【国外英文文学】Little Travels and Roadside Sketches.docx

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1、【国外英文文学】Little Travels and Roadside SketchesLittle Travels and Roadside Sketchesby William Makepeace ThackerayI. FROM RICHMOND IN SURREY TO BRUSSELS IN BELGIUMII. GHENT-BRUGES:- Ghent (1840) BrugesIII. WATERLOOLITTLE TRAVELS AND ROADSIDE SKETCHESI.-FROM RICHMOND IN SURREY TO BRUSSELS IN BELGIUM. . .

2、 I quitted the Rose Cottage Hotel at Richmond, one of the comfortablest, quietest, cheapest, neatest little inns in England, and a thousand times preferable, in my opinion, to the Star and Garter, whither, if you go alone, a sneering waiter, with his hair curled, frightens you off the premises; and

3、where, if you are bold enough to brave the sneering waiter, you have to pay ten shillings for a bottle of claret; and whence, if you look out of the window, you gaze on a view which is so rich that it seems to knock you down with its splendor-a view that has its hair curled like the swaggering waite

4、r: I say, I quitted the Rose Cottage Hotel with deep regret, believing that I should see nothing so pleasant as its gardens, and its veal cutlets, and its dear little bowling-green, elsewhere. But the time comes when people must go out of town, and so I got on the top of the omnibus, and the carpet-

5、bag was put inside.If I were a great prince and rode outside of coaches (as I should if I were a great prince), I would, whether I smoked or not, have a case of the best Havanas in my pocket-not for my own smoking, but to give them to the snobs on the coach, who smoke the vilest cheroots. They poiso

6、n the air with the odor of their filthy weeds. A man at all easy in his circumstances would spare himself much annoyance by taking the above simple precaution.A gentleman sitting behind me tapped me on the back and asked for a light. He was a footman, or rather valet. He had no livery, but the three

7、 friends who accompanied him were tall men in pepper-and- salt undress jackets with a dukes coronet on their buttons.After tapping me on the back, and when he had finished his cheroot, the gentleman produced another wind-instrument, which he called a kinopium, a sort of trumpet, on which he showed a

8、 great inclination to play. He began puffing out of the kinopium a most abominable air, which he said was the Dukes March. It was played by particular request of one of the pepper-and-salt gentry.The noise was so abominable that even the coachman objected (although my friends brother footmen were ra

9、vished with it), and said that it was not allowed to play toons on HIS bus. Very well, said the valet, WERE ONLY OF THE DUKE OF B-S ESTABLISHMENT, THATS ALL. The coachman could not resist that appeal to his fashionable feelings. The valet was allowed to play his infernal kinopium, and the poor fello

10、w (the coachman), who had lived in some private families, was quite anxious to conciliate the footmen of the Duke of B.s establishment, thats all, and told several stories of his having been groom in Captain Hoskinss family, NEPHEW OF GOVERNOR HOSKINS; which stories the footmen received with great c

11、ontempt.The footmen were like the rest of the fashionable world in this respect. I felt for my part that I respected them. They were in daily communication with a duke! They were not the rose, but they had lived beside it. There is an odor in the English aristocracy which intoxicates plebeians. I am

12、 sure that any commoner in England, though he would die rather than confess it, would have a respect for those great big hulking Dukes footmen.The day before, her Grace the Duchess had passed us alone in a chariot-and-four with two outriders. What better mark of innate superiority could man want? He

13、re was a slim lady who required four-six horses to herself, and four servants (kinopium was, no doubt, one of the number) to guard her.We were sixteen inside and out, and had consequently an eighth of a horse apiece.A duchess = 6, a commoner = 1/8; that is to say,1 duchess = 48 commoners.If I were a

14、 duchess of the present day, I would say to the duke my noble husband, My dearest grace, I think, when I travel alone in my chariot from Hammersmith to London, I will not care for the outriders. In these days, when there is so much poverty and so much disaffection in the country, we should not eclab

15、ousser the canaille with the sight of our preposterous prosperity.But this is very likely only plebeian envy, and I dare say, if I were a lovely duchess of the realm, I would ride in a coach-and- six, with a coronet on the top of my bonnet and a robe of velvet and ermine even in the dog-days.Alas! t

16、hese are the dog-days. Many dogs are abroad-snarling dogs, biting dogs, envious dogs, mad dogs; beware of exciting the fury of such with your flaming red velvet and dazzling ermine. It makes ragged Lazarus doubly hungry to see Dives feasting in cloth-of- gold; and so if I were a beauteous duchess .

17、. . Silence, vain man! Can the Queen herself make you a duchess? Be content, then, nor gibe at thy betters of the Duke of B-s establishment- thats all.ON BOARD THE ANTWERPEN, OFF EVERYWHERE.We have bidden adieu to Billingsgate, we have passed the Thames Tunnel; it is one oclock, and of course people

18、 are thinking of being hungry. What a merry place a steamer is on a calm sunny summer forenoon, and what an appetite every one seems to have! We are, I assure you, no less than 170 noblemen and gentlemen together, pacing up and down under the awning, or lolling on the sofas in the cabin, and hardly

19、have we passed Greenwich when the feeding begins. The company was at the brandy and soda-water in an instant (there is a sort of legend that the beverage is a preservative against sea-sickness), and I admired the penetration of gentlemen who partook of the drink. In the first place, the steward WILL

20、 put so much brandy into the tumbler that it is fit to choke you; and, secondly, the soda-water, being kept as near as possible to the boiler of the engine, is of a fine wholesome heat when presented to the hot and thirsty traveller. Thus he is prevented from catching any sudden cold which might be

21、dangerous to him.The forepart of the vessel is crowded to the full as much as the genteeler quarter. There are four carriages, each with piles of imperials and aristocratic gimcracks of travel, under the wheels of which those personages have to clamber who have a mind to look at the bowsprit, and pe

22、rhaps to smoke a cigar at ease. The carriages overcome, you find yourself confronted by a huge penful of Durham oxen, lying on hay and surrounded by a barricade of oars. Fifteen of these horned monsters maintain an incessant mooing and bellowing. Beyond the cows come a heap of cotton-bags, beyond th

23、e cotton-bags more carriages, more pyramids of travelling trunks, and valets and couriers bustling and swearing round about them. And already, and in various corners and niches, lying on coils of rope, black tar-cloths, ragged cloaks, or hay, you see a score of those dubious fore-cabin passengers, w

24、ho are never shaved, who always look unhappy, and appear getting ready to be sick.At one, dinner begins in the after-cabin-boiled salmon, boiled beef, boiled mutton, boiled cabbage, boiled potatoes, and parboiled wine for any gentlemen who like it, and two roast-ducks between seventy. After this, kn

25、obs of cheese are handed round on a plate, and there is a talk of a tart somewhere at some end of the table. All this I saw peeping through a sort of meat-safe which ventilates the top of the cabin, and very happy and hot did the people seem below.How the deuce CAN people dine at such an hour? say s

26、everal genteel fellows who are watching the manoeuvres. I cant touch a morsel before seven.But somehow at half-past three oclock we had dropped a long way down the river. The air was delightfully fresh, the sky of a faultless cobalt, the river shining and flashing like quicksilver, and at this perio

27、d steward runs against me bearing two great smoking dishes covered by two great glistening hemispheres of tin. Fellow, says I, whats that?He lifted up the cover: it was ducks and green pease, by jingo!What! havent they done YET, the greedy creatures? I asked. Have the people been feeding for three h

28、ours?Law bless you, sir, its the second dinner. Make haste, or you wont get a place. At which words a genteel party, with whom I had been conversing, instantly tumbled down the hatchway, and I find myself one of the second relay of seventy who are attacking the boiled salmon, boiled beef, boiled cab

29、bage, &c. As for the ducks, I certainly had some pease, very fine yellow stiff pease, that ought to have been split before they were boiled; but, with regard to the ducks, I saw the animals gobbled up before my eyes by an old widow lady and her party just as I was shrieking to the steward to bring a

30、 knife and fork to carve them. The fellow! (I mean the widow ladys whiskered companion)-I saw him eat pease with the very knife with which he had dissected the duck!After dinner (as I need not tell the keen observer of human nature who peruses this) the human mind, if the body be in a decent state,

31、expands into gayety and benevolence, and the intellect longs to measure itself in friendly converse with the divers intelligences around it. We ascend upon deck, and after eying each other for a brief space and with a friendly modest hesitation, we begin anon to converse about the weather and other

32、profound and delightful themes of English discourse. We confide to each other our respective opinions of the ladies round about us. Look at that charming creature in a pink bonnet and a dress of the pattern of a Kilmarnock snuff-box: a stalwart Irish gentleman in a green coat and bushy red whiskers

33、is whispering something very agreeable into her ear, as is the wont of gentlemen of his nation; for her dark eyes kindle, her red lips open and give an opportunity to a dozen beautiful pearly teeth to display themselves, and glance brightly in the sun; while round the teeth and the lips a number of

34、lovely dimples make their appearance, and her whole countenance assumes a look of perfect health and happiness. See her companion in shot silk and a dove-colored parasol; in what a graceful Watteau-like attitude she reclines. The tall courier who has been bouncing about the deck in attendance upon t

35、hese ladies (it is his first day of service, and he is eager to make a favorable impression on them and the ladys-maids too) has just brought them from the carriage a small paper of sweet cakes (nothing is prettier than to see a pretty woman eating sweet biscuits) and a bottle that evidently contain

36、s Malmsey madeira. How daintily they sip it; how happy they seem; how that lucky rogue of an Irishman prattles away! Yonder is a noble group indeed: an English gentleman and his family. Children, mother, grandmother, grown-up daughters, father, and domestics, twenty-two in all. They have a table to

37、themselves on the deck, and the consumption of eatables among them is really endless. The nurses have been bustling to and fro, and bringing, first, slices of cake; then dinner; then tea with huge family jugs of milk; and the little people have been playing hide-and-seek round the deck, coquetting w

38、ith the other children, and making friends of every soul on board. I love to see the kind eyes of women fondly watching them as they gambol about; a female face, be it ever so plain, when occupied in regarding children, becomes celestial almost, and a man can hardly fail to be good and happy while h

39、e is looking on at such sights. Ah, sir! says a great big man, whom you would not accuse of sentiment, I have a couple of those little things at home; and he stops and heaves a great big sigh and swallows down a half-tumbler of cold something and water. We know what the honest fellow means well enou

40、gh. He is saying to himself, God bless my girls and their mother! but, being a Briton, is too manly to speak out in a more intelligible way. Perhaps it is as well for him to be quiet, and not chatter and gesticulate like those Frenchmen a few yards from him, who are chirping over a bottle of champag

41、ne.There is, as you may fancy, a number of such groups on the deck, and a pleasant occupation it is for a lonely man to watch them and build theories upon them, and examine those two personages seated cheek by jowl. One is an English youth, travelling for the first time, who has been hard at his Gui

42、debook during the whole journey. He has a Manuel du Voyageur in his pocket: a very pretty, amusing little oblong work it is too, and might be very useful, if the foreign people in three languages, among whom you travel, would but give the answers set down in the book, or understand the questions you

43、 put to them out of it. The other honest gentleman in the fur cap, what can his occupation be? We know him at once for what he is. Sir, says he, in a fine German accent, I am a brofessor of languages, and will gif you lessons in Danish, Swedish, English, Bortuguese, Spanish and Bersian. Thus occupie

44、d in meditations, the rapid hours and the rapid steamer pass quickly on. The sun is sinking, and, as he drops, the ingenious luminary sets the Thames on fire: several worthy gentlemen, watch in hand, are eagerly examining the phenomena attending his disappearance,-rich clouds of purple and gold, tha

45、t form the curtains of his bed,-little barks that pass black across his disc, his disc every instant dropping nearer and nearer into the water. There he goes! says one sagacious observer. No, he doesnt, cries another. Now he is gone, and the steward is already threading the deck, asking the passenge

46、rs, right and left, if they will take a little supper. What a grand object is a sunset, and what a wonder is an appetite at sea! Lo! the horned moon shines pale over Margate, and the red beacon is gleaming from distant Ramsgate pier. . . . . . .A great rush is speedily made for the mattresses that l

47、ie in the boat at the ships side; and as the night is delightfully calm, many fair ladies and worthy men determine to couch on deck for the night. The proceedings of the former, especially if they be young and pretty, the philosopher watches with indescribable emotion and interest. What a number of

48、pretty coquetries do the ladies perform, and into what pretty attitudes do they take care to fall! All the little children have been gathered up by the nursery-maids, and are taken down to roost below. Balmy sleep seals the eyes of many tired wayfarers, as you see in the case of the Russian nobleman asleep among the portmanteaus; and Titmarsh, who has been walking the deck for some time with a great mattress on his shoulders, knowing full well that were he to relinquish it for an instant, some other person would seize on it, now