We turned to go, and I almost bumped into her. A dark-eyed, tail, slender brunette with a slow smile. She had just come off the train. She was wearing a mink coat. In one hand, she had a mink muff, and in the other, a gold cigarette holder. The man behind her, wiping a perspiring, beefy face, was saying, “Countess, it’s wrong—”
I could not hear the rest, because the chef de train of the Orient Express, striding along beside me, was chattering too shrilly. “Yes, monsieur,” I could hear him saying, “yes, you should have been down here in the good old days, just before the war…,”
WHAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE…
Shortly after the preceding story was published in the July 12, 1947, issue of The Saturday Evening Post, I ran into my friend, Joseph Wechsberg, the well-known author and gourmet. He congratulated me on my story about the Orient Express, and told me that he thought one day he would write about it, too. And one day, not many years later, he did.
Following the publication of Wechsberg’s Orient Express article, we had a reunion at the apartment of a mutual friend in Los Angeles. Our mutual friend and host said:
“I am glad both of you are here, because I am puzzled about something that you can perhaps clear up. You have both written about the very same subject, yet your versions are completely contradictory. Except that you both agree as to statistics and history, you might have written about two entirely different Orient Expresses, although you both insist it is the same one. Irving’s Orient Express, for him, was attractive, exotic, exciting. Joe’s Orient Express was, for him, unattractive, dull, boring. Irving’s Orient Express offered the reader of his article adventure and the promise that the train will live up to its legend. Joe’s Orient Express offered the reader a guarantee of tedium and disappointment. Which of you has the facts right? Which of you is telling the truth?”
There was a lively discussion, and, as best as I can recollect, it was agreed that both Wechsberg and I had the facts right, and each of us had told the truth. The Orient Express that we both had known was one and the same. The difference lay in the psyches and attitudes of its two passengers. I had ridden a romantic Orient Express because I was, to some extent, a sentimentalist and optimist; Wechsberg had ridden a dreary Orient Express because he was, to some extent, a sophisticate and cynic. There was no answer to our host’s question: Which of you is telling the truth? There was none then, and there is none now, for we both told the truth—though perhaps we told more about ourselves than about the famous train. I have since remembered a quotation, source unknown: “Truth has many faces, and any one of them alone is a lie.”
My article, then, is the one face of the Orient Express that I saw.
In the eighteen or nineteen years since I first rode on the Orient Express and wrote its biography, I have traveled on it and enjoyed its wonders more times than I can remember. I have gone from Paris to Milan and Venice on the Orient Express, and from Paris to Berlin, and from Paris to Vienna on its sister trains, and returned on them, and they have never failed me. Perhaps, at times, I chafed at, or even deplored, certain things wanting in the accommodations—the lack of air conditioning and Diesel engines, the lack of private bathrooms, the lack of community lounge cars. But these omissions, I found, were far outbalanced by what was available there, and on no other train—the incredible variety of scenery, the delicious foods and wines, and above all, the people I met on every journey—the beautiful, flirtatious young Austrian dancer returning home from the Orient, the stocky Yugoslav businessman hunting for his son who had disappeared two days before in Italy, the Wagons-Lits conductor who told everyone I was Edgar Wallace, the French inventor who alluded to some mysterious meeting in Zurich, the Russian diplomat who pretended that he did not understand me when I spoke to him, but permitted my young daughter to play with his daughters and then questioned her in excellent English.
Therefore, it was with sadness that I read the news of what was happening to the Orient Express—at least, what was happening to it, according to certain stories in the press. On a May evening in 1961, the Orient Express with ninety passengers aboard supposedly made its last run from the Gare dc l’Est in Paris to Budapest. This final public appearance was widely publicized. Two reasons were given for the train’s retirement. One was that the jet airplane had taken most of its wealthy passengers away. The other was that Communist customs men and frontier guards in their continuing search for fleeing refugees or smuggled goods were partially dismantling the train every time it crossed through the Iron Curtain. This caused delays and discomforts that discouraged passengers, as well as the Wagons-Lits company. Shortly after May, it was announced that the Arlberg-Orient Express, going from Paris to Bucharest, had also been retired from service. And finally, in July of 1962, it was announced that the Simplon-Orient Express, going from Paris to Venice to Zagreb to Sofia to Istanbul, had made its final journey.
Even as I lamented the loss of the world’s most exciting train, I failed to understand its being abandoned. For, despite the competition from airlines and the interference of Communist officials, it seemed to me that the Orient Express still represented one of the few adventurous experiences that could be purchased in Europe today. After checking on events connected with the train since I wrote about it in 1947, it became clear to me that intrigue had continued to travel with it year after year. In 1948, a United States military attache disappeared from the Arlberg-Orient Express. His corpse was found in a tunnel of the Austrian Alps. As recently as 1962, Communist agents found and apprehended several Yugoslavs trying to escape their country by hiding in the metal battery boxes beneath the Wagons-Lits coaches.
Despite such continuing wonders, my friend, Joe Wechsberg, was one of the many to write the train’s obituary: “The fiction of the elegant Orient Express had become a bad joke…The Orient Express had lost much of its initial speed, most of its pretense, and practically all of its onetime elegance. It was just a cheap, slow train.” A news magazine elaborated, in the obituary it published: “Under cold-war conditions, the Orient Express…no longer could maintain its once superb service. The train windows began to rattle; the cars became dirty; train personnel forgot what a really fat tip looked like. In addition, the ubiquitous airplane began carrying anyone—spies and all—faster and more comfortably.”
My old friend, Art Buchwald, the syndicated columnist and satirist, who is a secret romantic like myself, deplored the stories debunking the Orient Express as much as I did When, just before the train’s demise, a traveler (just off the Orient Express) told Buchwald not to take the train because it was no longer glamorous, Buchwald was distressed.
Said Buchwald, “But if these things are true, then the great books we’ve been brought up on, such as, Orient Express, The Lady Vanishes, and Istanbul Train are all lies, and we’ve been deluded.”
Replied his friend, with great sagacity, “Not necessarily, Virginia. No matter what they say, there is a little of the Orient Express in all of us. We must believe in the Orient Express. As long as there is one mystery book to be written, one movie to be made, one television program to be shown, the Orient Express will continue to capture our imaginations. Not believe in the Orient Express? You might as well not believe in Santa Claus. The Orient Express lives and will live forever. A thousand years from now, nay ten thousand years from now, it will continue to roll along the tracks of Europe.”
Truer words were never spoken in a jest. And yet, one last mystery: Is the Orient Express really dead? It is not, despite its obituaries. It lives on not only in the hearts of romantics—but in timetables and Eurail passes. From my journal entry under Venice, dated August 24, 1964, I find the following: “Took a motor launch from the Hotel Danieli to the Venice depot. The Orient Express, in from Athens, was waiting. We had two compartments. Orient Express left Venice at 12:10 p.m. and headed for Milan, Lausanne, Paris…Orient Express brought us into Gare de Lyon, Paris, at 6:20 morning.”
Recently, to straighten out the confusion caused by the announcements of the train’
s death, and its obvious resurrection, I consulted Olivier Chermiset, an executive of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits in Paris. According to M. Chermiset, the obituaries published in 1961 and 1962 were misleading. What had come to an end was not the life of a train, but rather the train’s old route. The main Orient Express no longer goes from Paris to Vienna to Budapest to Istanbul. It simply goes to Vienna, and no farther. The Arlberg-Orient Express, which used to travel to Bucharest and Athens, now winds up its run at Vienna, too. And the Simplon-Orient Express, instead of passing out of existence in 1962, suffered only a name change. It is now called the Direct Orient Express, and for $136—the price of transportation and a first-class compartment—the adventuresome traveler may board it in Paris, ride it through Lausanne, Milan, Venice, Trieste, Belgrade, Sofia, and still alight at Istanbul. Only when M. Chermiset began to speak of plans to make the Orient Express more democratic and modern—slower-priced compartments with berths for three, snack bars and cafeterias instead of diners—only then did I flee. For I had heard all I wanted to know: that there would be, as there had been in 1964, an Orient Express waiting for me again another summer in Venice.
Yes, Virginia, there is an Orient Express. You can ignore the obituaries and pallbearers. They are the lie. And one more thing, Virginia. Ignore the debunkers. Listen to me. I was up at three that last morning, in the aisle of the Orient Express as it sped through Switzerland and France—and you know what? There was a lady in distress. True, she was only on her way to the bathroom. But she was swathed in a long mink coat, a mink coat and nothing else, nothing else, Virginia. When that happens on an airplane, I’ll turn in my Wagons-Lits ticket and fly. But not before. No, never.
10
The Agony Column
Until that day in 1933, when he picked up his copy of The Times of London and as usual began to read the classified advertisements in the Personal column, Mr. Peter Fleming, a slender, dreamy young Englishman, had lived a relatively dull and sedentary existence.
Fleming’s background consisted of Oxford, a stint with BBC, and a brief job in Wall Street in New York. Now, as literary editor of the London Spectator, he was immune from all dangers but that of writer’s cramp. He sometimes played squash, but his favorite indoor sport consisted of musing over the Personal column of The Times. Here, in the small type of the world’s first and most famous Personal column, which for a century and a half had been nicknamed the “agony column,” Peter Fleming found his escape.
“What strange kind of a creature can it be whose wolfhound—now lost in Battersea Park—answers to the name of Effie?” he would reflect, as he read. “Why is Bingo heartbroken? And what possible use can Box A have for a horned toad?”
On that particular day in 1933, when Fleming, as was his habit, read through the mysterious and romantic classified advertisements, he stumbled suddenly upon one that made him sit up. It announced:
Exploring and sporting expedition, under experienced guidance, leaving England June, to explore rivers Central Brazil, if possible ascertain fate Colonel Fawcett; abundance game, big and small; exceptional fishing; ROOM TWO MORE GUNS; highest references expected and given. Write Box X, The Times, E.C.4.
For the first time, Fleming did not idly speculate or let his fancy play over an advertisement. Instead, he answered it. As a result, within a few months, he was transported into the middle of the primitive Matto Grosso jungles of Central Brazil. There, led by an American whom Fleming chose to call Major Pingle, he found himself wading through piranhas, brushing off stinging insects, dodging wild animals, hiding from hostile natives, and constantly searching for traces of the renowned Colonel Fawcett, who had disappeared in 1925 while in quest of the fabulous City of Gold.
After completing this excursion, Peter Fleming wrote a humorous best seller called Brazilian Adventure. Besides the fame and wealth that he soon acquired, he also became an explorer in Tartary and a traveler in Russia, China, Japan. He even married Celia Johnson, who would later attain cinema stardom in the film Brief Encounter.
Anonymity, daydreaming, the dull sedentary life were far behind—all because of a brief ad in the agony column of the London Times.
Of course, this unusual case history is not meant to suggest that the agony column, in steady doses, is a sure cure-all for monotony. But certainly, on the basis of past performances, the agony column of The Times, like all Personal columns modeled after it, remains one of the last modem outposts of hidden romance and adventure in a weary realistic existence made unhappy with the atom bomb, inflation, and Communism.
Few readers of the agony column ever actually succumb to its classified invitations. Peter Fleming was one of these few, the rare exception. Most readers prefer to enjoy their adventures vicariously, in the armchair, on the bus, and their number is legion. It is a known fact that William Hazlitt, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, and Cardinal Newman were Constant Readers. So was Disraeli, and so was Queen Victoria.
Today, the Queen of England, studying her special royal edition of The Times printed on rag paper, is an agony column fan. Among world leaders, the late Benito Mussolini once admitted that he followed the column. Winston Churchill, as well as dozens of others in politics, has found relaxation in perusing the agony ads.
Perhaps the most celebrated reader of all was Sherlock Holmes—for whom mail, addressed to No. 221B Baker Street, is still received daily by the London post office. In “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb,” the faithful Dr. Watson reports that “Sherlock Holmes was, as I expected, lounging about his sitting-room in his dressing gown, reading the agony column of The Times.” Again, flinging his newspaper aside, Sherlock Holmes confesses, “I read nothing except the criminal news and the agony column. The latter is always instructive.”
For detectives and criminals alike, the agony column has, indeed, always been instructive. In 1916, Anna Maria Lesser, the beautiful Fräulein Doktor of the German Secret Service, invaded England during World War I posing as an Irishwoman, brogue and all. Following up a rumor that the English had invented an Ironclad machine to break the trench deadlock on the Western Front, Fräulein Doktor moved into a little village near Hatfield Park. Here she got rid of the local scoutmaster, volunteered to take his place, and used her innocent boy scouts to spy on secret experiments being held before King George V and Lord Kitchener. One of her scouts watched an entire experiment from a tree, and described in detail the first invented tank to Fräulein Doktor, who, in turn, transmitted the intelligence to Germany. When things got hot, the Fräulein used the agony column at least twice to communicate her findings to other spies bound for the Continent. It is a known fact that several German graduates of Elzbeth Schragmuller’s infamous Antwerp spy school kept in constant touch with one another and with their leaders through the agony column, where strange ads, no matter how cryptic or curious, excited no suspicion.
In World War II, Nazi agents in England tried to repeat the successful use of the agony column by their World War I predecessors. British Intelligence admits such attempts were made, and quickly adds that every means was employed to block such use of the agony column by enemy spies. Odd or suspicious advertisements, as recently as two years ago, were submitted by the London Times to the official government censor. Cryptic messages, from persons who had not advertised in the agony column before, were often rejected. In many cases, either The Times or British Intelligence quietly investigated the background of advertisers.
Today, Scotland Yard uses the column as an unconventional arm of the law when hunting for murderers, thieves, blackmailers, and adventurers. While The Times does not permit a Personal advertisement to appear in a foreign language, curiously it allows ads to appear in code or cipher. Several times, Scotland Yard has secretly solved code messages in the ads and thus learned what criminals were communicating with one another. In one case, Scotland Yard detectives, after breaking a blackmailer’s code, composed a dummy ad in the same code and planted it in the agony column. The trick worked. The blackmailer was
trapped, and arrested.
Scotland Yard, however, is not the only code breaker. Often ordinary readers, who regard the column as a diversion superior to crossword puzzles, will try to find the key to a cipher. This game proves as stimulating as opening someone else’s mail. Occasionally, a prankster among these will write and insert a false ad in the same cipher, and shatter a budding romance. One such case occurred as far back as ninety-four years ago, and with sad consequences.
Two lovers were holding fervent clandestine meetings in the agony column. Their notes to one another were in cipher. On February 11, 1853, one contacted the other in the agony column as follows:
CENERENTOLA. Jsyng rd mifwy nx Xnhp mfaj ywnji yt kwfrj fs jcugfitynts Kwt dtz gzy hfssty Xngjshj nx xfsjxy nk ymf ywzj hfzxj nx sty zxzujhyji; nk ny nx tgg xytwnjx bngg gj xnkyji yt ymj gtyytr. It dtz wjrjrgiw tzw htzn’x knwxy uwtutznynts: ymnsp tk ny.
The villain in the piece, apparently the girl’s father, noticed the ad, suspected his daughter and her lover, and decided to teach them a lesson. He set to work studying ciphers, and found that this one was quite elementary. It was based on a primitive code used by Julius Caesar. With solution in hand, the girl’s father, determined to show the errant pair that he knew what was up, translated the ciphered ad and openly published it in the agony column. It read:
CENERENTOLA. Until my heart is sick have I tried to frame an explanation for you, but cannot. Silence is safest if the true cause is not suspected. If it is, all stories will be sifted to the bottom. Do you remember our cousin’s first proposition? Think of it. N pstb Dtz.
Except for correcting some atrocious typographical errors, the father made only one addition. He added the three last words, written in the very code he had broken—“N pstb Dtz”—meaning “I know you.”
The Sunday Gentleman Page 30