Europe Revised — 24 - Ch. XI: Dressed to Kill, pt. 2

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: HUNTING INCIDENT SAID TO BE DUE TO CONSPIRACY

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!

Chapter XII