one pen--too much for a thousand pens. But you never saw lions, life
size, made out of soap, did you? Or temples, pagodas, monuments of every
design, made out of buttons, matches, tacks, not mere toys, but big
enough for out doors?
Among others of these artistic and architectural structures, was a tall
shaft monument of tobacco, fine-cut, twist, stem, and leaves,
labeled--fancy my heart-throb on reading--“Maryland,” “Virginia,”
“Kentucky.” And these are some of the innumerable sights I saw at the
exposition. What else did I see?
“Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat, where have you been?
I have been to London to see the Queen.”
I saw the crown princess and her daughter! I looked at them and they
looked at me--took me in as they did the shop-windows, trees, whatever
came within the sweep of their roving glance--just as I did them! Such a
plain, insignificant little party as they were! The crown prince was not
with them. Just two ordinary open carriages, the princess in the first,
with her daughter by her side; in the other, a lady and gentleman in
attendance. They came out from a shop of carvings just as we were
approaching it to enter. And I saw a wedding at the chapel of the
Rathhaus (town hall)! Neither the bride nor groom was on the sunny side
of forty. She was dressed in a rich heavy black silk, with a white
illusion head-dress, that was voluminous enough for a veil, though
evidently not intended for one. The ceremony was apparently a simple
civil service, conducted by the magistrate, or whatever he was, and an
assistant. The bridal party was accompanied by one person only--a
gray-haired old gentleman.
How the days sped by! The first thing I knew, ere I was half ready to
leave, my last day had come. I bought a package of Nuremberg’s famous
gingerbread, and bidding my pleasant party “good-bye,” most reluctantly
betook myself to my home-bound train. Traveling, as I was, alone, I was
put in the special “ladies’” car, “Fuer Damen,” as it is labeled.
Presently, another “lone female” was put in, who proved to be a young
German lady. I began to stumble in German to her. She smiled, and
replied in tolerable English, it being one of the five languages of
which she was in a manner mistress; and she was just beginning the
sixth! “I have so much time,” she said simply, in explanation of such
learning. She was educated in Geneva. If she is an average example of
its pupils, Geneva’s schools must be indeed desirable. And the next
thing I knew, our five weeks at Heidelberg were gone, and it was time to
“move on” again.
We started for Munich via Baden-Baden, Strassburg and Switzerland--an
attractive programme, but not less did it hurt to say another
“good-bye” to the pleasant friends we had made--the beautiful Pension,
which had come to have a real home feeling; the romantic “ancient
university town,” and the grand old castle, both Longfellow-haunted to
me; and to the various charming places in the environs--become almost as
familiar as the favorite haunts of childhood. Our bright little
Fraulein, whose dainty motions made one think of a bird’s, said in her
very best English: “You must tired once more get, and soon again come
home.” Her eyes were brimming with tears. The good frau mother took me
in her arms, and in German fashion pressed each of my cheeks against
each of hers. It was a most charming family.
We spent a night at Baden, the great Spa--the ex-gambling hell--the
beautiful city that has risen from its degradation and put on robes of
innocence. This is due to the efforts of the present and the preceding
grand duke, both men of exceptionally noble characters, and warmly
honored and loved. The former prosperity and popularity given by the
seductions of the gambling bank have been succeeded and surpassed by
attractions of a different and higher kind. Instead of the dreadful
fascinations of the Cursall, the palatial Friedrichsbad, said to be the
most complete bathing establishment in the world, offers the healing and
luxury of its thermal and mineral baths. It takes its name from the
reigning grand duke, who was its chief and most intensely interested
projector. But his wise exertions and princely tastes have apparently
known no restrictions. They have been shown in the erection of other
magnificent buildings, in the laying out and exquisite adornment of
public parks and promenades; indeed in doing everything possible to
render Baden not only a delightful summer resort, but suitable for a
permanent home.
It is provided with theaters, balls, fine music, scientific lectures,
etc. The results justify his efforts and sagacious foresight. Wealthy
families of rank all over Germany are making it a home. Do I seem to
dwell on Baden and its grand duke? Well, I may as well admit, all the
homage I am capable of is evoked by such a man and such a work. I have
his photograph and many little pictures of his Baden! Have you ever read
in a way that impressed you to remembrance of the beautiful situation of
Baden? The highest compliment that can be bestowed, as the guide-book
says, is this: “It vies with Hiedelberg.” It lies among picturesque
wooded hills, at the entrance of the Black Forest, on the Oehlbach; it
is on the right bank of the stream, and runs up “a slope of the
Battert,” the summit of which is crowned by the New Schloss, one of the
grand duke’s residences. It has a Saratoga look. Haven’t all watering
places a close kin look? But it has its own foreign look too, and
distinctive features, even from those of Weisbaden, its rival.
On the left bank of the Oos--“the well corrected Oos,” as I have seen it
called somewhere, because it has been confined for some distance between
high stone walls--are the pleasure grounds, the Conversationhaus (the
old Cursaal), the Trinkhalle on one side of an open square, full of
avenues of shade trees, and in one corner of which is the gay and
fanciful “Music-Kiosk,” where the band plays, and the Lichtenthale
Allee. This last is an avenue of “vanishing distances,” of lime trees,
oaks, maples, flower-beds, shrubberies, fountains, and all kinds of
ornamental seats scattered through it. The Oos, the most turbid,
turbulent strip of a river, dashes along as if in a perfect fury at
those confining walls. The walls themselves, though, are a special
feature of the rare loveliness that meets the glance on every side;
they are so festooned and draped with vines one can scarce more than
guess at the stones so veiled. The Virginia creeper was so in excess the
river seemed rushing between a running fire of crimson flames. It was
indeed “exceeding beautiful.” In the evening we walked in the
brilliantly lighted square, peering into the gay shop windows, stopping
to listen to the band, mingling with the throngs of well-dressed people,
and bringing up in the “great saloon” (fifty-four yards long and
seventeen wide) of the Conversationhaus for a rest and a study of the
novel scene. Finally we strolled through the two old gambling saloons
(the Landscape and the Italian) and ever so many others, and lost
ourselves in admiration of the beauty and comfort. The next day we spent
in driving to the Old Schloss, six miles from town, on a high “berg,”
and to all the points of most interest. The Old Schloss is a very
romantic old ruin, and commands the finest views around Baden. From it
we went to the New Schloss, and were shown through a number of handsome
saloons and the apartment of the grand duke and duchess. It was such a
perfect little gem of an apartment that I must give you a peep into it.
A comparatively quite small oblong room, with two doors opposite each
other and in the middle of each wall. One end of the oblong was a dead
wall, the other a large bay window of the loveliest stained glass, in
pictures of all the choicest points about Baden. Only the center pane
was plain glass; it too, though, framing a lovely view of the scene
outside. The doors were rather doorways, being, I should think, ten feet
high by four wide, all apparently one solid magnificent mirror. As one
steps across the threshold, himself or herself is beheld before, behind,
on either hand, overhead, in infinite repetition. The French custodian
made merry in showing off this ingenious and amusing trick of reflecting
surfaces. After this came the Friedrichsbad, with its innumerable
varieties of baths, the Trinkhalle and a glass of its steaming water,
and--“and other things too numerous to make mention of,” to quote from
our old town crier.
With decided reluctance we set our faces toward Strassburg, where, to be
sure, we wished to go, but we did not feel ready to leave Baden.
We spent two days at Strassburg. You know there was the grand Cathedral,
with its grander clock, to see, the fortifications, some fine public
parks, and the immense Alsatian bows with the women attached, besides a
lunch on the famous local dish, pates de foie gras. I circumnavigated
the Cathedral, loitered through and through it, and finally sat down
before the clock at the stroke of eleven, to watch it through the next
hour. I saw the little boy come out and strike his quarter and
disappear, the youth, the middle-aged man, the old man; and then the
grand midday procession of puppets representing the Apostles, pass
before another puppet representing Christ, making fitting reverence, all
but that dreadful Judas, who turned his back on him. The cock, too,
performed beautifully, flapped his wings and stretched out his neck, and
crowed a sure-enough chanticleer crow, loud enough and cheerily enough
to waken the soundest sleeper and make the laziest willing to creep out
of bed. The little angel turned his hour-glass, the show was over, and I
came away very much impressed with that wonder of mechanism which has
been running and regulating itself ever since 1842, and is calculated to
do this for an unlimited number of years. And don’t you think I did
right to shut my ears and refuse to listen to a young Yankee “Paul Pry,”
recently from a six months’ sojourn in Strassburg, who wished to make me
believe there was a man behind performing a la--the organ-grinder! The
Alsatian bows were a perpetual feast of fun, but as a feast of the
palate once is often enough for me of the pates de foie gras.
From Strassburg through the Black Forest by rail was a run of 728 miles.
We had a series of thirty-eight tunnels in succession. The very
foundation rocks of the earth seem to have been blasted and dug through
to make this admirable road; the round charms of which could not be
summed up in a Summer day’s gossip.
L. G. C.
Munich, September 27, 1882.
[Illustration]
LETTER FROM MUNICH.
Baden was perfect in its way, and we left reluctantly. We “did” it quite
thoroughly--had a six mile drive to the Old Schloss, a fine old ruin, on
top of a high hill, with beautiful views of bergs, valleys, and the
town.
Then a visit to the New Schloss, one of the residences of the Grand
Duke. We were shown through some noble apartments, which I’ll describe
to you in detail when we meet. We went to the Trinkhalle and drank some
of the streaming water. The others made faces, but I did not find it
unpleasant. Then through the great Friedrichsbad, the principal
bath-house. I believe it furnishes every kind known to science or
desired by either suffering or luxurious humanity. And so on. At
Strassburg, the Cathedral with that wonderful clock! “The half has not
been told,” and it does not begin to come up to the reality. The way
that cock flaps its wings, stretches its neck and crows is enough to
make all created cocks die of envy. At St. Thomas Church, with its
magnificent monument to Marshal Saxe; and its most singular chapel,
containing the bodies of the Duke of Nassau and his daughter--the
former embalmed, the latter a slowly crumbling skeleton--both dressed in
the very clothes they wore! I cannot imagine a more ghastly and singular
spectacle than that of each lying there in an air-tight coffin, the
entire top of glass, thus allowing a full view.[B] Yet it was not
revolting to me, except as the dead were made a spectacle of. I gazed at
them with an equal fascination and reverence. We were much interested in
the fortifications, great numbers of soldiers and their drilling.
And we did not fail to indulge in the Strassburg specialty of pates de
foie gras. I was reminded of a criticism on a juvenile composition of
mine by one who knew how _not_ to withhold the wholesome truth: “Its
individuality is not sufficiently palpable.” At Constance we held our
“Council,” and the reports from Switzerland being very unfavorable,
decided to put it off to a more auspicious season.
Constance is a most charmingly situated and attractive little city. We
stayed at the Insel Hotel, the old monastery, in which Huss was
imprisoned, you know; and I saw the cell in which he was confined. It
was underground, and its walls were washed by the waters of the lake. I
set my feet on that white spot in the slab of the nave of the Cathedral
where he stood when he was condemned to be burned at the stake. You
remember it is said to remain dry always, even when the rest is wet.
Finally, we drove to the stone that marks the place where he and Jerome
suffered that dreadful sentence. It is a pile of rocks, all overgrown
with ivy and other vines, except where slabs show through bearing
commemorative inscriptions.
From Constance to Lindau we had an enchanting sail over an emerald sea,
with many a pretty village gleaming along its shore, “like a white swan
on her reedy nest;” and then green hills, that soon turned into denser
clouds, as it were, and directly, almost in a flash, the snow-covered
Alps!
Railway from Lindau here; and such a succession of pictures! Long, green
valleys, dotted with picturesque villages; chains of wooded knolls;
ranges of dark, pine-covered mountains, overtopped in places with a vast
jumble of cones; snow-covered Alps again, that shone in the sunlight
like molten silver! Words avail little toward reproducing such a
panorama. Only one’s own eyes can do it even the faintest justice.
I hope you have seen it, or, if not, will some day _soon_, before
you grow an old man. Have had a long, lazy, inconsequential,
just-going-anywhere-I-pleased stroll this perfect afternoon. The sky is
without a fleck; the air crystal clear; the sunshine just that happy
mingling of warmth and bracing quality that makes mere animal existence
an ecstasy. I could have walked to the uttermost ends of the earth in
it. The streets are wide, clean, admirably paved, handsomely built; fine
houses of beautiful designs in a soft, creamy-white stone. Parks,
gardens, avenues, open squares, trees, flowers, grass, and grand
monuments are innumerable. I felt as if I were under a spell of
enchantment. What a place to shrink from was “indoors!” I stayed out
till the very last moment.
What a city indeed is this München, the capital of “pretentious little
Bavaria!” Think of the days of delight before me in its vast halls of
art! I am sure you will, and with an added invocation out of your kind
heart for whatever else may be good for me.
L. G. C.
Munich, September 24, 1882.
MÜNCHEN.
This moment finished the second reading of yours of 22d. Ah! there are
some things you don’t have any conception of; for instance, you don’t
know how good it is to get a letter from home in a foreign land. I do.
Oh! Oh! Oh!
I came in from the opera, Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” in German, in a “rapt
ecstasy,” and, in the act of seating myself at our “after the play
little supper,” I saw your letter lying on my plate. I am intuitive; I
knew it was from you. I picked it up and laid it down with the address
on the under side. What would “Goggles” say to that? No; he is not a
woman; he is not Miss S----. The French have a proverb that runneth in
this wise: “La patience c’est la genie.” If it had been wisdom those
keen little epigrammatists would not have missed it so. However, I do
not wish to discourage you in the exercise of that passive virtue;
rather let it “work its good and perfect work.” Miss S----, not
“Goggles,” then said: “Why are you not going to read your letter; will
it keep?” Of course I blushed and hung down my head and simpered,
and--but you’ve seen the process many a time. Now, what would you give
to know how soon I got through with that dainty meal, and hurried away
to be “all alone to myself,” to pore over the letter that confessed to
two “love letters” to another woman. It does not need you or anybody
else to convince me I am the superarchangelic creature I was reported to
you. I know it myself now! See how good I am to write at this late hour,
not finding it possible to put you off to that will-o’-the-wisp time, “a
more convenient season.” And so glad of the love letters; not jealous a
bit, because they went where I want them to go! “Don’t worry in well
doing,” “effuse,” “flow like the lava,” “let all the currents of your
being set that way,” and so come into possession of that great estate
which all the kingdoms of the earth cannot match--“a noble woman nobly
planned.” Oh, please, I did not write those letters for any one but my
sister-in-law. She cut them up, and pieced them together again to suit
them to “print,” After they were published she wrote what she had done,
begging my forgiveness, but making such an appeal in behalf of the
paper I not only could not condemn, I even had to tell her she might do
as she pleased with my letters to her, _only my name must not be known
in connection_ with them. You fairly frighten me when you speak of them
in the same breath with your friends Mr. W---- and “E. A.” Indeed, I
feel timid about writing to you, since you have such letters as theirs.
Only, we write to each other for the simple “fun of the thing,” not
giving much heed to anything else, don’t we? And, on the whole, I hail
from “Old Kaintuck,” and that doesn’t mean cowardice in any direction
exactly!
I wish you could have been with me in Nuremberg--my heart city. You’d
have seen things too--all that I did not see; and between us there would
not have been much left behind. I am going back there some day--ah! that
misty future--it may be as the children are credited with saying, though
I never heard them, “before soon,” and it may be when I die and am
resurrected there. This Bavarian soil has a curiously homey tread. I can
easily see how I might linger here, “maybe for years, maybe forever.” So
much to do; so many places to go to; so much to see; such food for
thought, imagination, for _dolce far niente_. You know the kind of
pabulum that witching state of existence claims, but who can describe
it? I am tempted to give you “a sample day” out of this wonder life in
Munich. Do I count egotistically when I admit I count on your caring for
it, because I _count on the interest of friendship_? Did I tell you to
expect and excuse repetitions? Think how many letters I write, and every
one wishes to hear everything, and I try not to disappoint.
We are fortunate in pensions. I am on Maximilian Platz, and my windows
look out on, first, the Schiller Monument Platz, an exquisite memorial
platz, all to itself; a semi-circle, with a thick half belt of trees for
the background; in front an oval plat of grass, bordered with a bed of
flowers, in the center of which stands the statue in bronze on a white
marble pedestal. Just in front of it, grown in the grass, is an
evergreen wreath; beyond it rise, above a thicket of trees in their rich
Autumn tints, the towers of the Wittelsbach Palace, the residence of
Ludwig (grandfather of the present king) after his abdication, Brienner
strasse on one side and Maximilian Platz (a great semicircular street)
on the other. By the way, they converge, the latter here running into
the other, and thus making an end of itself, from a spacious boulevard
and driveway, around which are blocks of fine edifices in a
cream-colored stone. Immediately beneath my windows is a small
triangular platz, a _bijou_ of a beer garden, in trees and vines, a
gorgeous mosaic of greens, golds, browns and scarlets, and bowers and
tables, and chairs and shaded lamps, the kind that make moonlight.
Well, I begin the day with my breakfast in my own apartment, all alone.
That’s the custom of the country, you know, not my indolence. With that
spectacle to interest and claim my eager eyes, I shall give you day
before yesterday. At 10 a. m. Miss S---- and I went to the palace, which
means an entire square composed of three immense palaces--the Konigsbau,
the Alte Residenz, or Old Palace, and the Festsaalbau--each occupying
one side of the square; the fourth being filled up with the Court Chapel
and Court Theater. The greater part of all these is accessible, which
makes so much to be seen it has to be taken in “broken doses,” _so zu
sagen_. The Schatzkammer (Treasury) was our objective point. We ran the
gauntlet of soldiers on guard, a spacious court with a handsome
fountain, a kind of cloistered stretch with a wonderful grotto of
shells, a maze of small ante-rooms, till finally, in a state of perfect
bewilderment, we were taken in hand by the major-domo, who procured our
tickets (a little ceremony requiring your cards and a silver mark), and
ushered us into--oh! Monte Christo, the Arabian Nights, that stately
pleasure dome that Kublai-Khan decreed in Zanadu! We wandered through
them all. First, through a long gallery called the Stammbaum
(Genealogical Tree), containing the portraits of the princes and
princesses of the house of Wittelsbach. The room itself is most
attractive in gold, gilt and white ornamentation, what space is left
from the pictures--a collection that any family might be proud of. At
the end, “Open Sesame,” and a great door flies back, and we enter. I
wish I had Ovid’s pen, with which he wrote the description of the Palace
of the Sun! Such a blaze of diamonds and rubies, and pearls and
emeralds, and all the gems of the earth! There was the _Hausdiamant_, a
monster brilliant “in the Order of the Golden Fleece;” and the
Palatinate pearl, half black, half white; strings of buttons by the yard
of diamonds, a central one as large as a silver quarter, encircled by
smaller ones; breast-plates, as it were, of pear-shaped pearls dangling
from a mesh of diamonds; crowns of diamonds that had a blinding
brilliancy; cabinets filled with vessels made from rich stones and
inlaid with the most precious stones; a copy of Trajan’s Pillar it took
the goldsmith twenty years to execute; and more of such royal belongings
than I could get into a day’s description.
And one thing not put down in the catalogue: As I was standing
transfixed by some ornaments in _pink rubies_ and diamonds, over my
shoulder sounded the tones of a woman’s voice in American English. You
ought to have heard the suppressed fervor of my exclamation under my
breath: “Oh, you blessed American tongue!” I turned to confront a most
agreeable countrywoman, just as eager as myself for recognition on that
ground alone. I met her again at the opera to-night, and we had another
chat. I think her husband is an artist, as they live in Florence, and he
told me he had been over here sixteen or seventeen years, and was
“longing to get back home.” On leaving the palace, Miss S---- came home;
but I wasn’t half ready for indoors--never am except at meal-times and
bed-time! So I wandered around the streets in the sunshine, looking in
the shop windows and picking up a picture here and there--among
[Illustration: The Old Kaiser at Historical Window.]
them that of the “Vier Konige,” as the old Kaiser calls it, himself
holding his baby great-grandson with as proud an air as if it was his
own first-born son, with his son and grandson on either side. Four
living generations in the same picture is indeed a spectacle to be made
a note of.