Wintering in the Riviera: With Notes of Travel in Italy and France, and Practical Hints to Travellers — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Wintering in the Riviera: With Notes of Travel in Italy and France, and Practical Hints to Travellers
John Stuart Mill · en
Foreigners are very fond in the hot weather of putting down all the
six windows of the compartment, thus creating draughts, from which I
have several times caught a cold. They have not the slightest notion
of closing a window in passing through a tunnel, and on some lines the
tunnels are frequent and long. But while they put down the glass, they
also draw down the blue blinds placed over each window, under pretence
of the shining of the sun, but quite as often for no conceivable reason
except that the glass is down, or that they don’t want to be bothered
looking out. It is of no manner of consequence although the scenery
through which one is passing be the finest or the grandest possible,
down goes the blue blind without even the politeness of asking the
other passengers whether they so desire or not. As often as I could, I
secured a place at the window, and showed that, although a native of a
colder clime, I could stand the sunshine for the sake of the view. On
one occasion, on a former tour, travelling by diligence from Geneva to
Chamounix, there were some Germans smoking continually, as usual, on
the seats before us. These men, though approaching the grandest scenery
in Europe, insisted angrily on a leather curtain being kept down, so
as to exclude all view, simply because the raising of it admitted a
little sunshine. But this habit is not confined to Germans; and the
conclusion to which I have come is that, to say nothing of the quality
of inherent politeness in true consideration for others, the generality
of foreigners have no high appreciation for scenery, or are desperately
afraid of their complexion, which, to say the truth, cannot rival that
of the Anglo–Saxon.
I should just add, that in Switzerland, on some of the lines, the
railway carriages are constructed somewhat on the American plan, by
which entrance is made from end to end of the carriage, and the guard
can thus pass through from one carriage to another. At Interlachen,
between the two lakes, there is an upper storey to enable people the
better to see the views. Carriages similarly constructed are for the
same reason run upon the little line between Bayonne and Biarritz.
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