Europe Revised — 49 - Ch. XXIV: Mine Own People, pt. 2

The old lady was in the great National Museum at Naples, fluttering about like a distracted little brown hen.

She was looking for the Farnese Bull.

It seemed her niece in Knoxville had told her the Farnese Bull was the finest thing in the statuary line to be found in all Italy, and until she had seen that, she wasn't going to see anything else.

She had got herself separated from the rest of her party and she was wandering along about alone, seeking information regarding the whereabouts of the Farnese Bull from smiling but uncomprehending custodians and doorkeepers.

These persons she would address at the top of her voice.

Plainly she suffered from a delusion, which is very common among our people, that if a foreigner does not understand you when addressed in an ordinary tone, he will surely get your meaning if you screech at him.

When we had gone some distance farther on and were in another gallery, we could still catch the calliope-like notes of the little old lady, as she besought some one to lead her to the Farnese Bull.

That she came right out and spoke of the Farnese Bull as a bull, instead of referring to him as a gentleman cow, was evidence of the extent to which travel had enlarged her vision, for with half an eye anyone could tell that she belonged to the period of our social development when certain honest and innocent words were supposed to be indelicate--that she had been reared in a society whose ideal of a perfect lady was one who could say limb, without thinking leg.

I hope she found her bull, but I imagine she was disappointed when she did find it.

I know I was.

The sculpturing may be of a very high order--the authorities agree that it is--but I judge the two artists to whom the group is attributed carved the bull last and ran out of material and so skimped him a bit.

The unfortunate Dirce, who is about to be bound to his horns by the sons of Antiope, the latter standing by to see that the boys make a good thorough job of it, is larger really than the bull.

You can picture the lady carrying off the bull but not the bull carrying off the lady.

Numerously encountered are the tourists who are doing Europe under a time limit as exact as the schedule of a limited train.

They go through Europe on the dead run, being intent on seeing it all and therefore seeing none of it.

They cover ten countries in a space of time which a sane person gives to one; after which they return home exhausted, but triumphant.

I think it must be months before some of them quit panting, and certainly their poor, misused feet can never again be the feet they were.

With them adherence to the time card is everything.

If a look at the calendar shows the day to be Monday, they know they are in Munich, and as they lope along they get out their guidebooks and study the chapters devoted to Munich.

But if it be Tuesday, then it is Dresden, and they give their attention to literature dealing with the attractions of Dresden; seeing Dresden after the fashion of one sitting before a runaway moving picture film.

Then they pack up and depart, galloping, for Prague with their tongues hanging out.

For Wednesday is Prague and Prague is Wednesday--the two words are synonymous and interchangeable.

Surely to such as these, the places they have visited must mean as much to them, afterward, as the labels upon their trunks mean to the trunks--just flimsy names pasted on, all confused and overlapping, and certain to be scraped off in time, leaving nothing but faint marks upon an indurated surface.

There is yet again another type, always of the female gender and generally middle-aged and very schoolteacherish in aspect, who, in company with a group of kindred spirits, is viewing Europe under a contract arrangement by which a worn and wearied-looking gentleman, a retired clergyman usually, acts as escort and mentor for a given price.

I don't know how much he gets a head for this job; but whatever it is, he earns it ninety-and-nine times over.

This lady tourist is much given to missing trains and getting lost and having disputes with natives and wearing rubber overshoes and asking strange questions--but let me illustrate with a story I heard.

The man from Cook's had convoyed his party through the Vatican, until he brought them to the Apollo Belvidere.

As they ranged themselves wearily about the statue, he rattled off his regular patter without pause or punctuation: "Here we have the far-famed Apollo Belvidere found about the middle of the fifteenth century at Frascati purchased by Pope Julius the Second restored by the great Michelangelo taken away by the French in 1797 but returned in 1815 made of Carara marble holding in his hand a portion of the bow with which he slew the Python observe please the beauty of the pose the realistic attitude of the limbs the noble and exalted expression of the face of Apollo Belvidere he being known also as Phoebus the god of oracles the god of music and medicine the son of Leto and Jupiter--" Here he ran out of breath and stopped.

For a moment no one spoke.

Then from a flat-chested little spinster came this query in tired yet interested tones: "Was he--was he married?"

He who is intent upon studying the effect of foreign climes upon the American temperament should by no means overlook the colonies of resident Americans in the larger European cities, particularly the colonies in such cities as Paris and Rome and Florence.

In Berlin, the American colony is largely made up of music students and in Vienna of physicians; but in the other places many folks of many minds and many callings constitute the groups.

Some few have left their country for their country's good and some have expatriated themselves because, as they explain in bursts of confidence, living is cheaper in France than it is in America.

I suppose it is, too, if one can only become reconciled to doing without most of the comforts which make life worth while in America or anywhere else.

Included among this class are many rather unhappy old ladies who somehow impress you as having been shunted off to foreign parts because there were no places for them in the homes of their children and their grandchildren.

So now they are spending their last years among strangers, trying with a desperate eagerness to be interested in people and things for which they really care not a fig, with no home except a cheerless pension.

Also there are certain folk--products, in the main, of the Eastern seaboard--who, from having originally lived in America and spent most of their time abroad, have now progressed to the point where they now live mostly abroad and visit America fleetingly once in a blue moon.

As a rule these persons know a good deal about Europe and very little about the country that gave them birth.

The stock-talk of European literature is at their tongue's tip.

They speak of Ibsen in the tone of one mourning the passing of a near, dear, personal friend, and as for Zola--ah, how they miss the influence of his compelling personality!

But for the moment they cannot recall whether Richard K. Fox ran the Police Gazette or wrote the "Trail of the Lonesome Pine."

They are up on the history of the Old World.

From memory they trace the Bourbon dynasty from the first copper-distilled Charles to the last sourmashed Louis.

But as regards our own Revolution, they aren't quite sure whether it was started by the Boston Tea Party or Mrs. O'Leary's Cow.

Languidly they inquire whether that quaint Iowa character, Uncle Champ Root, is still Speaker of the House?

And so the present Vice-President is named Elihu Underwood?

Or isn't he?

Anyway, American politics is such a bore.

But they stand ready, at a minute's notice, to furnish you with the names, dates and details of all the marriages that have taken place during the last twenty years in the royal house of Denmark.

Some day we shall learn a lesson from Europe.

Some fair day we shall begin to exploit our own historical associations.

We shall make shrines of the spots where Washington crossed the ice to help end one war and where Eliza did the same thing to help start another.

We shall erect stone markers showing where Charley Ross was last seen and Carrie Nation was first sighted.

We shall pile up tall monuments to Sitting Bull and Nonpareil Jack Dempsey and the man who invented the spit ball.

Perhaps then these truant Americans will come back oftener from Paris and Florence and abide with us longer.

Meanwhile though they will continue to stay on the other side.

And on second thought, possibly it is just as well for the rest of us that they do.

In Europe I met two persons, born in America, who were openly distressed over that shameful circumstance and could not forgive their parents for being so thoughtless and inconsiderate.

One was living in England and the other was living in France; and one was a man and the other was a woman; and both of them were avowedly regretful that they had not been born elsewhere, which, I should say, ought to make the sentiment unanimous.

I also heard--at second hand--of a young woman whose father served this country in an ambassadorial capacity at one of the principal Continental courts until the administration at Washington had a lucid interval, and endeared itself to the hearts of practically all Americans residing in that country by throwing a net over him and yanking him back home; this young woman was so fearful lest some one might think she cherished any affection for her native land that once when a legation secretary manifested a desire to learn the score of the deciding game of a World's Series between the Giants and the Athletics, she spoke up in the presence of witnesses and said: "Ah, baseball!

How can any sane person be excited over that American game?

Tell me--some one please--how is it played?"

Yet she was born and reared in a town which for a great many years has held a membership in the National League.

Let us pass on to a more pleasant topic.

Let us pass on to those well-meaning but temporarily misguided persons who think they are going to be satisfied with staying on indefinitely in Europe.

They profess themselves as being amply pleased with the present arrangement.

For, no matter how patriotic one may be, one must concede--mustn't one?

--that for true culture one must look to Europe?

After all, America is a bit crude, isn't it, now?

Of course some time, say in two or three years from now, they will run across to the States again, but it will be for a short visit only.

After Europe one can never be entirely happy elsewhere for any considerable period of time.

And so on and so forth.

But as you mention in an offhand way that Cedar Bluff has a modern fire station now, or that Tulsanooga is going to have a Great White Way of its own, there are eyes that light up with a wistful light.

And when you state casually, that Polkdale is planning a civic center with the new county jail at one end and the Carnegie Library at the other, lips begin to quiver under a weight of sentimental emotion.

And a month or so later when you take the ship which is to bear you home, you find a large delegation of these native sons of Polkdale and Tulsanooga on board, too.

At least we found them on the ship we took.

We took her at Naples--a big comfortable German ship with a fine German crew and a double force of talented German cooks working overtime in the galley and pantry--and so came back by the Mediterranean route, which is a most satisfying route, especially if the sea be smooth and the weather good, and the steerage passengers picturesque and light-hearted.

Moreover the coast of Northern Africa, lying along the southern horizon as one nears Gibraltar, is one of the few sights of a European trip that are not disappointing.

For, in fact, it proves to be the same color that it is in the geographies--pale yellow.

It is very unusual to find a country making an earnest effort to correspond to its own map, and I think Northern Africa deserves honorable mention in the dispatches on this account.

Chapter XXV