



Produced by David Widger from page images generously
provided by the Internet Archive









VACATION RAMBLES

By Thomas Hughes, Q.C.

Author Of ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’

Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator.--Juvenal

London: Macmillan And Co.

1895

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PREFACE

Dear C----- So you want me to hunt up and edit all the “Vacuus Viator”
 letters which my good old friends the editors of _The Spectator_ have
been kind enough to print during their long and beneficent ownership of
that famous journal! But one who has passed the Psalmist’s “Age of Man,”
 and is by no means enamoured of his own early lucubrations (so far as
he recollects them), must have more diligence and assurance than your
father to undertake such a task. But this I can do with pleasure-give
them to you to do whatever you like with them, so far as I have any
property in, or control over them.

How did they come to be written? Well, in those days we were young
married folk with a growing family, and income enough to keep a modest
house and pay our way, but none to spare for _menus plaisirs_, of
which “globe trotting” (as it is now called) in our holidays was our
favourite. So, casting about for the wherewithal to indulge our taste,
the “happy thought” came to send letters by the way to my friends at 1
Wellington Street, if they could see their way to take them at the usual
tariff for articles. They agreed, and so helped us to indulge in our
favourite pastime, and the habit once contracted has lasted all these
years.

How about the name? Well, I took it from the well-known line of Juvenal,
“Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator,” which may be freely rendered,
“The hard-up globe trotter will whistle at the highwayman”; and, I
fancy, selected it to remind ourselves cheerfully upon what slender help
from the Banking world we managed to trot cheerfully all across Europe.

I will add a family story connected with the name which greatly
delighted us at the time. One of the letters reached your grandmother
when a small boy-cousin of yours (since developed into a distinguished
“dark blue” athlete and M.A. Oxon.) was staying with her for his
holidays. He had just begun Latin, and was rather proud of his new lore,
so your grandmother asked him how he should construe “Vacuus Viator.”
 After serious thought for a minute, and not without a modest blush, he
replied, “I think, granny, it means a wandering cow”! You must make
my peace with the “M.A. Oxon.” if he should ever discover that I have
betrayed this early essay of his in classical translation.

Your loving Father,

THOS. HUGHES.

October 1895.




VACATION RAMBLES




EUROPE--1862 to 1866




Foreign parts, 14th August 1862.

Dear Mr. Editor-There are few sweeter moments in the year than those
in which one is engaged in choosing the vacation hat. No other garment
implies so much. A vista of coming idleness floats through the brain as
you stop before the hatter’s at different points in your daily walk, and
consider the last new thing in wideawakes. Then there rises before
the mind’s eye the imminent bliss of emancipation from the regulation
chimney-pot of Cockney England. Two-thirds of all pleasure reside in
anticipation and retrospect; and the anticipation of the yearly exodus
in a soft felt is amongst the least alloyed of all lookings forward to
the jaded man of business. By the way, did it ever occur to you, sir,
that herein lies the true answer to that Sphinx riddle so often asked in
vain, even of _Notes and Queries_: What is the origin of the proverb “As
mad as a hatter”? The inventor of the present hat of civilisation
was the typical hatter. There, I will not charge you anything for the
solution; but we are not to be for ever oppressed by the results of this
great insanity. Better times are in store for us, or I mistake the signs
of the times in the streets and shop windows. Beards and chimney-pots
cannot long co-exist.

I was very nearly beguiled this year by a fancy article which I saw
in several windows. The purchase would have been contrary to all my