Round the world in any number of days

Everybody up to now has been vaguely discussing what kind of monsoon it would be. The most dismal prophecies were made. We were told it would be very rough, very hot, and very wet. As it turns out, it is not rough, not wet, but still hot: steamy and damp, that is to say.

I now feel as if I had been all my life on board. The passengers, the officers, and crew seem to be the only people in my universe; the rest are shadows and dreams. There are not many passengers on board. People fight shy of the Red Sea and the monsoon in July. I think they are wrong. There are just enough people for company and not too many for comfort. There is a pleasant variety of passengers; a few Australians, two Germans, a Frenchman and his wife, an Irishman,—once a mining expert and now a professional painter who paints bold and capable landscapes in oil, full of colour and light,—a Scotch family, a High Commissioner (whatever that may be), an American lady singer, a missionary, and two young North-Country Englishmen.

If one travels for over a month on a liner, one’s fellow passengers sometimes may become something more than what Bourget calls profils perdus: meaning the chance acquaintanceships of the table d’hôte and the railway train. In a steamer one can, if one chooses, get to know people really well.

Every evening a small crowd play whisky poker for cocktails; after dinner there is a good deal of bridge; sometimes some music. But from ship’s music, as a rule, one can “withdraw one’s attention” without difficulty.

I am told a good deal about Australia and the Australians by people who have been backwards and forwards. They agree to its being a splendid country, full of openings for the emigrant. “In Australia,” some one tells me, “people don’t ask you for references. If you ask for a job they give it you, and as long as you show you can do it, they let you do it, and as soon as you show signs of not being able to do it, they fire you out.”

That is, indeed, a different system from what obtains in the mother country, where references are regarded with awe, and where a thousand small side issues often contribute not only to a square peg remaining in a round hole, but to an utterly hopeless peg remaining in any kind of hole.

One also hears that the Australians (a) resent criticism on anything Australian; (b) are very critical of what they see in other countries.

What irritates the Australians, no doubt, and what justly irritates them, is when globe-trotters rush round the country in a few days and then write a book of critical impressions. In England (and in America, I should think) the people have got over being irritated by that particular form of literature. They don’t care. If a visitor, after spending a fortnight in England, writes a book called “The Rotten English,” or “Those Damned English,” or the “God-forsaken Country,” we don’t much care. And as for criticism, if it be well founded and well expressed, it will be certain to obtain a wide popularity in England. Witness Mr. Collier’s “England and the English.” Personally there is nothing I enjoy reading more than the critical impressions of my own country written by an intelligent foreigner. It opens the window on all sorts of shut-up points of view, and it calls one’s attention to what one had never noticed because it was too obvious; because we ourselves are in it.

But the Australians appear to be sensitive to the criticism of the foreigner, even when it is just and well founded. My very slender experience has convinced me that they are often unduly critical with regard to the objects of interest in other countries. One day, on board, one of the Australians expressed disappointment and censure with regard to London architecture. I thought at first he meant the new public offices; but not at all; he meant Westminster Abbey, which compared unfavourably with the cathedral in Adelaide.

I was inclined to think this critical point of view which was attributed to the colonials was perhaps imaginary, or in any case exaggerated. It certainly is exaggerated; it isn’t imaginary.

Here, for instance, are some extracts taken from a book written by A. W. Rutherford, of New Zealand, on Europe. I quote them from a review which appeared in an Australian review, “The Bookfellow.” Mr. Rutherford, says the reviewer, was disappointed with Paris; “the streets are not equal to those of any of our cities; the respectable restaurants are mean, shabby affairs; the swell restaurants are the haunts of gilded vice and supported by vice; the Seine, like the Thames within its city boundary, is just a dirty ditch—neither of them to be compared with the Waikato. Most Parisians look dowdy. Our Maoris could teach the French a lesson in politeness. Meat is not safe in France.... Much of the wine is vile; no colonial could possibly drink it; the cheap wines of France are deadly rubbish.”

Of the tombs in Westminster Abbey he says they are dirty, untidy, inartistic; “some of them look like great cooking ranges.”

He is disappointed in Venice, but he gives a clear reason for his disappointment in the gondola. “I had imagined the latter a frivolous, giddy thing, gaily painted, and the gondoliers clothed as in the play of that name. The gondoliers are just plain sailormen, in their work-a-day clothes.”

That explains everything. Everything, as I said about Naples, depends on what you expect, on your standard. If you expect a gondola to be gilded and giddy and it turns out to be black, you are disappointed. If you expect the Seine and the Thames to be vast rivers, outside their cities and not in them, you are disappointed. What such authors never seem to bother about is whether their standard is likely to be indorsed by the rest of the human race or not. Their standard may be an excellent one for some things. The things which everybody else in the world would acknowledge to be good. For instance, in this case, the manners of the Maoris. The Maoris are the most courteous and chivalrous race in the world. But if they can teach manners to the French, there are many people in the colonies who would benefit by a lesson from them also. Another thing which the author of this book does not seem to realize is that there are many people who prefer a gondolier should look like a sailor, which he is, than like a singer in operetta. They prefer him to be dressed in his ordinary work-a-day clothes. They think it not only more appropriate to his task, but more picturesque. They think a man who is dressed in the clothes which befit his profession will look more dignified than a man who is dressed up as for a pageant.

The reviewer ends by saying, “Mr. Rutherford is a representative New Zealander, and in many ways a typical New Zealander. His interesting book is worth reading. It is compounded of keen observation, shrewd judgment, parish prejudice, and pure ignorance ... in its narrowness and in its depth, its arrogance and its enlightenment, it comments upon New Zealand as effectively as upon Europe; it shows us why Dominion standards are condemned in Britain, sometimes justly, and it may suggest to British readers how the Dominions feel in regard to the comments of hasty British tourists with frequently less ability than Mr. Rutherford displays.”

Yes, it does suggest that. It also suggests to one to hope that free trade and liberty may be maintained in the matter. Let the colonial say exactly what he thinks about Europe, but let the European say exactly what he thinks about the colonies, and then neither side can have a grievance. But when the colonial complains of the hasty and narrow judgment of the European, let him have a thought for the possible beam in his own eye.

Another time, on board, another Australian complained that the works of G. K. Chesterton were bosh. “Thank God,” he added, “he’s not an Australian.”

But fancy if G. K. Chesterton had been an Australian. One wonders what would have been the effect on his figure, his style, and his philosophy. Instead of his romantic, adventurous optimism, would his genius have been sultry, pessimistic, and rebellious?

I think he would have written gigantic epics on the Blue Mountains, the Bush, and gum-trees; wild romances about bush-rangers, and beach-combers, and swinging songs about Botany Bay.

I can imagine G. K. Chesterton, looking lean and spare, riding a horse bareback. One of his qualities would have certainly developed in the same way, had he been born and bred over the sea, and that is his geniality, his large, hospitable nature, his belief in goodness; for hospitality and friendliness grow if anything quicker on Australian and colonial soil than they do in England.

Here is a fragment of verse supposed to be written by G. K. Chesterton, had he been born and bred in the country which Adam Lindsay Gordon sang:—

“The Melbourne Cup,” or “Hippodromania”