Diary of a Pilgrimage | Page 6

"Well, now, you take my advice, and get a calico suit and a sunshade.
Never mind the look of the thing. You be comfortable. You've no idea
of the heat on the Continent at this time of the year. English people will
persist in travelling about the Continent in the same stuffy clothes that
they wear at home. That's how so many of them get sunstrokes, and are
ruined for life."
I went into the club, and there I met a friend of mine--a newspaper
correspondent--who has travelled a good deal, and knows Europe pretty
well. I told him what my two other friends had said, and asked him
which I was to believe. He said:
"Well, as a matter of fact, they are both right. You see, up in those hilly
districts, the weather changes very quickly. In the morning it may be
blazing hot, and you will be melting, and in the evening you may be
very glad of a flannel shirt and a fur coat."
"Why, that is exactly the sort of weather we have in England!" I
exclaimed. "If that's all these foreigners can manage in their own
country, what right have they to come over here, as they do, and
grumble about our weather?"
"Well, as a matter of fact," he replied, "they haven't any right; but you
can't stop them--they will do it. No, you take my advice, and be

prepared for everything. Take a cool suit and some thin things, for if it's
hot, and plenty of warm things in case it is cold."
When I got home I found Mrs. Briggs there, she having looked in to see
how the baby was. She said:-
"Oh! if you're going anywhere near Germany, you take a bit of soap
with you."
She said that Mr. Briggs had been called over to Germany once in a
hurry, on business, and had forgotten to take a piece of soap with him,
and didn't know enough German to ask for any when he got over there,
and didn't see any to ask for even if he had known, and was away for
three weeks, and wasn't able to wash himself all the time, and came
home so dirty that they didn't know him, and mistook him for the man
that was to come to see what was the matter with the kitchen boiler.
Mrs. Briggs also advised me to take some towels with me, as they give
you such small towels to wipe on.
I went out after lunch, and met our Vicar. He said:
"Take a blanket with you."
He said that not only did the German hotel-keepers never give you
sufficient bedclothes to keep you warm of a night, but they never
properly aired their sheets. He said that a young friend of his had gone
for a tour through Germany once, and had slept in a damp bed, and had
caught rheumatic fever, and had come home and died.
His wife joined us at this point. (He was waiting for her outside a
draper's shop when I met him.) He explained to her that I was going to
Germany, and she said:
"Oh! take a pillow with you. They don't give you any pillows--not like
our pillows--and it's SO wretched, you'll never get a decent night's rest
if you don't take a pillow." She said: "You can have a little bag made
for it, and it doesn't look anything."
I met our doctor a few yards further on. He said:
"Don't forget to take a bottle of brandy with you. It doesn't take up
much room, and, if you're not used to German cooking, you'll find it
handy in the night."
He added that the brandy you get at foreign hotels was mere poison,
and that it was really unsafe to travel abroad without a bottle of brandy.
He said that a simple thing like a bottle of brandy in your bag might
often save your life.

Coming home, I ran against a literary friend of mine. He said:
"You'll have a goodish time in the train old fellow. Are you used to
long railway journeys?"
I said:
"Well, I've travelled down from London into the very heart of Surrey
by a South Eastern express."
"Oh! that's a mere nothing, compared with what you've got before you
now," he answered. "Look here, I'll tell you a very good idea of how to
pass the time. You take a chessboard with you and a set of men. You'll
thank me for telling you that!"
George dropped in during the evening. He said:
"I'll tell you one thing you'll have to take with you, old man, and that's
a box of cigars and some tobacco."
He said that the German cigar--the better class of German cigar--was of
the