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.
