Part 31 (1/2)

I saw her sometimes led by the hand, but oftenest without guide or protector,--never alone, however; for, rain or s.h.i.+ne, early or late, she carried always in her arms a huge puppet, with a face bigger than her own. It wore a shawl and a knit hood, the child herself being always bareheaded. It was some time before I could fathom the mystery of this doll, which seemed shapeless yet bulky, and heavier than the child could well lift, though she tugged at it faithfully and with an expression of care, as we often see poor babies in cities lugging about babies a little younger than themselves. At last I caught the puppet out one day without its shawl, and the mystery was revealed. It was a milliner's bonnet-block, on which a face had been painted. No wonder it seemed heavy and shapeless; below the face was nothing but a rough base of wood. It appeared that as soon as the thing was given to the child, she conceived for it a most inconvenient and unmanageable affection,--would go nowhere without it, would not go to sleep without it, could hardly be induced to put it for one moment out of her tired little arms, which could hardly clasp it round. It seemed but a fitting reward to perpetuate some token of such faithfulness; and after a good deal of pleading I induced the child's aunt, in whose charge she lived, to bring her to be photographed with her doll in her arms. It was not an easy thing to compa.s.s this; for the only photographer of the town, being one of the singers in the chorus, had small leisure for the practice of his trade in the Pa.s.sion Play year; but, won over by the novelty of the subject, he found an odd hour for us, and made the picture. The little thing was so frightened at the sight of the strange room and instruments that she utterly refused to stand alone for a second, which was not so much of a misfortune as I thought at first, for it gave me the aunt's face also; and a very characteristic Oberammergau face it is.

At the same time I also secured a photograph of the good Frau Rutz. It was an ill.u.s.tration of the inborn dramatic sense in the Oberammergau people, that when I explained to Frau Rutz that I wished her to sit for a picture of an Oberammergau woman at her carving, she took the idea instantly, and appeared prompt to the minute, with a vase of her own carving, her glue-pot, and all her tools, to lay on the table by her side. ”Do you not think it would be better with these?” she said simply; then she took up her vase and tool, as if to work, seated herself at the table in a pose which could not be improved, and looked up with, ”Is this right?” The photographer nodded his head, and, presto! in five seconds it was done; and Frau Rutz had really been artist of her own picture. The likeness did her less than justice. Her face is even more like an old Memling portrait than is the picture.

Weather-beaten, wrinkled, thin,--as old at forty-five as it should be by rights at sixty,--hers is still a n.o.ble and beautiful countenance.

Nothing would so surprise Frau Rutz as to be told this. She laughed and shook her head when, on giving her one of the photographs, I said how much I liked it. ”If it had another head on it, it might be very good,” she said. She is one of the few women in Oberammergau who do delicate carving. In the previous winter she had made thirty vases of this pattern, besides doing much other work.

Very well I came to know Frau Rutz's chiselled and expressive old face before I left Oberammergau. The front door of her house stood always open; and in a tiny kitchen opposite it,--a sort of closet in the middle of the house, lighted only by one small window opening into the hall, and by its door, which was never shut,--she was generally to be seen stirring or skimming, or scouring her bright saucepans. Whenever she saw us, she ran out with a smile, and the inquiry if there was anything she could do for us. On the day before the Pa.s.sion Play she opened her little shop. It was about the size of a steamboat stateroom, built over a bit of the sidewalk,--Oberammergau fas.h.i.+on,--and joined at a slant to the house; it was a set of shelves roofed over, and with a door to lock at night, not much more: eight people crowded it tight; but it was packed from sill to roof with carvings, a large part of which had been made by herself, her husband and sons, or workmen in their employ, and most of which, I think, were sold by virtue of the Frau's smile, if it proved as potent a lure to other buyers as to me. If I drove or walked past her house without seeing it, I felt as if I had left something behind for which I ought to go back; and when she waved her hand to us, and stood looking after us as our horses dashed round the corner, I felt that good luck was invoked on the drive and the day.

Driving out of Oberammergau, there are two roads to choose from,--one up the Ammer, by way of a higher valley, and into closer knots of mountains, and so on into the Tyrol; the other down the Ammer, through meadows, doubling and climbing some of the outpost mountains of the range, and so on out to the plains. On the first road lies Ettal, and on the other Unterammergau, both within so short a distance of Oberammergau that they are to be counted in among its pleasures.

Ettal is one of the twelve beautiful houses which the ecclesiastics formerly owned in this part of Bavaria. These old monks had a quick eye for beauty of landscape, as well as a shrewd one for all other advantages of locality; and in the days of their power and prosperity they so crowded into these South Bavarian highlands that the region came to be called ”Pfaffenwinkel,” or ”The Priest's Corner.” Abbeys, priories, and convents--a dozen of them, all rich and powerful--stood within a day's journey of one another. Of these, Ettal was pre-eminent for beauty and splendor. It was founded early in the fourteenth century by a German emperor, who, being ill, was ready to promise anything to be well again, and being approached at this moment by a crafty Benedictine, promised to found a Benedictine monastery in the valley of the Ammer, if the Holy Virgin would restore him to health.

An old tradition says that as the emperor came riding up the steep Ettaler Berg, at the summit of which the monastery stands, his horse fell three times on his knees, and refused to go farther. This was construed to be a sign from heaven to point out the site of the monastery. But to all unforewarned travellers who have approached Oberammergau by way of Ettal, and been compelled to walk up the Ettaler Berg, there will seem small occasion for any suggestion of a supernatural cause for the emperor's horse tumbling on his knees. A more unmitigated two miles of severe climb was never built into a road; the marvel is that it should have occurred to mortal man to do it, and that there is as yet but one votive tablet by the roadside in commemoration of death by apoplexy in the attempt to walk up. It was Alois Pfaurler who did thus die in July, 1866,--and before he was half-way up, too. Therefore this tablet on the spot of his death has a depressing effect on people for the latter half of their struggle, and no doubt makes them go slower.

How much the Benedictines of Ettal had to do with the Pa.s.sion Play which has made Oberammergau so famous, it is now not possible to know.

Those who know most about it disagree. In 1634, the year in which the play was first performed, it is certain that the Oberammergau community must have been under the pastoral charge of some one of the great ecclesiastical establishments in that region; and it is more than probable that the monks, who were themselves much in the way of writing and performing in religious plays, first suggested to the villagers this mode of working for the glory and profit of the Church.

Their venerable pastor, Daisenberger, to whom they owe the present version of the Pa.s.sion Play, was an Ettal monk; and one of the many plays which he has arranged or written for their dramatic training is ”The Founding of the Monastery of Ettal.” The closing stanzas of this well express the feeling of the Oberammergauer to-day, and no doubt of the Ettal monk centuries ago, in regard to the incomparable Ammer Thal region:--

”Let G.o.d be praised! He hath this vale created To show to man the glory of his name!

And these wide hills the Lord hath consecrated Where he his love incessant may proclaim.

”Ne'er shall decay the valley's greatest treasure, Madonna, thou the pledge of Heaven's grace!

Her blessings will the Queen of Heaven outmeasure To her quiet Ettal and Bavaria's race.”

Most travellers who visit Oberammergau know nothing of Unterammergau, except that the white and brown lines of its roofs and spires make a charming dotted picture on the Ammer meadows, as seen from the higher seats in the Pa.s.sion Play theatre. The little hamlet is not talked about, not even in guide-books. It sits, a sort of Cinderella, and meekly does its best to take care of the strangers who come grumbling to sleep there, once in ten years, only because beds are not to be had in its more favored sister village farther up the stream. Yet it is no less picturesque, and a good deal cleaner, than is Oberammergau; gets hours more of suns.h.i.+ne, a freer sweep of wind, and has compa.s.sing it about a fine stretch of meadow-lands, beautiful to look at, and rich to reap.

Its houses are, like those in Oberammergau, chiefly white stucco over stone, or else dark and painted wood, often the lower story of white stucco and the upper one of dark wood, with a fringe of balconies, dried herbs, and wood-piles where the two stories join. Many of the stuccoed houses are gay with Scripture frescos, more than one hundred years old, and not faded yet. There are also many of the curious ancient windows, made of tiny round panes set in lead. When these are broken, square panes have to be set in. n.o.body can make the round ones any more. On the inside of the brown wooden shutters are paintings of bright flowers; over the windows, and above the doors, are also Scripture frescos. One old house is covered with them. One scene is Saint Francis lying on his back, with his cross by his side; and another, the coronation of the Virgin Mary, in which G.o.d the Father is represented as a venerable man wrapped in a red and yellow robe, with a long white beard, resting his hand on the round globe, while Christ, in a red mantle, is putting the crown on the head of Mary, who is resplendent in bright blue and red. On another wall is Saint Joseph, holding the infant Christ on his knee. There must have been a marvellous secret in the coloring of these old frescos, that they have so long withstood the snows, rains, and winds of the Ammer valley. The greater part of them were painted by one Franz Zwink, in the middle of the last century. The peasants called him the ”wind painter,” because he worked with such preternatural rapidity. Many legends attest this; among others, a droll one of his finding a woman at her churning one day and asking her for some b.u.t.ter. She refused. ”If you'll give me that b.u.t.ter,” said Zwink, ”I'll paint a Mother of G.o.d for you above your door.” ”Very well; it is a bargain,” said the woman, ”provided the picture is done as soon as the b.u.t.ter,” whereupon Zwink mounted to the wall, and, his brushes flying as fast as her churn dasher, lo!

when the b.u.t.ter was done, there shone out the fresh Madonna over the door, and the b.u.t.ter had been fairly earned. Zwink was an athletic fellow, and walked as swiftly as he painted; gay, moreover, for there is a tradition of his having run all the way to Munich once for a dance. Being too poor to hire a horse, he ran thither in one day, danced all night, and the next day ran back to Oberammergau, fresh and merry. He was originally only a color-rubber in the studio of one of the old rococo painters; but certain it is that he either stole or invented a most triumphant system of coloring, whose secret is unknown to-day. It is said that in 1790 every house in both Ober and Unter Ammergau was painted in this way. But repeated fires have destroyed many of the most valuable frescos, and many others have been ruthlessly covered up by whitewash. An old history of the valley says that when the inhabitants saw flames consuming these sacred images, they wept aloud in terror and grief, not so much for the loss of their dwellings as for the irreparable loss of the guardian pictures. The effect of these on a race for three generations,--one after another growing up in the habit, from earliest infancy, of gazing on the visible representations of G.o.d and Christ and the Mother of G.o.d, placed as if in token of perpetual presence and protection on the very walls and roofs of their homes--must be incalculably great. Such a people would be religious by nature, as inherently and organically as they were hardy of frame by reason of the stern necessities of their existence. It is a poor proof of the superiority of enlightened, emanc.i.p.ated, and cultivated intellect, with all its fine a.n.a.lyses of what G.o.d is not, if it tends to hold in scorn or dares to hold in pity the ignorance which is yet so full of spirituality that it believes it can even see what G.o.d is, and feels safer by night and day with a cross at each gable of the roof.

One of the Unterammergau women, seeing me closely studying the frescos on her house, asked me to come in, and with half-shy hospitality, and a sort of childlike glee at my interest, showed me every room. The house is one of some note, as note is reckoned in Unterammergau: it was built in 1700, is well covered with Zwink's frescos, and bears an inscription stating that it was the birthplace of one ”Max Anrich, canon of St. Zeno.” It is the dwelling now of only humble people, but has traces of better days in the square-blocked wooden ceilings and curious old gayly-painted cupboards. Around three sides of the living-room ran a wooden bench, which made chairs a superfluous luxury. In one corner, on a raised stone platform, stood a square stove, surrounded by a broad bench; two steps led up to this bench, and from the bench, two steps more to the lower round of a ladder-like stair leading to the chamber overhead. The kitchen had a brick floor, worn and sunken in hollows; the stove was raised up on a high stone platform, with a similar bench around it, and the woman explained that to sit on this bench with your back to the fire was a very good thing to do in winter. Every nook, every utensil, was s.h.i.+ning clean. In one corner stood a great box full of whetstones, scythe-sharpeners; the making of these was the industry by which the brothers earned the most of their money, she said; surely very little money, then, must come into the house. There were four brothers, three sisters, and the old mother, who sat at a window smiling foolishly all the time, aged, imbecile, but very happy. As we drove away, one of the sisters came running with a few little blossoms she had picked from her balcony; she halted, disappointed, and too shy to offer them, but her whole face lighted up with pleasure as I ordered the driver to halt that I might take her gift. She little knew that I was thinking how much the hospitality of her people shamed the cold indifference of so-called finer breeding.

A few rods on, we came to a barn, in whose open doorway stood two women thres.h.i.+ng wheat with ringing flails. Red handkerchiefs twisted tight round their heads and down to their eyebrows, barefooted, bare-legged, bare-armed to the shoulders, swinging their flails l.u.s.tily, and laughing as they saw me stop my horses to have a better look at them; they made one of the vividest pictures I saw in the Ammer valley. Women often are hired there for this work of thres.h.i.+ng, and they are expected to swing flails with that l.u.s.ty stroke all day long for one mark.

THE Pa.s.sION PLAY AT OBERAMMERGAU.

The stir the Pa.s.sion Play brings does not begin in Oberammergau till the Friday afternoon before the Sabbath of the play. Then, gradually, as a hum begins and swells in a disturbed hive of bees, begins and swells the bustle of the incoming of strangers into the little place.

By sunset the crooked lanes and streets are swarming with people who have all fancied they were coming in good season before the crowd. The open s.p.a.ce in front of George Lang's house was a scene for a painter as the sun went down on Friday, Sept. 5, 1880. The village herd of cows was straggling past on its easy homeward way, the fifty bells tinkling even more sleepily than in the morning; a little goat-herd, with bright brown eyes, and bright brown partridge feathers in his hat, was worrying his little flock of goats along in the jam; vehicles of all sorts,--einspanners, diligences, landaus,--all pulling, twisting, turning, despairing, were trying to go the drivers did not know where, and were asking the way helplessly of each other. To heighten the confusion, a load of hay upset in the middle of the crowd. Twenty shoulders were under it in a twinkling, and the cart was rolled on, limping, on three wheels, friendly hands holding up the corner. Thirty-four vehicles, one after another, halted in front of George Lang's door. Out of many of them the occupants jumped confidently, looking much satisfied at sight of so comfortable a house, and presenting little slips of white paper consigning them to Mr. Lang's care. Much crestfallen, they re-entered their vehicles, to be driven to the quarters reserved for them elsewhere. Some argued; some grumbled; some entreated: all in vain. The decrees of the house of Lang are like those of the Medes and Persians.

It was long after midnight before the sound of wheels and voices and the cracks of postilions' whips ceased under my windows; and it began again before daylight the next morning. All was hurry and stir,--crowds going to the early ma.s.s; still greater crowds, with anxious faces, besieging the doors of the building where were to be issued the numbered tickets for seats at the Play; more crowds coming in, chiefly pedestrians; peasant men and women in all varieties and colors of costume; Englishmen in natty travelling-clothes, with white veils streaming from their hats; Roman Catholic priests in squads, their square-brimmed hats and high black coats white with dust. Eager, intent, swift, by hundreds and hundreds they poured in. Without seeing it, one can never realize what a spectacle is produced by this rus.h.i.+ng in of six thousand people into a little town in the s.p.a.ce of thirty-six hours. There can be nothing like it except in the movements of armies. Being in the streets was like being in a chorus or village-fair scene on an opera stage a mile big, and crowded full from corner to corner. The only thing to do was to abandon one's self to currents, like a s.h.i.+p afloat, and drift, now down this street and now down that, now whirl into an eddy and come to a stop, and now hurry purposelessly on, just as the preponderating push might determine.

Mingled up in it all, in everybody's way and under all the horses'

feet, were dozens of little mites of Oberammergauers, looking five, six, seven years of age, like lost children, offering for sale ”books of the Pa.s.sion Play.” Every creature above the age of an infant is busy at this time in other ways in Oberammergau; so it is left for the babies to hawk the librettos round the streets, and very shrewdly they do it. Little tots that are trusted with only one book at a time,--all they can carry,--as soon as it is sold, grab the pennies in chubby hands and toddle home after another.

As the day wore on, the crowd and the hum of it increased into a jam and a racket. By four o'clock it was a din of wheels, cracking whips, and postilions' cries. Great diligences, loaded down till they squeaked and groaned on their axles; hay-wagons of all sizes, rigged with white cloth stretched on poles for a cover, and rough planks fastened to the sides for seats, came in procession, all packed with the country people; hundreds of shabby einspanners, bringing two or three, and sometimes a fourth holding on behind with dangling feet; fine travelling-carriages of rich people, their postilions decked in blue and silver, with s.h.i.+ning black hats, and bra.s.s horns swung over their shoulders by green and white cords and ta.s.sels,--on they came into the twist and tangle, making it worse, minute by minute.

Most remarkable among all the remarkable costumes to be seen was that of an old woman from Dachau. She was only a peasant, but she was a peasant of some estate and degree. She had come as escort and maid for four young women belonging to a Roman Catholic inst.i.tution, and wearing its plain uniform. The contrast between the young ladies'

conventional garb of black and white and the blazing toilet of their guide and protector was ludicrous. She wore a jacket of brocade stiff with red, green, and silver embroidery; the sleeves puffed out big at the shoulder, straight and tight below to the wrist. It came down behind only a little lower than her shoulder-blades, and it was open in front from the throat to the waist-belt, showing beneath a solid ma.s.s of gold and silver braid. Nine enormous silver b.u.t.tons were sewed on each side the fronts; a scarf of soft black silk was fastened tight round her throat by a superb silver ornament, all twists and chains and disks. Her black woollen petticoat was laid in small, close flutings, straight from belt to hem, edged with scarlet, and apparently was stiff enough to stand alone. It was held out from her body, just below the belt, by a stiff rope coil underneath it, making a tight, hard, round ridge just below her waist, and nearly doubling her apparent size. All the women in Dachau must be as ”thick” as that, she said; and ”lovers must have long arms to reach round them!” The jacket, petticoat, and scarf, and all her ornaments, had belonged to her grandmother. What a comment on the quality of the fabrics and the perpetuity of a fas.h.i.+on! She was as elegant to-day as her ancestor had been nearly a century before her. On her head she wore a structure of brocaded black ribbon, built up into high projecting horns or towers, and floating in streamers behind. As she herself was nearly six feet tall, this s.h.i.+ning brocade fortress on the top of her head moved about above the heads of the crowd like something carried aloft for show in a procession.

Another interesting sight was the peasants who had come bringing edelweiss and blue gentians to sell,--great bunches of the lovely dark blue chalices, drooping a little, but wonderfully fresh to have come two days, or even three, from home; the edelweiss blossoms were there by sheaves, and ten pfennigs a flower seemed none too much to pay to a man who had climbed among dangerous glaciers to pick it, and had walked three whole days to bring it to market.

The very poor people, who had walked, were the most interesting. They came in groups, evidently families, two women to one man; carrying their provisions in baskets, bundles, or knapsacks; worn and haggard with dust and fatigue, but wearing a noticeable look of earnestness, almost of exaltation. Many of them had walked forty or fifty miles; they had brought only black bread to eat; they would sleep the two nights on hay in some barn,--those of them who had had the great good fortune to secure such a luxury; the rest--and that meant hundreds--would sit on the ground anywhere where they could find a spot clear and a rest for their heads; and after two nights and a day of this, they trudged back again their forty miles or fifty, refreshed, glad, and satisfied for the rest of their lives. This is what the Pa.s.sion Play means to the devout, ignorant Catholic peasant of Bavaria to-day, and this is what it has meant to his race for hundreds of years.