ON THE TRACK OF THE CRESCENT.*
COPY RIGHT in titles is among the benefits which the Incorporated Society of Authors proposes to secure to the novelists, who are contesting the proprietorial rights question as eagerly as Irish competitors for land, and for a similar reason—because the object of their contention is a limited quantity, while they themselves are not. To those about to steal, this will appear a pedantic and pettifogging precaution ; to us, impartial, it suggests the consideration that the thing, short of inventing a new language, cannot be done. Writers of books of travel are not quite so hard-up as the novelists ; but they soon will be, unless there should be a general agreement among mankind to stay at home, or if they do not, then to say nothing in print about it. The titles of travel-books have been gradually becoming so fantastic, that it makes one feel uncomfortably old to remember how the Saturday Review poked its rather heavy fun at the (then) daring originality of Through Norway with a Knapsack, suggesting "To Timbuctoo with a Tooth-brush," as a happy thought.
Major Johnson is inconsiderately lavish ; he might have been satisfied with one silly title, On the Track of the Crescent, for a book which is quite as much concerned with countries of the Cross, and have left his second, Erratic Notes front the Pincus to Pesth, to be picked up by some other traveller with a notion that alliteration is fine and no notion that "erratic notes" is nonsense. Again, if he had not been inspired by Sir Frederick Leighton's description of what Major Johnson calls "the geographical surroundings" of Greek Art—meaning Greece—
and if he had read Mr. Justin McCarthy's brilliant pages on the Parthenon, he would not have tried so unavailingly hard to "live up to" the fine fancies of the P.R.A., and when " the glorious Parthenon suddenly burst on his view," he would probably not have written what follows :—
" I felt stunned by the thought which rushed through my brain, that here Pericles, Themistocles, Plato, and Socrates, had stood and addressed their delighted fellow-countrymen. I could hardly realise it all. I here found what had once been spiral stairs, but of which [sic] little now remains. After some cautious climbing I stood at last on the top of the grandest of all grand buildings. The view was magnificent. Far down below lay Athens, basking in the blaze of the midday sun. Mount Hymettus on one side, and Tykabettus on the other, with the deep, blue Mediterranean beyond, formed a sight never to be forgotten. I now felt rather giddy, and was glad to descend."
The book is a big book, and the author covered a great deal of ground ; he did go from the limns to Pesth, and he has conscientiously cut short his "erratic notes" at the latter place. He saw men and cities, and he gives us his opinions of the people, and pronounces on the places with cheerful dogmatism, explained in an odd sentence of an undeniably original preface. " If I appear," says Major Johnson, " to have expressed my opinions on the people of the countries which I visited in a manner more dogmatic than my experience would warrant, I can only say that, for some time before going, I consulted the best authorities who have written on that part of Europe, the opinions which I formed from reading these works being merely confirmed by my own experience." To read this sentence is to learn that there exists in our own time a writer who approaches the immortal Mr. Collins, of Pride and Prejudice, in unintentional humour. The author had a " good time " and a pleasant companion while he was confirming in Greece the opinions formed from the best authors ; and be left " the classic ground " with regret. " I was very sorry, too," he adds, with the ndivet4 that makes this book amusing, "to leave Major H—. He is one of the best fellows I ever met ; full of poetry and good-sense—a strange mixture."
It is, however, when Major Johnson actually comes up with the Crescent that he is really fine. Major H— had not a monopoly of the strange mixture. His companion possesses sufficient poetry to enable him to state that the Circassians received into Turkey in 1869, " have but scantily rewarded their benefactor, for they have been as a thorn in her side, and as a viper in her bosom ever since ;" and to add : " The women are very beautiful, and great acquisitions in the harems of the rich." As for good-sense, here it is, " in heaps, in perfect heaps," like Mrs. Toots's. For instance, Major Johnson defines the Koran as "a curious mixture of Judaism and Christianity in the form of the Arian heresy," and " its precepts of dependence on the Supreme Being and submission to His will" as, "oddly enough, the chief obstacles to the progress and greatness of the Turks." Again, there is Major Johnson's exposition of the value to England of alliance with Turkey, an arrangement which he appears to believe originated with Lord Beaconsfield, for he says :—" It will be a sad day for England when this striking instance of the prescience of the greatest statesman of modern times (the Earl of Beaconsfield) ceases to be the corner-stone of our foreign policy."
Major Johnson's notion of fun, conveyed either by his pen or his pencil, is oppressive. A couple of pages about a scarecrow which turns out to be " the impaled man," and is saluted with a cry of " Yive le Hombog ! " is a specimen of the former method, while the latter is, perhaps, most fully represented by a drawing of a fat man staggering under the impossible load of a grand piano carried on his head, with the Italian proverb, " Chi va piano va sano," to explain the joke ! He also thinks it is humourons to talk " sarkasm" about " the inarticulatable one," and historical to state that Canon Liddon's statement about the impaled man "caused South-Eastern Europe to flow with blood, and our Indian Empire to stand a very good chance of ' perishing." Hence it will be seen that Major Johnson, like a true-blue Tory and a gallant Jingo, draws for his facts upon his imagination, but that his drafts for wit are not honoured. The Tory Jingo mind is not one that benefits by travel; all its conclusions are foregone, and it ever journeys on the primrose path. Major Johnson is not a remarkably instructive writer, and when he is amusing it is scarcely with intention ; but he is goodhumoured, and he observes things in an all-round way, which, while it gives his writing a Chinese-drawing-like air, has a genial and talkative effect. His account of the dancingdervishes at Constantinople is in the style of Georgy Osborne's prize composition, and the scene is depicted in the worst drawing we have ever found in any book ; still, when we get him well away from ancient Greece and the coroneted shade of " the Asian Mystery," he is not bad company. He is very fine upon the Turkish peasant, who is, he tells us, "physically and morally a very fine fellow," and "has chiefly learned his vices from Europeans, while his virtues are all his own." One truly funny saying is this : "His [the Turkish peasant's] house and person are always very clean, but the former is badly built." Of course, he talks about the Sultan's " wives ;" but we never hope to find an English traveller who will not fall into that error. The chapters on the Danubian Provinces are the least facetious and the most readable. The author's geniality procured him attention and kindly services, and no doubt made him a pleasant companion to people who, presumably, know nothing about Lord Beaconsfield. There was a certain Count B— (in this case the limited initial is quite proper) at Nagy-Enyed (it is in Transylvania) who was evidently a choice spirit in a very dull sphere. He took the Major in hand with great zeal and efficiency, and showed him many interesting sights—especially the coming-in from their pastures of the great herds of huge heavy-horned buffaloes. "How often are great scamps most charming fellows to meet 1" says Major Johnson, a propos of the Count, with an irresistible touch of poetry. He tells us a good deal about military matters in the countries which he visited. Here is something new, to us at least :—" I may mention," says the author, " a fact not generally known. The word Huszar ' is Hungarian for ' twentieth man,' that being the proportion in which the recruits for the cavalry were picked in former times from the population. These recruits took the national costume of the time of Matthew Corvinus (the fifteenth century) into the ranks, and the uniform and name have since spread from the Austro-Hungarian service into all the armies of Europe." Beyond a general notion of the pleasantness of Pesth, and a particular notion of the loveliness of the ladies there, we do not get much out of Major Johnson's narrative of his visit to that city. We leave him there, however, with a friendly feeling, and are not sorry to have read his book, although—perhaps because—it has a flavour of absurdity.
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