Diary of a Pilgrimage | Page 4

theatre would not even understand what was meant by a 'free list,'
the uncivilised barbarians! It is of no use pretending to them that you
are on the Press, because they don't want the Press; they don't think
anything of the Press. It is no good writing to the acting manager,
because there is no acting manager. It would be a waste of time
offering to exhibit bills, because they don't have any bills--not of that
sort. If you want to go in to see the show, you've got to pay. If you
don't pay, you stop outside; that's their brutal rule."
"Dear me," I said, "what a very unpleasant arrangement! And
whereabouts is this extraordinary theatre? I don't think I can ever have
been inside it."
"I don't think you have," he replied; "it is at Ober-Ammergau--first
turning on the left after you leave Ober railway-station, fifty miles from
Munich."
"Um! rather out of the way for a theatre," I said. "I should not have
thought an outlying house like that could have afforded to give itself
airs."

"The house holds seven thousand people," answered my friend B., "and
money is turned away at each performance. The first production is on
Monday next. Will you come?"
I pondered for a moment, looked at my diary, and saw that Aunt Emma
was coming to spend Saturday to Wednesday next with us, calculated
that if I went I should miss her, and might not see her again for years,
and decided that I would go.
To tell the truth, it was the journey more than the play that tempted me.
To be a great traveller has always been one of my cherished ambitions.
I yearn to be able to write in this sort of strain:-
"I have smoked my fragrant Havana in the sunny streets of old Madrid,
and I have puffed the rude and not sweet-smelling calumet of peace in
the draughty wigwam of the Wild West; I have sipped my evening
coffee in the silent tent, while the tethered camel browsed without upon
the desert grass, and I have quaffed the fiery brandy of the North while
the reindeer munched his fodder beside me in the hut, and the pale light
of the midnight sun threw the shadows of the pines across the snow; I
have felt the stab of lustrous eyes that, ghostlike, looked at me from out
veil-covered faces in Byzantium's narrow ways, and I have laughed
back (though it was wrong of me to do so) at the saucy, wanton glances
of the black-eyed girls of Jedo; I have wandered where 'good'--but not
too good--Haroun Alraschid crept disguised at nightfall, with his
faithful Mesrour by his side; I have stood upon the bridge where Dante
watched the sainted Beatrice pass by; I have floated on the waters that
once bore the barge of Cleopatra; I have stood where Caesar fell; I have
heard the soft rustle of rich, rare robes in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair,
and I have heard the teeth-necklaces rattle around the ebony throats of
the belles of Tongataboo; I have panted beneath the sun's fierce rays in
India, and frozen under the icy blasts of Greenland; I have mingled
with the teeming hordes of old Cathay, and, deep in the great pine
forests of the Western World, I have lain, wrapped in my blanket, a
thousand miles beyond the shores of human life."
B., to whom I explained my leaning towards this style of diction, said
that exactly the same effect could be produced by writing about places
quite handy. He said:-
"I could go on like that without having been outside England at all. I
should say:

"I have smoked my fourpenny shag in the sanded bars of Fleet Street,
and I have puffed my twopenny Manilla in the gilded balls of the
Criterion; I have quaffed my foaming beer of Burton where Islington's
famed Angel gathers the little thirsty ones beneath her shadowing
wings, and I have sipped my tenpenny ordinaire in many a
garlic-scented salon of Soho. On the back of the strangely-moving ass I
have urged--or, to speak more correctly, the proprietor of the ass, or his
agent, from behind has urged--my wild career across the sandy heaths
of Hampstead, and my canoe has startled the screaming wild-fowl from
their lonely haunts amid the sub-tropical regions of Battersea. Adown
the long, steep slope of One Tree Hill have I rolled from top to foot,
while laughing maidens of the East stood round and clapped their
hands and yelled; and, in the old-world garden of that pleasant Court,
where played the fair-haired children of the ill-starred Stuarts, have I
wandered long through many paths, my arm entwined about the waist
of one of Eve's sweet daughters, while her mother raged around
indignantly