"If you come to Heidelberg you will never want to go away," says Mr.
Warner in his "Saunterings." It was in summer that he said it. He had
wandered everywhere over the lovely hills. He knew this quaintest of
quaint towns by heart. He had studied the beautiful ruin in the sunshine
and by moonlight, and had listened amid the fragrance and warmth of a
midsummer night to the music of the band in the castle grounds, and to
the nightingales. I, who have only seen Heidelberg in the depth of
winter, with gray skies above and snow below, echo his words again and
again.
"Don't go to Heidelberg in winter. Don't think of it. It's so stupid.
There is nothing there now, positively nothing. O, don't!" declared the
friends in council at Hamburg. When one's friends shriek in a vehement
chorus, and "O, don't!" at one, it is usually wise to listen with
scrupulous attention to everything which they say, and then to do
precisely what seems good in one's own eyes. I listened, I came
immediately to Heidelberg in winter, and now I "never want to go away."
And why? Indeed, it is not easy to say where the fascination of the
place lies. Everybody knows how Heidelberg looks. We all have it in our
photograph albums,--long, narrow, irregular, outstretched between the
hills and the Neckar. And all our lives we have seen the castle
imprinted upon paper-knives and upon china cups that say Friendship's
Offering, in gilt letters, on the other side. But in some way the queer
houses,--some of solid stone, yellow and gray, some so high, with
pointed roofs, some so small, with the oddest little casements and heavy
iron-barred shutters, and the inevitable bird-cage and pot of flowers in
the window, quite like the pictures,--in some way these old houses seem
different from the photographs. And when one passes up through steep,
narrow, paved alleys lined with them, and sees bareheaded fat babies
rolling about on the rough pavement, and the mothers quite unconcerned
standing in the doorways, and small boys running and sliding on their
feet, as our boys do, laughing hilariously and jeering, as our boys also
do,--why will they?--when the smallest falls heavily and goes limping
and screaming to his home,--one is filled with amazement at the
half-strange, half-familiar aspect of things, and wonders if it be
really one's own self walking about among the picture houses. And as to
the castle, I never want to see it again on a paper-weight or a
card-receiver.
There's nothing here in winter, they say. I suppose there is not much
that every one would care for. It is the quietest, sleepiest place in
the world. It pretends to have twenty thousand inhabitants, but,
privately, I don't believe it, for it is impossible to imagine where all
the people keep themselves, one meets so few.
No, there's not much here, perhaps; but certainly whatever there is has
an irresistible charm for one who is neither too elegant nor too wise to
saunter about the streets, gazing at everything with delicious
curiosity. Blessed are they who can enjoy small things.
A solemn-looking professor passes; then a Russian lady wrapped in fur
from her head to her feet. Some dark-eyed laborers stand near by talking
in their soft, sweet Italian. The shops on the Haupstrasse are
brilliantly tempting with their Christmas display. Poor little girls
with shawls over their heads press their cold noses against the broad
window-panes, and eagerly "choose" what they would like. One stands with
them listening in sympathy, and in the same harmless fashion chooses
carved ivory and frosted silver of rare and exquisite design for a score
of friends.
Dear little boy at home,--yes, it is you whom I mean!--what would you
say to an imposing phalanx of toy soldiers, headed by the emperor, the
crown prince, Bismarck, and Von Moltke all riding abreast in gorgeous
uniforms? That is what I "choose" for you, my dear. And did you know, by
the way, that here in Germany Santa Claus doesn't come down the chimneys
and fill the children's stockings, and bring the Christmas-tree, but
that it is the Christ-child who comes instead, riding upon a tiny
donkey, and the children put wisps of hay at their doors, that the
donkey may not get hungry while the Christ-child makes his visits.
Many women walk through the streets carrying great baskets on their
heads. This custom seems to some travellers an evil. The women look too
much, they say, like beasts of burden. But if a washerwoman has a great
basket of clothes to carry home, and prefers to balance it upon her head
instead of taking it in her hands, why may she not, provided she knows
how? And it is by no means an easy thing to do, as you would be willing
to admit if you had walked, or tried to walk, about your room with your
unabridged dictionary borne aloft in a similar manner. These women wear
little flat cushions, upon which the baskets rest. Those women I have
seen looked well and strong and cheerful, and walked with a firm, free
step, swinging their arms with great abandon. Three such women on a
street-corner engaged in a morning chat were an interesting spectacle.
One carried cabbages of various hues, heaped up artistically in the form
of a pyramid. The huge circumference of their baskets kept them at a
somewhat ceremonious distance from one another, but they exchanged the
compliments of the season in the most kindly and intimate way, and their
freedom of gesticulation and beautiful unconcern as to the mountains on
their heads were really edifying.
I have not as yet been grieved and exasperated by the sight of a woman
harnessed to a cart. One, apparently very heavily laden, I did see drawn
by a man and two stalwart sons, while the wife and mother walked behind,
pushing. As she was necessarily out of sight of her liege lord, the
amount of work she might do depended entirely upon her own volition, and
she could push or only pretend to push, as she pleased; or even, if the
wicked idea should occur to her, going up a steep hill she might quietly
_pull_ instead of push, and so ascend with ease. The whole arrangement
struck me as in every respect a truly admirable and most uncommon
division of family labor.
We meet of course everywhere groups of students with their dainty little
canes, their caps of blue or red or gold or white, and their altogether
jaunty aspect. The white-capped young men are of noble birth. Some of
them wear, in addition to their white caps, ornaments of white
court-plaster upon their cheeks and noses, as memorials of recent strife
with some plebeian foe. To republican eyes they are no better looking
than their fellows, and it may be said that few of these scholastic
young gentlemen, titled or otherwise, who in knots of three or five or
more, accompanied by great dogs, often blockade the extremely narrow
pavement, manifest their pleasing alacrity in gallantly scattering, and
in giving _place aux dames_ as might be desired.
It has been snowing persistently of late. More snow has fallen than
Heidelberg has seen in many years, and the students have indulged in
unlimited sleighing. The Heidelberg sleigh is an indescribable object.
Its profile, if one may so speak, looks like a huge, red, decapitated
swan. It has two seats, and is dragged by two ponderous horses with
measured tread and slow, while the driver clings in a marvellous way to
the back of the equipage, incessantly brandishing an enormously long
whip. Sometimes a long line of these sleighs is seen, in each of which
are four students starting out for a pleasure-trip. The young men fold
their arms and lean back in an impressive manner. Their coquettish caps
are even more expressive than usual. The curious thing is, that, apart
from the evidence of our senses, they seem to be dashing along with the
utmost rapidity. There is something in the intrepid bearing of the
students, in the vociferations and loud whip-crackings of the driver,
that suggests dangerous speed. On the contrary the elephantine steeds
jog stolidly on, quite unmoved by the constant din; the students
continue to wear their adventurous, peril-seeking air, and the undaunted
man behind valiantly cracks his whip.
The contrast between the rate at which they go and the rate at which
they seem to imagine that they are going is most comical. The heart is
moved with pity for the benighted young men who do not know what
sleighing is, and one would like to send home for a few superior
American sleighs as rewards of merit for good boys at the university.
The thing with the least warmth and Christian kindness about it in
Heidelberg is the stove. There may be stoves here that have some
conscientious appreciation of the grave responsibilities devolving upon
them in bitter cold weather, but such have not come within the range of
my observation.
My idea of a Heidelberg stove is a brown, terra-cotta, lukewarm piece of
furniture, upon which one leans,--literally with _nonchalance_,--while
listening to attacks upon American customs and manners from
representatives of the Swiss and German nations. The tall white
porcelain stoves which somebody calls "family monuments," are at least
agreeable to the eye. But _these_ are neither ornamental nor wholly
ugly, neither tall nor short, white nor black, hot nor cold. They have
neither virtues nor vices. We feel only scorn for the hopeless
incapacity of a stove that cannot at any period of its career burn our
fingers. It is, as a stove, a total failure, and it makes but an
indifferently good elbow-rest.
However deficient in blind adoration for our fatherland we may have been
at home, it only needs a few weeks' absence from it, during which time
we hear it constantly ridiculed and traduced, to make us fairly bristle
with patriotism.
It is marvellous how like boastful children sensible people will
sometimes talk when a chance remark has transformed a playful, friendly
comparison of the customs of different nations into a war of words.
Often one is reminded of the story of the two small boys, each of whom
was striving manfully to sustain the honor of his family.
"We've got a sewing-machine."
"We've got a pianner."
"My mother's got a plaid shawl."
"My sister's got a new bonnet."
"We've got lightning-rods on our house."
"We've got a _mortgage_ on ours!"