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- Herausgeber: Skyline
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
Dear Mr. Editor-There are few sweeter moments in the year than those in which one is engaged in choosing the vacation hat. No other garment implies so much. A vista of coming idleness floats through the brain as you stop before the hatter’s at different points in your daily walk, and consider the last new thing in wideawakes. Then there rises before the mind’s eye the imminent bliss of emancipation from the regulation chimney-pot of Cockney England. Two-thirds of all pleasure reside in anticipation and retrospect; and the anticipation of the yearly exodus in a soft felt is amongst the least alloyed of all lookings forward to the jaded man of business. By the way, did it ever occur to you, sir, that herein lies the true answer to that Sphinx riddle so often asked in vain, even of Notes and Queries: What is the origin of the proverb “As mad as a hatter”? The inventor of the present hat of civilisation was the typical hatter. There, I will not charge you anything for the solution; but we are not to be for ever oppressed by the results of this great insanity. Better times are in store for us, or I mistake the signs of the times in the streets and shop windows. Beards and chimney-pots cannot long co-exist.
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Table of contents
PREFACE
EUROPE—1862 to 1866
Foreign parts, 14th August 1862.
Bonn, 22nd August 1862.
Munich, 29th August 1862.
The Tyrol, 2nd September 1862.
Vienna, 10th September 1862.
The Danube, 13th September 1862.
Constantinople, 34th September 1862.
Constantinople, 30th September 1862.
Athens, 1st October 1862.
Athens, 4th October 1862.
The Run Home, October 1862.
Dieppe, Sunday, 13th September 1863.
Bathing at Dieppe, 17th September 1863.
Normandy, 20th September 1863.
Gleanings from Boulogne
Blankenberghe
Belgian Bathing
Belgian Boats
AMERICA
Peruvian, 6.45 p.m.
8.45 p.m.
8 a.m., Friday.
9.30 a.m., Friday.
On board the Peruvian.
9.30 p.m., Saturday.
Monday.
Peruvian, 9th August 1870.
Wednesday.
Tuesday evening.
Friday.
Mouth of the St. Lawrence.
Sunday 14th.
Wednesday.
Montreal, 19th August 1870.
Montreal, 20th August 1870.
Tuesday morning, 23rd August 1870.
Elmwood, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 25th August 1870.
Elmwood Avenue, Cambridge, 31s£ August 1870.
Cambridge, 2nd September 1870.
New York.
Garrison’s Landing, opposite West Point, Friday, 9th September 1870.
Clifton Hotel, opposite Niagara Falls, 11th September 1870.
Storm Lake, 13th. September 1870.
Fort Dodge, 13th September 1870.
Chicago, September 1870.
Continental Hotel, Philadelphia, 23rd September 1870.
Washington, Friday.
St. Mark’s School, Southborough, Mass., Tuesday, 9th October.
Ithaca, N.Y., 16th October 1870.
New York, Tuesday.
AMERICA—1880 to 1887
East Tennessee, 1st September 1880.
Rugby, Tennessee, 10th September 1880.
Rugby, Tennessee.
A Forest Ride, Rugby, Tennessee.
The Natives, Rugby, Tennessee.
Our Forester, Rugby, Tennessee.
The Negro “Natives”, Rugby, Tennessee, 30th October 1880.
The Opening Day, Rugby, Tennessee.
Life in an American Liner
Life in Texas, Ranche on the Rio Grande, 16th September 1884.
Crossing the Atlantic, 4th September 1885.
Notes from the West, Cincinnati, 24th September 1886.
Westward Ho! 2nd April 1887.
The Hermit, Rugby, Tennessee, 19th September 1887.
American Opinion on the Union, SS. Umbria, 5th October 1887.
EUROPE—1876 to 1895
A Winter Morning’s Ride
Southport, 22nd March.
A Village Festival
The “Victoria,” New Cut.
Whitby and the Herring Trade, 30th August 1888.
Whitby and the Herring Trade, 31st August 1888.
Sunday by the Sea, Whitby, 7th September 1888.
Singing-Matches in Wessex, 28th September 1888.
The Divining-Rod, 21st September 1889.
Sequah’s “Flower of the Prairie,” Chester, 26th March 1890.
French Popular Feeling, 15th August 1890.
Royat les Bains, 23rd August 1890.
Royat les Bains, 30th August 1890.
Auvergne en Fête, 6th September 1890.
Scoppio Del Carro, Florence, Easter Eve, 1891.
A Scamper at Easter, 8th April 1893.
Lourdes, 15th April 1893.
Fontarabia, 22nd April 1893.
Echoes from Auvergne, La Bourboule, 2nd July 1893.
La Bourboule, 10th July 1893.
Comité des Fêtes. 17th July 1893.
Dogs and Flowers, La Bourboule, 24th July.
Dutch Boys, The Hague, 1st May 1894.
“Poor Paddy-Land!”—I—6th Oct. 1894.
“Poor Paddy-Land!”—II
“Panem et Circenses”, Rome, 21 st April 1895.
Rome—Easter Day
JOHN TO JONATHAN
PREFACE
EUROPE—1862 to 1866
Foreign parts, 14th August 1862.
Bonn, 22nd August 1862.
I am sitting at a table some forty feet long, from which most of the guests have retired. The few left are smoking and talking gesticulatingly. I am drinking during the intervals of writing to you, sir, a beverage composed of a half flask of white wine, a bottle of seltzer water, and a lump of sugar (if you can get one of ice to add it will improve the mixture). I take it for granted that you despise the Rhine, like most Englishmen, but, sir, I submit that a land where one can get the above potation for a fraction over what one would pay for a pot of beer in England, and can, moreover, get the weather which makes such a drink deliciously refreshing, is not to be lightly thought of. But I am not going into a rhapsody on the Rhine, though I can strongly recommend my drink to all economically disposed travellers.
All I hope to do, is, to gossip with you, as I move along; and as my road lay up the Rhine, you must take that with the rest.
Our first halt on the river was at Bonn. A university town is always interesting, and this one more than most other foreign ones, as the place where Prince Albert’s education was begun, and where Bunsen ended his life. I made an effort to get to his grave, which I was told was in a cemetery near the town, but could not find it. I hope it will long remain an object of interest to Englishmen after the generation who knew him has passed away. There is no one to whom we have done more scanty justice, and that unlucky and most unfair essay of W———‘s is the crowning injustice of all. I am not going into his merits as a statesman, theologian, or antiquary, which, indeed, I am wholly incompetent to criticise. The only book of his I ever seriously tried to master, his Church of the Future, entirely floored me. But the wonderful depth of his sympathy and insight!—how he would listen to and counsel any man, whether he were bent on discovering the exact shape of the buckle worn by some tribe which disappeared before the Deluge, or upon regenerating the world after the newest nineteenth century pattern, or anything between the two—we may wait a long time before we see anything like it again in a man of his position and learning. And what a place he filled in English society! I believe fine ladies grumbled about “the sort of people” they met at those great gatherings at Carlton Terrace, but they all went, and, what was more to the purpose, all the foremost men and women of the day went, and were seen and heard of hundreds of young men of all nations and callings; and their wives, if they had any, were asked by Bunsen on the most thoroughly catholic principles. And if any man or woman seemed ill at ease, they would find him by their side in a minute, leading them into the balcony, if the night were fine, and pointing out, as he specially loved to do, the contrast of the views up Waterloo Place on the one hand, and across the Green Park to the Abbey and the Houses, on the other, or in some other way setting them at their ease again with a tact as wise and subtle as his learning. But I am getting far from the Rhine, I see, and the University of Bonn. Of course I studied the titles of the books exposed for sale in the windows of the booksellers, and the result, as regards English literature, was far from satisfactory. We were represented in the shop of the Parker and Son of Bonn, by one vol. of Scott’s Poems; the puff card of the London Society, with a Millais drawing of a young man and woman thereupon, and nothing more; but, by way of compensation I suppose, a book with a gaudy cover was put in a prominent place, and titled Tag und Nacht in London, by Julius Rodenburg. There was a double picture on the cover: above, a street scene, comprising an elaborate equipage with two flunkeys behind, a hansom, figures of Highlanders, girls, blind beggars, etc., and men carrying advertisements of “Samuel Brothers,” and “Cremorne Gardens”; while in the lower compartment was an underground scene of a policeman flashing his bull’s eye on groups of crouching folks; altogether a loathsome kind of book for one to find doing duty as the representative book of one’s country with young Germany. I was a little consoled by seeing a randan named The Lorelei lying by the bank, which, though not an outrigger, would not have disgraced any building yard at Lambeth or at Oxford. Very likely it came out of one of them, by the way. But let us hope it is the first step towards the introduction of rowing at Bonn, and that in a few years Oxford and Cambridge may make up crews to go and beat Bonn, and all the other German Universities, and a New England crew from Cambridge, Massachusetts. What a course that reach of the Rhine at Bonn would make! No boat’s length to be gained by the toss for choice of sides, as at Henley or Putney; no Berkshire or Middlesex shore to be paid for. A good eight-oar race would teach young Germany more of young England than any amount of perusal of Tag und Nacht, I take it. I confess myself to a strong sentimental feeling about Rolandseck. The story of Roland the Brave is, after all, one of the most touching of all human stories, though tourists who drop their H’s may be hurrying under his tower every day in cheap steamers; and it is one of a group of the most characteristic stories of the age of chivalry, all having a connecting link at Roncesvalles. What other battle carries one into three such groups of romance as this of Roland, the grim tragedy of Bernard del Carpio and his dear father, and that of the peerless Durandarté? When I was a boy there were ballads on all these subjects which were very popular, but are nearly forgotten by this time. I used to have great trouble to preserve a serene front, I know, whenever I heard one of them well sung, especially that of “Durandarté” (by Monk Lewis), I believe. Ay, and after the lapse of many years I scarcely know where to go for the beau ideal of knighthood summed up in a few words better than to that same ballad:
Kind in manners, fair in favour,
Mild in temper, fierce in fight,—
Warrior purer, gentler, braver,
Never shall behold the light.
But much as I prize Rolandseck for its memories of chivalric constancy and tenderness, Mayence is my favourite place on the Rhine, as the birthplace of Gutenburg, the adopted home, and centre of the work of our great countryman, St. Boniface, and the most fully peopled and stirring town of modern Rhineland. We had only an hour to spend there, so I sallied at once into the town to search for Gutenburg’s house—the third time I have started on the same errand, and with the same result. I didn’t find it. But there it is; at least the guide-books say so. In vain did I beseechingly appeal to German after German, man, woman, and maid, “Wo ist das Haus von Gutenburg—das Haus wo Gutenburg wohnte?” I got either a blank stare, convincing me of the annoying fact that not a word I said was understood, or directions to the statue, which I knew as well as any of them. At last I fell upon a young priest, and, accosting him in French, got some light out of him. He offered to take me part of the way, and as we walked side by side, suddenly turned to me with an air of pleased astonishment, and said, “You admire Gutenburg, then?” To which I replied, “Father!” Why, sir, how in the world should you and I, and thousands more indifferent modern Englishmen, not to mention those of all other nations, get our bread but for him and his pupil Caxton? However, the young priest could only take me to within two streets, and then went on his way, leaving me with express directions, in trying to follow which I fell speedily upon a German fair. I am inclined to think that there are no boys in Germany, and that, if there were, there would be nothing for them to do; but for children there is no such place. This fair at Mayence was a perfect little paradise for children. Think of our wretched merry-go-rounds, sir, with nothing but some six or eight stupid hobby-horses revolving on bare poles, and then imagine such merry-go-rounds as those of Mayence fair. They look like large umbrella tents ornamented with gay flags and facetious paintings outside, and hung within, round the central post which supports the whole, with mirrors, flags, bells, pictures, and bright coloured drapery. Half concealed by the red or blue drapery, is the proprietor of the establishment, who grinds famous tunes on a first-rate barrel organ when the merry-go-round is set going, and keeps an eye on his juvenile fares. The whole is turned by a pony or by machinery. Then, for mounts, the children have choice of some thirty hobby-horses, or can ride on swans or dragons, richly caparisoned, or in easy vis-à-vis seats. When the complement of youthful riders is obtained, on a signal off goes the barrel organ and the pony and the whole concern—pictures, looking-glasses, bells, drapery, and all begin to revolve, with a fascinating jingling and emphasis! and at twice the pace of any British merry—go-round I ever saw. It is very comical to watch the gravity of the little Deutsch riders. They are of all classes, from the highly dressed little madchen, down to the ragged carter-boy, with a coil of rope over his shoulder, and no shoes, riding a gilded swan, but all impressed with the solemnity of the occasion. But here I am running on about fun of the fair, and missing Gutenburg’s house, as I did in reality, finding in the midst of my staring and grinning that I had only time to get to the boat; so with one look at Gutenburg’s statue I went off.
The crops through all these glorious Rhine valleys right away up to Heidelberg look splendid, particularly the herb pantagruelion, which is more largely grown than when I was last here. Rope enough will be made this year from hemp grown between Darmstadt and Heidelberg to hang all the scoundrels in the world, and the honest men to boot; and the tobacco looks magnificent. They were gathering the leaves as we passed. A half-picked tobacco field, with the bare stumps at one end, and the rich-leaved plants at the other, has a comically forlorn look.
Heidelberg I thought more beautiful than ever; and since I had been there a very fine hotel, one of the best I have ever been in, has been built close to the station, with a glass gallery 100 feet long, and more, adjoining the “Speisesaal,” in which you may gastronomise to your heart’s content, at the most moderate figure. Here we bid adieu to the Rhineland.
Munich, 29th August 1862.
A bird’s-eye view of any country must always be unsatisfactory. Still it is better than nothing, and in the absence of a human view, one may be thankful for it. My view of Wurtemberg was of the most bird’s-eye kind. The first thing that strikes one is the absence of all fences except in the immediate neighbourhood of towns. Even the railway has no fence, except for a few yards where a road crosses the line, and here and there a hedge of acacia, or barberry bushes (the berries were hanging red ripe on the latter), which are very pretty, but would not in any place keep out a seriously-minded cow or pig.
Wurtemberg is addicted to the cultivation of crops which minister to man’s luxuries rather than to his necessities. The proportion of land under fruit, poppies, tobacco, and hops, to that under corn, was very striking. There was a splendid hemp crop here also. They were gathering the poppy-heads, as we passed, into sacks. The women and girls both here and in Bavaria seem to do three-fourths of the agricultural work; the harder, such as reaping and mowing, as well as the lighter. The beds of peat are magnificent, and very neatly managed. At first I thought we had entered enormous black brick-fields, for the peat is cut into small brick-shaped pieces, and stacked in rows, just as one sees in the best managed of our brick-fields. As one nears Stuttgart the village churches begin to show signs of the difference in longitude. Gothic spires and arches give place to Eastern clock-towers, with tops like the cupolas of mosques, tinned over, and glittering in the hot sun. I hear that it was a fancy of the late Emperor Joseph to copy the old enemies of his country in architecture; but that would not account for the prevalence of the habit in his neighbour’s territory. I fancy one begins to feel the old neighbourhood of the Turks in these parts. The houses are all roomy, and there is no sign of poverty amongst the people. They have a fancy for wearing no shoes and scant petticoats in many districts; but it is evidently a matter of choice. Altogether, the whole fine, open, well-wooded country, from Bruchsal to Munich, gives one the feeling that an easy-going, well-to-do people inhabit and enjoy it.
As for Munich itself, it is a city which surprised me more pleasantly than almost any one I ever remember to have entered. One had a sort of vague notion that the late king had a taste for the fine arts, and spent a good deal of his own and his subjects’ money in indulging the taste aforesaid in his capital. But one also knew that he had been tyrannised over by Lola Montes, and had made a countess of her—and had not succeeded in weathering 1848; so that, on the whole, one had no great belief in any good work from such a ruler.
Munich gives one a higher notion of the ex-king; as long as the city stands, he will have left his mark on it. On every side there are magnificent new streets, and public buildings and statues; the railway terminus is the finest I have ever seen; every church, from the Cathedral downwards, is in beautiful order, and highly decorated; and it is not only in the public buildings that one meets with the evidences of care and taste. The hotel in which we stayed, for instance, is built of brick, covered with some sort of cement, which gives it the appearance of terra-cotta, and is for colour the most fascinating building material. The ceilings and cornices of the rooms are all carefully and tastefully painted, and all about the town one sees frescoes and ornamentation of all kinds, which show that the people delight in seeing their city look bright and gay; and every one admits that all this is due to the ex-king Lewis. But he has another claim on the gratitude of the good folk of Munich. The Bavarians were given to beer above all other people, and the people of Munich above all other Bavarians, long before he came to the throne; and former kings, availing themselves of the national taste, had established a “Hof-Breihaus,” where the monarch sold the national beverage to his people. King Lewis found the character of the royal beer not what it should be, and the rest of the metropolitan brewers were also falling away into evil ways of adulterating and drugging. He reformed the “Hof-Breihaus,” so that for many years nothing but the soundest possible beer was brewed there, which is sold to the buyers and yet cheaper than in any other house in Munich. The public taste has been thus so highly educated that there is no selling unwholesome beer now. A young artist took me to this celebrated tap. Unluckily it was a wet evening, so we had to sit at one of the tables, under a long line of sheds, instead of in an adjacent garden. There was a great crowd, some 300 or 400 imbibers jammed together, of all ranks. At our table the company were the artist and myself, a Middlesex magistrate, two privates, and a non-commissioned officer, and a man whom I set down as a small farmer. My back rubbed against a vociferous student, who was hobnobbing with all comers. There were Tyrolese and other costumes about, one or two officers, and a motley crowd of work people and other folk. The royal brew-house is in such good repute that no trouble whatever is taken about anything but having enough beer and a store of stone drinking-mugs, with tops to them forthcoming. Cask after cask is brought out and tapped in the vaulted entrance to the cellars, and a queue of expectant thirsty souls wait for their turn. I only know as I drank it how heartily I wished that my poor overworked brethren at home could see and taste the like. But it would not pay any of our great brewers to devote themselves to the task of selling really wholesome drink to the poor; and I fear the Prince of Wales is not likely to come to the rescue. He might find easier jobs no doubt, but none that would benefit the bodily health of his people more. The beer is so light that it is scarcely possible to get drunk on it. Many of the frequenters of the place sit there boosing for four or five hours daily, and the chance visitors certainly do not spare the liquor; but I saw no approach to drunkenness, except a good deal of loud talk.
The picture collections, which form, I believe, the great attraction of Munich, disappointed me, especially the modern ones in the new Pinacothek, collected by the ex-king, and to which he is constantly adding now that he is living at his ease as a private gentleman. I daresay that they may be very fine, but scarcely any of them bite; I like a picture with a tooth in it—something which goes into you, and which you can never forget, like the great picture of Nero walking over the burning ruins of Rome, or the execution picture in the Spanish department, or the Christian slave sleeping before the opening of the amphitheatre, or Judas coming on the men making the cross, in the International Exhibition. I have read no art criticism for years, so that I do not know whether I am not talking great heresy. But, heresy or not, I am for the right of every man to his own opinion in matters of art, and if an inferior painting gives me real pleasure on account of its subject, I mean to enjoy it and praise it, all the fine art critics in Christendom notwithstanding. The pictures of the most famous places in Greece, made since the election of the Bavarian Prince Otho to the throne of Greece, have a special interest of their own; but apart from these and some half dozen others, I would far sooner spend a day in our yearly exhibition than in the new Pinacothek. The colossal bronze statue of Bavaria is the finest thing of the kind I have ever seen; but the most interesting sight in Munich to an Englishman must be the Church of St. Boniface, not the exquisite colouring proportions, or the magnificent monolithic columns of gray marble, but the frescoes, which tell the story of the saint from the time when he knelt and prayed by his sick father’s bed to the bringing back of his martyred body to Mayence Cathedral. The departure of St. Boniface from Netley Abbey for Rome, to be consecrated Apostle to the Germans, struck me as the best of them; but, altogether, they tell very vividly the whole history of the Englishman who has trodden most nearly in St. Paul’s footsteps. We have reared plenty of great statesmen, poets, philosophers, soldiers, but only this one great missionary. Yet no nation in the world has more need of St. Bonifaces than we just now. The field is ever widening, in India, China, Africa. We can conquer and rule, and teach the heathen to make railways and trade, nut don’t seem to be able to get at their hearts and consciences. One fears almost that were a St. Boniface to come, we should only measure him by our common tests, and probably pronounce him worthless, or a dangerous enthusiast. But one day, when men’s work shall be tested by altogether different tests from ours of the enlightened nineteenth century kind, it will considerably surprise some of us to see how the order of merit will come out. We shall be likely to have to ask concerning St. Boniface—whose name is scarcely known to one Englishman in a hundred—and of others like him in spirit, of whom none of us have ever heard, Who are these countrymen of ours, and whence come they? And we shall hear the answer which St. John heard: “Isti sunt qui venerunt ex magna tribulatione et laverunt stolas suas in sanguine Agni.” I felt very grateful to Munich for having appreciated the great Apostle to the Germans.
The one building in Munich which is quite unworthy of the use to which it is put, is the English Church. The service is performed in a sort of dry cellar, under the Odeon. We had a very small congregation, but it was very pleasant to hear how they all joined in the responses. What a pity it is that we are always ready to do it abroad, and shut up again as soon as we get home. Even the singing prospered greatly, though we had no organ. But, alas! sir, the Colonial Church Society have done their best to spoil this part of our service abroad. They seem to have accepted from the editor as a gift, the stereotyped plates of a hymn-book, copies of which were placed about in the Munich church, and, I daresay, may be found all over the Continent. The editor has thought it desirable to improve our classical hymns. Conceive the following substitution for Bishop Ken’s “Let all thy converse be sincere”—
In conversation be sincere;
Make conscience as the noon-day clear:
Think how th’ all-seeing God thy ways
And all thy secret thoughts surveys.
This is only a fair specimen of the book. Surely the Colonial Church Society had better hastily return the stereotype plates with thanks.
The Tyrol, 2nd September 1862.
Next to meeting an old friend by accident, there is nothing more pleasant than coming in long vacation on some flower or shrub which reminds one of former holiday ramblings. In the Tyrol the other day we came suddenly on a bank in the mountains gemmed over with the creamy white star of the daisy of Parnassus, and it accompanied us, to our great delight, for 200 miles or more, till we got fairly down into the plains again. The last time I had seen it was on Snowdon years ago. When we got a little higher I pounced on a beautiful little gentian, which I had never seen before except on the Alps above Lenk, in Switzerland (the Hauen Moos the pass was called, or some such name—how spelt, goodness knows), which I once crossed with two dear friends on the most beautiful day I ever remember.
The flora of the Tyrol, at least that part of it which lies by the roadside, seems to be much the same as ours. With the above exceptions, I scarcely saw a flower which does not grow on half the hills in England; but their size and colouring was often curiously different. The Michaelmas daisy and ladies’ fingers, for instance, were much brighter and more beautiful; on the other hand, there was the most tender tiny heartsease in the world, and forget-me-nots, which were very plentiful here and there, were quite unlike ours—delicate little creatures, of the palest blue in the world, all the fleshiness and comfortable look, reminding one of marriage settlements and suitable establishments, gone clean out of them. In moving eastward with the happy earth you may easily get from Munich to Strasburg in one day; but, if you do, you will miss one of the greatest treats in the world, and that is a run through the Tyrol, which you may do from Munich with comfort in a week. There is a little rail which runs you down south or so to Homburg, on the edge of the mountain country, from whence you may choose your conveyance, from post carriage down to Shanks’ nag. If you follow my advice, whatever else you do you will take care to see the Finstermunz Pass, than which nothing in the whole world can be more beautiful. I rather wonder myself that the Tyrol has not drawn more of our holiday folk, Alpine Club and all, from Switzerland. The Orteler Spitz and the glaciers of his range are as fine, and I should think as dangerous, as anything in the Swiss Alps—the lower Alps in the Tyrol are quite equal to their western sisters; and there is a soft Italian charm and richness about the look and climate of the southern valleys, that about Botzen especially, which Switzerland has nothing to match. The luxuriance of the maize crops (the common corn of the country) and of the vines trained over trellis work in the Italian fashion, and of the great gourds and vegetable marrows which roll their glorious leaves and flowers and heavy fruit over the spare corners and slips of the platforms on which the vineyards rest—the innumerable fruit-trees, pears, apples, plums, peaches, and pomegranates all set in a framework of beautiful wooded mountains, from which the course of the streams may be traced down through all the richness of the valley by their torrent beds of tumbled rock—. remind us vividly of the descriptions of the Promised Land in the Old Testament. Then the contrast of the people to the Bavarians is as great as that of the countries. The latter seem to live the easiest, laziest life of all nations, in their rich low flats, which the women are quite aide to cultivate, while the men drink beer and otherwise disport themselves. But in the part of the Tyrol next Bavaria it is all grim earnest: “Ernst is das Leben” must be their motto if they are to get in their crops at all, and keep their little patches of valley and hanging fields cultivated—and it does seem to be their motto. After passing through the country one can quite understand how the peasantry came to beat the regular troops of France and Bavaria time after time half a century ago, and the memoirs of that holy war hang almost about every rock. There is no mistake here about battle-fields, and no difficulty in realising the scene: the march of columns along the gorges, the piles of rock and tree above, with Tyrolean marksmen behind, the voices calling across over the heads of the invaders “Shall we begin?”
“ In the name of the Holy Trinity, cut all loose”; and then the crash and confusion, the panic and despair, and the swoop of the mountaineers on the remnant of their foes. A great part of the country must be exceedingly poor, and yet only in the neighbourhood of two or three villages were we asked for alms, and then only by small children, who had apparently been demoralised by the passage of carriages. Except from one of these children, a small boy who flirted his cap in my face, and made a villainous grimace, when he got tired of running, and from the dogs, we had no uncourteous look or word. The dogs, however, are abominable mongrels, and there was scarcely one in the country which did not run barking and snapping after us. The people seem to me very much pleasanter to travel amongst than the Swiss.
I had expected to find them a people much given to the outward forms and ceremonies of religion at any rate—every guide-book tells one thus much; but I was not at all prepared for the extraordinary hold which their Christianity had laid upon the whole external life of the country. You can’t travel a mile in the Tyrol along any road without coming upon a shrine—in general by the wayside, often in the middle of the fields. I examined several hundreds of these; many of them little rough penthouses of plank, some well-built tiny chapels. I wish I had kept an exact account of the contents, but I am quite sure I am within the mark in saying that nine out of ten contain simply a crucifix; of the rest, the great majority contain figures or paintings of the Virgin or Child, and a few those of some patron saint. All bore marks of watchful care; in many, garlands of flowers or berries, or an ear or two of ripe maize, were hung round the Figure on the cross. Then in every village in which we slept, bells began ringing for matins at five or six, and in every ease the congregation seemed to be very large in proportion to the population. I was told, and believe, that in all the houses, even in the inns of most of these villages, there is family worship every evening at a specified hour, generally at seven. We met peasants walking along the road bare-headed, and chanting mass. I came suddenly upon parish priests and poor women praying before the crucifix by the wayside. The ostlers and stable-men have the same habit as our own, of pasting or nailing up rude prints on the stable-doors, and of all those which I examined while we were changing horses, or where we stopped for food or rest, there was only one which was not on a sacred subject. In short, to an Englishman accustomed to the reserve of his own country on such subjects, the contrast is very startling. If a Hindoo or any other intelligent heathen were dropped down in any English country, he might travel for days without knowing whether we have any religion at all; but, most assuredly, he could not do so in the Tyrol. Now which is the best state of things? I believe Her Majesty has no stauncher Protestant than I amongst her subjects, but I own that a week in the Tyrol has made me reconsider a thing or two. Outwardly, in short, the Tyroleans are the most religious people in Europe. Of course I am no judge after a week’s tour whether their faith has gone as deep as it has spread wide. You can only speak of the bridge as it carries you. Our bills were the most reasonable I have ever met with, and I could not detect a single attempt at imposition in the smallest particular. I went into the fruit market at Meran, and, after buying some grapes, went on to an old woman who was selling figs. She was wholly unable to understand my speech, so, being in a hurry, I put a note for the magnificent sum of ten kreutzer (or 3d. sterling) into her hand, making signs to her to put the equivalent in figs into a small basket I was carrying. This she proceeded to do, and when she had piled eight or ten figs on the grapes I turned to go, but by vehement signs she detained me, till she had given me the full tale, some three or four more. She was only a fair specimen of what I found on all sides. The poor old soul had not mastered our legal axiom of caveat emptor, but her trading morality had something attractive about it. They may be educated in time into buying cheap and selling dear, but as yet that great principle does not seem to have dawned on them.
There may be some danger of superstition in this setting up of crucifixes and sacred prints by the wayside and on stable-doors, but, on the other hand, the Figure on the cross, meeting one at every corner, is not unlikely, I should think, to keep a poor man from the commonest vices to which he is tempted in his daily life, if it does no more. He would scarcely like to stagger by it drunk from the nearest pot-house. If stable-boys are to have rough woodcuts on their doors, one of the Crucifixion or of the Mater Dolorosa is likely to do them more good than the winner of the Derby or Tom Sayers.
But my letter is getting too long for your columns, so I can only beg all your readers to seize the first chance of visiting the Tyrol. I shall be surprised if they do not come away with much the same impressions as I have. It is a glad land, above all that I have ever seen—a land in which a psalm of joy and thankfulness seems to be rising to heaven from every mountain top and valley, and, mingled with and beneath it, the solemn low note of a people “breathing thoughtful breath”—an accompaniment without which there is no true joy possible in our world, without which all attempt at it rings in the startled ear like the laugh of a madman. Those words of the old middle-age hymn seemed to be singing in my ears all through the Tyrol:—
Fac me vere tecum flere,
Crucitixo condolere,
Donee ego vixcro.
I shall never find a country in which it will do one more good to travel.
Vienna, 10th September 1862.
The stage Englishman in foreign countries must be always an object of interest to his countrymen. He is a decidedly popular institution in Germany, not the least like the Dundreary type, or the sort of top-booted half fool, half miscreant, one sees at a minor theatre in Paris. The latest Englishmen on the boards of the summer theatres here are a Lord Mixpickl, and his man Jack, but the most popular, and those which appear to be regarded in fatherland as the real thing, are the Englishmen in a piece called “The Four Sailors.” It opens with a yawning chorus. Four young Englishmen are discovered sitting at a German watering-place, reading copies of the Times and Post, and yawning fearfully. The chorus done, one says, “The funds are at 84.”
“ I bet you they are at 86,” says another, and on this point they become lively. It appears by the talk which ensues, that they have come abroad resolved on finding some romantic adventure before marrying, which they are all desirous of doing. This they found impossible at home; hitherto have not succeeded here; have only succeeded in trampling on the police arrangements, and getting bored. They all imitate one another in speech and action, saying “Yaas” in succession very slowly, and always looking at one another deliberately before acting. Now the four sailors appear, who are three romantic young women and their maid, disguised as sailors, under the care of their aunt, a stout easy-going old lady, dressed as a boatswain, and of lax habits In the matters of tobacco and drink. After hornpipe dancing and other diversions, the young ladies settle to go and bathe, and cross the stage where the Englishmen are carrying their bathing-dresses. A cry is raised that their boat is upset; whereupon the Englishmen look at one another. At last one gets up, takes off his coat, folds it up, and puts it carefully on his chair, ditto with waistcoat and hat, the others doing the same. They walk off in Indian file, and return each with a half-drowned damsel across his shoulders. Having deposited their burthens, they return to the front of the stage to dress, when one suggests that they have never been introduced, upon which, after a pause, and looking solemnly at each other and the audience, they ejaculate all together, “Got dam!” They then take refuge in beer, silence, and pipes. At last one says, “This is curious!” Three yaas’, and a pause. Another, “This is an adventure!” Three yaas’, and a longer pause. At last, “Dat ist romantisch!” propounds another. Tumultuous yaas’ break forth at this discovery. The object of their journey is accomplished, they marry the four sailors, and return to love and Britain.
The summer theatres are charming institutions, but somewhat casual. For instance, while we were at Ischl, there were no performances because the weather was too fine. Ischl itself is wonderfully attractive, and as he has not the chance of getting a seaside watering-place, the Kaiser Konig has shown much taste in the selection of Ischl. The Traun and Ischl, which meet here, are both celebrated for beauty and trout (a young Englishman was wading about and having capital sport while we were there). You get fine views of glaciers from the hills which rise on all sides close to the town, and the five valleys at the junction of which it lies are all finely wooded and well worth exploring. The town is furnished with a drinking-hall (but no gambling), baths, a casino, pretty promenades, and Herzogs and other grand folk, with Hussar and other officers in plenty to enliven them. You can dance every evening almost if you like, and gloves are fabulously good, and only a florin a pair for men, or with two buttons, for ladies, a florin and ten kreutzers; so, having regard to the number which are now found necessary in London, it would almost pay young persons to visit Ischl once a year to make their purchases. There is also a specialty in the way of pretty old fashioned looking jewellery made and sold here cheap, but the Passau pearls found in the great cockle-shells of these parts are dear, though certainly very handsome. I must not forget the rifle-range amongst the attractions of the place. I fell in with two members of the Inns of Court, and we heard the well-known crack, and soon hunted out the scene of operations. We found some Austrian gentlemen practising at 100 yards at a target with a small black centre, within which was a scarcely distinguishable bull’s-eye. When a centre is made the marker comes out, bows, waves his arms twice, and utters two howls called “yodels.” When the bull’s-eye is struck a shell explodes behind, the Austrian eagle springs up above the target, and a Tyrolean, the size of life, from each side—which performance so fascinated one of my companions that he made interest with the shooters, who allowed him to use one of their rifles. I rejoice to say that he did not disgrace the distinguished corps to which he belongs. At his first shot he obtained the bow and two howls from the marker, and at his fourth the explosion and appearances above described followed, whereupon he wisely retired on his laurels.
You proceed eastwards from Ischl, down the beautiful valley of the Traun to Eben; see the great store-place for the salt and wood of the district. The logs accompany you, in the river, all the way down; and it is amusing to watch their different ways of floating. Such of them as are not stopped in transit by the hooks of the inhabitants are collected by a boom stretched across the head of the Gmünden Lake, on which you take boat at Eben See. The skipper of the steamer is an Englishman, who has been there for thirty years—a quiet matter-of-fact man, who collects his own tickets, wears no uniform, and has a profound disbelief in the accuracy of the information furnished to tourists in these parts by the natives. Long absence from home has somewhat depressed him, but he lights up for a few moments when he gets on his paddle-box and orders the steam to be put on to charge the boom. But travellers should consult him if they want correct information, and should not trust in “Bradshaw.” The lion of the neighbourhood is the Traun Falls; and a station has been opened on the railway to Lintz to facilitate the seeing of the falls, which station is not even mentioned in the “Bradshaw” for August 1862. This is too bad.
I had considerable opportunities of seeing the state of the country in Austria. The people are prosperous and independent to a degree which much astonished me. They are almost all what we should call yeomanry, owning from twenty to two hundred acres of land. Even the labourers, who work for the great proprietors, own their own cottages and an acre or so of land round; in fact, the Teutonic passion for owning land is so strong that, unless a man can acquire some, he manages to emigrate. Since 1848 the communes have stepped into the position of lords of the manors, and own most of the woods and the game. The great proprietors pay them for the right of sporting over their own lands. In faet, whatever may be the case with the higher classes, the people here seem to have it much their own way since 1848. We spent a Sunday afternoon in the palace gardens at Schonbrunn, into which half the populace of Vienna, smoking vile-smelling cigars, seemed to have poured in omnibuses and cabs, which stood before the palace, and on foot. We (the people) occupied the whole of the gardens, and a splendid military band played for our behoof. You reach the gardens by passing under the palace, so that King People was everywhere, and the Kaiser Konig, if he wants retirement, must stay in his private rooms. A report spread that the Emperor and Empress were coming out, whereupon King People, and we amongst them, swept into the lower part of the palace, and right up to a private staircase, at the foot of which an open carriage was standing. A few burly and well-behaved guardsmen remonstrated good-humouredly, but with no effect. There we remained in block, men, women, and children, the pipes and cigars were not extinguished, and the smell was anything but imperial. Presently the Emperor and Empress came down, and the carriage passed at a foot’s pace through the saluting and pleased crowd. The Empress is the most charming-looking royal personage I have ever seen, and seemed to think it quite right that the people should occupy her house and grounds. Fancy omnibuses driving into the Court-yard of Buckingham Palace, and John Bull proceeding to occupy the private gardens! John himself would decidedly think that the end of the world was come. The Constitution, too, seems to work well from all I heard. The Court party has ceased almost to struggle for power. It revenges itself, however, in social life. Society (so called) is more exclusive in Vienna than anywhere else, and consists of some 400 or 500 persons all told. Even the most distinguished soldiers and statesmen have not the entrée. Benedek’s family is not in society, nor Schmerling’s, though I hear his daughter is one of the prettiest and most ladylike girls in Austria. All which is very silly, doubtless, but the chief sufferers are the 400 inhabitants who drive in the Prater, and go to the Leichtenstein and Schwartzenburg parties, and after all, if aristocracies in the foolish sense are inevitable, an aristocracy of birth is preferable to one of money, or, me judice, of intellect, seeing that the latter gives itself at least as absurd airs, and is likely to be much more mischievous. On the other hand, my Hungarian sympathies have been somewhat shaken since visiting the country. I suppose the national dress has something to say to it. An Englishman cannot swallow braided coats, and tight coloured pants, and boots all at once, and the carriage and airs of the men are offensive. I say this more on the judgment of several of my country-women on this point than on my own, but from my own observation I can say that Pesth, to a mere passer-by, has all the appearances of the most immoral capital in the world. In the best shops, in the best streets, there are photographs and engravings exhibited which, with us, would speedily call Lord Campbell’s Act into operation. And the Haymarket is in many respects moral in comparison with many parts of Pesth. It is the only place in Europe where I have seen men going about drunk before midday. In short, you will perceive that my inspection inclines me to suspect that there may he more than one has been wont to believe in the assertion, that the Constitution we hear so much of is aristocratic and one which will give back old feudal privileges to a conquering race and enable them to oppress Slaves, Croats, etc., as they did before 1848. There is, everybody admits, a large discontented class in Hungary, composed chiefly of the poor nobility (who have long ago spent their compensation money), and professional men, especially advocates, but it is strenuously maintained that the great mass of the people have been far better off in all ways and more contented since 1849. I don’t pretend to give you anything except the most apparently truthful evidence I can pick up by the wayside, and the observations of my own eyes, and certainly the latter have not been favourable to Hungary in any way, though they look certainly very like a fighting race, these Magyars. The railroad from Pesth to Basiash, where one embarks on the Danube, passes through enormous flats, heavy for miles and miles with maize and other crops, and very thinly peopled. It is a constant wonder where the people can come from to reap and garner it all. The great fault of the country is the dust, which is an abominable nuisance. Certainly the facilities for travelling are getting to be all that can be wished in our time. A little more than forty-eight hours will bring a man, who can stand night journeys, to Vienna; after resting a night, eighteen hours more will bring him to Basiash, where he will at once plunge into the old world of turbans and veiled women, minarets and mosques; man and beast and bird, houses and habits, all strange and new to him; and if the Danube fares were not atrociously high, there are few things I would more earnestly recommend to my holiday-making countrymen than a trip down that noblest, of European rivers. Considering the present state of political matters, too, in the world, he can hardly select a more interesting country. Certainly the Eastern question gains wonderfully in interest when one has seen ever so little of the lands and people about which the wisest heads of all the wisest statesmen of our day are speculating and scheming—not very wisely, I fear, at present.
The Danube, 13th September 1862.
The Rhine may, perhaps, fairly be compared with the Upper Danube, between Lintz and Vienna, even between Vienna and Pesth. There is no great disparity so far, either in the size of themselves or of the hills and plains through which they run. The traveller’s tastes, artistic and historical, decide his preference. The constant succession of ruined holds of the old oppressors of the earth which he meets on the Rhine, are wanting on the Danube. It is certainly a satisfaction to see such places thoroughly ruined—to triumph over departed scoundrelism wherever one comes on its relics. As a compensation, however, he will find on the Danube a huge building or two, such as that of the Benedictine Monastery at Molk, or the Cathedral and Palace of the Primate of Hungary at Gran, of living interest, and with work still to do in the world. There is not much to choose between the banks of the two streams in the matter of general historical interest, though to me the long struggle between the Christian and the Moslem, the footprints of which meet one on all sides, gives the Danube slightly the advantage even in this respect. There are longer gaps of flat uninteresting country on the eastern stream, no doubt, which may be set off against the sameness and neatness of the perpetual vineyard on the western; and on the Danube you get, now and then, a piece of real forest, which you never see, so far as I remember, on the Rhine.
Below Belgrade, however, all comparison ceases. The Rhine is half the size of its rival, and flows westward through the highest cultivation and civilisation to the German Ocean, while the huge Danube rushes through the Carpathians into a new world—an eastern people, living amidst strange beasts and birds, in a country which is pretty much as Trajan left it. You might as well compare Killiecrankie to the Brenner Pass, as any thing on the Rhine to the Kazan, the defile by which the Danube struggles through the western Carpathians. Here the river contracts in breadth from more than a mile to between 200 and 300 yards; the depth is 170 feet. The limestone rocks on both sides rise to near 2000 feet, coming sheer down to the water in many places, clothed with forest wherever there is hold for roots. Along the Servian side, on the face of the precipice, a few feet above the stream, run the long line of sockets in which the beams were fastened for the support of his covered road by Trajan’s legions. A tablet and an inscription 1740 years old still bear, I believe, the great Roman’s name, and a memorial of his Dacian campaign, though I cannot vouch for the fact, as we shot by it at twenty miles an hour; but I could distinctly see Roman letters. On the left bank the Austrians have carried a road by blasting and masonry; and a cavern which was held for weeks by 400 men against a Turkish army in 1692 commands the whole pass.
We had scarcely entered the defile when some eight or ten eagles appeared sweeping slowly round over a spot in the hanging wood, where probably a deer or goat was dying. I counted upwards of thirty before we left the Kazan; several were so near the boat that you could plainly mark the glossy barred plumage, and every turn of the body and tail as they steered about upon those marvellous, motionless wings. One swooped to the water almost within shot, but missed the fish, or whatever his intended prey might be. A water ouzel or two were the only other living creatures which appeared to draw our attention for a moment from the sway of the mighty stream and the succession of the dizzy heights. Below the pass the stream widens again. You lose something of the feeling of power in the mass of water below you, though the superficial excitement of whirl, and rush, and eddy, is much increased. Here, at Orsova, a small military town on the frontier line between Hungary and Wallachia, we turned out into a flat-bottomed steamer, with four tiny paddle-wheels, drawing only some three feet of water, which was to carry us over the Iron Gates, as the rapids are called; and beautifully the little duck fulfilled her task. The English on board, three ladies and five men, had already fraternised; we occupied the places in the bows. The deck was scarcely a yard above water, and there were no bulwarks, only a strong rail to lean against. The rush of the stream here beat any mill-race I have ever seen, and the little steamer bounded along over the leaping, boiling water at the rate of a fast train. Twice only she plunged a little, shipping just enough water to cause some discomposure amongst the ladies’ dresses, and to wet our feet. We shot past the wreck of a Turkish iron Steamer in the wildest part, which had grounded on its way up to Belgrade with munitions of war. The Servians had boarded and burnt her, and there she lay, and will lie, till the race washes her to pieces, for there is nothing to be got out of her now except the iron of her hull. Below the Iron Gate, a fine Austrian steamer received us, and we moved statelily out into the stream on our remaining thirty hours’ voyage. We had left the mountains, but were still amongst respectable hills covered with forest, full of game, an engineer officer who was on board told us, and plenty of wolves to be had in the winter—too many, indeed, occasionally. A friend of his had knocked up a little wooden shooting-box in these Wallachian forests—a rough affair, with a living-room below, a bedroom above. He had found the wolves so shy that he scarcely believed in them; however, to give the matter a fair trial, he asked three or four friends to his box, bought a dead horse, and roasted him outside. The speedy consequence was such a crowd of wolves that he and his friends had to take refuge in the bedroom and fight for their lives; as it was, the wolves were very near starving them out. And now the river had widened again, and water-fowl could rest and feed on the surface.
