Volume Ii Part 31 (1/2)
Not like the buoyant, voluble, social Sunday of Paris, though still consecrated to leisure and family enjoyment more than to religious exercises. As I walked down the streets, the doors were standing open, men smoking their pipes, women knitting, and children playing. One place of resort was the graveyard of an antiquated church. A graveyard here is quite different from the solitary, dismal place where we lay our friends, as if to signify that all intercourse with them is at an end. Each grave was trimmed and garlanded with flowers, fastened with long strings of black or white ribbon. Around and among the graves men, women, and children were walking, the men smoking and chatting, not noisily, but in a cheerful, earnest way. It seems to me that this way of treating the dead might lessen the sense of separation. I believe it is generally customary to attend some religious exercise once on Sunday, and after that the rest of the day is devoted to this sort of enjoyment.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _of the Wartburg._]
The morning we started for Eisenach was foggy and rainy. This was unfortunate, as we were changing from a dead level country to one of extreme beauty. The Thuringian Forest, with its high, wooded points crowned here and there with many a castle and many a ruin, loomed up finely through the mist, and several times I exclaimed, ”There is the Wartburg,” or ”That must be the Wartburg,” long before we were near it. It was raining hard when we reached Eisenach station, and engaged a carriage to take us to the Wartburg. The mist, which wreathed thickly around, showed us only glimpses as we wound slowly up the castle hill--enough, however, to pique the imagination, and show how beautiful it might be in fair weather.
The grounds are finely kept: winding paths invite to many a charming stroll. When about half way up, as the rain had partially subsided, I left the carriage, and toiled up the laborious steep on foot, that I might observe better. You approach the castle by a path cut through the rock for about thirty or forty feet. At last I stood under a low archway of solid stone masonry, about twenty feet thick. There had evidently been three successive doors; the outer one was gone, and the two inner were wonderfully ma.s.sive, braced with iron, and having each a smaller wicket door swung back on its hinges.
As my party were a little behind, I had time to stop and meditate. I fancied a dark, misty night, and the tramp of a party of hors.e.m.e.n coming up the rocky path to the gateway; the parley at the wicket; the unbarred doors, creaking on their rusty hinges,--one, two, three,--are opened; in clatters the cavalcade. In the midst of armed men with visors down, a monk in cowl and gown, and with that firm look about the lips which is so characteristic in Luther's portraits. But here our party came up, and the vision was dispelled. As none of us knew a word of German, we stood rather irresolutely looking at the buildings which, in all shapes and varieties, surround the court. I went into one room--it was a pantry; into another--it was a wash room; into a third--it was a sitting room, garnished with antlers, and hung round with hard old portraits of princes and electors, and occupied by Germans smoking and drinking beer. One is sure that in this respect one cannot fail of seeing the place as it was in Luther's time. If they were Germans, of course they drank beer out of tall, narrow beer gla.s.ses; that is as immutable a fact as the old stones of the battlement.
”H.,” said C., ”did the Germans use to smoke in Luther's day?”
”No. Why?”
”0, nothing. Only, what could they do with themselves?”
”I do not know, unless they drank the more beer.”
”But what could they do with their chimney-hood?”
So saying, the saucy fellow prowled about promiscuously a while, a.s.sailing one and another in French, to about as much purpose as one might have tried to storm the walls with discharges of thistle down; all smoked and drank as before. But as several other visitors arrived, and it became evident that if we did not come to see the castle, it was not likely we came for any thing else, a man was fished up from some depths unknown, with a promising bunch of keys. He sallied forth to that part of the castle which is undergoing repairs.
Pa.s.sing through bricks and mortar, under scaffolds, &c., we came to the armory, full of old knights and steeds in complete armor; that is to say, the armor was there, and, without peeping between the crevices, one could hardly tell that their owners were not at home in their iron houses. There sat the Elector of Saxony, in full armor, on his horse, which was likewise cased in steel. There was the suit of armor in which Constable Bourbon fell under the walls of Rome, and other celebrated suits, some covered with fine engraved work, and some gilded. A quant.i.ty of banners literally hung in tatters, dropping to pieces with age. Here were the middle ages all standing.
Then we pa.s.sed up to a grand hall, which is now being restored with great taste after the style of that day--a long, lofty room, with an arched roof, and a gallery on one side, and beyond, a row of Romanesque arched windows, commanding a view of the country around.
Having finished the tour of this part, we went back, ascended an old, rude staircase, and were ushered into Luther's Patmos, about ten or twelve feet square. The window looked down the rocky sides into an ocean of seething mist. I opened it, but could see nothing of all those scenes he describes so graphically from this spot. I thought of his playful letter on the ”Diet of the Rooks,” but there was not a rook at hand to ill.u.s.trate antiquity. There was his bedstead and footstool, a mammoth vertebra, and his writing table. A sculptured chair, the back of which is carved into a cherub's head, bending forward and shadowing with its wings the head of the sitter, was said to be of the time of Luther, but not _his_ chair. There were some of his books, and a rude, iron-studded clothes press.
Thus ended for me the Lutheran pilgrimage. I had now been perseveringly to all the shrines, and often inquired of myself whether our conceptions are helped by such visitations. I decided the question in the affirmative; that they are, if from the dust of the present we can recreate the past, and bring again before us the forms as they then lived, moved, and had their being. For me, I seem to have seen Luther, Cranach, Melanchthon, and all the rest of them--to have talked with them. By the by, I forgot to mention the portraits of Luther's father and mother, which are in his cell. They show that his _mother_ was no common woman. She puts me in mind of the mother of Samuel J. Mills--a strong, shrewd, bright, New England character.
I must not forget to notice, too, a little glitter of effect--a little, shadowy, fanciful phase of feeling--that came over me when in Luther's cell at Erfurt. The time, as I told you, was golden twilight, and little birds were twittering and chirping around the cas.e.m.e.nt, and I thought how he might have sat there, in some golden evening, sad and dreamy, hearing the birds chirp, and wondering why he alone of all creation should be so sad. I have not a doubt he has done that very thing in this very spot.
JOURNAL--(CONTINUED.)
Monday, August 15. From Eisenach, where we dined cozily in the railroad station house, we took the cars for Ca.s.sel. After we had established ourselves comfortably in a _nich rauchen_ car, a gentleman, followed by a friend, came to the door with a cigar in his mouth. Seeing ladies, he inquired if he could smoke. Comprehending his look and gesture, we said, ”No.” But as we spoke very gently, he misunderstood us, and entered. Seeing by our looks that something was amiss, he repeated the question more emphatically in German: ”Can I smoke? Yes, or no.” ”No,” we answered in full chorus. Discomfited, he retired with rather a flushed cheek. We saw him prospecting up and down the train, hunting for a seat, followed by his _fidus Achates_. Finally, a guard took him in tow, and after navigating a while brought him to our door; but the gentleman recoiled, said something in German, and pa.s.sed on. Again they made the whole circuit of the train, and then we saw the guard coming, with rather a fierce, determined air, straight to our door. He opened it very decidedly, and ordered the gentleman to enter. He entered, cigar and all. His friend followed.
”Well,” said H., in English, ”I suppose he must either smoke or die.”
”Ah, yes,” I replied, ”for the sake of saving his life we will even let him smoke.”
”Hope the tobacco is good,” added H.; and we went on reading our ”Villette,” which was very amusing just then. The gentleman had his match already lighted, and was just in the act of puffing preliminarily when H. first spoke. I thought I saw a peculiar expression on his friend's face. He dropped a word or two in German, as if quite incidentally, and I soon observed that the smoking made small progress. Pie kept the cigar in his mouth, it is true, for a while, just to show he would smoke if he chose; but his whiffs were fewer and fainter every minute; and after reading several chapters, happening to cast my eye that way, the cigar had disappeared. Not long after the friend, sitting opposite me, addressed W. in _good English_, and they were soon well agoing in a friendly discussion of our route. The winged word had hit the mark that time.
We pa.s.sed the night in an agreeable hotel, Roi de Prusse, at Ca.s.sel.
By the way, it occurred to us that this was where the Hessians came from in the old revolutionary times.
Tuesday, August 16. A long, dull ride from Ca.s.sel to Dusseldorf.
Wednesday, August 17. Whittridge came at breakfast. The same mellow, friendly, good-humored voice, and genial soul, I had loved years ago in the heart of Indiana. We had a brief festival of talk about old times, art, artists, and friends, and the tide of time rolled in and swept us asunder. Success to his pencil in the enchanted glades of Germany! America will yet be proud of his landscapes, as Italy of Claude, or England of Turner.
Ho for Anvers! (Antwerp.) Through Aix-la-Chapelle, Liege, Malines, till nine at night.
Thursday, August 18. What gnome's cave is this Antwerp, where I have been hearing such strange harmonies in the air all night? We drive to the cathedral, whose tower reminded Napoleon of Mechlin lace. What a shower of sprinkling music drops comes from the sky above us! We must go up and see about this. We spiralize through a tubular stairway to an immense height--a tube of stone, like a t.i.tanic organ pipe, filled with waves of sound pouring down like a deluge. Undulations tremendous, yet not intolerable: we soon learned their origin.
Reaching a small door, I turned aside, and came where the great bell was hung, which twenty men were engaged in ringing. It was a _fete_ day. I crept inside the frame, and stood actually under the colossal ma.s.s, as it swung like a world in its spheric chime. A new sense was developed, such as I had heard of the deaf possessing. I seemed existing in a new medium. I _felt_ the sound in my lungs, in my bones, on all my nerves to the minutest fibre, and yet it did not stupefy nor stun me with a harsh clangor. It was _deep_, DEEP. It was an abyss, gorgeously illuminated of velvet softness, in which I floated. The sound was fluid like water about me. I closed my eyes. Where was I? Had some prodigious monster swallowed me, and, like another Jonah, had I ”gone down beneath the bottoms of the mountains”?