I replied that I thought it was somewhere about the middle. He
said:
"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 brand that is technically known over here as the "Penny
Pickwick - Spring Crop;" and he thought that I should not have time,
during the short stay I contemplated making in the country, to
acquire a taste for its flavour.
My sister-in-law came in later on in the evening (she is a
thoughtful girl), and brought a box with her about the size of a
tea-chest. She said:
"Now, you slip that in your bag; you'll be glad of that. There's
everything there for making yourself a cup of tea."
She said that they did not understand tea in Germany, but that with
that I should be independent of them.
She opened the case, and explained its contents to me. It certainly
was a wonderfully complete arrangement. It contained a little caddy
full of tea, a little bottle of milk, a box of sugar, a bottle of
methylated spirit, a box of butter, and a tin of biscuits:
