Vacation Rambles (ePub)

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.