Diary of a Pilgrimage, by Jerome K. Jerome

Transcribed from the 1919 J. W. Arrowsmith Ltd. edition by David Price, email [email protected].  Proofed by Andrew Wallace, email [email protected].

DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE

by
JEROME K. JEROME

author of
“the idle thoughts of an idle fellow,” “stageland”
“three men in a boat,” etc.

Illustrations by g. g. fraser

BRISTOL
J. W. Arrowsmith Ltd., Quay Street
LONDON
Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. Limited

First Edition, April, 1891.
Reprinted, June, 1891.
Reprinted, December, 1891.
Reprinted, February, 1892.
Reprinted, February, 1895.
Reprinted, September, 1896.
Reprinted, December, 1897.
Reprinted, January, 1899.
Reprinted, September, 1900.
Reprinted, October, 1902.
Reprinted, October, 1903.
Reprinted, January, 1904.
Reprinted, October, 1905.
Reprinted, March, 1907.
Reprinted, February, 1909.
Reprinted, February, 1910.
Reprinted, November, 1911.
Reprinted, February, 1914.
Reprinted, December, 1916.
Second Edition, December, 1919.

PREFACE

Said a friend of mine to me some months ago: “Well now, why don’t you write a sensible book?  I should like to see you make people think.”

“Do you believe it can be done, then?” I asked.

“Well, try,” he replied.

Accordingly, I have tried.  This is a sensible book.  I want you to understand that.  This is a book to improve your mind.  In this book I tell you all about Germany—at all events, all I know about Germany—and the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play.  I also tell you about other things.  I do not tell you all I know about all these other things, because I do not want to swamp you with knowledge.  I wish to lead you gradually.  When you have learnt this book, you can come again, and I will tell you some more.  I should only be defeating my own object did I, by making you think too much at first, give you a perhaps, lasting dislike to the exercise.  I have purposely put the matter in a light and attractive form, so that I may secure the attention of the young and the frivolous.  I do not want them to notice, as they go on, that they are being instructed; and I have, therefore, endeavoured to disguise from them, so far as is practicable, that this is either an exceptionally clever or an exceptionally useful work.  I want to do them good without their knowing it.  I want to do you all good—to improve your minds and to make you think, if I can.

What you will think after you have read the book, I do not want to know; indeed, I would rather not know.  It will be sufficient reward for me to feel that I have done my duty, and to receive a percentage on the gross sales.

London, March, 1891.

MONDAY, 19TH

My Friend B.—Invitation to the Theatre.—A Most Unpleasant Regulation.—Yearnings of the Embryo Traveller.—How to Make the Most of One’s Own Country.—Friday, a Lucky Day.—The Pilgrimage Decided On.

My friend B. called on me this morning and asked me if I would go to a theatre with him on Monday next.

“Oh, yes! certainly, old man,” I replied.  “Have you got an order, then?”

He said:

“No; they don’t give orders.  We shall have to pay.”

“Pay!  Pay to go into a theatre!” I answered, in astonishment.  “Oh, nonsense!  You are joking.”

“My dear fellow,” he rejoined, “do you think I should suggest paying if it were possible to get in by any other means?  But the people who run this theatre would not even understand what was meant by a ‘free list,’ the uncivilised barbarians!  It is of no use pretending to them that you are on the Press, because they don’t want the Press; they don’t think anything of the Press.  It is no good writing to the acting manager, because there is no acting manager.  It would be a waste of time offering to exhibit bills, because they don’t have any bills—not of that sort.  If you want to go in to see the show, you’ve got to pay.  If you don’t pay, you stop outside; that’s their brutal rule.”

“Dear me,” I said, “what a very unpleasant arrangement!  And whereabouts is this extraordinary theatre?  I don’t think I can ever have been inside it.”

“I don’t think you have,” he replied; “it is at Ober-Ammergau—first turning on the left after you leave Ober railway-station, fifty miles from Munich.”

“Um! rather out of the way for a theatre,” I said.  “I should not have thought an outlying house like that could have afforded to give itself airs.”

“The house holds seven thousand people,” answered my friend B., “and money is turned away at each performance.  The first production is on Monday next.  Will you come?”

I pondered for a moment, looked at my diary, and saw that Aunt Emma was coming to spend Saturday to Wednesday next with us, calculated that if I went I should miss her, and might not see her again for years, and decided that I would go.

To tell the truth, it was the journey more than the play that tempted me.  To be a great traveller has always been one of my cherished ambitions.  I yearn to be able to write in this sort of strain:—

“I have smoked my fragrant Havana in the sunny streets of old Madrid, and I have puffed the rude and not sweet-smelling calumet of peace in the draughty wigwam of the Wild West; I have sipped my evening coffee in the silent tent, while the tethered camel browsed without upon the desert grass, and I have quaffed the fiery brandy of the North while the reindeer munched his fodder beside me in the hut, and the pale light of the midnight sun threw the shadows of the pines across the snow; I have felt the stab of lustrous eyes that, ghostlike, looked at me from out veil-covered faces in Byzantium’s narrow ways, and I have laughed back (though it was wrong of me to do so) at the saucy, wanton glances of the black-eyed girls of Jedo; I have wandered where ‘good’—but not too good—Haroun Alraschid crept disguised at nightfall, with his faithful Mesrour by his side; I have stood upon the bridge where Dante watched the sainted Beatrice pass by; I have floated on the waters that once bore the barge of Cleopatra; I have stood where Cæsar fell; I have heard the soft rustle of rich, rare robes in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair, and I have heard the teeth-necklaces rattle around the ebony throats of the belles of Tongataboo; I have panted beneath the sun’s fierce rays in India, and frozen under the icy blasts of Greenland; I have mingled with the teeming hordes of old Cathay, and, deep in the great pine forests of the Western World, I have lain, wrapped in my blanket, a thousand miles beyond the shores of human life.”

B., to whom I explained my leaning towards this style of diction, said that exactly the same effect could be produced by writing about places quite handy.  He said:—

“I could go on like that without having been