my black mirror.
has everybody heard of doctor dee, the magician, and of the black speculum or mirror of cannel coal, in which he could see at will everything in the wide world, and many things beyond it? if so, i may introduce myself to my readers in the easiest manner possible. although i cannot claim to be a descendant of doctor dee, i profess the occult art to the extent of keeping a black mirror, made exactly after the model of that possessed by the old astrologer. my speculum, like his, is constructed of an oval piece of cannel coal, highly polished, and set on a wooden back with a handle to hold it by. nothing can be simpler than its appearance; nothing more marvellous than its capacities—provided always that the person using it be a true adept. any man who disbelieves nothing is a true adept. let him get a piece of cannel coal, polish it highly, clean it before 251 use with a white cambric handkerchief, retire to a private sitting-room, invoke the name of doctor dee, shut both eyes for a moment, and open them again suddenly on the black mirror. if he does not see anything he likes, after that—past, present, or future—then let him depend on it there is some speck or flaw of incredulity in his nature; and the sad termination of his career may be considered certain. sooner or later, he will end in being nothing but a rational man.
i, who have not one morsel of rationality about me; i, who am as true an adept as if i had lived in the good old times ("the ages of faith," as another adept has very properly called them) find unceasing interest and occupation in my black mirror. for everything i want to know, and for everything i want to do, i consult it. this very day, for instance (being in the position of most of the other inhabitants of london, at the present season), i am thinking of soon going out of town. my time for being away is so limited, and my wanderings have extended, at home and abroad, in so many directions, that i can hardly hope to visit any really beautiful scenes, or gather any really interesting experiences that are absolutely new to me. i must go to some place that i have visited before; and i must, in common regard to my own holiday interests, take care that it is a place where i have already thoroughly enjoyed myself, 252 without a single drawback to my pleasure that is worth mentioning.
under these circumstances, if i were a mere rational man, what should i do? weary my memory to help me to decide on a destination, by giving me my past travelling recollections in one long panorama—although i can tell by experience that of all my faculties memory is the least serviceable at the very time when i most want to employ it. as a true adept, i know better than to give myself any useless trouble of this sort. i retire to my private sitting-room, take up my black mirror, mention what i want—and, behold! on the surface of the cannel coal the image of my former travels passes before me, in a succession of dream-scenes. i revive my past experiences, and i make my present choice out of them, by the evidence of my own eyes; and i may add, by that of my own ears also—for the figures in my magic landscapes move and speak!
shall i go on the continent again? yes. to what part of it? suppose i revisit austrian italy, for the sake of renewing my familiarity with certain views, buildings, and pictures which once delighted me? but let me first ascertain whether i had any serious drawbacks to complain of on making acquaintance with that part of the world. black mirror! show me my first evening in austrian italy.
a cloud rises on the magic surface—rests on it a 253 little while—slowly disappears. my eyes are fixed on the cannel coal. i see nothing, hear nothing of the world about me. the first of the magic scenes grows visible. i behold it, as in a dream. away with the ignorant present. i am in italy again.
the darkness is just coming on. i see myself looking out of the side window of a carriage. the hollow roll of the wheels has changed to a sharp rattle, and we have entered a town. we cross a vast square, illuminated by two lamps and a glimmer of reflected light from a coffee-shop window. we get on into a long street, with heavy stone arcades for foot-passengers to walk under. everything looks dark and confused; grim visions of cloaked men flit by, all smoking; shrill female voices rise above the clatter of our wheels, then subside again in a moment. we stop. the bells on the horses' necks ring their last tiny peal for the night. a greasy hand opens the carriage-door, and helps me down the steps. i am under an archway, with blank darkness before me, with a smiling man holding a flaming tallow candle by my side, with street spectators silently looking on behind me. they wear high-crowned hats and brown cloaks, mysteriously muffling them up to the chin. brigands, evidently. pass, scene! i am a peaceable man, and i don't like the suspicion of a stiletto, even in a dream. 254
show me my sitting-room. where did i dine, and how, on my first evening in austrian italy?
i am in the presence of two cheerful waiters, with two flaring candles. one is lighting lamps; the other is setting brushwood and logs in a blaze in a perfect cavern of a hearth. where am i, now that there is plenty of light to see by? apparently in a banqueting-hall, fifty feet long by forty wide. this is my private sitting-room, and i am to eat my little bit of dinner in it all alone. let me look about observantly, while the meal is preparing. above me is an arched painted ceiling, all alive with cupids rolling about on clouds, and scattering perpetual roses on the heads of travellers beneath. around me are classical landscapes of the school which treats the spectator to umbrella-shaped trees, calm green oceans, and foregrounds rampant with dancing goddesses. beneath me is something elastic to tread upon, smelling very like old straw, which indeed it is, covered with a thin drugget. this is humanely intended to protect me against the cold of the stone or brick floor, and is a concession to english prejudices on the subject of comfort. may i be grateful for it, and take no unfriendly notice of the fleas, though they are crawling up my legs from the straw and the drugget already!
what do i see next? dinner on table. drab-coloured soup, which will take a great deal of thickening 255 with grated parmesan cheese, and five dishes all round it. trout fried in oil, rolled beef steeped in succulent brown gravy, roast chicken with water-cresses, square pastry cakes with mince-meat inside them, fried potatoes—all excellent. this is really good italian cookery: it is more fanciful than the english and more solid than the french. it is not greasy, and none of the fried dishes taste in the slightest degree of lamp oil. the wine is good, too—effervescent, smacking of the muscatel grape, and only eighteen-pence a bottle. the second course more than sustains the character of the first. small browned birds that look like larks, their plump breasts clothed succulently with a counterpane of fat bacon, their tender backs reposing on beds of savoury toast,—stewed pigeon,—a sponge-cake pudding,—baked pears. where could one find a better dinner or a pleasanter waiter to serve at table? he is neither servile nor familiar, and is always ready to occupy any superfluous attention i have to spare with all the small talk that is in him. he has, in fact, but one fault, and that consists in his very vexatious and unaccountable manner of varying the language in which he communicates with me.
i speak french and italian, and he can speak french also as well as his own tongue. i naturally, however, choose italian on first addressing him, because it is his native language. he understands 256 what i say to him perfectly, but he answers me in french. i bethink myself, upon this, that he may be wishing, like the rest of us, to show off any little morsel of learning that he has picked up, or that he may fancy i understand french better than i do italian, and may be politely anxious to make our colloquy as easy as possible to me. accordingly i humour him, and change to french when i next speak. no sooner are the words out of my mouth than, with inexplicable perversity, he answers me in italian. all through the dinner i try hard to make him talk the same language that i do, yet, excepting now and then a few insignificant phrases, i never succeed. what is the meaning of his playing this game of philological see-saw with me? do the people here actually carry the national politeness so far as to flatter the stranger by according him an undisturbed monopoly of the language in which he chooses to talk to them? i cannot explain it, and dessert surprises me in the midst of my perplexities. four dishes again! parmesan cheese, macaroons, pears, and green figs. with these and another bottle of the effervescent wine, how brightly the evening will pass away by the blazing wood fire! surely, i cannot do better than go to austrian italy again, after having met with such a first welcome to the country as this. shall i put down the cannel coal, and determine without any more ado on paying a second 257 visit to the land that is cheered by my comfortable inn? no, not too hastily. let me try the effect of one or two more scenes from my past travelling experience in this particular division of the italian peninsula before i decide.
black mirror! how did i end my evening at the comfortable inn?
the cloud passes again, heavily and thickly this time, over the surface of the mirror—clears away slowly—shows me myself dozing luxuriously by the red embers with an empty bottle at my side. a suddenly-opening door wakes me up; the landlord of the inn approaches, places a long, official-looking book on the table, and hands me pen and ink. i inquire peevishly what i am wanted to write at that time of night, when i am just digesting my dinner. the landlord answers respectfully that i am required to give the police a full, true, and particular account of myself. i approach the table, thinking this demand rather absurd, for my passport is already in the hands of the authorities. however, as i am in a despotic country, i keep my thoughts to myself, open a blank page in the official-looking book, see that it is divided into columns, with printed headings, and find that i no more understand what they mean than i understand an assessed tax-paper at home, to which by-the-bye, the blank page bears a striking general resemblance. the headings are technical official 258 words, which i now meet with as parts of italian speech for the first time. i am obliged to appeal to the polite landlord, and, by his assistance, i get gradually to understand what it is the austrian police want of me.
the police require to know, before they will let me go on peaceably to-morrow, first, what my name is in full? (answered easily enough.) second, what is my nation? (british, and delighted to cast it in the teeth of continental tyrants.) third, where was i born? (in london—parish of marylebone—and i wish my native vestry knew how the austrian authorities were using me.) fourth, where do i live? (in london, again—and i have half a mind to write to the times about this nuisance before i go to bed.) fifth, how old am i? (my age is what it has been for the last seven years, and what it will remain till further notice—twenty-five exactly.) what next? by all that is inquisitive, here are the police wanting to know (sixth) whether i am married or single! landlord, what is the italian for bachelor? "write nubile, signor." nubile? that means marriageable. permit me to remark, my good sir, that this is a woman's definition of a bachelor—not a man's. no matter, let it pass. what next? (o distrustful despots! what next?) seventh, what is my condition? (first-rate condition, to be sure,—full of rolled beef, toasted larks, and effervescent wine. condition! what do they mean by that? 259 profession, is it? i have not got one. what shall i write? "write proprietor, signor." very well; but i don't know that i am proprietor of anything except the clothes i stand up in: even my trunk was borrowed of a friend.) eighth, where do i come from? ninth, where am i going to? tenth, when did i get my passport? eleventh, where did i get my passport? twelfth, who gave me my passport? was there ever such a monstrous string of questions to address to a harmless, idle man, who only wants to potter about italy quietly in a postchaise! do they catch mazzini, landlord, with all these precautions? no: they only catch me. there! there! take your travellers' book back to the police. surely, such unfounded distrust of my character as the production of that volume at my dinner-table implies, forms a serious drawback to the pleasure of travelling in austrian italy. shall i give up at once all idea of going there, in my own innocent character, again? no; let me be deliberate in arriving at a decision,—let me patiently try the experiment of looking at one more scene from the past.
black mirror! how did i travel in austrian italy after i had paid my bill in the morning, and had left my comfortable inn?
the new dream-scene shows me evening again. i have joined another english traveller in taking a vehicle that they call a calèche. it is a frowsy kind 260 of sedan-chair on wheels, with greasy leather curtains and cushions. in the days of its prosperity and youth it might have been a state-coach, and might have carried sir robert walpole to court, or the abbé dubois to a supper with the regent orleans. it is driven by a tall, cadaverous, ruffianly postilion, with his clothes all in rags, and without a spark of mercy for his miserable horses. it smells badly, looks badly, goes badly; and jerks, and cracks, and totters as if it would break down altogether—when it is suddenly stopped on a rough stone pavement in front of a lonely post-house, just as the sun is sinking and the night is setting in.
the postmaster comes out to superintend the harnessing of fresh horses. he is tipsy, familiar, and confidential; he first apostrophises the calèche with contemptuous curses, then takes me mysteriously aside, and declares that the whole high road onward to our morning's destination swarms with thieves. it seems, then, that the austrian police reserve all their vigilance for innocent travellers, and leave local rogues entirely unmolested. i make this reflection, and ask the postmaster what he recommends us to do for the protection of our portmanteaus, which are tied on to the roof of the calèche. he answers that unless we take special precautions, the thieves will get up behind, on our crazy foot-board, and will cut the trunks off the top 261 of our frowsy travelling-carriage, under cover of the night, while we are quietly seated inside, seeing and suspecting nothing. we instantly express our readiness to take any precautions that any one may be kind enough to suggest. the postmaster winks, lays his finger archly on the side of his nose, and gives an unintelligible order in the patois of the district. before i have time to ask what he is going to do, every idler about the posthouse who can climb, scales the summit of the calèche, and every idler who cannot, stands roaring and gesticulating below with a lighted candle in his hand.
while the hubbub is at its loudest, a rival travelling carriage suddenly drives into the midst of us, in the shape of a huge barrel-organ on wheels, and bursts out awfully in the darkness with the grand march in semiramide, played with the utmost fury of the drum, cymbal, and trumpet-stops. the noise is so bewildering that my travelling companion and i take refuge inside our carriage, and shut our eyes, and stop our ears, and abandon ourselves to despair. after a time, our elbows are jogged, and a string a-piece is given to us through each window. we are informed in shouts, accompanied fiercely by the grand march, that the strings are fastened to our portmanteaus above; that we are to keep the loose ends round our forefingers all night; and that the moment we feel a tug, we may be quite certain the 262 thieves are at work, and may feel justified in stopping the carriage and fighting for our baggage without any more ado. under these agreeable auspices, we start again, with our strings round our forefingers. we feel like men about to ring the bell—or like men engaged in deep sea-fishing—or like men on the point of pulling the string of a shower-bath. fifty times at least, during the next stage, each of us is certain that he feels a tug, and pops his head agitatedly out of window, and sees absolutely nothing, and falls back again exhausted with excitement in a corner of the calèche. all through the night this wear and tear of our nerves goes on; and all through the night (thanks, probably, to the ceaseless popping of our heads out of the windows) not the ghost of a thief comes near us. we begin, at last, almost to feel that it would be a relief to be robbed—almost to doubt the policy of resisting any mercifully-larcenous hands stretched forth to rescue us from the incubus of our own baggage. the morning dawn finds us languid and haggard, with the accursed portmanteau strings dangling unregarded in the bottom of the calèche. and this is taking our pleasure! this is an incident of travel in austrian italy! faithful black mirror, accept my thanks. the warning of the two last dream-scenes that you have shown me shall not be disregarded. whatever other direction i may take when i go out of town for the present 263 season, one road at least i know that i shall avoid—the road that leads to austrian italy.
shall i keep on the northern side of the alps, and travel a little, let us say, in german-switzerland? black mirror! how did i get on when i was last in that country? did i like my introductory experience at my first inn?
the vision changes, and takes me again to the outside of a house of public entertainment; a great white, clean, smooth-fronted, opulent-looking hotel—a very different building from my dingy, cavernous italian inn. at the street-door stands the landlord. he is a little, lean, rosy man, dressed all in black, and looking like a master undertaker. i observe that he neither steps forwards nor smiles when i get out of the carriage and ask for a bedroom. he gives me the shortest possible answer, growls guttural instructions to a waiter, then looks out into the street again and, before i have so much as turned my back on him, forgets my existence immediately. the vision changes again, and takes me inside the hotel. i am following a waiter up-stairs—the man looks unaffectedly sorry to see me. in the bedroom corridor we find a chambermaid asleep with her head on a table. she is woke up; opens a door with a groan, and scowls at me reproachfully when i say that the room will do. i descend to dinner. two waiters attend on me, under protest, and look as if they were on the 264 point of giving warning every time i require them to change my plate. at the second course the landlord comes in, and stands and stares at me intently and silently with his hands in his pockets. this may be his way of seeing that my dinner is well served; but it looks much more like his way of seeing that i do not abstract any spoons from his table. i become irritated by the boorish staring and frowning of everybody about me, and express myself strongly on the subject of my reception at the hotel to an english traveller dining near me.
the english traveller is one of those exasperating men who are always ready to put up with injuries, and he coolly accounts for the behaviour of which i complain, by telling me that it is the result of the blunt honesty of the natives, who cannot pretend to take an interest in me which they do not really feel. what do i care about the feelings of the stolid landlord and the sulky waiters? i require the comforting outward show from them—the inward substance is not of the smallest consequence to me. when i travel in civilised countries, i want such a reception at my inn as shall genially amuse and gently tickle all the region round about my organ of self-esteem. blunt honesty which is too offensively truthful to pretend to be glad to see me, shows no corresponding integrity—as my own experience informs me at this very hotel—about the capacities of 265 its wine-bottles, but gives me a pint and charges me for a quart in the bill, like the rest of the world. blunt honesty, although it is too brutally sincere to look civilly distressed and sympathetic when i say that i am tired after my journey, does not hesitate to warm up, and present before me as newly dressed, a methuselah of a duck that has been cooked several times over, several days ago, and paid for, though not eaten, by my travelling predecessors. blunt honesty fleeces me according to every established predatory law of the landlord's code, yet shrinks from the amiable duplicity of fawning affectionately before me all the way up stairs when i first present myself to be swindled. away with such detestable sincerity as this! away with the honesty which brutalises a landlord's manners without reforming his bottles or his bills! away with my german-swiss hotel, and the extortionate cynic who keeps it! let others pay tribute if they will to that boor in innkeeper's clothing, the colour of my money he shall never see again.
suppose i avoid german-switzerland, and try switzerland proper? mirror! how did i travel when i last found myself on the swiss side of the alps?
the new vision removes me even from the most distant view of an hotel of any kind, and places me in a wild mountain country where the end of a rough 266 road is lost in the dry bed of a torrent. i am seated in a queer little box on wheels, called a char, drawn by a mule and a mare, and driven by a jovial coachman in a blue blouse. i have hardly time to look down alarmedly at the dry bed of the torrent, before the char plunges into it. rapidly and recklessly we thump along over rocks and stones, acclivities and declivities that would shake down the stoutest english travelling-carriage, knock up the best-bred english horses, nonplus the most knowing english coachman. jovial blue blouse, singing like a nightingale, drives a-head regardless of every obstacle—the mule and mare tear along as if the journey was the great enjoyment of the day to them—the char cracks, rends, sways, bumps, and totters, but scorns, as becomes a hardy little mountain vehicle, to overturn or come to pieces. when we are not among the rocks we are rolling and heaving in sloughs of black mud and sand, like a dutch herring-boat in a ground-swell. it is all one to blue blouse and the mule and mare. they are just as ready to drag through sloughs as to jolt over rocks; and when we do come occasionally to a bit of unencumbered ground, they always indemnify themselves for past hardship and fatigue by galloping like mad. as for my own sensations in the character of passenger in the char, they are not, physically speaking, of the pleasantest possible kind. i can only keep myself 267 inside my vehicle by dint of holding tight with both hands by anything i can find to grasp at; and i am so shaken throughout my whole anatomy that my very jaws clatter again, and my feet play a perpetual tattoo on the bottom of the char. did i hit on no method of travelling more composed and deliberate than this, i wonder, when i was last in switzerland? must i make up my mind to be half-shaken to pieces if i am bold enough to venture on going there again?
the surface of the black mirror is once more clouded over. it clears, and the vision is now of a path along the side of a precipice. a mule is following the path, and i am the adventurous traveller who is astride on the beast's back. the first observation that occurs to me in my new position is, that mules thoroughly deserve their reputation for obstinacy, and that, in regard to the particular animal on which i am riding, the less i interfere with him and the more i conduct myself as if i was a pack-saddle on his back, the better we are sure to get on together.
carrying pack-saddles is his main business in life; and though he saw me get on his back, he persists in treating me as if i was a bale of goods, by walking on the extreme edge of the precipice, so as not to run any risk of rubbing his load against the safe, or mountain, side of the path. in this and in other 268 things i find that he is the victim of routine, and the slave of habit. he has a way of stopping short, placing himself in a slanting position, and falling into a profound meditation at some of the most awkward turns in the wild mountain-roads. i imagine at first that he may be halting in this abrupt and inconvenient manner to take breath; but then he never exerts himself so as to tax his lungs in the smallest degree, and he stops on the most unreasonably irregular principles, sometimes twice in ten minutes,—sometimes not more than twice in two hours—evidently just as his new ideas happen to absorb his attention or not. it is part of his exasperating character at these times, always to become immersed in reflection where the muleteer's staff has not room to reach him with the smallest effect; and where, loading him with blows being out of the question, loading him with abusive language is the only other available process for getting him on. i find that he generally turns out to be susceptible to the influence of injurious epithets after he has heard himself insulted five or six times. once, his obdurate nature gives way, even at the third appeal. he has just stopped with me on his back, to amuse himself, at a dangerous part of the road, with a little hard thinking in a steeply slanting position; and it becomes therefore urgently necessary to abuse him into proceeding forthwith. first, the muleteer calls him a serpent—he 269 never stirs an inch. secondly, the muleteer calls him a frog—he goes on imperturbably with his meditation. thirdly, the muleteer roars out indignantly, ah sacré nom d'un butor! (which, interpreted by the help of my anglo-french dictionary, means apparently, ah, sacred name of a muddlehead!); and at this extraordinary adjuration the beast instantly jerks up his nose, shakes his ears, and goes on his way indignantly.
mule-riding, under these circumstances, is certainly an adventurous and amusing method of travelling, and well worth trying for once in a way; but i am not at all sure that i should enjoy a second experience of it, and i have my doubts on this account—to say nothing of my dread of a second jolting journey in a char—about the propriety of undertaking another journey to switzerland during the present sultry season. it will be wisest, perhaps, to try the effect of a new scene from the past, representing some former visit to some other locality, before i venture on arriving at a decision. i have rejected austrian italy and german switzerland, and i am doubtful about switzerland proper. suppose i do my duty as a patriot, and give the attractions of my own country a fair chance of appealing to any past influences of the agreeable kind, which they may have exercised over me? black mirror! when i 270 was last a tourist at home, how did i travel about from place to place?
the cloud on the magic surface rises slowly and grandly, like the lifting of a fog at sea, and discloses a tiny drawing-room, with a skylight window, and a rose-coloured curtain drawn over it to keep out the sun. a bright book-shelf runs all round this little fairy chamber, just below the ceiling, where the cornice would be in loftier rooms. sofas extend along the wall on either side, and mahogany cupboards full of good things ensconce themselves snugly in the four corners. the table is brightened with nosegays; the mantel-shelf has a smart railing all round it; and the looking-glass above is just large enough to reflect becomingly the face and shoulders of any lady who will give herself the trouble of looking into it. the present inhabitants of the room are three gentlemen with novels and newspapers in their hands, taking their ease in blouses, dressing-gowns, and slippers. they are reposing on the sofas with fruit and wine within easy reach—and one of the party looks to me very much like the enviable possessor of the black mirror. they exhibit a spectacle of luxury which would make an ancient spartan shudder with disgust; and, in an adjoining apartment, their band is attending on them, in the shape of a musical box which is just now playing the last scene in lucia di lammermoor. 271
hark! what sounds are those mingling with the notes of donizetti's lovely music—now rising over it sublimely, now dying away under it, gently and more gently still? our sweet opera air shall come to its close, our music shall play for its short destined time and then be silent again; but those more glorious sounds shall go on with us day and night, shall still swell and sink inexhaustibly, long after we and all who know and love and remember us have passed from this earth for ever. it is the wash of the waves that now travels along with us grandly wherever we go. we are at sea in a schooner yacht, and are taking our pleasure along the southern shores of the english coast.
yes, this to every man who can be certain of his own stomach, this is the true luxury of travelling, the true secret for thoroughly enjoying all the attractions of moving about from place to place. wherever we now go, we carry our elegant and comfortable home along with us. we can stop where we like, see what we like, and always come back to our favourite corner on the sofa, always carry on our favourite occupations and amusements, and still be travelling, still be getting forward to new scenes all the time. here is no hurrying to accommodate yourself to other people's hours for starting, no scrambling for places, no wearisome watchfulness over baggage. here are no anxieties 272 about strange beds,—for have we not each of us our own sweet little cabin to nestle in at night?—no agitating dependence at the dinner hour upon the vagaries of strange cooks—for have we not our own sumptuous larder always to return to, our own accomplished and faithful culinary artist always waiting to minister to our special tastes? we can walk and sleep, stand up or lie down just as we please, in our floating travelling-carriage. we can make our own road, and trespass nowhere. the bores we dread, the letters we don't want to answer, cannot follow and annoy us. we are the freest travellers under heaven; and we find something to interest and attract us through every hour of the day. the ships we meet, the trimming of our sails, the varying of the weather, the everlasting innumerable changes of the ocean, afford constant occupation for eye and ear. sick, indeed, must that libellous traveller have been who first called the sea monotonous—sick to death, and perhaps, born brother also to that other traveller of evil renown, the first man who journeyed from dan to beersheba, and found all barren.
rest then awhile unemployed, my faithful black mirror! the last scene you have shown me is sufficient to answer the purpose for which i took you up. towards what point of the compass i may turn after leaving london is more than i can tell; 273 but this i know, that my next post-horses shall be the winds, my next stages coast-towns, my next road over the open waves. i will be a sea-traveller once more, and will put off resuming my land journeyings until the arrival of that most obliging of all convenient periods of time—a future opportunity.
