THE EXPENSES OF TRAVEL.
THERE is a general idea, not altogether without foundation, that it is just as cheap to travel on the Continent as to make little tours in Wales, or Yorkshire, or Derbyshire. Now, un- doubtedly there are modes of managing this, but it is a great delusion to suppose that you can travel great distances and live comfortably, at the same price at which you can travel small dis- tances and live equally comfortably, however you may choose- your locality. In general, we may lay it down as a sure rule that the style of living being once clearly defined, the cost of a tour will depend (except, of course, in the case of the pedestrian) on the distance moved over by the traveller ; or to throw it into a quasi-astronomical formula, if the cost of living be supposed con- stant, equal areas will be swept over by the traveller at equal expenses. In other words, if any one hopes to get to Switzerland and back, travelling in precisely the same sort of way, and living in precisely the same sort of way, in which he would make the tour of the Snowdon district in Wales, or the Dovedale and Peak districts in Derbyshire, or the Ingleborough and Bolton Abbey districts in Yorkshire, he will unquestionably be disappointed. If he wishes to go to Switzerland at the same expense at which he will spend the same time in England, he must deny himself something material which in England he would allow himself,—travel second-class and stint him- self a little as to the number of his meals,—or else move about much less in Switzerland when he has got there, and so avail him- self of the very moderate pension prices open to those who will con- sent to stay in one hotel for a week. By any or all of these means, undoubtedly, it is possible to reduce travel on the Continent as low or even lower than the same length of travel within a single- county, or one or two counties, in England ; but it is only by measures of this kind that you can do so, and we need not say that a very considerable sacrifice of pleasure is involved to most people in this last and most efficient of economies,—the limiting yourself to a single hotel, at pension rates, for a week at a time. In the first place, directly you are en pension, you begin to fidget about inattention, and imagine yourself specially neglected, even if you are not, while not improbably you will be postponed to the more profitable travellers who are paying the full rates. Then the mere knowledge that you have agreed to stay a week will make you desire intensely to get on to some other station, and also render you more than usually critical of your fellow-prisoners in the pen- sion. Finally, the pension system is scarcely ever in full force except at stations where the breed of regular tourists, and usually the stall-fed English tourists, most do congregate, and as a matter almost of course, therefore, you are sure to meet numbers of your own countrymen, and to be thrown into that state of mind from which, in travel, you chiefly wish to escape,—the habit of noting superficial faults of manner, speech, and dress,—with which you are quite familiar enough from your experience in the railway train which takes you up to business every morning, and which have none of the novelty or freshness that is the special delight even of foreign eccentricities. It will be impossible, too, even to delude yourself into the impression ,—one of the chief enjoyments of travel,—that you are making a rather special discovery, peculiar to yourself, of an almost unrivalled nugget of beauty or sublimity, in which you have a sort of moral monopoly, if you are com- pelled to seek out one of the innumerable notable places where you can contract to be boarded and fed at seven francs a day, exclusive of wine. The freedom of travel is entirely lost by the pension system ; but we admit that on the Continent there are far more complete arrangements for living cheaply en pension in almost every locality of repute than there are in England. If the traveller is quite willing to limit himself to a month, and to spend that month thus,—eay, a week in going and returning, and three weeks at three different centres in Switzerland,—for example, Lucerne, Grindelwald, Chamounix,—doubtless he can manage it much cheaper than he could a month spent in constant movement from inn to inn within a comparatively narrow area in England. For example, a man who will commit himself to return within the month can get one of Mr. Cook's first-class tourist tickets, which take him to Berne and Geneva and back for £6 18s. He will probably spend at least 10s. :a Ilay in addition during his journey to and fro, which makes -about ten guineas for the week spent in going out and home. He can spend the other three weeks en pension, for at the very most £2 10s. a week, all incidental expenses included, unless he goes in for guides or mules, which are very expensive amusements indeed ; and if he is economical and avoids all " incidental expenses," he could do it for much less. But even this gives about £18 as the total cost of a month of travel arranged without any necessity for anxiety or care at all, and we very much doubt whether any man could go to and fro among the inns of Wales or Derbyshire for so little as that during the same period. In this case, the economy is obtained by living en pension ; and we do not dispute that a man who was very careful indeed could manage the same thing without tying himself by the foot at two or three localities ; but then he would have to be very careful indeed about his pour-boires, and his Trinkgelds ; he must never get anything better than ordinaire at dinner, and choose the cheapest modes of conveyance,—the lake steamers, when possible,—for his little excursions ; he must cavil at bills, avoid lunch and tea altogether, and sternly resist the attractions of photographs, or Swiss cottages, or chamois horns, or carved paper-knives, et hoc genus omne. We do not doubt that a man with a genius for finding cheap hotels,—he must remember that bad, third-rate hotels in a dear place are seldom cheap, —and cutting down his expenses to a minimum, might get a month in Switzerland (taking Mr. Cook's second-class ticket, and living en pension) for even £14. We did once know a travelling Irish -student who managed to sleep in the train to avoid hotel expenses at night, and he travelled for something incredibly small ;—but then he came back so emaciated that his friends hardly knew him, and he had to take cod-liver oil for the next half-year. Moreover, to most men the necessity for this sort of close care -would almost be more than a counterbalancing weight to the ,pleasure of the travel itself. On the other hand, a man who did not tie himself to pensions and who did engage guides, or a guide and a mule, whenever he wanted to see a glacier or an unfamiliar pass, would spend easily from thirty to forty pounds, —in proportion to the number of his special excursions with guides, and would not need to reproach himself for having been extravagant even then. And if instead of going for a month to Switzerland, he went for a month to the Tyrol, his expenditure would be still higher, because in that case he must necessarily pass over a considerably greater length of route in the same time. And directly you exceed the month you lose the advantage of the very considerable reduction which most of the Cook excursion tickets ensure,—(how Mr. Cook manages to give a return ticket first-class to Mayence available for a month at very nearly the same price as a single ticket obtained by the ordinary means has often been a puzzle to us), for only one of these, and that only pro- curable at a good deal higher rate, is extended to two months,— so that directly you really aim beyond the ordinary English holiday-makers, either in space or time, the expense of travel rises even in rate;—unless, indeed, time is so completely at your dis- posal that you can afford to travel very short distances every day, in which case, of course, you may make the cost per day almost as little above the cost of living per day as you choose.
On the whole, we do not think it is easy to travel on the Continent without cheeseparing expedients, even if you use, as you almost always may do, second-class carriages (except in Belgium, where they are crowded and uncomfortable), for so little, if you travel alone, as one pound a day,—i.e., if you have any great distance to travel over in the time. A party of two or three can, of course, manage it more easily at a pound a head than a single traveller, because many of the smaller expenses,—like fiacres or guides,—do not increase with the number in the party. Even Mr. Cook, we see, with all his devices, estimates the cost of a month's tour to Italy at not less than a pound a head per day, and, of course, he includes none of the incidental expenses exclusive of travel and fare, like small purchases, without which very few travellers con- trive to get home again. We are disposed,' therefore, to doubt very much whether half the pleasure can ordinarily be got at the same expense out of a Swiss or Italian journey limited to a few weeks, as might be got out of a riding or driving tour in some of the more picturesque English counties, where you can, without the smallest doubt, make a pound a head a day cover everything without the least difficulty (unless you order much wine or other- wise recherehi dinners) ; and you can, moreover, be all day in the open air, and fine scenery, and stop at night exactly where you please (if there's room for you), so that 25 per cent. of your holiday is not wasted in dusty railway-carriages. Of course, there
is the objection that you do not see foreign manners, and costumes, and snow mountains, and glaciers, and all sorts of unfamiliar objects which rest the mind and renew its spring ; but then, on the other hand, you have none of the mortifica- tion of going abroad to meet rather more Englishmen and Englishwomen than you would meet at home, only that they are pretending to talk French or German and succeeding in talking broken English, and that they are embarking on a very tremendous scale indeed in alpenstocks, and habitually walking up hills not at all more steep than Richmond Hill with those very ostentatious and inefficient white poles in their hands, and perhaps a guide apiece into the bargain.
Our general conclusion, then, is this,—that if you wish to travel without anxiety of any sort, you ought to allow about a pound a day a head, exclusive of the long railway journey ; —i.e., exclusive of all journeys but short daily excursions, and even then not to order expensive wines or take a mute and guide more than once a week or so,—though we quite admit that there are various means of reducing the expenses in Switzerland or any locality frequented by the fatted European tourist to a very much lower rate. But whether the cost at which you effect that reduction and the company in which you effect it, is not a full set-off against the stimulus of a foreign land and Alpine scenery, is a question that can only be settled by the traveller himself in foro conseientim, where we will leave it to be by him determined.
Previous page
