that i started on this occasion even more than on any other with the greatest delight “goes without saying.” a longer and more varied journey than i had ever before enjoyed was before me. all was new, even more entirely new to the imagination than paris; and my interest, curiosity, and eagerness were great in proportion. we travelled by way of metz, strasbourg, and stuttgardt, and, after reaching the german frontier, by lohnkutscher or vetturino—incredibly slow, but of all modes of travelling save the haquenée des cordeliers the best for giving the traveller some acquaintance with the country traversed and its inhabitants.
a part of the journey was performed in a yet slower fashion, and one which was still richer in its opportunities for seeing both men and things. for we descended the danube on one of those barges which ply on the river, used mainly for cargo, but also occasionally for passengers. when i look back upon that part of our expedition i feel some astonishment at not only the hardihood of my mother and sister in consenting to such an enter{307}prise, but more still at my own—it really seems to my present notions—almost reckless audacity in counselling and undertaking to protect them in such a scheme.
whether any such boats still continue to navigate the danube, i do not know. i should think that quicker and better modes of transporting both human beings and goods have long since driven them from their many time secular occupation. in any case it is hardly likely that any english travellers will ever again have such an experience. the lohnkutscher with his thirty or forty miles a day, and his easy-going lotus-eating-like habitudes is hardly like to tempt the traveller who is wont to grumble at the tediousness of an express train. but a voyage on a danube carrier barge would be relegated to the category of those things which might be done, “could a man be secure, that his life should endure as of old, for a thousand long years,” but which are quite out of the question in any other circumstances.
here is the account which my mother gives of the boat on which we were about to embark at ratisbon for the voyage down the river to vienna.
“we start to-morrow, and i can hardly tell you whether i dread it or wish for it most. we have been down to the river’s bank to see the boat, and it certainly does not look very promising of comfort. but there is nothing better to be had. it is a large structure of unpainted deal boards, almost the whole of which is occupied by a sort of ark-like{308} cabin erected in the middle. this is very nearly filled by boxes, casks, and bales; the small portion not so occupied being provided with planks for benches, and a species of rough dresser placed between them for a table. this we are given to understand is fitted up for the express accommodation of the cabin passengers.”
in point of fact, we had, as i remember, no fellow passengers in any part of our voyage. i take it that nobody, save perhaps the peasants of the villages on the banks of the stream, for short passages from one of them to the other, ever thought of travelling by these barges even in those days. they were in fact merely transports for merchandise of the heavier and rougher sort. the extreme rudeness of their construction, merely rough planks roughly nailed together, is explained by the fact that they are not intended ever to make the return voyage against the stream, but on arriving at vienna are knocked to pieces and sold for boarding.
“but the worst thing i saw,” continues my mother, “is the ladder which, in case of rain, is to take us down to this place of little ease. it consists of a plank with sticks nailed across it to sustain the toes of the crawler who would wish to avoid jumping down seven or eight feet. the sloping roof of the ark is furnished with one bench of about six feet long, from which the legs of the brave souls who sit on it dangle down over the river. there is not the slightest protection whatever at the edge{309} of this abruptly sloping roof, which forms the only deck; and nothing but the rough unslippery surface of the deal planks, of which it is formed, with the occasional aid of a bit of stick about three inches long nailed here and there, can prevent those who stand or walk upon it from gently sliding down into the stream.... well! we have determined, one and all of us, to navigate the danube between ratisbon and vienna; and i will neither disappoint myself nor my party from the fear of a fit of vertigo, or a scramble down a ladder.”
but if the courage of the ladies did not fail them, mine, as that of the person most responsible for the adventure, did! and i find that, on the day following that on which the last extract was written, my mother writes:
“at a very early hour this morning t. [tom] was up and on board, and perceiving by a final examination of the deck, its one giddy little bench, and all things appertaining thereto, that we should inevitably be extremely uncomfortable there, he set about considering the ways and means by which such martyrdom might be avoided. he at last got hold of the schiffmeister, which he had found impossible yesterday, and by a little persuasion and a little bribery, induced him to have a plank fixed for us at the extreme bow of the boat, which we can not only reach without difficulty, but have a space of some nine or ten feet square for our sole use, on condition of leaving it free for the captain about five minutes before each landing. this perch{310} is perfectly delightful in all respects. our fruit, cold meat, wine, bread, and so forth are stowed near us. desks and drawing books can all find place; and in short, if the sun will but continue to shine as it does now, all will be well.... our crew are a very motley set, and as we look at them from our dignified retirement, they seem likely to afford us a variety of very picturesque groups. on the platforms, which project at each end of the ark, stand the men—and the women too—who work the vessel. this is performed by means of four immense oars protruding lengthwise [i.e. in a fore and aft direction], two in front and two towards the stern, by which the boat is steered. besides these, there are two others to row with. these latter are always in action, and are each worked by six or eight men and women, the others being only used occasionally, when the boat requires steering. it appears that there are many passengers who work for their passage [but this i take to have been inference only], as the seats at the oars are frequently changed, and as soon as their allotted task is done, they dip down into the unknown region beyond the ark and are no more seen till their turn for rowing comes round again. i presume the labour, thus divided, is not very severe, for they appear to work with much gaiety and good humour, sometimes singing, sometimes chatting, and often bursting into shouts of light-hearted laughter.”
it was a strange voyage; curious, novel, and full of{311} never-failing interest; luxurious even in its way, in many respects; which may now be considered an old world experience; which probably has never been tried since, and certainly will never be tried again, however many wandering young englishmen (of whom there are a hundred now for every one to be met with in those days) might fancy trying it. no danger whatever of the kind which my mother appears to have anticipated threatened any of the party. but the adventure was not without danger of another kind, as the sequel showed.
of course all the people with whom we were brought into contact—the captain and crew of the boat, the riverside loungers at the landing-places, the hosts and households of the little inns in the small places at which the boat stopped every night (it never travelled save by daylight)—were all mystified, and had all their ideas of the proprieties and the eternal fitness of things outraged by the phenomenon of a party of english ladies and gentlemen—supposed by virtue of ancient and well recognised reputation to be all as rich as cr?sus, and who were at all events manifestly able to pay for a carriage—choosing such a method of travelling. nor had english wanderers at that time earned the privilege since accorded to their numerousness, of doing all sorts of strange things unquestioned on the score of the well-known prevalent insanity of the race. all who came within sight of us were utterly puzzled at the unaccountableness of the phenomenon. and one does not mystify the whole{312} of a somewhat rude population without risking disagreeables of various sorts.
on looking back on the circumstances from my present lofty and calm observatory, i am disposed to wonder that nothing worse betided us than the one adventure of which i am about to speak. but, as i remember, the people generally were, if somewhat ruder and rougher than an english population of similar status, upon the whole very kindly and good-natured.
but at one place—a village called pleintling—we did get into trouble, which very nearly ended tragically. the terms upon which we were to be housed for the night, and the price to be paid for our accommodation of all sorts had been settled overnight, and the consciousness that we were giving unusual trouble induced us to pay without grumbling such a price for our beds and supper and breakfast as the host had assuredly never received for his food and lodging in all his previous experience. but it was doubtless this very absence of bargaining which led our landlord to imagine that he had made a mistake in not demanding far more, and that any amount might be had for asking it from so mysterious a party who parted, too, so easily with their money. so as we were stepping on board the next morning he came down to the water’s edge, and with loud vociferation demanded a sum more than the double of that which we had already paid him. the ladies, and indeed all the party save myself, who was the paymaster, had{313} already gone on board, and i was about to follow, unheeding his demands and his threats, when he seized me by the throat, and dragging me backwards, declared in stentorian tones that he had not been paid. i sturdily refused to disburse another kreutzer. the other men, who had gone on board, jumped back to my assistance. but suddenly, as if they had risen from the earth, several other fellows surrounded us and dragged down my friends. the old landlord, beside himself with rage, lifted an axe which he had in his hand, and was about to deal me a blow which would probably have relieved the reading world of this and many another page! but my mother, shrieking with alarm, had meantime besought the captain of the boat to settle the matter by paying whatever was demanded. he also jumped on shore just in time, and released us from our foes, and himself from further delay, by doing so.
at the next place at which we could go on shore we made a complaint to the police officials; and it is not without satisfaction even after the lapse of half a century that i am able to say that a communication from the police in an austrian town some days subsequently, and after we had crossed the bavarian frontier, informed us that the old scoundrel at pleintling had not only been made to disgorge the sum he had robbed us of, but had been trounced as he deserved. i suspect that he had imagined from the strangeness of our party, and our mode of travelling, that there were reasons why we should{314} not be inclined to seek any interview with the officers of the police.
with that sole exception our voyage from ratisbon to vienna was a prosperous, and on the whole, pleasant one, varied only by not unfrequently recurring difficulties occasioned by shoals and sandbanks, when all hands, save the non-working party in the bow, would take to the water in a truly amphibious fashion to drag the boat off.
but i must not be led by these moving accidents by flood and field to forget a visit paid to the sculptor dannecker in his studio at stuttgardt. there is in my mother’s book an etching by m. hervieu of the man and place. i remember well the affectionate reverence with which he uncovered for us his colossal bust of schiller, as described by my mother, and the reasons which he assigned (mistaken as they appeared to me, but it is presumptuous in me to say so) for making it colossal. schiller had been his life-long friend, and these reasons, whether artistically good or not, were at all events morally admirable and pathetically touching as given by the old man, while looking up at his work with tears in his octogenarian eyes. i do not think the reproduction of the bust in m. hervieu’s etching is a very happy one, but i can testify to the full-length portrait of the aged sculptor being a thoroughly life-like one. it is the old man himself. he died a year or two after the date of our visit.
uhland too we visited, and gustav schwab. of{315} the former i may say literally vidi tantum, for i could speak then no german, and very few words now, and uhland could speak no other language. and our interview is worth recording mainly for the case of the noticeable fact that such a man, holding the position he did and does in the literature of his country, should at that day have been unable to converse in french.
gustav schwab, though talking french fluently, and, as i remember, a little english also, impressed me as quintessentially german in manner, in appearance, and ways of thinking. he was one of the kindliest of men, contented with you only on condition of being permitted to be of service to you, and at the end of half an hour making you somehow or other feel as if he must have been an old friend, if not in your present, at least in some former state of existence.
my journey among these southern germans left me with the impression that they are generally a kindly and good-natured people. a little incident occurred at tübingen which i thought notably illustrated this. the university library there is a very fine one; and while the rest of our party were busied with some other sight-seeing, i went thither and applied to the librarian for some information respecting the departments in which it was strong, its rules, &c. he immediately set about complying with my wishes in the most obliging manner, going through the magnificent suite of rooms with me himself, and pausing before the shelves wherever{316} he had any special treasure to show. all of a sudden, without any warning, just as we were passing through the marble jambs of a doorway from one room to another, my head began to swim; i lost consciousness, and fell, cutting my head against the marble sufficiently to cause much bloodshed. when i recovered my senses i found the librarian standing in consternation over me, and his pretty young wife on her knees with a basin of water bathing my head. she had been summoned from her dwelling to attend me, and there was no end to their kindness. i never experienced such a queer attack before or since. i suppose it must have been occasioned by too much erudition on an empty stomach!
our route to vienna was a very devious one, including southern bavaria, salzburg, and great part of the tyrol. but i must not indulge in any journalising reminiscences of it. were i to do so in the case of all the interesting journeys i have made since that day how many volumes would suffice for the purpose! when calling the other day, only two or three months ago, on cardinal massaia at the propaganda in rome in order to have some conversation with him respecting his thirty-five years’ missionary work in africa, on returning from which he received the purple from leo xiii., he obligingly showed me the ms. which he had prepared from his recollection of the contents of the original notes, unfortunately destroyed during his imprisonment by hostile tribes in africa, and{317} which is now being printed at the propaganda press in ten volumes quarto. his eminence was desirous that it should be translated into english, and published in london with the interesting illustrations he brought home with him, and which adorn the roman edition. but as the wish of his eminence was that it should be published unabridged (!) i was obliged to tell him that i feared he would not find a london publisher. we parted very good friends, and on taking my leave of him he said, pressing my hand kindly, that we should shortly meet again in heaven—which, considering that he knew he was talking to a heretic, i felt to be a manifestation of liberal feeling worthy of note in a cardinal of the church of rome.
will the kind reader, bearing in mind the recognised and almost privileged garrulity of old age, pardon the chronology-defying introduction of this anecdote here, which was suggested to me solely by the vision of what my reminiscences would extend to if i were to treat of all my wanderings up and down this globe in extenso?
the latter part of our voyage was especially interesting and beautiful, but tantalising from the impossibility of landing on every lovely spot which enticed us. nevertheless, we at last found ourselves at vienna with much delight, and our first glimpses of the city disposed us to acquiesce heartily in the burthen of the favourite viennese folk-song, “es ist nur ein kaiserstadt, es ist nur ein wien!{318}”
i remember well an incident which my mother does not mention, but which seemed likely to make our first début in the kaiserstadt an embarrassing one. there was in some hand-bag belonging to some one of the party an old forgotten pack of playing cards, which the examining officer of the customs pounced on with an expression of almost consternation on his face.
“oh, well, throw them away,” said the spokesman of our party airily, “or, if the regulations require it, we will pay the duty, though we have not the least desire to retain possession of them.”
but this we soon found did not meet the case by any means. we had been guilty of a serious misdemeanour and offence against the law by having such things (undeclared too) amongst our baggage! there must be a report, and a written petition, setting forth with due contrition, and humble peccavi admissions, our lamentable ignorance, and perhaps the enormity might be condoned to a foreigner! after a little talk, however, and the incense of a little consternation on our faces, duly offered to the official jove (who entirely spurned any offering of another sort), the said jove wrote the petition for us himself, carried it somewhere behind the scenes, and shortly announced that it was benignly granted: as i believe, by himself! the accursed thing was ceremoniously destroyed before our eyes, and we were free to walk forth into the streets of the kaiserstadt.
i revisited vienna two or three years ago, and{319} found that “ein wien” had become at least three! if the increase and changes of london and paris have made my early recollections of those cities emphatically those of a former age, the changes at vienna, though of course smaller in absolute extent, have yet more entirely metamorphosed the character of the place. the abolition of the wall, which used to shut in the exclusive little city, and placed between it and the suburbs not only a material barrier, but a gulf such as that which divided dives from lazarus, has changed the social habitudes and even the moral characteristics of the inhabitants.
in the days of my first visit, now just a little more than fifty years ago, nobody who was anybody would have dreamed of living on the outside of the sacred barrier of the wall, any more than a member of the fashionable world of london would dream of living to the eastward of temple bar. i think, indeed, that the former would have been more utterly out of the question than the latter. i remember that even in the case of foreigners like ourselves, it was deemed, in accordance with the best advice we could procure on the subject, necessary, or at least expedient, that we should find lodgings in the city, despite the exceeding difficulty and the high price involved in procuring them. the division of the society into classes, still more marked in vienna than probably in any other city of europe, at that time almost amounted to a division into castes; and in the case of the higher aristocracy{320} to have lived in any one of the suburbs would assuredly have involved a loss of social caste.
mainly this arose of course from the inappellable law of fashion that so it should be. but in part also it probably arose from the little social inconveniences arising from mere distance. the society of vienna at that day—society par excellence—was a very small one. everybody knew everybody, not only their pedigree and all their quarterings (very necessary to be known), but the men and women themselves personally. i forget entirely what were the introductions which placed my mother and her party at once in the very core of this small and exclusive society. but we did find ourselves so placed, and that at once. probably the general notion in england was then, and may be still, that the aristocratic society of vienna would be less likely to open its doors to one who had no title whatever to enter them save a literary reputation, than the corresponding classes in any other european capital. but whatever was the “open sesame” my mother possessed, the fact was that all doors were open to her with the most open-handed hospitality. and, as i have said, to know one was, even in the case of a stranger, pretty nearly equivalent to knowing them all.
the by far greater number of this small society of nobles were, as was to be expected, wealthy men; some, more especially the hungarians, were such even if estimated by english standards. but there were some among them who were very much the{321} reverse. and my opportunities of observation were abundantly sufficient to enable me to perceive without any fear of being mistaken, that the terms of intimacy and equality upon which these latter lived with their wealthier neighbours were no whit affected by their comparative impecuniosity. one single lady of very noble birth i well remember, who to a great pressure of the res angusta domi added no small spice of eccentricity; but there was no mansion so magnificent that did not open its doors very widely to her. no fête was complete without her. she always wore a turban, and always carried it about with her in her pocket. and i have seen her pause in the midst of a splendid entrance hall, with half a dozen lackeys standing around, while she took her turban from her pocket, adjusted it on her head, and changed her shoes.
the ladies of the grand monde in vienna in those days had the queer habit of writing no notes. their invitations and the answers to them, and the excuses, or any other communications arising from the social intercourse of the day, were all sent by word of mouth by footmen. whether the highest bon ton required an affectation of not being able to write, i cannot say! but such was the practice.
another specialty consisted in a practice of the young men of the same world. every man of them retained in his special pay and service one of the (very excellent) hackney coaches of the city, which he always expected to find ready for his service, and the driver of which was trusted by him as much, or{322} more perhaps, than a man is in the habit of trusting his own servant.
the social division between the different castes—between the noble and the non-noble—was absolute in those days; and of course both parties were the losers in sundry respects by such separation. but the results were not bad in all respects. one was an exceeding simplicity and absence of any affectation of finery or morgue on the part of the noble class, and a corresponding easy-going freedom from the small forms of social ambition on the part of the non-noble. there was among the latter no attempt or thought of attempting to enter the noble society. it was out of the question; and as far as i could see such entry did not appear to be an object of ambition, or the impossibility of it to occasion either heart-burning or jealousy. in the case of the ladies of the deux mondes, the separation was absolute and without exception. but i was told that in some few cases the young men of the upper class might be seen in the houses of certain of their non-noble fellow-citizens, but never with any reciprocity of toleration. in respect of mere wealth and luxury in the manner of living, there were many bourgeois families on a par, and in many cases on far more than a par, with those of the nobles. and no doubt it frequently occurred that the social law which forbade all intercourse between the two septs, was felt to be as inconvenient and as much a matter of regret on one side of the barrier as on the other. but, noblesse oblige, and the law was not transgressed.{323}
in the case of foreigners, however, or at least of english foreigners, we were very soon given to understand that the law in question was not applicable. we were perfectly free to make acquaintances in either world, and some of the most valued friends we made in vienna, and some of the pleasantest hospitalities we accepted, were found in bourgeois houses. i remember two different instances of a very amusing curiosity on the part of certain noble ladies, which prompted them to avail themselves of our chartered liberty in the matter, for the obtaining of tidings of the ways and manners of the inmates of certain houses, which there was no possibility of their ever having an opportunity of observing for themselves. but on ransacking my memory for instances of the kind, i must say that all that occur to me, refer to curiosity of the upper respecting the nether world; and that i do not recollect any vice versa cases.
i have said that the rule of exclusion as regards all that part of the vienna world not nobly born was absolute. but if absoluteness can be conceived as ever becoming more absolute, the social law did so in the case of jewish families. these were numerous, and many of them in respect of wealth, and more in respect of culture, were on a par with the best and highest portion of the viennese society. i remember one jewish family in particular, consisting of a widow and her daughter and her niece, with whom we became intimately acquainted, and in whom and whose surroundings we found a level{324} of high culture (taking that word in its largest extension to all that goes to form the idiosyncrasy of a human being), far in advance of anything we met with among their social superiors.
in fact the grand monde of that far distant day in vienna was frivolous, unintellectual, and, i am afraid i must say, uneducated to a remarkable degree. it had its own peculiar charm, which consisted in the most perfectly high-bred tone of manner combined with complete simplicity, the absolute absence of any sort of affectation whatever, and great good-nature. but in all my experience of them there was not to be found a salon among them of equal social attraction to that of my above-mentioned jewish friends.
but all this refers to the social conditions of a day, which, as my recent visits to vienna have shown me, is one passed away and gone. it belongs to the days when “vater franz” was, or, to be accurate, had only two years previously ceased to be, the idol of austrian, and especially viennese loyalty and affection. the most striking instances of the devotion of all classes of the population to their emperor were constantly narrated to me. i specially remember the tale of one occasion, when the emperor had remained shut up in the palace for three or four days—or perhaps the period was somewhat longer—because he had caught a cold. a cloud seemed to have passed over the blue vienna sky. the occasion of his first drive through the streets of the city after his little indisposition was an ovation! the people filled the streets, and hung about his{325} carriage. market women poked their faces in at the window to assure themselves that “vater franz” was restored to them none the worse for his confinement. it was, to the best of my remembrance, on every thursday, at that time, that it had been the emperor’s practice to devote a certain number of hours in the day to receiving any one of his subjects who had notified in the proper quarter a desire to speak with him. but might not some socialist or nihilist, or other description of radical, have easily shot him at one of those entirely unguarded interviews? aye! but i am writing of half a century ago, before such things and persons had appeared upon the scene. and assuredly the possibility of such a catastrophe had never entered into the brain of any man, woman, or child in the kaiserstadt.
there was one among the many acquaintances we made at vienna who belonged in nowise to any division of its society, but who was, like ourselves, to be met with among them all. this was old john cramer the pianist. i took a great liking to him. the mingled simplicity, bonhomie, shrewdness, and old-world courtesy of the old man delighted me. he was full of old-world stories, generally ending any anecdote of some one of the many notable personages he had known with a sigh, and “well, peace to his manes!” pronounced as one syllable, as i have mentioned in an earlier page. for old john cramer had lived in the days before the schoolmaster had gone “abroad” so widely as in these{326} latter times. the old maestro had just written a monody to the memory of malibran, then recently lost to the world of music prematurely. “it is full of feeling,” writes my mother, “and, as i listened to this veteran pianist, as he performed for me his simple and classic little composition, and marked the delicacy and finish of his style, unincumbered by a single movement in which the conceptions of a harmonious genius are made to give way before the meretricious glory of active fingers, i felt at the very bottom of my heart that i was rococo, incorrigibly rococo, and that such i should live and die.”
another specialty, which in those days gave to vienna much of the physiognomy which made it different in outward appearance from any other of the great capitals of europe, and which would not be observed there at the present time, was caused by the heterogeneousness of the countries which compose the empire, and the very motley appearance of the specimens of all of them which might be found in the capital. a parisian tells you in france that a provincial in the streets of paris is as recognisable at a glance as if he were ticketed on the forehead. and so he may be to a parisian. but the eccentricities of his appearance are not such as to impart any variety to the moving panorama in the streets of paris as it appears to a stranger. the breton, the provencal, the bearnais makes himself look, when he visits paris, as much like a parisian as he can, and flatters himself no doubt that he succeeds perfectly. but croatians,{327} bohemians, wild-looking figures from transylvania might be seen in the streets of vienna, precisely as they might have been seen in their own distant homes. strange and not a little sinister looking groups of hungarian gipsies, encampments outside and at the foot of the walls, of bohemian waggoners, caftaned jews from the distant parts of galicia, all added to the strangeness and much to the picturesqueness of the city. i remember one especial group, the extreme barbarism of whose appearance, incredible filthiness, and wild, picturesque, but very forbidding physiognomies, particularly attracted my attention. i was told that they were gipsies from croatia.
on the whole it is—or rather i should say was—evident that one has travelled far eastward to reach vienna, and the whole physiognomy of the place is modified by that fact.
i am unwilling to close this chapter of my vienna reminiscences without mentioning a lady, whose very exceptional histrionic talent had impressed me as vividly as it did my mother, who has given an honourable place in her volumes to madame rettich. i subsequently became intimate with her very charming daughter in italy, and it is from her that i learned the fact that her mother had been the first actress to personate goethe’s “gretchen” on the stage. considerable doubt had been felt as to the expediency of the attempt. but madame rettich made it—not for the first time at vienna, but at some provincial theatre—with entire success.
