As the nineteenth century progressed guidebook prose became less prolix, and Baedeker deals with the above in a single sentence: ‘The curious subterranean vaults with stone and iron doors were perhaps once used as dungeons’ — a far cry from the romantic horrors detailed in Murray fifty years before, and possibly coming from the notion that one could justifiably encourage forgetfulness of such sadistic vileness on the assumption that similar practices would never surface again, the Nazi period at that time impossible to imagine.
By 1914 80,000 people a year visited Baden-Baden. Public gambling had been suppressed in 1872 (though it was allowed again under the Nazis) when it became more of a health resort. Bradshaw’s Dictionary of Bathing Places said that the waters contained mineral properties for the cure of ‘uric acid diathesis, gout, catarrhal affections of the throat and larynx, dyspepsia, chronic catarrh of the stomach and intestines, and bladder diseases’, which made the waters of Baden-Baden ‘stand unrivalled’. The waters were chiefly taken in the morning from 7 to 8 o’clock, while the band was playing, and: ‘Special cabins were provided for the purpose of gargling.’
In spring and autumn ‘grand musical festivals are held; and in winter chamber music, symphony and vocal concerts’. The town orchestra had fifty-two members. The theatre, ‘a handsome and beautifully decorated building,’ says Thomas Cook’s guidebook, ‘was opened in 1862 and inaugurated by Hector Berlioz.’ The Hamburg Amerika Shipping Line Guide Through Europe, 1914, tells us that the theatre ‘has a memorial tablet to Berlioz, the composer whose setting of Faust has become so famous’.
Another feature just prior to the First World War was that ‘air trips may be taken in Zeppelin’s air-ships in the Municipal Flying Ground’.
CHAPTER SEVEN
NORTHERN ITALY
D. H. Lawrence walked to Italy, and Goethe travelled by coach, as did Beckford and Heine, and countless others, some of note, most of course not. In the latter part of the nineteenth century tourists went by train, and aircraft today make it even more effortless.
Problems only began on reaching the frontier, though the traveller no doubt hoped that later compensations would erase all memories of difficulty. Old grumble-guts Murray, in Northern Italy, 1883 tells us what to be prepared for: ‘Passports are no longer indispensable, but all travellers are advised to secure with them this important certificate of nationality.’ Baedeker, in 1897, says, ‘The countenance and help of the British and American consuls can, of course, be extended to those persons only who can prove their nationality.’ Murray remarks that at the Custom-house luggage is opened and sometimes carefully searched. ‘Even in the case of persons giving an assurance that their luggage contains no prohibited article, the concealment of which will, if discovered, entail trouble and annoyance, the examination will probably be persisted in. This severity of search has been increased under the present Italian Government, and it is especially enforced upon travellers arriving by the St. Gothard Railway.’ That is to say, British, the majority of whom used that route. One also had to note: ‘The Italian custom-house officers would consider it an insult to be offered money.’
Murray’s Switzerland, 1891, consoles the traveller with the fact that he will have little difficulty in facing the Italian customs; though he then goes on to say that, at Chiasso, ‘the head officials have made themselves notorious in the execution of their duty and discourtesy towards travellers’.
After the early Murray handbooks, in which it was assumed that travellers could afford to be extravagant, later editions positively extol niggardliness. Concerning railway travel in Italy: ‘The clerks at the stations sometimes refuse to give change; it is therefore desirable to be always prepared with the exact amount of the fare’, which is seconded by Baedeker, who adds: ‘“Mistakes” are far from uncommon on the part of the ticket-clerks or the officials who weigh luggage.’ He also says: ‘During the last few years an extraordinary number of robberies of passengers’ luggage have been perpetrated in Italy without detection, and articles of great value should not be entrusted to the safe-keeping of any trunk or portmanteau, however strong and secure it may seem.’ Anyone tempted to carry arms in defence of life and belongings while in the country was told by Bradshaw: ‘Revolvers are liable to be confiscated.’
A humantiarian view is taken by Baedeker, as shown by the following: ‘The enormous weight of the trunks used by some travellers not unfrequently causes serious and even lifelong injury to the hotel and railway porters who have to handle them.’ But the suggested remedy would also benefit thieves, who would not suffer a hernia in their attempts to carry them away: ‘Travellers are therefore urged to place their heavy articles in the smaller packages and thus minimize the evil as far as possible.’
Accommodation at hotels in the large provincial cities was generally good, Murray says, and nearly equal to those elsewhere, ‘but at intermediate stations and off the main routes they are often very dirty, and infested with vermin to an extent of which those who travel only in winter can have no idea … When off the lines of railway or main road, those who wish tea and coffee in the evening should carry milk with them from the place where they slept the previous night, as it is often not to be had at the inns on the road. The tea at the smaller inns is generally so bad that travellers will do well to carry their own supply, together with a small metal teapot.’
English travellers, here as elsewhere, were apt to be charged higher prices, and ‘it will save trouble and annoyance to fix beforehand the prices to be paid for everything. The second floor is preferable to the first, and the traveller will do well to remember that on account of the defective drainage in most towns of Italy, it is always better to incur the fatigue of ascending a number of stairs than to sleep on or near the ground floor. In the smaller towns it would be absurd to expect the comforts and conveniences of great cities: travellers never gain anything by exacting or requiring more than the people can supply; and if they have sufficient philosophy to keep their temper, they will generally find that they are treated with civility.’