HAMBURG TO LUBECK.
The bleak, icy winter of North Germany is past. We have trodden its
accumulated snows as they lay in crisp heaps in the streets of Hamburg;
and have watched the muffled crowd upon the frozen Alster, darting and
reeling, skating, sliding, and sleighing upon its opaque and motionless
surface. We have alternately loved and execrated the massive German
oven, which warmed us indeed, but never showed us a cheerful face. We
have sipped our coffee or our punch in the beautiful winter garden of
Tivoli, under the shade of lemon-trees, with fragrant flowers and shrubs
around us; and finally, have looked upon the ice-bound Elbe with its
black vessels, slippery masts, and rigid cordage, and seen the Hanoverian
milk lasses skimming its dun expanse laden with their precious burdens.
We have got over the slop and drizzle, and half-thawed slush, too; and
the boisterous March wind dashes among the houses; and what is better
than all, the fresh mornings are growing brighter and longer with every
returning sun.
Away, then, out of the old city, alone on the flat, sandy road that lies
between Hamburg and Berlin. Here we are, with hope before us, resolution
spurring us on, and a twenty-eight pound knapsack on our backs. Tighten
the straps, my friend, and you will walk easier with your load.
My journey as a workman on the tramp from Hamburg to Berlin I propose to
tell, as simply as I can. I have no great adventures to describe, but I
desire to illustrate some part of what has already been said about the
workmen in Germany, and I can do this best by relating, just as it was, a
small part of my own road experience, neither more nor less wonderful
than the experience which is every day common to thousands of Germans.
I was very poor when I set out from Hamburg in the month of March, with
my knapsack strapped to my back, my stick in my hand, and my bottle of
strong comfort slung about my neck after the manner of a locket. I was
not poor in my own conceit, for I had in my fob--the safest pocket for so
large a sum of money--two gold ducats and some Prussian dollars: English
money, thirty-five shillings. I thought I was a proper fellow with that
quantity of ready cash upon my person, and a six weeks' beard on my chin.
Many adieus had been spoken in Hamburg at our last night's revel, but a
Danish friend was up betimes to see me out of town. At length he also
bade the wanderer farewell, and for the comfort of us both my locket
having passed from hand to hand, he left me to tramp on alone, over the
dull, flat, sandy road. There was scarcely a tree to be seen, and the
sky looked like a heavy sheet of lead, but I stepped out boldly and made
steady progress. The road got to be worse; I came among deep ruts and
treacherous sloughs, and the fields on each side of the road were
flooded. In some parts the road was a sand swamp, and the walk became
converted into a gymnastic exercise; a leaping about towards what seemed
the hard and knobby places that appeared among the mud. This exercise
soon made me conscious of the knapsack, to which I was then not
thoroughly accustomed. It was not so much the weight that I felt, but
the tightness of the belt across the chest, which caused pain and
impediment of breathing. Custom, however, caused the knapsack to become
even an aid to me in walking.
A sturdy young fellow who did not object to mud was pushing his way
recklessly behind me. I was soon overtaken, we exchanged kind greetings,
and jogged on together, shoulder to shoulder. He had been upon his
travels; had been in Denmark for two years, and had left Copenhagen to
return to his native village, that lay then only eight or ten miles
before us. What was his reason for returning? He was required to
perform military service, and for the next two years at least--or for a
longer time, should war break out--was doomed to be a soldier. He did
not think the doom particularly hard, and we jogged on together in a
cheerful mood until his knowledge of the ground became distressingly
familiar, and he illustrated portions of the scenery with tales of
robbery and murder. The scenery of the road became at every turn more
picturesque. Instead of passing between swampy fields, it ran along a
hollow, and the ground was on each side broken into deep holes with
rugged edges; black leafless bushes stood out from the grey and yellow
sand, while farther away in the background, against the leaden sky, there
was a sombre fringe of thickly planted fir-trees. The daylight, dim at
noon, had become dimmer as evening drew near; the grey sky darkened, and
the tales of robbery and murder made my thoughts anything but cheerful.
As the hills grew higher on each side of us, it occurred to us both that
here was a fine place for a murder, and I let my companion go before,
handling my stick at the same time as one ready to strike instantly if
any injury were offered. I was just demonstrative enough to frighten my
companion. We were a mere couple of rabbits. Each of us in his
innocence feared that the other might be a guilty monster, and so we were
both glad enough to get out of the narrow pass. On the other side of the
glen the road widened, and my companion paused at the head of a little
path that led down to a deeper corner of the hollow, and across the
fields. That was his way home. He had but a mile to go, and was already
anticipating all the kisses of his household. He wished me a prosperous
journey; I wished him a happy welcome in his village; and we shook hands
like two young men who owed amends to one another.
He had told me before we parted that there were two houses of
entertainment not far in advance. Already I saw the red-tiled roof of
one, that looked like a respectable farm-house. From the door of that
house, however, I was turned away; and as the darkness of the evening was
changing into night, I ran as fast as I was able to the next place of
shelter. By the pump, the horse-trough, and the dirty pool I knew that
there was entertainment there for man and horse. I therefore raised the
wooden latch, and in a modest tone made my request for a bed. A vixenish
landlady from the midst of a group of screaming children cried to me,
"You can't have a bed, you can have straw." That would do quite as well,
I said.
I sat down at a table in a corner of the large room, called for a glass
of beer, produced some bread and sausage that I had brought with me from
Hamburg, and made a comfortable supper. There was a large wood fire
blazing on the ample hearth, but the landlord and his family engrossed
its whole vicinity. The house contained no other sitting-room and no
other sleeping accommodation than the one family bedroom and the barn.
While I was at supper there came in other wandering boys like myself. I
had escaped the rain, but they had not; they came in dripping: a stout
man, and a tall, lank stripling. The youth wore a white blouse and hat
covered with oil-skin; his trousers were tucked halfway up his legs, and
he had mud up to his ankles. We soon exchanged our scraps of information
about one another. The stout man was a baker from Lubeck on the way to
Hamburg; the stripling, probably not yet out of his teens, was part
brazier, part coppersmith, part tinman; had been three weeks on his
travels, and had come, like myself, from Hamburg since morning. He was
very poor. He did not tell us that; but he ordered nothing to eat or
drink, and except the draught of comfort that he got out of my bottle,
the poor fellow went supperless to bed. Not altogether supperless
though, for he had some smoke. We made a snug little party in the
corner, and talked, smoked, and comforted ourselves, after the children
had been put to bed, and while the landlord, landlady, and an old
grandfather told stories to each other in Low German by the fire. At
nine o'clock the landlord lighted his lantern, and told us bluffly that
we might go to bed. We therefore, having handed him our
papers--passports and wander-books--for his security and for our own,
followed into the barn. That was a place large enough to hold straw for
a regiment of soldiers. It was a continuation of the dwelling-house,
sheltered under the same roof. We mounted three rude ladders, and so got
from floor to floor into the loft. Having guided us safely thither, he
quitted us at once with a "good night;" taking his lantern with him, and
leaving us to make our beds in the thick darkness as we could. The straw
was not straw: it was short-cut hay, old enough to have lost all scent of
hay, and to have acquired some other scents less pleasing to the nose;
hay, trodden, pressed, and matted down, without a vestige in it of its
ancient elasticity. There was nothing in it to remind us of a summer
tumble on the hay-cock. The barn roof was open, and the March night wind
whistled over us. I took off my boots to ease my swollen feet; took my
coat off that I might spread it over my chest as a counterpane; and
struggled in vain to work a hole for my feet into the hard knotted bank
of hay. So I spent the night, just so much not asleep that I was always
conscious, dimly, of the snoring of the baker, and awoke sometimes to
wonder what the landlord's cock had supped upon, for it was continually
crowing in its sleep, on the barn-floor below. When morning broke we
rose and had a brisk wash at the pump, scraped the mud from our boots,
and breakfasted. The baker and I had plain dry bread and hot coffee.
The tinman breakfasted on milk. He said it was better--poor fellow! he
knew it was cheaper. By seven o'clock we were all afoot again, the baker
journeying to Hamburg, the tinman and I road-companions to Lubeck.
At noon, after a five hours' walk, a pleasant roadside inn with a deep
gable roof and snug curtains behind its lattice windows, tempted me to
rest and dine. "We shall get a good dinner here," I said; "let us go
in." The tinman would hear of no such thing. "We must get on to
Lubeck," he replied. "Two more hours of steady walking and we shall be
there." Poor youth! At Lubeck he could demand a dinner at his herberge,
and he had no chance of any other. So we trudged on till the tall
turrets and steeples of Lubeck rose on the horizon. The tinman desired
to know what my intentions were. Was I going straight on to Berlin
without working? Should I seek work at Lubeck? If not, of course I
would take the _viaticum_. "I thought not," I told him. "Ah, then," he
said, "you have some money." The viaticum is the tramp-money that may be
claimed from his guild by the travelling workman. Germans, like other
people, like to take pills gilded, and so they cloak the awkward incident
of poverty under a Latin name.
Lubeck being in sight we sat down upon a grassy bank to make our toilet.
A tramp's knapsack always has little pouches at the side for soap,
brushes, and blacking. We were not so near to the tall steeples as we
thought, and it took us a good hour and a half before we reached the city
gates. The approaches are through pretty avenues of young trees and
ornamental flower-plots. The town entrance at which we arrived was
simply a double iron gate, like a park gate in England. As we were about
to pass in, the sentinel beckoned and pointed us towards a little
whitened watchbox, at which we stopped to hand our papers through a
pigeon-hole. In a few minutes the police officer came out, handed to me
my passport with great politeness, and in a sharp voice bade the tinman
follow him. Such is the difference between a passport and a wander-book.
I, owner of a passport, might go whither I would: tinman, carrying a
wander-book, was marched off by the police to his appointed house of
call. I took full advantage of my liberty, and, as became a weary young
man with two gold ducats in his fob, went to recruit my strength with the
best dinner I could get. Having taken off my knapsack and my blouse, I
soon, therefore, was indulging in a lounge upon the sofa of one of the
best hotels in the sleepy and old-fashioned free city of Lubeck.