor a professional sackracer. And they come up so high I'm afraid people will think the gallant coast-guards have got me in a lifebuoy and are bringing me ashore through the surf."
"You'll be wanting them a bit loose, sir, you know," he interjected, still snuggling close behind me. "All our gentlemen like them loose."
"Oh, very well," I said; "perhaps these things are mere details. However, I would be under deep obligations to you if you'd change 'em from barkentine to schooner rig, and lower away this gaff-topsail which now sticks up under my chin, so that I can luff and come up in the wind without capsizing. And say, what is that hard lump between my shoulders?"
"Nothing at all, sir," he said hastily; and now I knew he was flurried. "I can fix that, sir—in a jiffy, sir."
"Anyhow, please come round here in front where I can converse more freely with you on the subject," I said. I was becoming suspicious that all was not well with me back there where he was lingering. He came reluctantly, still half-embracing me with one arm.
Petulantly I wrestled my form free, and instantly those breeches seemed to leap outward in all directions away from me. I grabbed for them, and barely in time I got a grip on the yawning top hem. Peering down the cavelike orifice that now confronted me I beheld two spectral white columns, and recognized them as my own legs. In the same instant, also, I realized what that hard clump against my spine was, because when he took his hand away the clump was gone. He had been standing back there with some eight or nine inches of superfluous waistband bunched up in his fist.
The situation was embarrassing, and it would have been still more embarrassing had I elected to go forth wearing my breeches in their then state, because, to avoid talk, he would have had to go along too, walking immediately behind me and holding up the slack. And such a spectacle, with me filling the tonneau and he back behind on the rumble, would have caused comment undoubtedly.
That pantsmaker was up a stump! He looked reproachfully at me, chidingly at the breeches and sternly at the tapemeasure—which he wore draped round his neck like a pet snake—as though he felt convinced one of us was at fault, but could not be sure which one.
"I'm afraid, sir," he said, "that your figure is changing."
"I guess you're right," I replied with a soft sigh. "As well as I can judge I'm not as tall as I was day before yesterday by at least eighteen inches. And I've mislaid my diaphragm somewhere, haven't I?"
"'Ave them off, please, sir," he said resignedly. "I'll 'ave to alter them to conform, sir. Come back to-morrow."
I had them off and he altered them to conform, and I went back on the morrow; in fact I went back so often that after a while I became really quite attached to the place. I felt almost like a member of the firm. Between calls from me the cutter worked on those breeches. He cut them up and he cut them down; he sheared the back away and shingled the front, and shifted the buttons to and fro.
Still, even after all this, they were not what I should term an unqualified success. When I sat down in them they seemed to climb up on me so high, fore and aft, that I felt as short-waisted as a crush hat in a state of repose. And the only way I could get my hands into the hip pockets of those breeches was to take the breeches off first. As ear muffs they were fair but as hip pockets they were failures. Finally I told him to send my breeches, just as they were, to my hotel address—and I paid the bill.
I brought them home with me. On the day after my arrival I took them to my regular tailor and laid the case before him. I tried them on for him and asked him to tell me, as man to man, whether anything could be done to make those garments habitable. He called his cutter into consultation and they went over me carefully, meantime uttering those commiserating clucking sounds one tailor always utters when examining another tailor's handiwork. After this my tailor took a lump of chalk and charted out a kind of Queen Rosamond's maze of crossmarks on my breeches and said I might leave them, and that if surgery could save them he would operate. At any rate he guaranteed to cut them away sufficiently to admit of my breast bone coming out into the open once more.
In a week—about—he called me on the telephone and broke the sad news to me. My English riding pants would never ride me again. In using the shears he had made a fatal slip and had irreparably damaged them in an essential location. However, he said I need not worry, because it might have been worse; from what he had already cut out of them he had garnered enough material to make me a neat outing coat, and by scrimping he thought he might get a waistcoat to match.
I have my English raincoat; it is still in a virgin state so far as wearing it is concerned. I may yet wear it and I may not. If I wear it and you meet me on the street—and we are strangers—you should experience no great difficulty in recognizing me. Just start in at almost any spot on the outer orbit and walk round and round as though you were circling a sideshow tent looking for a chance to crawl under the canvas and see the curiosities for nothing; and after a while, if you keep on walking as directed, you will come to a person with a plain but substantial face, and that will be me in my new English raincoat. Then again I may wear it to a fancy-dress ball sometime. In that case I shall stencil Pike's Peak or Bust! on the sidebreadth and go as a prairie schooner. If I can succeed in training a Missouri hound-dog to trail along immediately behind me the illusion will be perfect.
After these two experiences with the English tailor I gave up. Instead of trying to wear the apparel of the foreigner I set myself to the study of it. I would avoid falling into the habit of making comparisons between European institutions and American institutions that are forever favorable to the American side of the argument. To my way of thinking there is only one class of tourist-Americans to be encountered abroad worse than the class who go into hysterical rapture over everything they see merely because it is European, and that is the class who condemn offhand everything they see and find fault with everything merely because it is not American. But I must say that in the matter of outer habiliments the American man wins the decision on points nearly every whack.
In his evening garb, which generally fits him, but which generally is not pressed as to trouserlegs and coatsleeves, the Englishman makes an exceedingly good appearance. The swallow-tailed coat was created for the Englishman and he for it; but on all other occasions the well-dressed American leads him—leads the world, for that matter. When a Frenchman attires himself in his fanciest regalia he merely succeeds in looking effeminate; whereas a German, under similar circumstances, bears a wadded-in, bulged-out, stuffed-up appearance. I never saw a German in Germany whose hat was not too small for him—just as I never saw a Japanese in Occidental garb whose hat was not too large for him—if it was a derby hat. If a German has on a pair of trousers that flare out at the bottom and a coat with angel sleeves—I think that is the correct technical term—and if the front of his coat is spangled over with the largest-sized horn buttons obtainable he regards himself as being dressed to the minute.
As for the women, I believe even the super-critical mantuamakers of Paris have begun to concede that, as a nation, the American women are the best-dressed women on earth. The French women have a way of arranging their hair and of wearing their hats and of draping their furs about their throats that is artistic beyond comparison. There may be a word in some folks' dictionaries fitly to describe it—there is no such word in mine; but when you have said that much you have said all there is to say. A French woman's feet are not shod well. French shoes, like all European shoes, are clumsy and awkward looking.
English children are well dressed because they are simply dressed; and the children themselves, in contrast to the overdressed, overly aggressive youngsters so frequently encountered in America, are mannerly and self-effacing, and have sane, simple, childish tastes. Young English girls are fresh and natural, but frequently frumpy; and the English married woman is generally dressed in poor taste and appears to have a most limited wardrobe. Apparently the husband buys all he wants, and then, if there is any money left over, the wife gets it to spend on herself.
Venturing one morning into a London chapel I saw a dowdy little woman of this type kneeling in a pew, chanting the responses to the service. Her blouse gaped open all the way down her back and she was saying with much fervor, "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done." She had too, but she didn't know it, as she knelt there unconsciously supplying a personal illustration for the spoken line.
The typical highborn English woman has pale blue eyes, a fine complexion and a clear-cut, rather expressionless face with a profile suggestive of the portraits seen on English postage stamps of the early Victorian period; but in the arranging of her hair any French shopgirl could give her lessons, and any smart American woman could teach her a lot about the knack of wearing clothes with distinction.
In England, that land of caste which is rigid enough to be cast iron, all men, with the exception of petty tradespeople, dress to match the vocations they follow. In America no man stays put—he either goes forward to a circle above the one into which he was born or he slips back into a lower one; and so he dresses to suit himself or his wife or his tailor. But in England the professional man advertises his calling by his clothes. Extreme stage types are ordinary types in London. No Southern silver-tongued orator of the old-time, string-tied, slouch-hatted, long-haired variety ever clung more closely to his official makeup than the English barrister clings to his spats, his shad-bellied coat and his eye-glass dangling on a cord. At a glance one knows the medical man or the journalist, the military man in undress or the gentleman farmer; also, by the same easy method, one may know the workingman and the penny postman. The workingman has a cap on his head and a neckerchief about his throat, and the legs of his corduroy trousers are tied up below the knees with strings—else he is no workingman.
When we were in London the postmen were threatening to go on strike. From the papers I gathered that the points in dispute had to do with better hours and better pay; but if they had been striking against having to wear the kind of cap the British Government makes a postman wear, their cause would have had the cordial support and intense sympathy of every American in town.
It remains for the English clerk to be the only Englishman who seeks, by the clothes he wears in his hours of ease, to appear as something more than what he really is. Off duty he fair1y dotes on the high hat of commerce. Frequently he sports it in connection with an exceedingly short and bobby sackcoat, and trousers that are four or five inches too short in the legs for him. The Parisian shopman harbors similar ambitions—only he expresses them with more attention to detail. The noon hour arriving, the French shophand doffs his apron and his air of deference. He puts on a high hat and a frock coat that have been on a peg behind the door all the morning, gathers up his cane and his gloves; and, becoming on the instant a swagger and a swaggering boulevardier, he saunters to his favorite sidewalk cafe for a cordial glassful of a pink or green or purple drink. When his little hour of glory is over and done with he returns to his counter, sheds his grandeur and is once more your humble and ingratiating servitor.
In residential London on a Sunday afternoon one beholds some weird and wonderful costumes. On a Sunday afternoon in a sub-suburb of a Kensington suburb I saw, passing through a drab, sad side street, a little Cockney man with the sketchy nose and unfinished features of his breed. He was presumably going to church, for he carried a large Testament under his arm. He wore, among other things, a pair of white spats, a long-tailed coat and a high hat. It was not a regular high hat, either, but one of those trick-performing hats which, on signal, will lie doggo or else sit up and beg. And he was riding a bicycle of an ancient vintage!
The most impressively got-up civilians in England—or in the world, either, for that matter—are the assistant managers and the deputy cashiers of the big London hotels. Compared with them the lilies of the field are as lilies in the bulb. Their collars are higher, their ties are more resplendent, their frock coats more floppy as to the tail and more flappy as to the lapel, than it is possible to imagine until you have seen it all with your own wondering eyes. They are haughty creatures, too, austere and full of a starchy dignity; but when you come to pay your bill you find at least one of them lined up with the valet and the waiter, the manservant and the maidservant, the ox and the ass, hand out and palm open to get his tip. Having tipped him you depart feeling ennobled and uplifted—as though you had conferred a purse of gold on a marquis.
Chapter XI. Dressed to Kill
With us it is the dress of the women that gives life and color to the shifting show of street life. In Europe it is the soldier, and in England the private soldier particularly. The German private soldier is too stiff, and the French private soldier is too limber, and the Italian private soldier has been away from the dry-cleanser's too long; but the British Tommy Atkins is a perfect piece of work—what with his dinky cap tilted over one eye, and his red tunic that fits him without blemish or wrinkle, and his snappy little swagger stick flirting the air. As a picture of a first-class fighting man I know of but one to match him, and that is a khaki-clad, service-hatted Yankee regular—long may he wave!
There may be something finer in the way of a military spectacle than the change of horse-guards at Whitehall or the march of the foot-guards across the green in St. James' Park on a fine, bright morning—but I do not know what it is. One day, passing Buckingham Palace, I came on a footguard on duty in one of the little sentry boxes just outside the walls. He did not look as though he were alive. He looked as though he had been stuffed and mounted by a most expert taxidermist. From under his bearskin shako and from over his brazen chin-strap his face stared out unwinking and solemn and barren of thought.
I said to myself: "It is taking a long chance, but I shall ascertain whether this party has any human emotions." So I halted directly in front of him and began staring fixedly at his midriff as though I saw a button unfastened there or a buckle disarranged. For a space of minutes I kept my gaze on him without cessation.
Finally the situation grew painful; but it was not that British grenadier who grew embarrassed and fidgety—it was the other party to the transaction. His gaze never shifted, his eyes never wavered—but I came away feeling all wriggly.
In no outward regard whatsoever do the soldiers on the Continent compare with the soldiers of the British archipelago. When he is not on actual duty the German private is always going somewhere in a great hurry with something belonging to his superior officer—usually a riding horse or a specially heavy valise. On duty and off he wears that woodenness of expression—or, rather, that wooden lack of expression—which is found nowhere in such flower of perfection as on the faces of German soldiers and German toys.
The Germans prove they have a sense of humor by requiring their soldiers to march on parade with the goose step; and the French prove they have none at all by incasing the defenseless legs of their soldiers in those foolish red-flannel pants that are manufactured in such profusion up at the Pantheon.
In the event of another war between the two nations I anticipate a frightful mortality among pants—especially if the French forces should be retreating. The German soldier is not a particularly good marksman as marksmen go, but he would have to be the worst shot in the world to miss a pair of French pants that were going away from him at the time.
Still, when all is said and done, there is something essentially Frenchy about those red pants. There is something in their length that instinctively suggests Toulon, something in their breadth that makes you think of Toulouse. I realize that this joke, as it stands, is weak and imperfect. If there were only another French seaport called Toubagge I could round it out and improve it structurally.
If the English private soldier is the trimmest, the Austrian officer is the most beautiful to look on. An Austrian officer is gaudier than the door-opener of a London cafe or the porter of a Paris hotel. He achieves effects in gaudiness which even time Italian officer cannot equal.
The Italian officer is addicted to cock feathers and horsetails on his helmet, to bits of yellow and blue let into his clothes, to tufts of red and green hung on him in unexpected and unaccountable spots. Either the design of bottled Italian chianti is modeled after the Italian officer or the Italian officer is modeled after the bottle of chianti—which, though, I am not prepared to say without further study of the subject.
But the Austrian officer is the walking sunset effect of creation. For color schemes I know of nothing in Nature to equal him except the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. Circus parades are unknown in Austria—they are not missed either; after an Austrian officer a street parade would seem a colorless and commonplace thing. In his uniform he runs to striking contrasts—canary yellow, with light blue facings; silvers and grays; bright greens with scarlet slashings—and so on.
His collar is the very highest of all high collars and the heaviest with embroidery; his cloak is the longest and the widest; his boots the most varnished; his sword-belt the broadest and the shiniest; and the medals on his bosom are the most numerous and the most glittering. Alf Ringling and John Philip Sousa would take one look at him—and then, mutually filled with an envious despair, they would go apart and hold a grand lodge of sorrow together. Also, he constantly wears his spurs and his sword; he wears them even when he is in a cafe in the evening listening to the orchestra, drinking beer and allowing an admiring civilian to pay the check—and that apparently is every evening.
There was one Austrian colonel who came one night into a cafe in Vienna where we were and sat down at the table next to us; and he put our eyes right out and made all the lights dim and flickery. His epaulets were two hairbrushes of augmented size, gold-mounted; his Plimsoll marks were outlined in bullion, and along his garboard strake ran lines of gold braid; but strangest of all to observe was the locality where he wore what appeared to be his service stripes. Instead of being on his sleeves they were at the extreme southern exposure of his coattails; I presume an Austrian officer acquires merit by sitting down.
This particular officer's saber kept jingling, and so did his spurs, and so did his bracelet. I almost forgot the bracelet. It was an ornate affair of gold links fastened on his left wrist with a big gold locket, and it kept slipping down over his hand and rattling against his cuff. The chain bracelet locked on the left wrist is very common among Austrian officers; it adds just the final needed touch. I did not see any of them carrying lorgnettes or shower bouquets, but I think, in summer they wear veils.
One opportunity is afforded the European who is neither a soldier nor a hotel cashier to dress himself up in comic-opera clothes—and that is when he a-hunting goes. An American going hunting puts on his oldest and most serviceable clothes—a European his giddiest, gayest, gladdest regalia. We were so favored by gracious circumstances as to behold several Englishmen suitably attired for the chase, and we noted that the conventional morning costume of an English gentleman expecting to call informally on a pheasant or something during the course of the forenoon consisted, in the main, of a perfect dear of a Norfolk jacket, all over plaits and pockets, with large leather buttons like oak-galls adhering thickly to it, with a belt high up under the arms and a saucy tail sticking out behind; knee-breeches; a high stock collar; shin-high leggings of buff or white, and a special hat—a truly adorable confection by the world's leading he-milliner.
If you dared to wear such an outfit afield in America the very dickeybirds would fall into fits as you passed—the chipmunks would lean out of the trees and just naturally laugh you to death! But in a land where the woodlands are well-kept groves, and the undergrowth, instead of being weedy and briery, is sweet-scented fern and gorse and bracken, I suppose it is all eminently correct.
Thus appareled the Englishman goes to Scotland to shoot the grouse, the gillie, the heather cock, the niblick, the haggis and other Scotch game. Thus appareled he ranges the preserves of his own fat, fair shires in ardent pursuit of the English rabbit, which pretty nearly corresponds to the guinea pig, but is not so ferocious; and the English hare, which is first cousin to our molly cottontail; and the English pheasant—but particularly the pheasant.
There was great excitement while we were in England concerning the pheasants. Either the pheasants were preying on the mangel-wurzels or the mangel-wurzels were preying on the pheasants. At any rate it had something to do with the Land Bill—practically everything that happens in England has something to do with the Land Bill—and Lloyd George was in a free state of perspiration over it; and the papers were full of it and altogether there was a great pother over it.
We saw pheasants by the score. We saw them first from the windows of our railroad carriage—big, beautiful birds nearly as large as barnyard fowls and as tame, feeding in the bare cabbage patches, regardless of the train chugging by not thirty yards away; and later we saw them again at still closer range as we strolled along the haw-and-holly-lined roads of the wonderful southern counties. They would scuttle on ahead of us, weaving in and out of the hedgerows; and finally, when we insisted on it and flung pebbles at them to emphasize our desires, they would get up, with a great drumming of wings and a fine comet-like display of flowing tailfeathers on the part of the cock birds, and go booming away to what passes in Sussex and Kent for dense cover—meaning by that thickets such as you may find in the upper end of Central Park.
They say King George is one of the best pheasant-shots in England. He also collects postage stamps when not engaged in his regular regal duties, such as laying cornerstones for new workhouses and receiving presentation addresses from charity children. I have never shot pheasants; but, having seen them in their free state as above described, and having in my youth collected postage stamps intermittently, I should say, speaking offhand, that of the two pursuits postage-stamp collecting is infinitely the more exciting and dangerous.
Through the closed season the keepers mind the pheasants, protecting them from poachers and feeding them on selected grain; but a day comes in October when the hunters go forth and take their stands at spaced intervals along a cleared aisle flanking the woods; then the beaters dive into the woods from the opposite side, and when the tame and trusting creatures come clustering about their feet expecting provender the beaters scare them up, by waving their umbrellas at them, I think, and the pheasants go rocketing into the air—rocketing is the correct sporting term—go rocketing into the air like a flock of Sunday supplements; and the gallant gunner downs them in great multitudes, always taking due care to avoid mussing his clothes. For after all the main question is not "What did he kill?" but "How does he look?"
At that, I hold no brief for the pheasant—except when served with breadcrumb dressing and currant jelly he is no friend of mine. It ill becomes Americans, with our own record behind us, to chide other people for the senseless murder of wild things; and besides, speaking personally, I have a reasonably open mind on the subject of wild-game shooting. Myself, I shot a wild duck once. He was not flying at the time. He was, as the stockword goes, setting. I had no self-reproaches afterward however. As between that duck and myself I regarded it as an even break—as fair for one as for the other—because at the moment I myself was, as we say, setting too. But if, in the interests of true sportsmanship, they must have those annual massacres I certainly should admire to see what execution a picked half dozen of American quail hunters, used to snap-shooting in the cane jungles and brier patches of Georgia and Arkansas, could accomplish among English pheasants, until such time as their consciences mastered them and they desisted from slaughter!
Be that as it may, pheasant shooting is the last word in the English sporting calendar. It is a sport strictly for the gentry. Except in the capacity of innocent bystanders the lower orders do not share in it. It is much too good for them; besides, they could not maintain the correct wardrobe for it. The classes derive one substantial benefit from the institution however. The sporting instinct of the landed Englishman has led to the enactment of laws under which an ordinary person goes smack to jail if he is caught sequestrating a clandestine pheasant bird; but it does not militate against the landowner's peddling off his game after he has destroyed it. British thrift comes in here. And so in carload lots it is sold to the marketmen. The result is that in the fall of the year pheasants are cheaper than chickens; and any person who can afford poultry on his dinner table can afford pheasants.
The Continental hunter makes an even more spectacular appearance than his British brother. No self-respecting German or French sportsman would think of faring forth after the incarnate brown hare or the ferocious wood pigeon unless he had on a green hat with a feather in it; and a green suit to match the hat; and swung about his neck with a cord a natty fur muff to keep his hands in between shots; and a swivel chair to sit in while waiting for the wild boar to come along and be bowled over.
Being hunted with a swivel chair is what makes the German wild boar wild. On occasion, also, the hunter wears, suspended from his belt, a cute little hanger like a sawed-off saber, with which to cut the throats of his spoil. Then, when it has spoiled some more, they will serve it at a French restaurant.
It was our fortune to be in France on the famous and ever-memorable occasion when the official stag of the French Republic met a tragic and untimely end, under circumstances acutely distressing to all who believe in the divinity bestowed prerogatives of the nobility. The Paris edition of the Herald printed the lamentable tale on its front page and I clipped the account. I offer it here in exact reproduction, including the headline:
Further details are given in this morning's Figaro of the incident between Prince Murat and M. Dauchis, the mayor of Saint-Felix, near Clermont, which was briefly reported in yesterday's Herald.
A regular conspiracy was organized by M. Dauchis, it is alleged, in order to secure the stag Prince Murat and Comte de Valon were hunting in the forest of La Neuville-en-Hetz. Already, at the outset of the hunt, M. Dauchis, according to Le Figaro, charged at a huntsman with a little automobile in which he was driving and threatened to fire. Then when the stag ran into the wood, near the Trye River, one of his keepers shot it. In great haste the animal was loaded on another automobile; and before either the prince or Comte de Valon could interfere it was driven away.
While Comte de Valon spurred his horse in pursuit Prince Murat disarmed the man who had shot the stag, for he was leveling his gun at another huntsman; but before the gun was wrenched from his hands he had struck Prince d'Essling, Prince Murat's uncle, across the face with the butt.
Meantime Comte de Valon had overtaken the automobile and, though threatened with revolvers by its occupants, would have recaptured the stag if the men in charge of it had not taken it into the house of M. Dauchis' father.
The only course left for Prince Murat and Comte de Valon was to lodge a complaint with the police for assault and for killing the stag, which M. Dauchis refused to give back.
From this you may see how very much more exciting stag hunting is in France than in America. Comparing the two systems we find but one point of resemblance—namely, the attempted shooting of a huntsman. In the North Woods we do a good deal of that sort of thing: however with us it is not yet customary to charge the prospective victim in a little automobile—that may come in time. Our best bags are made by the stalking or still-hunting method. Our city-raised sportsman slips up on his guide and pots him from a rest.
But consider the rest of the description so graphically set forth by Le Figaro—the intriguing of the mayor; the opposing groups rampaging round, some on horseback and some in automobile runabouts; the intense disappointment of the highborn Prince Murat and his uncle, the Prince d'Essling, and his friend, the Comte de Valon; the implied grief of the stag at being stricken down by other than noble hands; the action of the base-born commoner, who shot the stag, in striking the Prince d'Essling across his pained and aristocratic face with the butt—exact type of butt and name of owner not being given. Only in its failure to clear up this important point, and in omitting to give descriptions of the costumes worn by the two princes and the comte, is Le Figaro's story lacking. They must have been wearing the very latest creations too.
This last brings us back again to the subject of clothes and serves to remind me that, contrary to a belief prevalent on this side of the water, good clothes cost as much abroad as they cost here. In England a man may buy gloves and certain substantial articles of haberdashery in silk and linen and wool at a much lower figure than in America; and in Italy he will find crocheted handbags and bead necklaces are to be had cheaper than at home—provided, of course, he cares for such things as crocheted handbags and bead necklaces. Handmade laces and embroideries and sundry other feminine fripperies, so women tell me, are moderately priced on the Continent, if so be the tourist-purchaser steers clear of the more fashionable shops and chases the elusive bargain down a back street; but, quality considered, other things cost as much in Europe as they cost here—and frequently they cost more. If you buy at the shopkeeper's first price he has a secret contempt for you; if you haggle him down to a reasonably fair valuation—say about twice the amount a native would pay for the same thing—he has a half-concealed contempt for you; if you refuse to trade at any price he has an open contempt for you; and in any event he dislikes you because you are an American. So there you are. No matter how the transaction turns out you have his contempt; it is the only thing he parts with at cost.
It is true that you may buy a suit of clothes for ten dollars in London; so also may you buy a suit of clothes for ten dollars in any American city, but the reasonably affluent American doesn't buy ten-dollar suits at home. He saves himself up to indulge in that form of idiocy abroad. In Paris or Rome you may get a five-course dinner with wine for forty cents; so you may in certain quarters of New York; but in either place the man who can afford to pay more for his dinner will find it to his ultimate well-being to do so. Simply because a boarding house in France or Italy is known as a pension doesn't keep it from being a boarding house—and a pretty average bad one, as I have been informed by misguided Americans who tried living at a pension, and afterwards put in a good deal of their spare time regretting it.
Altogether, looking back on my own experiences, I can at this time of writing think of but two common commodities which, when grade is taken into the equation, are found to be radically cheaper in Europe than in America—these two things being taxicabs and counts. For their cleanliness and smartness of aspect, and their reasonableness of meter-fare, taxicabs all over Europe are a constant joy to the traveling American. And, though in the United States counts are so costly that only the marriageable daughters of the very wealthy may afford to buy them—and even then, as the count calendars attest, have the utmost difficulty in keeping them after they are bought—in Continental Europe anywhere one may for a moderate price hire a true-born count to do almost any small job, from guiding one through an art gallery to waiting on one at the table. Counts make indifferent guides, but are middling fair waiters.
Outside of the counts and the taxicabs, and the food in Germany, I found in all Europe just one real overpowering bargain—and that was in Naples, where, as a general thing, bargains are not what they seem. For the exceedingly moderate outlay of one lira—Italian—or twenty cents—American—I secured this combination, to wit, as follows:
In the background old Vesuvius, like a wicked, fallen angel, wearing his plumy, fumy halo of sulphurous hell-smoke; in the middle distance the Bay of Naples, each larcenous wave-crest in it triple-plated with silvern glory pilfered from a splendid moon; on the left the riding lights of a visiting squadron of American warships; on the right the myriad slanted sails of the coral-fishers' boats, beating out toward Capri, with the curlew-calls of the fishermen floating back in shrill snatches to meet a jangle of bell and bugle from the fleet; in the immediate foreground a competent and accomplished family troupe of six Neapolitan troubadours—men, women and children—some of them playing guitars and all six of them, with fine mellow voices and tremendous dramatic effect, singing—the words being Italian but the air good American—John Brown's Body Lies a-Moldering in the Grave!
I defy you to get more than that for twenty cents anywhere in the world!