men who travel alone may be divided into two classes. there is the man who cannot get a companion, and the man who does not want one. there is also, between these two solitary men, an intermediate solitary man, who travels alone because he cannot find the companion that would exactly suit him. but, whatever may be the cause of his solitude, the man who travels alone is not, i think, to be envied.
if he be a studious, thoughtful man, taking delight in museums and houses of assembly, given to chemistry and the variations of european politics, fond of statistics and well-instructed in stuffed vermin, he may be as happy travelling[20] alone as he would be alone in his library; but such a man is exceptional, and i am not now speaking of him. he is a student and not a tourist. he is going to school and not out for a holiday. the man who travels alone, with whom we have to do, is one who goes abroad for a little health, for a good deal of recreation if he can find it, and for the pleasure of looking about him and seeing the world. the improvement in health he may find; but the recreation will be doubtful, unless he be one by nature averse to gregarious habits.
when we see such a one,—and such a one is often seen straying along the rhine or wandering listlessly among the mountains,—we always suppose him to be alone because he cannot help it. we are never kind enough to give him credit for a choice for solitude; and we avoid him sedulously because we have it in our power to give him that one thing that he wants. such is the human nature of tourists, which in this respect is very like[21] to the human nature of people who stay at home. we like to have at our houses those whom it is difficult to obtain, and do not care to entertain those who are always ready to come to us.
it must be admitted that the ill-nature of tourist parties in this respect is justified to a great degree by the experienced results of any exceptional good-nature into which soft-hearted persons may be occasionally betrayed. who among us that has been thus soft-hearted on an occasion has not repented in sackcloth and ashes? the solitary tourist when once taken up can hardly be dropped; he appears, and reappears, and comes up again till the original friends of the original good-natured sinner become gloomy and sullen and talk of strong measures. whispers of an enforced separation are murmured about, and jones, who has picked the man up, and who "found that there was something in him" as they sat next each other in a railway carriage, is made to understand by smith and walker, that unless he can contrive[22] to drop mr. robinson, he must be dropped himself. it is not so easy to drop mr. robinson. the paths of switzerland, and the roads into italy, are open to all the world.
poor robinson! we will cling to him for a while, and endeavour to show the nature of the misery which he suffers. at home he is an honest fellow, and those who know him best say that he is a gentleman. he is quite equal to the men whom he meets on his tour, and who look down upon him because of his solitude. the time will probably come when he will be no longer alone, when he will have a wife and children, and a house into which jones would think it a blessing to be admitted.
but at present robinson is alone, and has known himself to be thrown aside by the men whose society he coveted. he had come out on his tour with much compunction, dreading his solitude, believing in his heart of hearts that it would be better for him to go with his sisters to[23] broadstairs. but he had accused himself of being unmanly, he had buckled on his armour in the shape of a murray's guide, a vocabulary, and a bradshaw, and had started by the ostend boat, assuring himself that many others had done the same before him, and had returned home proudly to tell the tale of their wanderings. on the railway to cologne he had picked up with jones, and for twenty-four hours the prospects of a blessed union had cheered him. he had followed the friends to their hotel with some half-word of excuse. he had sat by smith at the first dinner, dividing smith from a pretty young countrywoman, and had found smith to be somewhat unpleasant. had he understood his game he would have taken himself to the other side of smith. wanting to gain much, he should have surrendered something. in the evening he had smoked with jones, whose good-nature had not as yet been outraged. then had walker and smith roundly brought their friend to task, and jones having asked the poor[24] fellow which way he meant to travel on the morrow, had plainly told him that he and his party intended to take another route.
some chance reader of these words may, perhaps, one day have felt such rebuke, and be able to understand its harshness. "ah, yes! very well," said robinson. "then i dare say we shall not meet again. i couldn't very well alter my plan now." there was a dash of manliness about him, and he could show some gallantry before the traitor friend who had become his foe. but when he went up to his room, the tears were almost in his eyes, and as he turned into bed, he resolved that on the morrow he would betake himself home.
but on the morrow his heart was higher, and he persevered. he saw the three odious men as they started from the inn door, and was able to perceive that they were not gentlemen. smith he thought he had seen behind a counter. as for walker, he had caught walker tripping with his hs, and was glad to be rid of him. before his breakfast was[25] over he had taught himself almost to believe that he had dropped the equivocal party, and had told himself that he should be very careful how he selected his acquaintance.
but not the less was he very melancholy, and at the end of the second day from that morning had fallen into a dreary state of misanthropy. ideas had begun to float through his brain which he believed to be philosophical, but which all tended to the no-good-in-anything school of thought. he had assumed a constrained look of contempt, and would hardly notice the waiter, as he declined one after another the dishes brought to him at dinner. in the evening he roamed about moodily in the twilight, asking himself psychological questions about suicide; not, indeed, intending to kill himself, but having a fancy for the subject as one of great interest. he thought that he might, perhaps, have killed himself had he not felt that his doing so would be deleterious to his sisters. as for jones, or smith, or walker, in his present[26] mood he would not have spoken to them. he was in love with solitude, and would have been severe to any jones or any walker who might have intruded upon him.
but on the next day he makes another effort, having encountered our friend paterfamilias, with his wife and three daughters, upon a rhine steamboat. like a prudent young man in such circumstances, he first speaks a word to the father, and the father admits the word graciously. fathers so situated are always oblivious of their daughters, and never remember that they, when young men, used to make similar attempts. but mothers never forget, and with accurate measures of mental yard and foot, take inventory of all comers, weighing every gesture, and knowing the value of every stitch in the man's garment, and of every tone in the man's voice. the stitches and tones belonging to robinson were not much in his favour. when a man is at discount with himself he is usually below par with all the world beside. when in the[27] course of a couple of hours robinson had remarked to sophie,—the youthful sophie,—that the rhine was the monarch of rivers, the mother speaks a cautious word to carry, the eldest daughter, and just as misanthropy was giving place to a genial love for all his kind under a pleasant smile on sophie's mouth, the whole family whisk themselves away, and our friend is again alone.
he has childe harold in his pocket, and the labour of learning a stanza or two by heart carries him on into switzerland. in ascending the rigi he again comes across jones and walker. alas for human nature, he is only too happy to be recognized by those whom he had assured himself that he despised! a civil word half spoken by a panting voice, a nod of recognition which could hardly not have been given, draws him once more into their social circle, and he forgets the counter, and the doubtful hs, and the bearishness of the obdurate smith. if they will only open their arms to him, and let him be one of them! a fear[28] comes upon him that they may suspect him to be impecunious, and he adapts his conversation to the idea, striving to make it apparent, by words carefully turned for the purpose, that he is quite another sort of person than that. walker sees the attempt, and measures the man accordingly,—but measures him wrongly. poor robinson has been mean,—is mean; he has sunk beneath the weight of his solitude to a lowness that is not natural to him; but he has not the meanness of which they suspect him. "if you let that man hang on to you any longer, he'll be borrowing money of you," says smith. jones remarks that it takes two men to play at that game; but on the following morning the three friends, having necessarily been domiciled with robinson on the top of the mountain that night, are careful to descend without him, and the poor wretch knows that he has again been dropped. the trio, as they descend the hill, are very merry withal respecting the robinson difficulty, indulging that joy of ascendancy which[29] naturally belongs to us when we have discovered anyone low enough to require our assistance.
along the lakes and over the mountains goes the wretched man, still in solitude. he tells himself in moments of sober earnest that he has made a mistake, and has subjected himself to great misery in attempting to obtain alone delights which by their very nature require companionship. robinson is not a student. he cares nothing for minerals, and knows nothing of botany. neither the social manners of the people among whom he is wandering, nor the formation of the earth's crust in those parts, are able to give him that excitement which he requires. the verdure of the alps, the peaks of the mountains, the sun rising through the mists, would give him pleasure if he had with him another soul to whom he could exclaim in the loving intimacy of free intercourse, "by george, tom, that is jolly! it's all very well talking of cumberland, but one must come to switzerland to see that." every man cannot be a childe[30] harold; and even to be a childe harold one must begin by a stout determination to be unhappy, and to put up with it. in his own lodgings in london robinson has lived a good deal alone, and, though he has not liked it, he has put up with it. it has been the business of his life. but he has it not in him to travel alone and to enjoy it. if, indeed, the foreign office in whitehall had entrusted him with a letter or even a teapot, to carry to the foreign office at vienna, he would have executed his mission with manly fidelity, and would have suffered nothing on the journey. the fact that he had a teapot to convey would have been enough for his support. but then work is always so much easier than play.
but he goes on wearily, and still makes an effort or two. as he falls down into italy, looking with listless, unseeing eyes at all the prettinesses of the ticino, he comes upon another robinson, and there is a chance for him. but he has unconsciously learned and despised his own littleness,[31] and in that other lonely one he fears to find one as small, or it may be smaller than himself. he gathers his toga round him, in the shape of knapsack and walking-stick, with somewhat of dignity, and looks at his brother with suspicious eye. his brother makes some faint effort at fraternization, such as he had made before, and then robinson,—our robinson,—is off. he wants a companion sorely, but he does not want one who shall be so low in the world's reckoning as to want him. so he passes on, and having at last tramped out with weary feet his six weeks of wretched vacation, he returns home rejoicing to think that on the morrow he shall be back amidst the comforts of his desk and stool, and the society of his fellow-labourers.
most of us are robinsons. we are so far lucky indeed, the greater number of us, that we need not be solitary robinsons. we have our friends, and are better advised than to attempt the enjoyment of our tours alone. but as to our capacity[32] for doing so, or our conduct if we should attempt it, i doubt whether many of us would be much stronger than he was.
