Part 11 (1/2)
So we went to Prague, and thence to Vienna, which, in the year 1847, was a very different place indeed to what it is at present; for an unbounded gaiety and an air of reckless festivity was apparent then all the time to everybody everywhere. Under it all lurked and rankled abuses, munic.i.p.al, social, and political, such as would in 1893 be deemed incredible if not unnatural (as may be read in a clever novel called _Die schone Wienerinn_), but on the surface all was brilliant foam and suns.h.i.+ne and laughing sirens. What new thing Strauss would play in the evening was the great event of the day. I saw and heard the great Johann Strauss--this was the grandfather--and in after years his son, and the _schone Edie_ his grandson. Everywhere one heard music, and the Prater was a gay and festive paradise indeed. There was no business; the town lived on the Austrian, Hungarian, Bohemian, Russian, and other n.o.bility, who in those days were extravagant and ostentatious to a degree now undreamed of, and on strangers. As for free and easy licentiousness, Paris was a trifle to it, and the police had strict orders to encourage everything of the kind; the result being that the seventh commandment in all its phases was treated like pie-crust, as a thing made to be broken, the oftener the better. Even on our first arriving at our hotel, our good-natured landlord, moved by the principle that it was not good for a young man to be alone, informed us that if we wished to have damsels in our rooms no objection would be interposed. ”Why not?” he said; ”this is not a church”; the obvious inference being that to a Viennese every place not a church must necessarily be a temple to Venus. And every Wiener, when spoken to, roared with laughter; and there were minstrels in the streets, and musicians in every dining-place and cafe, and great ringing of bells in chimes, and 'twas merry in hall when beards wagged all, and ”the world went very well in those days.” Vienna is a far finer town now, but it is a Quaker meeting-house compared to what it was for gaiety forty years ago.
This change of life and manners has spread, and will continue to spread, all over the world. In feudal times the people were kept quiet by means of holidays, carnivals, processions, fairs, fairy-tales, treats, and indulgences; even the common childish instinct for gay dress and picturesqueness of appearance was encouraged, and at high tides everybody was fed and given to drink: so that if the poor toiled and fasted and prayed, it might be for months, they had their joyous revellings to antic.i.p.ate, when there were free tables even for strangers. In those days--
”A Christmas banquet oft would cheer A poor man's heart for half the year.”
This Middle Age lasted effectively until the epoch of the Revolution and railroads, or, to fix a date, till about 1848. And then all at once, as at a breath, it all disappeared, and now lives, so to speak, only in holes and corners. For as soon as railroads came, factories sprang up and Capital began to employ Labour, and Labour to plot and combine against Capital; and what with scientific inventions and a sudden stimulus to labour, and newspapers, the mult.i.tude got beyond fancy dresses and the being amused to keep them quiet like children, and so the _juventus mundi_ pa.s.sed away. ”It is a perfect _shame_!” say the dear young lady tourists, ”that the peasantry no longer wear their beautiful dresses; they ought to be _obliged_ to keep them up.” ”But how would _you_ like, my dear, if you were of the lower orders, to wear a dress which proclaimed it?” Here the conversation ceaseth, for it becomes too deep for the lady tourist to follow.
How it was we wandered I do not distinctly remember, but having visited Nuremberg, Prague, and Dresden, we went to Breslau, where a fancy seized us to go to Cracow. True, we had not a special _vise_ from a Russian minister to enter the Muscovite dominions, but the police at Breslau, who (as I was afterwards told) loved to make trouble for those on the frontier, bade us be of good cheer and cheek it out, neither to be afraid of any man, and to go ahead bravely. Which we did.
There was a sweet scene at the frontier station on the Polish-Russian line at about three o'clock in the morning, when the grim and insolent officials discovered that our pa.s.sports had only the police _vise_ from Breslau! I was asked why I had not in my native country secured the _vise_ of a Russian minister; to which I replied that in America the very existence of such a country as Russia was utterly unknown, and that I myself was astonished to find that Russians knew what pa.s.sports were.
Also that I always supposed that foreigners conferred a great benefit on a country by spending their money in it; but that if I could not be admitted, that was an end of it; it was a matter of very trifling consequence, indeed, for we really did not care twopence whether we saw Russia or not; a country more or less made very little difference to such travellers as we were.
Cheek is a fine thing in its way, and on this occasion I developed enough bra.s.s to make a pan, and enough ”sa.s.s” to fill it; but all in vain. When I visited the Muscovite realm in after years I was more kindly received.
On this occasion we were closely searched and re-searched, although we were not allowed to go on into Russia! Every square inch of everything was examined as with a microscope--even the small sc.r.a.ps of newspaper in which soap or such trifles were wrapped were examined, a note made as to each, and all put under paper-weights; and whatever was suspected--as, for instance, books or pamphlets--was confiscated, although, as I said, we were turned back! And this robbery accomplished, we were informed that the stage-coach, or rather rough post-waggon, in which we came, would return at five o'clock P.M., and that we could in it go back to Dresden, and might pa.s.s the time till then on a bench outside the building--reflecting on our sins! I had truly some papers about me which I did not care to have examined, but these were in my cravat, and even Russian ingenuity had not at that time got beyond picking pockets and feeling the linings of coats. It has since been suggested to me by something which I read that I was under suspicion. I had in Munich aided a Swiss student who was under police surveillance for political intriguing to escape, by lending him money to get away. It is probable that for this my pa.s.sport was marked in a peculiar manner. My companion, Pottinger, was not much searched; all suspicion seemed to fall on me.
The stage went on, and Pottinger and I sat on the bench in a mild drizzle at half-past three in the morning, with as miserable a country round about as mortal man ever beheld. By-and-bye one of the subs., a poor Pole, moved by compa.s.sion and the hope of reward, cautiously invited us to come into his den. He spoke a very little German and a little Latin (Pottinger was an Oxford man, and knew several heavy cla.s.sics, Greek and Latin, perfectly by heart). The Pole had a fire, and we began to converse. He had heard of America, and that Polish exiles had been well treated there. I a.s.sured him that Poles were admired and cherished among us like pet lambs among children, and the adored of the adored. Then I spoke of Russian oppression, and the Pole, in utmost secrecy, produced a sabre which had been borne under Kosciusko, and showed us a silver coin--utterly prohibited--which had been struck during the brief period of the Polish revolution.
The Pole began to prepare _his_ coffee--for one. I saw that something must be done to increase the number of cups. He took up his book of prayers and asked of what religion we were. Of Pottinger I said contemptuously, ”He is nothing but a heretic,” but that as for myself, I had for some time felt a great inclination towards the _Panna_--Holy Virgin--and that it would afford me great pleasure to conform to the Polish Catholic Church, but that unfortunately I did not understand the language. To which he replied, that if _he_ were to read the morning service in Polish and I would repeat it word by word, that the _Panna_ would count it to my credit just as if I had. And as I was praying in good earnest for a breakfast, I trust that it was accepted. Down on our knees we went and began our orisons.
”Leland! you --- humbug!” exclaimed Pottinger.
”Go away, you infernal heretic, and don't disturb Christians at their devotions!” was my devout reply. So, prayers concluded, there _was_ coffee and rolls for three. And so in due time the coach returned. I rewarded our host with a thaler, and we returned to Breslau, of which place I noted that the natives never ate anything but sweet cakes for their first morning meal.
We stopped at Gorlitz, where I asked a woman standing in the half-doorway of the house of Jacob Bohme if that was his house. But she had never heard of such a man!
Dresden we thoroughly explored, and were at Leipzig during the great annual fair. These fairs, in those days, were sights to behold. Now they are succeeded by stupendous Expositions, which are far finer and inconceivably greater, yet which to me lack that kind of gypsy, side-show, droll, old-fas.h.i.+oned attraction of the ancient gatherings, even as Barnum's Colossal Moral Show of half-a-dozen circuses at once and twenty-five elephants does not _amuse_ anybody as the old clown in the ring and one elephant did of yore.
Thence to Berlin, where we were received with joy by the American students, who knew all about one another all over Germany. I very much enjoyed the great art gallery, and the conversation of those who, like myself, followed lectures on AEsthetics and the history of art. Thence to Magdeburg and Hanover, Dusseldorf--to cut it short, Holland and the chief cities in Belgium.
I noted one little change of custom in Berlin. In South Germany it was a common custom for students, when calling on a friend, to bring and leave generally a small bouquet. When I did this in Berlin my friends were astonished at it. This was an old Italian custom, as we may read in the beautiful One Hundred and Fifty _Brindisi_ or Toasts of Minto.
”Porto a voi un fior novello, Ed, oh come vago e bello!”
In 1847 even a very respectable hotel in Holland was in any city quite like one of two centuries before. You entered a long antiquely-brown room, traversed full length by a table. Before every chair was placed a little metallic dish with hot coals, and a churchwarden pipe was brought to every visitor at once without awaiting orders. The stolid, literal, mechanical action of all the people's minds was then _wonderful_. An average German peasant was a genius compared to these fresh, rosy-fair, well-clad Hollanders. It was to me a new phase of human happiness in imbecility, or rather in undisturbed routine; for it is written that no bird can fly like a bullet and doze or sleep sweetly at the same time.
Yet, as from the Huns, the most hideous wretches in the world, there arose by intermixture the Hungarians, who are perhaps the handsomest, so from the Knickerbocker Dutch sprang the wide-awake New Yorkers! The galleries in Holland and Belgium were to me joys unutterable and as the glory of life itself. Munich and Thiersch still inspired me; I seemed to have found a destiny in aesthetics or art, or what had been wanting in Princeton; that is, how the beautiful entered into life and was developed in history and made itself felt in all that was worth anything at all.
Modern English writers on this subject--with exceptions like that of J.
A. Symonds, whose Essays I cannot commend too highly--are in the same relation to its grand truth and higher inspiration as Emerson and Carlyle to Pantheism in its mightiest early forms. For several years the actual mastery of aesthetics gave me great comfort, and advanced me marvellously in thought to wider and far higher regions.
I forget where I parted with Pottinger; all that I can remember was, that early in November I arrived alone in Paris, going to some small hotel or other, and that as all the fatigues of the past many weeks of weary travel seemed to come upon me all at once, I went to bed, and never left the house till four o'clock P.M. the next day. On the next I found my way into the Latin Quarter, and secured a _not_ very superior room in the Place Saint-Michel, near the Ecole de Medecine, to which I moved my luggage.
I was very much astonished, while sitting alone and rather blue and overcast in my room, at the sudden entrance of a second cousin of mine named Frank Fisher, who was studying medicine in Paris. He had by some odd chance seen my name registered in the newspapers as having arrived at the hotel, and lost no time in looking me up. He lived on the other side of the Seine in the Boule Rouge, near the Rue Helder, a famous happy hunting-ground for _les b.i.+.c.hes_--I mean kids or the very dear. I must go forthwith to his quarters and dine, which I did, and so my introduction to Paris was fairly begun.
I attended at the College Louis le Grand, and at the Sorbonne, all or any lectures by everybody, including a very dull series on German literature by Philarete Chasles. I read books. _Inter alia_, I went through Dante's ”Inferno” in Italian aided by Rivarol's translation, of which I possessed the _very copy_ stamped with the royal arms, and containing the author's autograph, which had been presented to the King. I picked it up on the Quai for a franc, for which sum I also obtained a first edition of _Melusine_, which Mr. Andrew Lang has described as such a delightful rarity. And I also ran a great deal about town. I saw Rachel, and Frederic Lemaitre, and Mlle. Dejazet, and many more at the great theatres, and attended a.s.siduously at Bobinot's, which was a very small theatre in the Quartier Latin, frequented entirely by students and grisettes. I went to many a ball, both great and small, including the masked ones of the Grand Opera, and other theatres, at which there was dissipation and diablerie enough to satisfy the most ardent imagination, ending with the _grande ronde infernale_. I made many acquaintances, and if they were not by any means all highly respectable, they were at least generally very singular or notorious. One day I would dine at a place outside the Barrier, where we had a plain but fairly good dinner for a franc, _vin compris_, and where the honoured guest at the head of the table was the _chef des claqueurs_ or head of the paid applauders at all the theatres. Then it would be at a private _table-d'hote_ of _lorettes_, where there was after dinner a little private card-playing. I heard afterwards that two or three unprincipled gamblers found their way into this nest of poor little innocents and swindled them out of all their money. When I was well in funds I would dine at Magny's, where, in those days, one could get such a dinner for ten francs as fifty would not now purchase. When _au sec_, I fed at Flictoteau's--we called him _l'empoisonneur_--where hundreds of students got a meal of three courses with half a bottle of ordinaire, and not so bad either, for thirty sous.
It happened one night at Bobinot's that I sat in the front row of the stage-box, and by me a very pretty, modest, and respectable young girl, with her elder relations or friends. How it happened I do not know, but they all went out, leaving the young lady by me, and I did not speak to her.
Which ”point” was at once seized by the house. The pit, as if moved by one diabolical inspiration, began to roar, ”_Il l'embra.s.sera_!” (He will kiss her), to which the gallery replied, ”_Il ne l'embra.s.sera pas_.”
So they kept it up and down alternately like see-sawing, to an intonation; and be it remarked, by the way, that in French such a monotonous bore is known as a _scie_ or saw, as may be read in my romance in the French tongue ent.i.tled _Le Lutin du Chateau_, which was, I regret to say, refused by Hachette the publisher on account of its freedom from strait-laced, blue-nosed, Puritanical conventionalism, albeit he praised its literary merit and style, as did sundry other French scholars, if I may say it--who should not!
I saw that something must be done; so, rising, I waved my glove, and there was dead silence. Then I began at the top of my voice, in impa.s.sioned style in German, an address about matters and things in general, intermingled with insane quotations from Latin, Slavonian, anything. A change came o'er the spirit of the dream of my auditors, till at last they ”took,” and gave me three cheers. I had _sold_ the house!