Читать книгу The Observations of Professor Maturin - Clyde Bowman Furst - Страница 6

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THE writer recently enjoyed the great privilege of being the guest of his friend, Professor Maturin, at a meeting of the Sindbad Society, an organization for the enjoyment of informal discussion concerning the theory and practice, the graces and the usefulness, of foreign travel.

Similar in purpose to the Travellers’ Club of London, but lacking anything like the equipment of that body’s sumptuous Pall Mall home, the Sindbad Society endeavors to fulfil its function by means of occasional dinners in the private rooms of other clubs. Indeed, I was given to understand that the members were unanimous in considering a local habitation, or immovable property of any sort, to be most inappropriate for a club the very essence of which was peregrination. My neighbor at the large round dinner table averred that to own even a portrait of Sindbad the Sailor, the mythical founder and patron of the club, would be to embody in a concrete object sentiments of value only so long as they animated the mind.

As we took our places at table, it became evident, in spite of the recreative character of the club, that here was no body of amateurs, to whom travel meant merely London and Paris, the Rhine and the Riviera. I recognized a former director of the American School in Rome, an artist and a craftsman who had just returned from Japan and India, an importer of things Persian, and a biologist who spent half his time in the South Seas. Professor Maturin described the other members to me as an engineer who had developed oil wells in China, an archaeologist who directed excavations in Syria, former secretaries of legation at St. Petersburg and at Constantinople, an army officer from Manila, and an explorer who had climbed everything but the mountains of the moon.

The dinner, although entirely without pose, was intentionally and interestingly exotic. Russian preserved cucumbers and a soup of chestnuts from the south of France were followed by an entrée of lamb, prepared according to a Constantinople recipe, and by boned capon. The colonel mixed a Filipino salad-dressing, and with it the archaeologist supplied cigarettes made of coffee leaves. Finally, the engineer introduced a South American dessert of ripe red bananas, guava jelly, and sharp cheese, and with this was served Carlsbad burnt-fig coffee. The wines, although poured sparingly, were as interesting as the food. The cigars were Cuban vegueras. The endeavor, which was surely realized throughout, had evidently been to seek the unusual, not for the sake of mere strangeness, but for an excellence unattainable through the ordinary.

The same might be said of the talk which accompanied the meal. It was anything but conscious or formal, and yet I noticed that leading questions were not only allowed but expected, and that it was the custom of the entire company to listen when any conversation became generally interesting. In this way I enjoyed a whole series of descriptions of forests and mountains, rivers and deserts, of barbarous and unfrequented countries, of harbors and fortifications, cities and courts, cathedrals and colleges, libraries and museums; with anecdotes of experience and adventure, of state and society, of beautiful women and distinguished men.

The near distance of Europe was by no means forgotten, but it was discussed in a way that made me feel that I must, in Bacon’s phrase, have gone there “hooded,” or, at least, as the mythical American who checked off each city in his Baedeker after a hurried glance about him from the top of some tall building. In particular, I was possessed with successive desires to make good my deficiencies by going at once to live at a wonderful small hotel across the river in Paris, visiting a certain sculptor’s studio in Madrid, dreaming on the terraces of Lake Maggiore, and hearing the opera by telephone at Budapest. When the talk ranged more widely, as it did for the most part, I longed to observe a volcano and experience an earthquake in action, and determined to journey without delay to Damascus for the sake of its baths and cafés, “the most exquisitely luxurious in the world;” that is, if I did not decide, instead, for Shepherd’s hotel at Cairo, or, perhaps, the vale of Thingvalla in Iceland.

With the cigars, the conversation shifted from details of observation and experience, by way of penetrative comment on men and manners, until it reached what seemed, at least to me, profound conclusions concerning national and social characteristics. The classical scholar, with a majority of the other members, opposed the craftsman and the engineer, in ascribing a certain monotony and shallowness to Japanese life, in spite of its old aestheticism and its new efficiency. Both of the diplomats endorsed the Persian specialist’s statement that “the hope of the East is in Western inoculation; it will never regenerate itself.” “Nor be regenerated,” growled the colonel. “From my point of view,” replied the artist, “it has no need to. Nature is the absolute artist, and nowhere else do people live so close to her. Rare natural beauty, a constant sun, and a mellow atmosphere give existence there such an intensity and richness that mere living becomes an art—‘pure pomegranate, not banana,’ as they say in Egypt.” “It takes the eyes of love to see angels,” concluded the archaeologist. “Natural savages may be noble, but effete races are not, and such most of the Eastern peoples seem to me. However, I may be wrong, or at least narrow; toleration is the great lesson of travel.”

After a number of such discussions, which were listened to by all, the company returned by general consent to more specific topics—plans, principally, for future journeys. These had but a melancholy interest for me, who had not the remotest hope of realizing any of them, until the conversation became once more general in outlining an ideal rapid journey around the world. This whirled me past Honolulu palm trees and craters, amid Japanese cherry-blossoms and wistaria, along the Great Wall of China, through Canton gardens and bazaars, into Calcutta palaces and Delhi temples, by dahabeah in Egypt and camel in Syria, until I caught my breath once more in the midst of the Mediterranean.

But the most valuable part of the evening, and to me the most enjoyable, if satisfaction is to be measured by what one remembers longest, was the concluding half-hour, when every member of the group, quite unconsciously I am sure, fell to felicitating every other member on the success of the evening, the value of travel, and the pleasure and profit of thus discussing it.

I had, myself, experienced vicariously some of the delights of filling in the blank spaces on the map of the world with picturesque scenes and animated figures. I had noted with interest how the habit of observation seemed to lead inevitably to comparison, and that to generalization and conclusion. It had been no small satisfaction to learn how adequately the human frame and mind had met and withstood the severer experiences of the more daring—how small, after all, were the world’s greatest difficulties and dangers to the unconquerable spirit. But it was most gratifying of all to realize that the general experience had resulted not in distrust, but in belief in the fundamental kindliness, if not goodness, of general human nature; and in a firm conviction that the world as a whole was visibly advancing in material, mental, and moral well-being.

I had, naturally, never questioned the charm of travel as a recreation, but this evening gave me a new sense of its superior value as experience and education. I knew, of course, that travel required no ordinary equipment of perception, knowledge, and judgment—of sensitiveness to impressions, with material to compare and ability to value; that indifferent travel would serve only, as Rousseau said of indifferent reading, “to make presumptuous ignoramuses.” But, although I had long believed that the observant and thoughtful home-keeping man might attain an understanding of himself and even of his nation, I came now to doubt that there was any means other than foreign travel for developing a realization of what is really fundamental to the general human spirit.

In voicing to Professor Maturin my gratitude for the pleasure and profit of the evening, I found that he had observed me growing a trifle stale, and had designedly administered this meeting as a remedy. He expressed his opinion that I was already out of danger, judging from my evident appreciation, with Shakespeare, that “a good traveller is something at the latter end of a dinner.” And he beamed on me as mellowly as the moon when, at parting, I expressed my intention of continuing the medicine, homoeopathically, through books of travel, until my wonted tone was entirely restored. The whole prescription worked such wonders as a tonic that I strongly recommend it to others.