|
November 2, 1867
________
|
MANNERS UPON THE ROAD. [Victorian Travel]
A Letter to a Young Papa.
MY DEAR SIR, You may have remarked that
nothing is more comical than the free-and-easy way in which
the independent American citizen behaves in the railroad
car. The grave manner in which the presence of other people
is wholly disregarded is as you may have observed often
very diverting and sometimes very exasperating. You, my dear
Sir, especially illustrated this great truth when you
entered the train with your family at Mugby Junction a few
weeks since, upon which occasion a select car-full had the
honor of traveling in your company.
You are evidently, dear Sir, a young and
recently-created papa, and therefore very much is to be
forgiven to you, as even an old curmudgeon of a bachelor
like your present correspondent will cheerfully allow. There
were, if you will kindly remember, three ladies in your
party and a boy of fourteen, and many bags, and bundles, and
baskets, and what you were pleased to call "satchels" but,
chiefly, there was the baby. And here let a bachelor, not
naturally savage, declare upon his honor to all traveling
mothers with young children, that he does not, with the
ferocious Charles Lamb, pledge the memory of the good king
Herod, whenever he hears the cry of the baby in the car. Far
from it. So far that there is nobody he pities more than the
sensitive mother whose child will cry, and who struggles
desperately to console him, with the harrowing consciousness
that there are a remorseless multitude around her who are
internally, or even audibly, wondering and peevishly
demanding "why on earth women with young babies will be
forever traveling in the cars! Cars are no places for
babies. Nurseries are the places for babies. If babies must
travel, why not provide a separate car?" Alas! so populous
is the kingdom of Herod!
But, exasperated fellow-travelers, let us
reflect. These poor mothers, often exhausted and hopelessly
contending with poor babies equally exhausted, and hot, and
suffocating, and uncomfortable, are to be soothed in every
way and no derided and scolded. Do you suppose women prefer
to travel with babies? And which, upon the whole, is the
more edifying spectacle an uncomfortable child tired and
fretting, or a mature man querulous and sulky because of the
fretting! If you observe the child do you suppose nobody
observes you? Why, my dear fellow-bachelor and curmudgeon,
we are all quietly watching and studying each other at the
rate, as we fly, of twenty-five miles an hour.
Other women than the mothers understand this
if the men do not. How often men turn round, and shrug their
shoulders, and stare at the hapless mother vainly humming to
her tired and restless child, while some woman, with a few
gentle words of kindness or experience to the mother and of
soothing to the child, consoles each, as if an angel had
descended. I read in the reports of the suffrage debate in
the New York Constitutional Convention a speech in which the
orator said that women were so harsh and fierce in their
judgments of each other, that if women should ever sit as
jurors upon their accused sisters he could only say, "God
have mercy upon the accused!" What a perpetual consolation
to that eloquent orator it must be to know that Providence
has graciously provided a sex to secure fair treatment to
women and that he belongs to it! But his experience is
different from that of this bachelor who has never found the
hands of women reluctant, nor their hearts chill, nor their
tongues hesitating, whenever another woman was to be
relieved. Who betray women? Who, when they are fallen,
stretch out to them a helping hand? These last are they who
in a crowded car sympathize with the travel-worn mothers
whose children weep and wail.
One of these tender comforters was Barbara Lovewell. That
was not her name, of course, but that was her nature.
Barbara was neither young, when I first knew her, nor
beautiful; nor was she ever married, nor in any manner
graceful or personally attractive. But no sylph of Saratoga,
no Newport belle, is likely to be the heroine of a truer
romance than her life was a romance and a tragedy which
nobody suspected who had not heard her story. Once, indeed,
it was told in the pages of Harper's Magazine, but under
strange names and willful disguises so that you could only
vaguely gather the substance of the truth. Barbara Lovewell
was a heroine without knowing it, without caring about it.
She was such a simple, earnest, honest soul, so interested
in a thousand things, and so intelligent and full of
sympathy, that her life and mind were always occupied, and
she had no time to contemplate herself or to reflect that
she had earned the right, if she could do it, to win the
world to listen to her melodious woes.
When she was more than fifty nearly sixty years old,
indeed she was traveling over one of the long Western
railroads, and in a car very crowded and uncomfortable.
Toward midnight a baby began to wail in the dim, hot car. In
vain the mother tried to hush the child to sleep. The wail
became a fret, and the fret a positive cry. The passengers
began to awake, and to move, and mutter impatiently in their
seats. In the stillness of the car the cry of the child
seemed preternaturally loud, and the poor mother was at her
wit's end. Suddenly a man's voice exclaimed from the dark
end of the car, "Do stop that baby!" There was an audible
"Amen" from many passengers, and a grunting and pishing
which went to the very heart of the young mother. Nothing
would appease the child. Singing, and trotting, and patting,
and scolding, and changing his position, were tried in vain.
He was fearfully wide awake, and his fretful cry was
undeniably most disagreeable and disturbing. Then Barbara
Lovewell, who sat at the end of the car from which the
impatient voice of the man had proceeded, rose quietly and
went to the mother, and said, gently, "Let me try to comfort
your little boy." The mother looked her gratitude and
sitting down by her, Margaret put the child's head upon her
bosom, and the kindly handling, the motion of the car, and
the sweet sense of change immediately lulled the restless
child to sleep. The whole car was relieved. There was a low
murmur of gratitude from the passengers; and just as all
were sinking again, like the child, to sleep, the silence
was broken by an old gentleman who leaned over to Margaret
and said to her, " Law, ma'am! how easy 'tis to see that
you've put children to sleep all your life.' Nothing like a
grandma, ma'am, to put children to sleep!"
The children of Alice call Bartrum father, says Elia, in the
Dream Children. Barbara Lovewell never knew the caress of a
child of her own; but in the "undiscovered country" to which
she has gone there could be no more childlike purity of soul
than hers, and in this world no more loving and maternal
heart.
Well, well! I have strayed very far from Mugby Junction and
your interesting family group, my dear Sir, and we will
return immediately. You remember that the three ladies of
your party sat near the middle of the car and talked loud
I may even say sonorous baby-talk to the baby, so that the
whole company in the car were compelled to hear. The boy sat
at the end of the car; and in the midst of the prattle and
chuckling of the three ladies and the crowing of the baby,
the boy suddenly broke in from near the door with a
startling Ah boo! Ah boo! addressed to the baby. The
astonished passengers stared, but the delighted infant
responded, Ah boo! cheerily and incessantly answered from
the end of the car by the boy. And you, dear Sir, joined
with animation in the innocent round, and loudly cried, Ah
boo! Ah boo!
Were you unconscious of other persons in the car? Or didn't
you care? Or did you suppose them to be delighted to share
in the festive prattle of your nursery? Ah boo! my dear Sir;
ah boo! Nothing, as you well know, if you would only reflect
for a moment, can be more ill-bred than to thrust yourself
and your little family upon the attention of others. Without
the least consciousness of the fact, and, of course, with no
such intention, you make them and yourself laughably
ridiculous. Now, my dear young papa, you travel a great
deal. I have met you elsewhere than at Mugby Junction. You
have not thought of the very grotesque and unfavorable
impression you have made; and I feel very sure you will feel
that I have written this letter to reveal it to you because
I am sincerely,
Your friend,
An
Old Bachelor.
How To
Cite This Article:
"Manners Upon the Road", November 2, 1867
[electronic edition]. Harper's Bazaar, Nineteenth Century
Fashion Magazine,
http://harpersbazaar.victorian-ebooks.com (2005).
MORE INFO:
Travel
in Style: How to Dress for Travel in 1852: How to dress for travel in
1852 with the proper traveling dress, shoes, bonnet and
corset.
Victorian
Baby Carriages: The Golden Age of Carriages: Victorian
children traveled in style!
National
Railway Historical Society
|
|
