Heinlein’s own observation of the vast array of countries he and Virginia visited is exquisite. This is travel writing at its best, and was years ahead of its time in judgment and outlook. As with many things Heinlein, this is one that has come back around into fashion and seems utterly contemporary. Furthermore, Heinlein’s advice on travel etiquette is timeless and useful and, at times, highly amusing.
Finally, Grumbles from the Grave is a kind of writer’s autobiography in letters. Collected and edited by Virginia Heinlein after Heinlein’s death, these are largely Heinlein’s letters first to John W. Campbell and then to his agent and long-time friend, Lurton Blassingame. If you were ever searching for the lost book Heinlein ought to have produced on the art of writing, you’ll find it here. Wonderful discussions of methods, overcoming blocks, writing on spec and to order can be found throughout, as well as expert (and still pertinent) commentary on the business of writing.
The letters also make for a most excellent “director’s commentary” while reading the stories and novels, and will provide insights and provoke second and third readings to find the good stuff that you may have missed the first go round.
So what follows in this collection is a passage through the Golden Age of science fiction that is, not coincidentally, the First Golden Age of Robert A. Heinlein. If it wasn’t for the juveniles and adult novels where Heinlein first laid down the themes and methods that defined a Heinlein tale, the mighty philosophical fiction triumvirate of Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress might well have become lost in the ether. Furthermore, an American literary masterwork, Have Space Suit−Will Travel, would never have existed at all.
Preface
Tramp Royale has spent almost forty years in the obscurity of the files.
It was written immediately after our return from a trip around the world in 1953 and '54, and sent on the rounds of publishing companies. But, at that time, there was a slump in the publishing business, and no one could see any possibility of publishing it. It was then put in the files and sent to the library at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and forgotten.
In 1989, an editor asked me whether Robert had any unpublished books. I recalled this one. So the library made a copy of the manuscript, and I sent it to that editor.
Now here it is.
It might strike you as odd that an out-of-date travel book should be resurrected and published. But there must be something interesting in it, aside from the dated prices and old hotels which might now be torn down to make room for more modern ones.
Homesickness is ever-present when one travels away from home. It might well have flavored some of this book. I hope that our friends from some of the places mentioned in this book will not take offense at what has been said. Robert wrote his observations of their hotels and cultures without pulling his punches. We both know from later observation that Australian hotels have changed for the better.
On looking back, I find the prices of those days laughable. Where could one get a suite for $22 U.S. these days? I'm sure that Singapore prices are far higher now. And $35 for an alligator bag! If you could find one now, I'm sure it would cost ten times that much.
The title of this book comes from a Kipling poem-"Sestina of the Tramp-Royal"-which you will find at the end of this book. The Britannica says of the sestina form: "A most elaborate form of verse . . . The scheme was the invention of the troubadour, Arnault Daniel, who wrote many sestinas . . . The sestina, in its pure medieval form, consists of six stanzas of six lines each of blank verse; hence the name. The final words of the first stanza appear in varied order in all the others, the order laid down by the Provencals being: abcdef, faebdc, cfdabe, ecbfad, deacfb, bdfeca. On these stanzas a tornada, or envoi, of three lines, in which all the key words were repeated in the following order:-b-e, d-c, f-a."
Such rigidity in form is probably not suited to beautiful poetry, and the Kipling verses are not his best, but the poem might have been influential in the writing of this book.
Enjoy this book as a period piece. It does not represent today's world at all. We enjoyed even the horrid parts of the trip in retrospect, but especially the homecoming. Being away from home for an extended period makes one appreciate one's home country.
Virginia Heinlein
Atlantic Beach, Florida
I
Ten Suitcases
My wife Ticky is an anarchist-individualist. I sometimes suspect that all females are anarchists in their hearts, with no innate respect for law and order . . . but on her it shows more. She is the sort of person who looks the wrong way at tennis matches. When she was in the Navy during the early 'forties she showed up one morning in proper uniform but with her red hair held down by a simple navy-blue band-a hair ribbon. It was neat (Ticky is always neat) and it suited the rest of her outfit esthetically, but it was undeniably a hair ribbon and her division officer had fits.
"If you can show me," Ticky answered with simple dignity, "where it says one word in the Navy Uniform Regulations on the subject of hair ribbons, I'll take it off. Otherwise not."
See what I mean? She doesn't have the right attitude.
I should have known better than to propose a trip around the world to her. Little-did-I-dream that I would spend the next forty thousand miles shaking in my boots for fear that she would wind up in some foreign calaboose while I tried to find the American consul.
The junket came about because we found ourselves last year with a drawerful of old, dirty money and no special use for it. I do not like to keep money around too long; the stuff shrinks like Colorado snow in a chinook-inflation, or they pass a new tax, or an operation, or something. Or someone comes along who can sweet-talk me out of it. It never lasts long.
We had been talking more or less about building another house with it, renting it, and becoming fat and nasty as landlords. But building involves time as well as money; it becomes a demanding vice. The fascinating details of septic tanks and clerestories and insulation move in like Bermuda grass and take over the mind and imagination. For a fiction-writer such as myself this is a road to bankruptcy.
But it was necessary to do something before a distinguished stranger came along and persuaded me to invest in a Wyoming oil lease.
Ticky was out weeding on the terrace when I found the solution. I hurried out to tell her, approaching the matter with the finesse of a sailor on a four-hour pass. "Look," I said, "we're going to make a trip around the world."
I had placed myself to catch her if she fainted, or to join in the dance if her ecstatic response required exercise to work it off. She was able to control her enthusiasm. For about thirty unusually long seconds she continued to fiddle with a johnny-jump-up, then she said bleakly, "Why?"
"Huh? Don't you want to go around the world?"
"I like it here."
"Well, so do I. But we can't spend our whole lives in one spot. We grow roots. We vegetate. People will start searching us for sun scorch and scale bugs. Travel is-"
"Speaking of roots, I'm worried about those lilacs. I think I'll have to-"
I approached her gently and took a trowel out of her hand. "Ticky," I said gently, "listen to me. Forget gardening for a moment. We're going around the world. I mean it."
She sighed and let me keep the trowel. "Why? What has Timbuctu got that we haven't got more of right here? Except fleas, maybe?"
"That's not the point. I grant you that Colorado Springs is almost certainly a nicer spot than Timbuctu, but-"
"Then why go there?"
"Why? Because I like to travel. I thought you did, too."
"I do. We went to Sun Valley less than a year ago. It was fun." She thought about it. "If you want to go abroad, let's go to Lake Louise. I've always wanted to go there."
"Huh? Canada is not 'abroad'-it's not a foreign country."
"Ask a Canadian."
"Sure, sure. But it's really just a part of home that happens not to pay taxes to Washington. Pretty clever of
them, too, come to think about it. But take Timbuctu, since you mentioned it."
"You take it. Let's go to Lake Louise and watch the glaciers glashe."
"All right, all right! We'll go to Lake Louise. We'll have dinner there tonight. It'll only take about three hours, not counting the hour to drive to the airport. We can discuss the trip around the world and make plans and tomorrow morning we'll come back and start arrangements."
"Mmm . . . no. Your tux is at the cleaner's and I haven't a dinner dress that is fit to wear." She took the trowel back from my limp fingers. "About next Wednesday, maybe. I'll have to buy some clothes and Sweet Chariot ought to be put in the shop for a day, just to be safe."
"What do you want to put the car in the shop for? It runs; if it will get us from here to the airport that's all I ask of it."
"Because we are going to drive to Lake Louise. No airplanes for me."
"What? Now wait a minute, slow up. We are not going to drive to Lake Louise. Since when this silly aversion to airplanes?"
"Since all these crashes in the papers. Airplanes are dangerous."
"Look who's talking! Leadfoot Lulu, the gal who thinks she is parked if she's doing less than ninety."
"I have excellent reflexes," Ticky answered with dignity, "but my reflexes are useless if a plane I'm a passenger in runs into a mountain. Which they've been doing."
"Which they do darned seldom. It's-"
"Once is enough. Once is too many."
"It's well known that modern airlines are the safest form of travel. Insurance companies no longer make any distinction between air travel and any other normal hazard. If there is anything as certain as death itself it is that insurance companies don't take risks; they operate on the same simple, straightforward statistical principles as the gambling houses in Las Vegas-the odds are picked so that the house always wins. It's the same with air travel; if these spectacular crashes were frequent enough to shift the odds, the insurance companies would change the rules in a hurry."
"Hmmph!" said Ticky.
"Hmmph yourself. Air crashes rate headlines simply because they are unusual. Take the Quintuplets-they got a lot of newspaper publicity, too. But what do you think your chances are of having quintuplets?"
"You aren't Mr. Dionne," Ticky answered darkly.
"That's beside the point. Don't you believe in statistics?"
Ticky pondered it. "Sure, I believe in statistics. But I've noticed that whenever I personally am a statistic I'm always way out at the end of the curve, instead of being comfortably toward the middle. They've got a plane crash all shined up, waiting for me to come along."
"Sheer solipsism. Paranoia. The Ticky-centric Universe."
"How else?" she answered contentedly and went on with her weeding.
I took a deep breath. "Ticky," I said, "listen to me. Put down that trowel and look at me. I'm going to put it in simple, Ticky-sized words and I want baby to try to understand it. I am going around the world. You are going with me because I need to keep you in sight where I can watch you and keep you out of trouble. We are going to fly."
"No."
"Yes. It's either planes or ships, and ships are a stupid waste of time. When you go by plane, you spend your time being there instead of killing days and weeks getting there."
"No."
"Yes. I'll bet your grandmother refused to set foot in one of those horseless carriages. But right now we fly, all the way around the world."
"No."
"Yes, we do. And when the time comes we'll take a rocketship tour to the moon, too."
So I firmly gave in. We ordered tickets for a round-the-world tour on one of the President Line steamships. It was a lovely ship, as the four-color folders showed-swimming pool, ballroom, private baths, movies, deck sports, beef tea in your deck chair in mid morning. By the time I got through studying the deck plans and the itinerary I no longer regretted not going by air. We applied for our passports and Ticky started making out lists.
That is, we applied for our passports after we sent in for certified copies of our birth certificates. Do you happen to know where your birth certificate is right at the moment? Or did the personnel office ever give it back to you after you applied for that job with Douglas back in 1942? You think it's with the insurance policies? I'll give you even money that the document you have in mind will turn out to be a New Jersey driver's license, expired. Americans, lucky people, even today need birth certificates only on very rare occasions. Hardly a half century ago they needed them not at all and very few had them. If an American wished to travel abroad, he did not need a birth certificate because he did not require a passport. All that he required was a letter of credit from his bank and leisure. It was literally possible for an American to wake up on Monday morning, decide to go to Europe, and be sailing, sailing over the bounding main on Wednesday.
Nowadays he had better allow three months as a minimum for the red tape. Six months is much easier on the nerves.
First the birth certificate: this takes about two weeks provided everything is clear sailing, that is to say that you know exactly what official to write to, his address and the amount of the fee that you must send. If you do not know, then you may be able to save two or three useless exchanges of letters by sending a money order for five dollars to the clerk of the county you believe you were born in. He will either do it himself and send you your change, or will pass it on to the proper official (in populous counties, such as those of New York City) who will most likely take care of it the following Tuesday if the photostat clerk or the vital statistics clerk is not on vacation.
Or he may send back the entire five dollars with a polite note informing you that "the records in question were destroyed by fire when the courthouse burned down in 1919." This is a penalty move and requires you to go back six squares and start again.
In my case the penalty move came in the form of a letter stating that "vital statistics were not kept in this county in the year named." This produced a scramble to achieve what is called a delayed registry of birth. Luckily I come from a family of pack rats; we were able to dig up a family bible entry, my first grade report card (good marks in arithmetic, poor in music, fair in deportment-none of this modern evading the issue), my cradle roll certificate, and a letter addressed to me by name on the occasion of my third birthday. There was also a lock of hair.
The cradle roll certificate had the wrong year on it, so we threw that out, but the other exhibits, in due and leisurely time, produced from the State of Missouri a document which said that my birth had at last been duly registered at the state capital. I breathed relief; at last I was me. I had attended school, been commissioned in the armed services, held two civil service jobs, married, voted, run for office, drawn a pension, and done all manner of things as a citizen and a flesh-and-blood being through more than four decades, all without having had any legal existence whatsoever. Now at last this little 4x6 slip of paper, issued by a clerk who had never seen me, assured me that I was real and therefore could apply for a passport.
I am not opposed to birth certificates. They are a nuisance only if you do not have one. But I am not impressed by them. There must be thousands (more likely, millions) of persons like myself in this country who managed to get born without benefit of statistics, nor do I find it reasonable to penalize a new-born infant for an omission on the part of government. Contrariwise, a birth certificate as a proof of identity-its only conceivable function-leaves much to be desired, as they are easily obtained illegally. If I were in the spy business and needed a U.S. birth certificate, I would-but why should I make it easy for spies? Especially when they know more about it than I do? I am sure that no Russian spy in this country ever lacked for an American birth certificate if he needed one for his unlawful occasions.
But an honest citizen can be very handicapped by the lack of one at times. If your birth was never registered, better take steps, as I did. If it was and you are serenely aware that you can always send for a copy if you need one,
better send for one now; the courthouse might burn down again. Seven to two you won't! You will wait until it is indispensable, as I did.
Eventually we got our birth certificates and applied for our passports, with another short delay for passport photos. Those passport photos, the sort suitable to hang in a post office under a "WANTED FOR FRAUD" notice, are not accidental. The State Department prescribes the lighting and the pose; the public-enemy result is automatic. I cheated a little by smiling when I saw it was about to be taken.
Be sure to get at least a dozen and a half copies; foreign officials have a way of asking for two or more copies unexpectedly. I have no idea what they need them for or what they do with them. Scrapbooks? But failure to produce on demand can be as troublesome as losing your traveler's cheques. Have them. Carry them on your person when crossing international boundaries-a traveler fully fitted out these days to cross such an imaginary line has bulges all over his person like Tweedledee and Tweedledum outfitted for battle, and he looks and feels just as foolish.
In addition to a myriad pieces of stamped paper adding up to several pounds, he will, if he is wise, have at least two cartons of American cigarettes within easy reach and which he is prepared to give away at the drop of a hint. Bribery? No, "Squeeze"-a bribe is paid to get a man to do something he should not do; "squeeze" is something he demands of you for doing something you are legally entitled to have done anyhow, such as stamping your passport or passing your personal luggage. Most officials do not expect squeeze; those who do can make you miss trains, or worse.
While I am in a mood of reminiscent irritation let me state flatly that there is no limit to the variety of bureaucratic buffoonery placed in the way of legitimate travelers today and that it is my solemn opinion that none of it is of any use whatever. None of it is efficient enough to stop spies, smuggling, or illegal immigration. But the proof of the uselessness of any particular item of red tape lies in the fact that each procedure required by the laws of Ruritania will be found to be missing from the red tape of Lower Slobbovia, with no equivalent procedure to replace it. Instead, Lower Slobbovia will have a different silly mess of its own. This one impounds your passport, that one requires you to report to the police, this one so help me wants you to file an income tax return for a stay of four days, that one requires that you register your Kodak (but lets you take any pictures at all!), this one wants to know where your grandparents were born before it will let you simply change planes inside their sacred precincts. That one requires a cash deposit to guarantee that you will leave, then requires you to submit a freshman term paper to get it back when you do leave. This one-
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