At eleven o’clock, the daylight not yet merged in night, we fell asleep
to harp music, played by a band of Gypsies in most picturesque garb. We
hurried to the cathedral next morning for “choral service,” and heard
some fine music, which attuned us to our loitering among its ancient
memorials. After some hours inside we came out into the lovely day, and
strolled off for a walk. From the crest of the hill on which the
cathedral is built to the water’s edge its wooded sides are laid out in
beautiful shady walks. There we wandered, keeping up a running fire of
exclamations at the beautiful broken views, gathering now a wild flower,
now a fern, or stretching up for a leaf from the masses of thick foliage
on the trees overhead. How the hours shot by! Atop of the hill again, we
found our way into a castle, in close neighborhood to the cathedral, a
charming old piece of antiquity, with its stores of rare, old curious
things. I could fill a quire of old-fashioned letter paper and not do
half justice to it. So I shan’t say anything more about it, but shut
both eyes and mouth and get away from Durham, already grown fascinating
enough to make me wish I could live in the shadow of that ancient pile
with its “gothic shade.”
Our route hither lay for the most part of the way along the coast of the
German ocean. The white breakers burst right beneath us sometimes,
sending their roar to our ears. Away off occasionally glimmered a
dream-like sail, or a phantom stretch of smoke from some
passing-out-of-our-world vessel. Near enough for a good view we saw,
“Markworth, proud of Percy’s name,”
very literally a “castle by the sea,” as it seemed as if washed by its
waves. The country landward was prettily rolling and laid off in fields
of grain and pasture. Great flocks of sheep speckled the latter. A
Scotch lady got into our “compartment” when we were still some miles
from “Dun Edin.” She was very companionable and pointed out all the
features of note as they came in sight.
The sun as it went down was a great puzzle to us; it seemed to be
setting in the east, and we could not get it to fit the points of the
compass stowed away in our craniums. You see it did not set till nearer
nine than eight o’clock, and that gave it time to get almost round to
where it had started from! The Scotch welcome quite won our hearts. We
had written and engaged rooms a week before, so knew we would be
expected. The landlady and three daintily-arrayed maids were in the
hall, and the former, Mrs. Campbell, stepped forward and took our hands,
with the sweetest-voiced welcome! We felt at home at once. Just here I
think I must give you a list of the people collected under her
roof--tourists, here for a day or weeks, as may chance: an Episcopal
High Church curate, from Wales; a Mrs. Smith and her daughter, from
Australia; a Mr. Bruce, from the Cape of Good Hope (he was there when
Stanley went there with the remnant of the host that made the trip with
him “Across the Dark Continent”); a Mr. Masters and wife, from another
part of South Africa, he an emigrant from Yorkshire and she a native
born, but the daughter of an emigrant; a lady who resides in Oxford and
is enthusiastic about it as a place of residence; two young ladies from
the south of England; another two, sisters, from London; a Miss Gurley,
a Scotch maiden lady, a great traveler and linguist, and altogether
charming. She had been to the United States and Canada, three times.
While in the United States, she was the guest of Bishop Potter. She
belongs to Edinburgh, is living across the Firth, among the hills of
Fife, not far from royal Falkland. Add us three Americans, and I think
it could be called a mixed household, indeed,
L. G. C.
Edinburgh, July 4, 1882.
[Illustration]
EDINBURGH.
We spend our days as usual, “sight-seeing.” The first place we sought
was Holyrood Palace. It is not palatial compared to Windsor, Hampton
Court, and the situation is not a cheerful one--low, in a kind of a
hollow. I can imagine it oppressively gloomy to a young girl of
nineteen, just from gay and sunny Paris, and one of the ornaments of its
brilliant court. In the picture gallery there is a lovely, full-length
portrait of Mary; but there is a still lovelier picture of her at the
castle. I saw her apartments, her bed with its faded velvet hangings,
that are slowly dropping to pieces too; one of her paintings on marble,
much chipped and defaced, showing no little merit; a piece of her
embroidery in a glass case; the little mirror hung on the wall she
doubtless took much pleasure in seeing her fair face in; the small
supper-room, with its closet, where the dreadful murder of Rizzio was
begun, and the splotch of blood on the landing at the head of the
stairs, where it was finished. How well we seem to know all about
her--poor
[Illustration: Mary Queen of Scots, Edinburgh.]
queen, unfortunate and to be pitied, even if as wicked as her worst
enemies think. At the castle, on the hill that springs up in the very
heart of the city, another suite of “Queen Mary’s apartments” is shown,
in one of which her son was born. The situation of the castle is
incomparably fine. It overlooks the entire city and a wide and varied
range beyond. Ben Lomond and Ben Ledi show themselves to the north-west,
and on a fair day the Pentland hills lie low and purple in another
direction; the Firth carries the gaze with it to the sea in the east,
and it is dotted with pretty islands, and its thither side is bounded by
the misty shores of Fife. This same view is commanded by Arthur’s Seat
and Calton Hill. Arthur’s Seat is the highest point--everybody and every
guide-book says so, and I know it from _experience_, having climbed its
823 feet. We make all kinds of excursions in the environs, and find it
the easiest thing in the world to keep up our ecstasies.
Alexander Swift says, “Every true Scotsman thinks Edinburgh the most
picturesque city in the world.” No wonder. It certainly possesses every
feature requisite to constitute that preeminence--“hill, crag, castle,
rock, blue stretch of sea, the picturesque ridge of the old town, the
squares and terraces of the new”--the quaint streets with their ancient
houses “peaked and jagged by gable and roof, and windowed from basement
to cope” with those small diamond-paned sashes that seem meant only “to
make darkness visible,” and yet other streets of a later and more
stately architecture; the Nor’ Lock converted into a dreamland of park
and gardens; the splendid monuments arresting the eye in every direction
to recall the illustrious dead and give proof of the appreciation and
taste of the living; the hills, crags and slopes that “stand dressed in
living green,” and the squares and terraces a mass of verdure and
flowers--all these and more are the charms of this “Edina, Scotia’s
darling.” Add to them the innumerable resorts, historic, beautiful,
grand!--Oh! everything--all around in every direction, and one’s
sympathy leaps forth to meet that of “every Scotsman.”
Now, shall I tell you what a “Bohemian” I have grown to be? Perhaps you
will be shocked, but really it is the most fascinating life conceivable,
and not to be condemned untried. We go where, and when, and _how_ we
please; _en grandes dames_, in the conventional splendor of full dress
and the swellest turnout of the stand, this always “under protest.”
Oftener, we set our own “locomotives” to the way and find unsuspected
Edens. But oftenest and to my heart’s delight, we mount to a super-royal
perch _atop of the “tram,”_ as the street car is called here, and “view
the landscape o’er” at such advantage as no crown or throne can command.
And that’s the way we went to Morning Side, Edinburgh’s Clifton, and to
Portobello, its sea-bathing resort. Don’t be alarmed though; we are not
setting a fashion, only following one already established. If only this
mode of traveling were practicable for everywhere. Alas! instead the
railway comes in to sadly curtail the enchantment of “views.” We had to
submit to it in order to see Roslyn Chapel, that ideal morceau of
architecture, that exquisite efflorescence of solid rock, that chapel of
chapels, “one among ten thousand and altogether lovely.” First we struck
through Hawthorden, a walk of three miles, beginning with an ordinary
park that quickly led to an ivy-mantled ruin, hung on the very brink of
a beetling crag, the rock-ribbed foundation of which dropped almost
sheer to a swift and clamorous stream two or three hundred feet below.
In this underlying basement of rock, queer caverns had been hewn, but
farther back than dates reach. We explored them notwithstanding some
hesitation, which, however, gave way to the liveliest enthusiasm. In one
we came across a sword of Robert Bruce in an open wire case. The meshes
were about an inch in length; by counting them I found the sword
measured fifty-eight inches. I wondered how much taller the warrior was
than his weapon of warfare! Leaving these caverns we were soon
descending a path that brought us to the edge of the stream and then ran
along it the rest of the way. Anything wilder or more beautiful is
rarely met, but I have seen Trenton Falls in my own native land, and it
surpasses. Climbing the hill again at the end of the three miles we
reached the chapel. Another day we spent at Dunfermline. In the Abbey we
stood on the grave of Robert Bruce; it is right under the pulpit. In the
ancient and long-disused, but well-preserved, nave we saw that
inexplicable caprice or trick of architecture, one of the great Norman
columns that scanned from one place shows the upper half much smaller
than the lower; from another, the reverse effect, and from yet another,
a pillar of perfect proportion. The ruins of the old palace and part of
the abbey are very touching and beautiful. It too has “a den,” as every
deep wooded and rocky glen with a stream running through its dark length
is called. We sat on the rustic seat under a grand old tree and looked
at the ruins and moralized, raved over the vistas, shadows, flashing
sunlight and--munched our lunch. Saturday we skimmed away on the wings
of the delicious morning as well as the wings of steam to Dalkeith and
Newbattle Abbey to spend the day between the two. The former is the
favorite seat of the Duke of Buccleugh, the latter that of his
son-in-law, the Marquis of Lothian. The ducal palace is positively ugly;
but it has its complement of grand state apartments filled with fine
pictures and the usual quota of superb articles of vertu and
bric-a-brac.
Newbattle Abbey is a charming _home_. Its park boasts some rare old
trees, among them a giant beech that is “a monarch of the forest”
verily, measuring twenty-three feet in girth. Thursday we start on our
excursion to the Highlands; it will take a week. We shall return here
for a fresh departure. Then look out for another half quire of this
moving matter.
L. G. C.
Edinburgh, July 21, 1882.
HEIDELBERG.
In Heidelberg. Think of it! What an energetic idler I am grown! The
Neckar lies a pistol-shot from my windows; high hills rise on the
thither side, looking so home-like--Maysville home, like Mr. W.’s, where
you came once upon a time. When my glance darts out the windows and
rests upon them, suddenly I catch my breath, and I am not sure whether
it is pain or pleasure I feel. Half way up they are cultivated, but the
tops are wooded. Just over my head the old castle looms up among the
trees. “The Gardens” of this pension where I am lead right up to it. I
shall climb to it to-morrow for the first time. Reached here day before
yesterday, late; got settled yesterday for a good rest; shall stay here
till the latest season for Switzerland; then it and on to Munich for
another rest.
Here’s “a mere mention” of where I have been since I wrote from “Edina,
Scotia’s darling.” From there to the English lakes we saw ten each
lovelier than the last. I wish you
[Illustration: Pension and Garden to which Goethe wrote a Poem,
Heidelberg.]
were within sound; how I would _rave_ to you! Then ruins. Furness Abbey
and Fountain’s Abbey, both beyond Melrose, and Dryburg in some respects.
London for a week (where we parted). Then to Rochester for its
cathedral, castle (a ruin) and Gad’s Hill, Canterbury. Oh! Oh! Oh!
Dover, Ostend, “The Belfry of Bruges,” Ghent, Brussels, seeing the king
and queen gratis, Antwerp, The Hague, Rotterdam (the loveliest and
liveliest of them all), Amsterdam, Cologne, Bonn, and a pilgrimage to
the graves of Niebuhr and Bunsen, Coblenz, Mayence--from Bonn to Mayence
being the grand Rhine trip. “The castled crag of Drachenfels,” and
innumerable other castled crags, sometimes as many as three in sight;
the Lurlieberg; the sweet, song-famous Bingen; the world-wide known wine
district, Rheingau, whence come the costliest wines in the
world--Johannisberger, Reiderheimer, Steinberger, etc. I saw the Schloss
Johannisbergers crowning a lovely vine-clad knoll, the entire vineyard
or vineyards comprised in forty acres. The Schloss is a very extensive
chateau, but ugly; belongs to Prince Richard Metternich, and yields a
neat little income of £8,000 ($40,000). Some of our tobacco acres do
almost as well! We climbed the precipitous rock on which “the majestic
fortress of Ehrenbrietstein” is situated. It is opposite Coblenz, and we
crossed the Rhine to reach it on a bridge of boats. I saw three bridges
of this kind. I guess they have been handed down since Caesar’s time. I
could not find out their special merit. They are not particularly
striking--just a number of boats, sharp at both ends, side by side, with
the solid flooring and railing of any bridge.
The view from the fortress is one of the finest on this glorious stretch
of seventy miles, and I was glad to see it.
I wish I could lend you my eyes for a few minutes, so you could see what
I saw. You’d come over and see it all, if it cost you that farm you
spoke of in one of your letters, or another book!
L. G. C.
Heidelberg, August 15, 1882.
[Illustration]
HEIDELBERG.
I am just home, this is “home” for the present, from a week’s delight at
Nuremberg. “Delight,” how feeble that sounds. Enchantment, fascination,
the absorption that makes one lovingly linger and loth to come away. It
is the quaintest, most charming old city, I verily believe, that the sun
shines on. From its streets, sometimes wider, sometimes narrower, but
always crookeder, to its curious houses with their high-peaked gables
and red-tiled roofs, with regular rows of such funny hooded windows let
into them, and the upper stories all cut up into the most lavishly
ornate towers, balconies, and sculptures; from its ramparts with towers
of various forms at intervals, and its dry moat, thirty-five yards wide
and thirty-five feet deep, to the river running through and dividing the
town into nearly equal parts, spanned by old and historic bridges; from
the churches, museums and galleries filled with the masterpieces of
Durer, Kraft, Stoss and Vischer, to the shops with their bewildering
medley of carvings in wood and ivory, and castings in terra-cotta,
bronze and brass, by the thousand nameless artists of to-day; from--oh!
everything to everything. Just leave all the rest of Europe out if you
can’t get it and Nuremberg in. Think how you’d feel to see a lime tree
planted by Queen Kunigunde in the year 1002! or a lamp that has never
been allowed to go out since it was first lighted in 1326! or a wedding
in the Rathhaus! I saw them all. And saw besides, the Crown Princess and
her daughter, and was not struck blind by the sight! And there was a
great exposition in progress, and yesterday the anniversary celebration
of the victory at Sedan. The exposition was a grand and most artistic
spectacle; and all “United Germany” a spectacular display of
multitudinous flags, and processions enlivened with human huzzas and
band music! I wish I dare tell you the half I saw, or a tithe of the
ravishment of mind and soul wrought by that picturesque, haunting, old
ancestral city of mine. My great grandfather went to America from it.
Did I ever tell you? Do you wonder I could not bear to tear myself away?
I am going back some day if I have the ghost of a chance.
To-day I have been resting; too tired for church, for anything but this
careless scamper over a sheet of paper. Had an interruption in a call
from some Cape Colony English ladies, tourists as we are, whom we met at
Inverness and went with to the battle-field of Culloden; and again at
Dunkeld. My traveling companion, Miss S---- of Boston, struck them quite
unexpectedly again yesterday on the “Old Bridge” that crosses the
Neckar, which I think I called Maine in my last to you. They are very
agreeable, and their party consists of the mother and five daughters.
Well, I do think the sheets of paper of the present day have the most
limited capacity. I am not half begun and this is used up! Pshaw!
L. G. C.
Heidelberg, September 3, 1882.
[Illustration]
BADEN-BADEN.
As a reward for your reformation I write to you on this precious sheet.
You see I have come to be wonderfully attached to Heidelberg, the
beautiful, the quaint, the historically poetic, learned and picturesque
old town on the Neckar. It seems like another home. So I could not show
my appreciation of you in a more complimentary way than by sending this
little series of pictures. Have you ever been here, I wonder? You did
not say, but you wrote as if you knew it by sight as well as by heart.
As I cannot know, I will venture an explanation. The panorama speaks for
itself. Put on your “specs” and look at the castle, half way up the
_berg_, “the Jettenhuhl, a wooded spur of the Konigestuhl.” Look at it
from the “Terrasse.” Thus you’ll get something of an idea of it. The
Gesprente Thurm is the one that was blown up by the French. The
thickness of the walls, twenty-one feet, and the solid masonry, held it
so well that only a fragment, as it were, gave way. It still hangs as if
ready to be replaced. “Das Grosse Fass Gebaude,” too, you will have no
difficulty in making out. If you only had it with its 49,000 gallons of
wine, but wouldn’t you divide with your neighbors! The columns in the
portico that shows in the Schlosshof are the four brought from
Charlemagne’s palace at Ingelheim by the Count Palatine Ludwig, some
time between 1508-44. The Zum Ritter has nothing to do with the castle,
but is an ancient structure (1592) in the Renaissance style, and one of
the few that escaped destruction in 1693. It is a beautiful, highly
ornamental building, and I wish you could see it, if you have not seen
it.
All the above information, I beg you to believe, I do not intend you
to think was evolved from my inner consciousness, but gathered from
the--nearest guide-book!
I am so much obliged to you for mapping out Switzerland to me. I have
been trying my best to get all those “passes” into my brain. Now, thanks
to your letter, I have them all in the handiest kind of a bunch. Ariel
like, “I’ll do my bidding gently,” and as surely, if I get there. But
there are dreadful reports of floods and roads caved in and bridges
swept away and snows and--enough of such exciting items as sets one
thinking--“to go or not to go?” We are this far on the way. Reached
here this afternoon. Have spent the evening sauntering in the gardens,
the Conversationhaus, the bazaar, mingling with the throng, listening to
the band, and comparing what it is with what it was. It was a gay and
curious spectacle, but on the whole had “the banquet-hall deserted”
look. The situation is most beautiful. It lies, you know, at the
entrance of the Black Forest, among picturesque, thickly-wooded hills,
in the valley of the Oos, and extends up the slope of some of the hills.
The Oos is a most turbid, turbulent stream; dashes through part of the
town with angry, headlong speed. There is an avenue along its bank of
oaks, limes and maples, bordered with flower-beds and shrubberies, and
adorned with fountains and handsome villas. We shall devote to-morrow to
seeing all there is to be seen, and go to Strassburg to-morrow evening
for two or three days. From there to Constance, and then hold _our_
“Council” as to further movements.
L. G. C.
Baden-Baden, September 19, 1882.
[Illustration]
FROM HEIDELBERG TO NUREMBERG.
Just after I last wrote I left my companions to worry along over their
“German lessons,” and ran away to Nuremberg. A very pleasant party was
going there on the way to Vienna, and wished me to go along. Of all
Germany, divided or united, Nuremberg was my objective point; for in
addition to its special attraction as “the most perfect surviving
specimen of mediaeval architecture in Europe,” it has a nearer interest
to me in that it was the home of my father’s paternal ancestors, as far
back as 1570. So I went with alacrity. We left Heidelberg at the
reasonable hour of 10:50 a. m. Thanks to the moderate form of tourist
life I have adopted, neither the hours of my “beauty sleep” nor that
last supreme “forty winks” of the luxuriant morning sleeper, are ever
interfered with. Our way lay up the Neckar, and as the train left the
Carlsthor it glided--literally glided, the rate of speed not exceeding
from twelve to fifteen miles an hour, and it “the fast train,”
too!--along the bank of the river, under an avenue of trees, giving
ample time for one to take in views that one might delight to shut her
eyes and recall in the dreamland hours of some future paradise. There
were cone-shaped, beautiful, castle-capped mountains, the long winding
valley with the river showing in many a lovely curve and shoot; village
after village, in the mellowest tints of Indian red, brown, and drab,
gathered around its church or chapel, almost every one with an amazing
tall spire; ranges of wooded hills that came together in one direction,
or retreated from each other in another, disclosing wonderful
vistas;--and the weather! One moment a burst of sunlight; the next a
veil of fleecy white clouds that changed into the mistiest blue;
presently a dash of rain; then the brilliant clearing up again. Thus
continued both views and weather to Heilbronn, forty-two miles. There
are two historic points, Wimpfen am Berg, which occupies an old Roman
station destroyed by the Huns under Attila; and Sinzheim, where Turenne
gained a victory in 1674. I own their history was not half so
interesting to me as their beauty. From Heilbronn to Nuremberg, over a
hundred miles, the country was one great stretch of farming land, fine
soil, and admirably cultivated.
We ran into Nuremberg in a pelting rain. All the hotels full. After
being turned away from five, with the most proper apologies be it said,
we found lodging, but “no rations” except breakfast, at a private house.
This was duly served: coffee, rolls, butter and eggs, the last _raw_!
Fancy our amusement. Having left our names at the various hotels for the
first vacancy, next morning the Golden Eagle found a place for us
beneath its sheltering wings. We were fortunate in the time of our
visit--a grand exposition was in progress. Nearly all of “united
Germany,” as well as “little Bavaria,” seemed thronging the hotels and
crowding the streets. The Crown Prince and his family occupied two
hotels. The exposition continues, and is really a superb attraction. As
for the quaint, picturesque old city itself, I cannot believe there is
another so fascinating. From its streets, sometimes wide, oftener
narrow, always crooked; its houses, eight and ten stories high, with
their lofty-peaked gables and red-tiled roofs, with five or more tiers
of the funniest little windows; its churches, monuments, and
repositories of the best productions of that brilliant constellation of
workers--Durer, Kraft, Vischer, Stoss and Hirschvogel--who lived and
flourished there together; its shops, tempting with pictures, carvings,
castings, and--toys; its museums, that it would take days to tell you
about; its curious old bridges spanning the river Pegnitz, that divides
it into two parts; the fortifications, consisting of a rampart running
round the entire old city, with towers at intervals, and a dry moat,
thirty-five feet deep and as many yards wide; its old berg, or castle,
that rises on a lofty sandstone rock with “the wide extended prospect”
from its walls and windows, and the old lime tree in the court, planted
by Queen Kunigunde somewhere from 1004 to 1024; to the cemetery where
Durer is buried, with its singular, but the most impressive monuments,
plain, massive, low monoliths, with large plates inserted in the tops
bearing the inscriptions. From first to last, everywhere and everything,
the old town, all alive with the quickest beating of the pulse of the
nineteenth century, was a delight and wonder.