the effectual abolition of a labouring and servile class will make itself felt in every detail of the inn that will shelter us, of the bedrooms we shall occupy. you conceive my awakening to all these things on the morning after our arrival. i shall lie for a minute or so with my nose peeping over the coverlet, agreeably and gently coming awake, and with some vague nightmare of sitting at a common table with an unavoidable dustman in green and gold called boffin, [footnote: vide william morris’s news from nowhere.] fading out of my mind. then i should start up. you figure my apprehensive, startled inspection of my chamber. “where am i?” that classic phrase, recurs. then i perceive quite clearly that i am in bed in utopia.
utopia! the word is enough to bring anyone out of bed, to the nearest window, but thence i see no more than the great mountain mass behind the inn, a very terrestrial looking mountain mass. i return to the contrivances about me, and make my examination as i dress, pausing garment in hand to hover over first this thing of interest and then that.
the room is, of course, very clear and clean and simple; not by any means cheaply equipped, but designed to economise the labour of redding and repair just as much as is possible. it is beautifully proportioned, and rather lower than most rooms i know on earth. there is no fireplace, and i am perplexed by that until i find a thermometer beside six switches on the wall. above this switch-board is a brief instruction: one switch warms the floor, which is not carpeted, but covered by a substance like soft oilcloth; one warms the mattress (which is of metal with resistance coils threaded to and fro in it); and the others warm the wall in various degrees, each directing current through a separate system of resistances. the casement does not open, but above, flush with the ceiling, a noiseless rapid fan pumps air out of the room. the air enters by a tobin shaft. there is a recess dressing-room, equipped with a bath and all that is necessary to one’s toilette, and the water, one remarks, is warmed, if one desires it warm, by passing it through an electrically heated spiral of tubing. a cake of soap drops out of a store machine on the turn of a handle, and when you have done with it, you drop that and your soiled towels and so forth, which also are given you by machines, into a little box, through the bottom of which they drop at once, and sail down a smooth shaft. a little notice tells you the price of your room, and you gather the price is doubled if you do not leave the toilette as you found it. beside the bed, and to be lit at night by a handy switch over the pillow, is a little clock, its face flush with the wall. the room has no corners to gather dirt, wall meets floor with a gentle curve, and the apartment could be swept out effectually by a few strokes of a mechanical sweeper. the door frames and window frames are of metal, rounded and impervious to draught. you are politely requested to turn a handle at the foot of your bed before leaving the room, and forthwith the frame turns up into a vertical position, and the bedclothes hang airing. you stand at the doorway and realise that there remains not a minute’s work for anyone to do. memories of the foetid disorder of many an earthly bedroom after a night’s use float across your mind.
and you must not imagine this dustless, spotless, sweet apartment as anything but beautiful. its appearance is a little unfamiliar of course, but all the muddle of dust-collecting hangings and witless ornament that cover the earthly bedroom, the valances, the curtains to check the draught from the ill-fitting wood windows, the worthless irrelevant pictures, usually a little askew, the dusty carpets, and all the paraphernalia about the dirty, black-leaded fireplace are gone. but the faintly tinted walls are framed with just one clear coloured line, as finely placed as the member of a greek capital; the door handles and the lines of the panels of the door, the two chairs, the framework of the bed, the writing table, have all that final simplicity, that exquisite finish of contour that is begotten of sustained artistic effort. the graciously shaped windows each frame a picture — since they are draughtless the window seats are no mere mockeries as are the window seats of earth — and on the sill, the sole thing to need attention in the room, is one little bowl of blue alpine flowers.
the same exquisite simplicity meets one downstairs.
our landlord sits down at table with us for a moment, and seeing we do not understand the electrically heated coffee-pot before us, shows us what to do. coffee and milk we have, in the continental fashion, and some excellent rolls and butter.
he is a swarthy little man, our landlord, and overnight we saw him preoccupied with other guests. but we have risen either late or early by utopian standards, we know not which, and this morning he has us to himself. his bearing is kindly and inoffensive, but he cannot conceal the curiosity that possesses him. his eye meets ours with a mute inquiry, and then as we fall to, we catch him scrutinising our cuffs, our garments, our boots, our faces, our table manners. he asks nothing at first, but says a word or so about our night’s comfort and the day’s weather, phrases that have an air of being customary. then comes a silence that is interrogative.
“excellent coffee,” i say to fill the gap.
“and excellent rolls,” says my botanist.
our landlord indicates his sense of our approval.
a momentary diversion is caused by the entry of an elfin-tressed little girl, who stares at us half impudently, half shyly, with bright black eyes, hesitates at the botanist’s clumsy smile and nod, and then goes and stands by her father and surveys us steadfastly.
“you have come far?” ventures our landlord, patting his daughter’s shoulder.
i glance at the botanist. “yes,” i say, “we have.”
i expand. “we have come so far that this country of yours seems very strange indeed to us.”
“the mountains?”
“not only the mountains.”
“you came up out of the ticino valley?”
“no — not that way.”
“by the oberalp?”
“no.”
“the furka?”
“no.”
“not up from the lake?”
“no.”
he looks puzzled.
“we came,” i say, “from another world.”
he seems trying to understand. then a thought strikes him, and he sends away his little girl with a needless message to her mother.
“ah!” he says. “another world — eh? meaning ——?”
“another world — far in the deeps of space.”
then at the expression of his face one realises that a modern utopia will probably keep its more intelligent citizens for better work than inn-tending. he is evidently inaccessible to the idea we think of putting before him. he stares at us a moment, and then remarks, “there’s the book to sign.”
we find ourselves confronted with a book, a little after the fashion of the familiar hotel visitors’ book of earth. he places this before us, and beside it puts pen and ink and a slab, upon which ink has been freshly smeared.
“thumbmarks,” says my scientific friend hastily in english.
“you show me how to do it,” i say as quickly.
he signs first, and i look over his shoulder.
he is displaying more readiness than i should have expected. the book is ruled in broad transverse lines, and has a space for a name, for a number, and a thumbmark. he puts his thumb upon the slab and makes the thumbmark first with the utmost deliberation. meanwhile he studies the other two entries. the “numbers” of the previous guests above are complex muddles of letters and figures. he writes his name, then with a calm assurance writes down his number, a.m.a.1607.2.ab+. i am wrung with momentary admiration. i follow his example, and fabricate an equally imposing signature. we think ourselves very clever. the landlord proffers finger bowls for our thumbs, and his eye goes, just a little curiously, to our entries.
i decide it is advisable to pay and go before any conversation about our formulae arises.
as we emerge into the corridor, and the morning sunlight of the utopian world, i see the landlord bending over the book.
“come on,” i say. “the most tiresome thing in the world is explanations, and i perceive that if we do not get along, they will fall upon us now.”
i glance back to discover the landlord and a gracefully robed woman standing outside the pretty simplicity of the utopian inn, watching us doubtfully as we recede.
“come on,” i insist.