Off Gibraltar,
[DEAR MOTHER: February 12,
1893.]
Today is Sunday. We arrive at Gibraltar at five tomorrow
morning and the boat lies there until nine o'clock. Unless
war and pestilence have broken out in other places, I shall go
over to Tangiers in a day or two, and from there continue on
my journey as mapped out when I left. I have had a most
delightful trip and the most enjoyable I have ever taken by
sea. These small boats are as different from the big
twin-screw steamers as a flat from a Broadway hotel.
Everyone gets to know everything about everyone else, and it
has been more like a yacht than a passenger steamer. When I
first came on board I thought I would not find in any new old
country I was about to visit anything more foreign than the
people, and I was right, but they are most amusing and I have
learned a great deal. They are different from any people I
know, and are the Americans we were talking about. The ones
of whom I used to read in
The Atlantic and
Blackwood's, as
traveling always and sinking out of sight whenever they
reached home. They, with the exception of a Boston couple,
know none of my friends or my haunts, and I have learned a
great deal in meeting them. It has been most
broadening
and
the change has been
such a rest. I had no idea of how
tired
I was of talking about the theater of Arts and Letters and
Miss Whitney's debut and my Soul. These people are simple and
unimaginative and bourgeois to a degree and as kind-hearted
and apparent as animal alphabets. I do not think I have had
such a complete change or rest in years, and I am sure I have
not laughed so much for as long. Of course, the idea of a six
months' holiday is enough to make anyone laugh at anything,
but I find that besides that I was a good deal harassed and
run down, and I am glad to cut off from everything and start
fresh. I feel miserably selfish about it all the time.
These Germans run everything as though you were the owner
of the line. The discipline is like that of the German Army
or of a man-of-war, everything moves by the stroke of a bell,
and they have had dances and speeches and concerts and
religious services and lectures every other minute. Into all
of these I have gone with much enthusiasm. We have at the
captain's table Dr. Field, the editor of
The Evangelist,
John Russell, a Boston Democrat, who was in Congress and who
has been in public life for over forty years. A Tammany
sachem, who looks like and worships Tweed, and who says what I
never heard an American off the stage say: "That's me.
That's what I do," he says. "When I have insomnia, I don't
believe in your sleeping draughts. I get up and go round to
Jake Stewart's on Fourteenth Street and eat a fry or a
porterhouse steak and then I sleep good — -that's me." There
is also a lively lady from Albany next to me and her husband,
who tells anecdotes of the war just as though it had happened
yesterday. Indeed, they are all so much older than I that all
their talk is about things I never understood the truth about,
and it is most interesting. I really do not know when I have
enjoyed my meal time so much. The food is very good, although
queer and German, and we generally take two hours to each
sitting. Dr. Field is my especial prey and he makes me laugh
until I cry. He is just like James Lewis in "A Night Off,"
and is always rubbing his hands and smacking his lips over his
own daring exploits. I twist everything he says into meaning
something dreadful, and he is instantly explaining he did not
really see a bullfight, but that he walked around the outside
of the building. I have promised to show him life with a
capital L, and he is afraid as death of me. But he got back
at me grandly last night when he presented a testimonial to
the captain, and referred to the captain's wife and boy whom
he is going to see after a two years' absence, at which the
captain wept and everybody else wept. And Field, seeing he
had made a point, waved his arms and cried, "I have never
known a man who amounted to anything who had not a good wife
to care for — except
you — " he shouted, pointing at me,
"and
no woman will ever save
you." At which the passengers,
who
fully appreciated how I had been worrying him, applauded
loudly, and the Doctor in his delight at having scored on me
forgot to give the captain his testimonial.
There are two nice girls on board from Chicago and a
queer Southern girl who paints pictures and sings and writes
poetry, and who is traveling with an odd married woman who is
an invalid and who like everyone else on board has apparently
spent all her life away from home. I have spent my odd time
in writing the story I told Dad the night before I sailed and
I think it in some ways the best, quite the best, I have
written. I read it to the queer girl and her queer chaperon
and they weep whenever they speak of it, which they do every
half hour. All the passengers apparently laid in a stock of
"Gallegher" and "The West" before starting, and young women in
yachting caps are constantly holding me up for autographs and
favorite quotations. Yesterday we passed the Azores near
enough to see the windows in the houses, and we have seen
other islands at different times, which is quite refreshing.
Tomorrow I shall post this and the trip will be over. It has
been a most happy start. I am not going to write letters
often, but am going head over ears into this new life and let
the old one wait awhile. You cannot handle Africa and keep up
your fences in New York at the same time. I am now going out
to talk to the Boston couple, or to propose a lion hunt to Dr.
Field.
Since I wrote that last I have seen Portugal. It
made
me seem suddenly very far away from New York.
Portugal is a high hill with a white watch tower on it flying
signal flags. It is apparently inhabited by one man who lives
in a long row of yellow houses with red roofs, and populated
by sheep who do grand acts of balancing on the side of the
hill. There is also a Navy of a brown boat with a
leg-of-mutton sail and a crew of three men in the boat — not to
speak of the dog. It is a great thing to have a traveled son.
None of you ever saw Portugal, yah!
I am now in Gibraltar. It is a large place and there
does not seem to be room in this letter, in which to express
my feelings about Moors in bare legs and six thousand
Red-coats and to hear Englishmen speak again. When I woke up
Gibraltar was a black silhouette against the sky, but toward
the south there was a low line of mountains with a red sky
behind them, dim and mysterious and old, and that was Africa.
Then Spain turned up all amethyst and green, and the
Mediterranean as blue as they tell you it is. They wouldn't
let me take my gun into Gibraltar.
They know my reputation for war.
DICK.
