In 1852, two years after condemning all of Europe, cranky Victorian travel writer Favell Lee Mortimer turned to the east for Far Off: Asia and Australia Described. What did she learn of the colorful people, rich history, and sophisticated cultures of these exotic lands?

• “The reason why the Armenians live in holes in the ground is because they hope the Kurds may not find out where they are.”
• “It is impossible to trust a Persian.”
• “The Buddhists are full of tricks by which to get presents out of people.”
• “The Chinese are very selfish and unfeeling.”
• “The Arabs are so unforgiving and revengeful that they will seek to kill a man year after year.”
• “In disposition the Siamese are deceitful and cowardly.”
• “It must be very terrible to live in the midst of such murderers as the people of Bokhara seem to be.”

And: “All the religions of China are bad, but of the three, the religion of Confucius is the least foolish.”

Some day you will move me almost to the verge of irritation by your chuckleheaded Goddamned fashion of shutting your Goddamned gas off without giving any notice to your Goddamned parishioners. Several times you have come within an ace of smothering half of this household in their beds & blowing up the other half by this idiotic, not to say criminal, custom of yours. And it has happened again to-day. Haven’t you a telephone?

— Letter from Mark Twain to the Hartford City Gas Light Company, Feb. 12, 1891

When George Bernard Shaw was a music critic, he dined one evening at a restaurant with a mediocre orchestra.

Recognizing Shaw, the leader sent him a note asking what he would like them to play next.

Shaw replied, “Dominoes.”

Evangelical author Favell Lee Mortimer (1802-1878) set foot only twice outside England, but that didn’t stop her from writing harrowing travel books for Victorian children. From The Countries of Europe Described (1850):

• “There are not nearly as many thieves in Wales as there are in England.”
• “[On Easter] the streets of Petersburgh are filled with staggering, reeling drunkards.”
• “Nothing useful is well done in Sweden.”
• “It is dreadful to think what a number of murders are committed in Italy.”
• “The Greeks do not know how to bring up their children.”
• “A great many people have coughs in Vienna, because the east wind blows very cold.”
• “Though the Portuguese are indolent, like the Spaniards, they are not so grave, and sad, and silent.”
• “The Hungarians are much wilder people than the Germans; they are not industrious; they do not know how to make things; most of them cannot read or write.”
• “The greatest fault of the Norwegians is drunkenness.”
• “The Poles love talking, and they speak so loud they almost scream; and they are proud of this, and say that the Germans are dumb.”
• “Denmark is flat, but not nearly as flat as Holland, nor as damp, nor as ugly.”

“I do not mean to say that there are as many robbers in Sweden as in Sicily; there the robbers are seldom punished at all: in Sweden they are punished; but yet the rest of the people go on stealing.”