CHAPTER VII.—LORD WINTERBOURNE.

Lord Winterbourne, all his life, had been a man of guile; he was so long

experienced in it, that dissimulation became easy enough to him, when he

was not startled or thrown suddenly off his guard. Already every one

around him supposed he had quite forgiven and forgotten the wild

escapade of Louis. He had no confidant whatever, not even a valet or a

steward, and his most intimate associate knew nothing of his dark and

secret counsels. When any one mentioned the ungovernable youth who had

fled from the Hall, Lord Winterbourne said, “Pooh, pooh—he will soon

discover his mistake,” and smiled his pale and sinister smile. Such a

face as his could not well look benign; but people were accustomed to

his face, and thought it his misfortune—and everybody set him down, as,

in this instance at least, of a very forgiving and indulgent spirit,

willing that the lad should find out his weakness by experiment, but not

at all disposed to inflict any punishment upon his unruly son.

The fact was, however, that Lord Winterbourne was considerably excited

and uneasy. He spent hours in a little private library among his

papers—carefully went over them, collating and arranging again and

again—destroyed some, and filled the private drawers of his cabinet with

others. He sent orders to his agent to prosecute with all the energy

possible his suit against the Athelings. He had his letters brought to

him in his own room, where he was alone, and looked over them with eager

haste and something like apprehension. Servants, always sufficiently

quick-witted under such circumstances, concluded that my lord expected

something, and the expectation descended accordingly through all the

grades of the great house; but this did not by any means diminish the

number of his guests, or the splendour of his hospitality. New arrivals

came constantly to the Hall—and very great people indeed, on their way

to Scotland and the moors, looked in upon the disappointed statesman by

way of solace. He had made an unspeakable failure in his attempt at

statesmanship; but still he had a certain amount of influence, and

merited a certain degree of consideration. The quiet country brightened

under the shower of noble sportsmen and fair ladies. All Banburyshire

crowded to pay its homage. Mrs Edgerley brought her own private

menagerie, the newest lion who could be heard of; and herself fell into

the wildest fever of architecturalism—fitted up an oratory under the

directions of a fellow of Merton—set up an Ecclesiological Society in

the darkest of her drawing-rooms—made drawings of “severe saints,” and

purchased casts of the finest “examples”—began to embroider an

altar-cloth from the designs of one of the most renowned connoisseurs in

the ecclesiological city, and talked of nothing but Early English, and

Middle Pointed. Politics, literature, and the fine arts, sport,

flirtation, and festivity, kept in unusual excitement the whole

spectator county of Banbury, and the busy occupants of Winterbourne

Hall.

In the midst of all this, the Lord of Winterbourne spent solitary hours

in his library among his papers, took solitary rides towards Abingford,

moodily courted a meeting with Miss Anastasia, even addressed her when

they met, and did all that one unassisted man could do to gain

information of her proceedings. He was in a state of restless

expectation, not easy to account for. He knew that Louis was in London,

but not who had given him the means to go there; and he could find no

pretence for bringing back the youth, or asserting authority over him.

He waited in well-concealed but frightfully-felt excitement for

_something_, watching with a stealthy but perpetual observation the

humble house of the Athelings and the Priory at Abingford. He did not

say to himself what it was he apprehended, nor indeed that he

apprehended anything; but with that strange certainty which criminals

always seem to retain, that fate must come some time, waited in the

midst of his gay, busy, frivolous guests, sharing all the occupations

round him, like a man in a dream,—waited as the world waits in a pause

of deadly silence for the thunderclap. It would rouse him when it came.

It came, but not as he looked for it. Oh blind, vain, guilty soul, with

but one honest thought among all its crafts and falsehoods! It came not

like the rousing tumult of the thunder, but like an avalanche from the

hills; he fell under it with a groan of mortal agony; there was nothing

in heaven or earth to defend him from the misery of this sudden blow.

All his schemes, all his endeavours, what were they good for now?

FROM PERA TO BUCHAREST.

The map of Europe sufficiently explains why Bucharest, by no means the

smallest or least interesting capital in this division of the globe’s

surface, is unquestionably the least visited and known. Situate beyond

the lands of the Austrian, the Russian, and the Turk, it is remote from

every place to which business or pleasure attracts travellers. Distant

from frequented highways, the paths to it are long and wearisome. Down

the Danube from Vienna, or up it from Constantinople, or across Roumelia

and Bulgaria, with rough and savage posting, are the three best but

still untempting routes. And in Western Europe, people generally know

and care extremely little about Moldavia and Wallachia, provinces

concerning which little has been written, save in the ephemeral pages of

newspapers. The late war has done something to improve our acquaintance

with them; but still there exists concerning them an enormous amount of

ignorance, even amongst persons otherwise well informed. It is not long

since we met with such persons, who imagined a Hospodar to be sort of

savage chief, dressed in sheep’s-skin, and took Boyards to be minor

barbarians, inhabiting caves, and living by plunder and the chase. This

is far, indeed, from the fact. The Moldo-Wallachians are amongst the

greatest ramblers of our time; there are few members of the upper

classes who do not quit their own country for some weeks or months every

year, and those who have met with them in Vienna and Paris, and in their

favourite summer haunts, the baths of France and Germany, will have

found them to be usually people of much external polish, of luxurious

habits and profuse expenditure, speaking French fluently, and (although

often with a bad accent and a deficiency of refinement) almost as their

native tongue, and anxious to elevate their race and country in the eyes

of foreigners, who, they well know, are little acquainted with and apt

to depreciate them. At home they are a good-natured, courteous and

hospitable people, to whom a stranger needs but slight introduction to

be sure of friendly welcome and attention. And if the introduction be a

special one, or the foreigner’s qualities, name or position, recommend

him particularly to the notice, and open to him the heart, of the

Danubian magnate, he will find himself feasted, caressed, and cherished

to an unbounded extent; he will be bidden to repasts savoury of the

skill of exotic artists; he will be supplied with horses and escorted to

promenades, and made welcome at whatever hour he present himself, and

made acquainted with all the pretty women and eligible men in the

country—_bans_, _vorniks_, _logothetes_, _postelniks_, or by whatever

other uncouth-sounding titles they may be known. Certainly whoever goes

to the Principalities with the idea that he is proceeding to an

uncivilised and unpleasant country, will be most agreeably surprised

before he has sojourned there three days. The rural districts may not

much interest him; the roads, or their absence, may provoke his

malediction, and he will not be very loud in praise of the inns; if he

enter by way of Galatz, he will doubtless pronounce that flourishing

town to be the ugliest and most wearisome place in which ever the

convenience or caprice of the Austrian Lloyds’ Steam Company compelled a

disgusted traveller to lose forty-eight hours; the small country towns

will hardly attract him much, unless it be those which, like Giurgevo,

are memorable for actions of war; but the capitals, and especially

Bucharest, will offer him pleasures, amusements, and even comforts he

did not anticipate when plunging into this frontier land of the

Christian and the Turk. The Wallachians have a local proverb to the

effect that he who once drinks of the water of the Dumbrovitza, will

never drink of any other. The Dumbrovitza is a turbid, narrow,

poplar-and-willow-fringed streamlet that flows through Bucharest,

valueless for navigation, and having waters of no very pleasant flavour

or attractive limpidity; but the metaphor is more transparent than the

stream, and intimates the seductions of the gay, idle, _insouciant_,

dissipated, and, if truth must be told, wicked capital of Wallachia.

Even in our luxurious day, wanderers beyond railways, and into regions

little trodden, occasionally find ample cause for complaint of miscalled

houses of entertainment. The inns about the Lower Danube are rather of a

savage sort, and those at Giurgevo and Galatz, especially at the former

place, are decidedly bad; a Spanish posada is not exactly the kind of

hostelry one would select for a long sojourn; even in comfortable

Germany, when one gets off the main tracks, one often finds rough

commons and hard quarters in the small towns and village _gasthaüser_.

But I suppose there is no inn in the world, ranking as the first in a

capital city, from which a person of ordinary palate, patience, and

purse, feels more rejoiced to escape than from the much-trumpeted Hôtel

d’Angleterre, at Pera, Constantinople. Doubtless the author of _Eothen_

little thought, when vaunting the activity, resources, and polyglot

accomplishments of his travelling attendant, that he was providing

future fame and custom for one of the most detestable caravanserais to

which, for want of a better, Englishmen ever thronged. Missiri’s hotel,

the best in Pera, is one of the worst and dearest in Europe. Small

rooms, bad wines, unwholesome dinners of a bastard French description,

enormous charges, and gross impertinence, constitute the programme of an

establishment which, during the war, was so overwhelmed with custom that

it frequently rejected, in one morning, as many guests as would have

filled it from cellar to garret. The notion had got abroad that it was

the only possible inn in Pera; that at all the others you were poisoned,

and plundered, and flea-bitten to an unendurable extent; in short, that

it was _the_ correct house of resort. When an idea of this kind takes

root amongst Englishmen, argument and proof are alike in vain to

eradicate it. The truth is that there were other hotels, very little, if

at all worse, than that of Angleterre, and where, if the dining-room was

rather smaller, the civility was certainly much greater. But this was

not credited; and the English flocked to Missiri’s, until no Englishman

who could possibly find room—though it were but a shakedown in a

subterranean suite, to which lastcomers were consigned—would go

elsewhere, because at Missiri’s alone was he sure to find his

acquaintances and countrymen. So that the hotel had literally the pick

of the innumerable English passing to and from the Crimea, or abiding

for a time in Constantinople. It was in the position of a dealer who

finds ten times as many buyers as his stock will supply, and who sells

at his own price, delivering his goods with a grumble and a snarl, as if

he reproached himself at the last moment with not having been more

extortionate. The cool insolence with which this great, crowded, noisy,

comfortless tavern rejected every species of complaint, however well

founded, bidding malcontents to go farther and fare worse, the

unblushing assurance with which the most exorbitant charges were

defended and maintained, the grudging surliness with which the merest

trifle was conceded when out of the established routine of the house,

the impertinent opposition frequently made to the private arrangements

of guests, caused one to sigh for the comforts and civility of an

English village inn or French provincial hostelry—each fifth-rate in its

own country; but oh! how superior in all essentials to the best hotel at

Pera!

From this, most joyfully, on a morning early in May, did I turn my

steps, followed by two porters bearing my moderate baggage, and descend

that precipitous and perilous street which, its surface agreeably varied

by loose paving-stones, dead rats, and deep holes, is the most direct

route to the Bosphorus. The journey is not fifteen minutes long, but one

passes through much variety. The upper part of the street is rather

busy. First comes the Russian embassy, then scraping and cleaning

preparatory to the reception of a new ambassador. It was used, during

the war, as a hospital for French officers. A little lower down are the

English postoffice and the French army post; also some French _buvettes_

or wineshops, with inscriptions on their windows and walls, such as one

sees at the barriers and in the faubourgs of Paris, announcing the

excellence and price of the wine and absinthe vended within. A hotel

succeeds to the English post, and just opposite to it are some tottering

uninhabited houses, such as there are many of in Pera, uselessly

encumbering ground of immense building value, and threatening to fall

into the balconies over the way. Below this the street gets narrow, and

assumes a solitary and mysterious aspect. Armenian families dwell here;

and here, as may be known by the close latticeshutters that defend every

opening, are the houses of Mussulmans. No sign of life at door or

window, and few passengers in the street. You meet perhaps a porter

toiling up with one of those tremendous loads, which Turks alone have

the power and knack of bearing; his sinewy brown legs bare, and the

sweat raining from his shaggy eyebrows; further on, you come upon a

group of British cavalry officers, just across from Scutari, upon

luncheon and lounging intent; lower down you overtake a commissariat

official in blue uniform, with velvet facings, rosy, and inclined to

corpulence, as commissaries should be, and not unfrequently are. He is

in command of a small party of soldiers, escorting a string of Turks,

laden with specie for the Crimea. Then you are in your turn overtaken by

one in staff uniform, mounted on a handsome Arab, too good to be knocked

about amongst these abominable pavements and holey places, and followed

by an interpreter in cap of red and gold. It is the gallant and popular

Major B—— one of Charles James Napier’s Scinde lambs, who reigns supreme

over the depot of the Turkish Contingent on the Bosphorus, and is on his

way to Stamboul to smoke the pipe of peace and hold converse of grave

import with the worthy Seraskier Mehemet Rushdi Pasha—one of the few

honest and disinterested statesmen, be it said _en passant_, of whom

Turkey at the present day can boast. And now a short turn to the left

and another to the right take us through a series of old-clothes shops,

in and outside of which is exhibited the most extraordinary collection

of cast-off garments and ancient rags that the eccentric fancy of a

crazy painter ever threw together. Houndsditch would stare aghast at the

motley museum of toggery, to which all the nations of the earth have

contributed. Then we got into Pipe Street; so christened from the

occupation of its inhabitants, who are seen sitting in their open shops,

which are exactly like wooden boxes with one side taken out, kneading

and moulding red clay, and gilding and carving it with much cunning, and

fashioning cherry and jasmin sticks, and fitting mouthpieces of glass

and amber, and so composing the tchibouk—instrument well beloved by

Turks, and well enough suited to a sedate people, sedentary in habits

and composed in motions, but ill adapted to Western vivacity and

briskness, and a very sorry exchange for the commodious cigar. After

passing Pipe Street, one gets into the region of strong scents. We will

give a wide berth, if you please, to that butcher’s shop which forms the

corner; but, wide though it be, it suffices not, and we are nearly

knocked down by the whiff that overtakes us. We pass a block of grimy,

tumbledown houses, at whose open windows and doors are seen what we at

first take to be a party of boys in gaudy masquerade dresses. They are

Armenian women, tawdrily attired, for the most part in jackets and loose

trousers, having upon their heads fantastical caps of gaudy embroidered

cloth, and in their mouths large paper cigars. This street is known

amongst the British, and particularly the maritime portion of the

population of Pera, Galata, and Tophaneh, as Kummupjonni Street, a name

on whose etymology we are pondering when we are enveloped and assailed

by such a diabolical and horrible stench that all reflection and

reasoning are at once expelled from our head. It is like passing Death’s

laboratory, just as a bottle of Concentrated Essence of Cholera is

broken. How anybody can live for a day within a thousand yards of this

dreadful exhalation appears miraculous. Yet the neighbourhood is densely

peopled, and the author of the perfume, a fabricator of a mess of faded

vegetables soaked in fetid vinegar—a preparation much approved and

consumed by the Turks—stands in his shop looking healthy and comely, and

seemingly unaffected by the miasma he evokes from a sort of sewer into

which the superfluous acids and steaming residue of his cauldron flow

through a greasy grating. We fly with a shudder, the effluvia pursuing

us, and it is hours before the reminiscence entirely leaves our

nostrils, chased thence by the fresh breezes of the Euxine.

The Ferdinando Primo, Austrian Lloyds’ steamer, advertised to sail at

noon that day, was smoking at her anchorage hard by Seraglio Point when

I pushed off from the dilapidated jetty of Tophaneh. As my caïque neared

her I saw there was no need for hurry, or chance of her sailing at the

appointed time. She was environed, besieged, blockaded, by a flotilla of

the miscellaneous craft that swarm in the Golden Horn. Of all places in

the world, I believe Constantinople, its harbour and environs, to be

that which affords most studies for the painter, whether his taste be

for landscape, groups, physiognomy, or buildings, and there were a

thousand to be found here in the congregation of boats and miscellany of

races that pressed, splashed, rubbed, ground, screamed, scolded, and

swore against the sides of the slovenly Austrian craft, whose decks were

a chaos of lumber and a hive of humanity. My two athletic and

picturesque Greeks, in their red skull-caps, loose shirts, and short

trousers of striped muslin, their berry-brown breasts and magnificent

legs bare, their splendid mustaches—which a British Guardsman would have

thought cheap at a twelvemonth’s pay—twisting out, like the tendrils of

a vine, on either side of their classical countenances, drove the nozzle

of their slender skiff into a narrow opening in the outer line of boats

and lighters, which were five or six deep around the steamer, following

up the intrusion by a volley of those colloquial amenities common

amongst the boatmen, porters, robbers, beggars, and _canaille_ of

Constantinople—that is to say, amongst nine-tenths of the entire

population of that most disreputable capital and its suburbs. The

Billingsgate of the Bosphorus must be heard and understood for its

richness to be appreciated; its furious vehemence makes every stranger

wonder that it so rarely leads to blows. In the case of my oarsmen it

did not even lead to a passage to the vessel’s gangway. Turkish women,

looking like bundles of particoloured rags cast into the bottom of

boats, scarcely vouchsafed a glance of their calm serious dark eyes at

the noisy intruders; lightermen opposed to us the passive resistance of

their heavy-laden barges; three dirty-faced English merchant sailors,

extricating themselves from the press, brought their heavy broadbottomed

ship’s-boat against the bows of our caïque, making her lose what little

vantage she had gained, at which I thought my Greeks would have torn out

their mustaches, or committed suicide on the spot, or done some other

desperate deed in the excess of their frantic fury. And here, before

quitting Constantinople, perhaps, and I hope, for ever (for Stamboul,

which in Turkish estimation is but one remove from Paradise, is a most

detestable residence to a civilised Christian), I will just destroy a

popular delusion, originating, I believe, with Byron, with respect to

the convenience and agreeableness of the “light caïque,” that

description of boat being about the most uncomfortable I am acquainted

with. I do not here refer to fine, roomy, eight-oared caïques, in which

you sit on well-cushioned benches and with perfect convenience, six or

eight persons if you please, whilst in front of you are your eight or

ten rowers, and in rear, on an elevated poop, the helmsman with an

umbrella, at sight of which parasol, and of the multitudinous oars, and

at the general aspect of the whole, the guards turn out wherever you

pass, and arms are presented to you all the way up the Bosphorus, no

matter who or what you are, because you _might_ be a pasha, punctilious

in matters of etiquette, in which case the soldiers might get the stick

for omitting the proper forms. But to keep up a craft of this sort, with

its numerous crew, is no slight expense, and is usually done only by

ambassadors, by wealthy Turkish functionaries, and by contractors for

the supply of the army in the East. Therefore, in speaking of caïques, I

refer to the common sort, hired for the trip or day by ordinary people,

and having one, two, or three rowers. In these cranky things you sit

down on rugs or cushions of questionable purity, your head on a level

with the gunwale, your body forming the letter L, since your legs are

stretched out before you, and your back kept bolt upright by the

perpendicular front of the poop. The only way to be tolerably

comfortable in these boats is to sit cross-legged, like a Turk, a

posture to which few Europeans ever habituate themselves. In hot weather

you lose the breeze, owing to your being so low in the boat, whilst the

glare of the sun is terrific; in winter, if there is the least sea on,

you are sure to get a ducking, and may not improbably get capsized, for

although the boatmen on the Bosphorus are generally skilful, the caïque

is unsafe from its extreme sharpness and narrowness, and no year passes

without accidents, especially between Constantinople and Scutari.

The arrangements of the Austrian Lloyds, up the Danube from

Constantinople to Vienna, are certainly not better than are to be

expected from a company enjoying a complete monopoly. Now that the

Danube is open, it is to be hoped, for the sake of the public, that an

opposition line will be started. This would be a considerable

undertaking, and of course the Austrian company would do its utmost to

impede and embarrass its competitor’s operations; but still I think that

a good line of foreign boats might, by energy and perseverance, overcome

all difficulties. The Austrian Lloyds is not in favour with the public,

and its present system can please none but the shareholders, who

annually divide large profits. Its prices are extremely high, and the

accommodation it offers is very indifferent. Now that Paris is less than

sixty hours’ railway from Pesth, the route to Constantinople by the

Danube ought to be able to compete with that by Marseilles or Trieste.

Doubtless many persons, especially of those who fear sea-sickness, would

prefer it to Mediterranean and Adriatic buffetings, if in other respects

it offered the same advantages as the passage by sea. At present the

Danube route is fully thirty per cent dearer than that by Marseilles. It

is at best but a long and tedious journey up or down the Danube; and

when to its monotony and weariness are added the very worst style of

German _cuisine_ (such as prevails on board most of the boats), and a

system of sleeping accommodation by which the passengers are ranged on a

double row of shelves, in a stifling atmosphere replete with

entomological torments, and with one washing-basin for each thirty

persons—and this for five or six days together—travellers unused to

roughing it will be apt in preference to risk the swell in the Gulf of

Lyons, the smart gales that sometimes blow off Sicily’s shores and

amongst the isles of Greece, and the heavy gusts not unfrequent in the

Sea of Marmora. Then in summer the boats on the Danube do not run often

enough. The fast boat (and the slow ones are out of the question for

persons going any distance, and serve only for goods and aborigines)

runs but once a-week, and is consequently often so overcrowded that

people are compelled to sleep on sofas and tables, and even on deck.

This I myself have seen. On such occasions the officers of the boat are

in the habit of selling their cabins for the voyage at very handsome

prices. And the boats are also badly timed. You wait never less than

one, generally two, sometimes, I was there assured, three days at

Galatz, where the sea-boat from Constantinople leaves you, and the

river-boat takes you up. All this surely requires amendment, now that

there is so great an increase of intercourse between Eastern and Western

Europe. Such amendment would perhaps be made by the Austrians if they

once saw their present monopoly as carriers seriously menaced. Austria

has long been jealous of maintaining influence in Moldo-Wallachia; and

the general opinion in those principalities is that she will do her

utmost to filter her way into the country, and gain a permanent footing

there by appropriating as many public establishments, such as railroads,

banks, and lines of fluvial navigation, as she can get into her hands.

The more suspicious see in these projects a hope and design of ultimate

annexation; but this must be so remote a prospect, that it is more

reasonable to attribute them to the expectation of present profit.

I was informed, on landing at Giurgevo, that a little old gentleman, of

imperious air, and with a full white beard, who seemed to be keeping

everybody in motion for his own special service, was one of the greatest

boyards in Moldavia. This was the first opportunity I had had of

observing a boyard on his own dunghill, and I thought I ought to have

felt more impressed upon the occasion. I confess I should have taken him

for an old Jew, possibly for a dealer in cast-off raiment. I now learned

that the beard was the distinguishing mark of the boyard, and of this I

had further proof as I proceeded towards Bucharest. That city was the

destination of three or four of my fellow-travellers from Galatz, and we

at once informed ourselves as to the best means of getting there. A

diligence would start immediately, we were told, so we hastily devoured

a bad breakfast, and were in readiness to start; not so the diligence,

which was shown to us standing near the inn, and looking as unlike a

move as if it had merely been placed there to ornament the

neighbourhood. Occasionally a Tartar-looking personage, fantastically

clothed in sackcloth, emerged from a tumbledown shed, approached the

vehicle, gazed at it admiringly, and then again disappeared. After this

had been repeated at intervals for about an hour and a half, eight

horses, or rather ponies, entangled in a quantity of rope-work, were

brought into the yard and attached to the diligence, which was evidently

an old German carriage, deemed past work in its own country, but still

good enough for the Danubian Principalities; still there were no signs

of loading our luggage, but presently appeared a cart, in which we were

informed it was to be transported. In most countries, but especially in

the East, imprudent is the traveller who suffers himself to be separated

from his kit, and we protested accordingly, but in vain. The diligence

had its full complement of passengers, and that it should also carry

their baggage, and reach Bucharest that night, or without a breakdown,

was entirely out of the question; so, after stipulating that the cart

should keep up with the diligence, we were fain to submit to the

unsatisfactory arrangement.

It is but forty-two miles from Giurgevo to Bucharest, and as we started

before eleven o’clock, and were told that we should change horses twice

on the road, we thought ourselves justified in believing the assurance

given us that we should reach the latter place by five in the afternoon.

Our team was not a very promising one. The eight horses, of all sizes,

and in most diversified harness, some of the leaders being without bits,

were driven by two wildlooking postilions in sheepskin caps, and started

off at a good pace. But all sign of a road disappeared almost as soon as

we got out of Giurgevo. There was a mere wheel-track across the plain.

For some distance our course lay through pastures, where grazing is

allowed on payment of about a zwanziger, or eightpence English, per head

of cattle, for six months. When we got off the level and upon an

undulating surface, our way was through little copses, and the track was

frequently so narrow that the oak saplings almost brushed into the

carriage as we passed. The road was nowhere very picturesque, but here

and there it was pretty enough, and the woods were thickly fringed with

wildflowers; not, however, in the profusion that existed when I again

travelled along the same track at the beginning of July, when we drove

literally through fields of blossom, marigolds, and hollyhocks, and

purple flowers growing like lavender, and feathery grey flowers, and

beds of pinks. Then, however, I journeyed through the densest clouds of

that insidious white dust which is one of the plagues of Bucharest and

its environs. Now, a shower the night before had soaked the soil, which

is there of a sticky tenacious nature, so entirely without admixture of

stones and pebbles that I do not believe you could gather a bushel of

these on the whole road from Giurgevo to Bucharest. In winter the ground

is so deep that there is almost an end to travelling, except in light

carriages with many horses, and the transport of merchandise and produce

is nearly suspended; this is owing to the want of roads, of which but

very few miles have been made in Wallachia during the whole period of

Prince Stirbey’s hospodarship, although large sums have annually been

set aside for the purpose. In winter, tracks, passable enough in summer,

become quagmires. This was not the case on the day of our journey, but

still there was mud enough to retard our progress, and we got on but

slowly, looking anxiously out for a relay. At last we ascertained that

we should change horses but once, instead of twice or three times, and

glad were we when, after crossing a bridge over a shallow stream, we

pulled up at a road-side inn. We looked for fresh posters, but none

appeared; we were invited to alight, and presently the truth transpired,

which was that we were to go right through to Bucharest with the same

eight weary garrons, and, to enable them to perform this feat, we were

to halt for a time where we now were. This was a nuisance, but grumbling

was useless. I was amused, and perfectly astonished, at the plan adopted

to invigorate our cattle for their second long stage. After they had

devoured a copious feed of corn, they were freed from all harness, and

driven like so many oxen into the river. After unlimited drink and much

splashing and soaking, a mounted man rode into the river on the other

side, and drove them out, and they came scampering, capering and kicking

up to the diligence, and submitted themselves to be rubbed down and

harnessed with the usual docility of Moldo-Wallachian horses.

It was a Sunday, a hot and beautiful day, and the inhabitants of the

straggling village were making the most of the holiday. The inn, a mere

road-side winehouse and baiting place, which a few weeks later was

sacked and partly destroyed by a detachment of Austrian soldiers that

was marching through, was full of peasants eating and drinking. The

sound of music and festivity, a short distance off, attracted us, and we

soon came upon a wedding-party, dancing and making merry outside the

dwelling of the bride’s family. The dance that seemed most in favour was

neither graceful nor diversified in its figures; the dancers formed a

circle, holding hands, and alternately closed in and spread out,

increasing or diminishing the circumference. This seemed the whole of

the dance, which, however, was nearly broken up by such an event as the

approach of four or five strangers, one of them an officer in uniform,

and another having a rather luxuriant beard, which immediately caused

him to be taken for a boyard of the first feather. The women seemed

bashful—they were certainly shy and not pretty, and it struck me that

some of them would have been the better for soap and water. Their dress,

which was that common amongst their class in Wallachia, consisted of a

shirt, fastened round the neck and completely covering the upper part of

their persons. From the waist downwards they were dressed like the women

of nearly all countries—that is to say, they wore a lot of

petticoats—but, above the waist, the chemise was their only covering.

This costume has rather a striking effect, until one gets used to it. To

very well made women, who do not require the support of the corset—and

many such are to be found amongst the Wallachian peasantry—it is far

from unbecoming, since it displays the contour and graces of the form

far better than any artificial tightening; but in the case of women past

a certain age, and who have been addicted to child-bearing, stays are

missed, and the _coup d’œil_ is by no means satisfactory. The shirt is

sometimes of a material which, without being indecently transparent,

allows a slight flesh tint to transpire; but these shirts are usually

thickly sprinkled with stars or other devices worked in gold or silver,

and this is, I believe, considered the strict national costume. The

usual ornaments of the women of the lower classes are gold and silver

coins, and even the mixed metal piastres. They are pierced and strung,

and worn as necklaces, and also in the form of a sort of cap or broad

circlet over the hair. In full dress, a Wallachian peasant girl thus

usually carries her dowry on her person. The temptation of these

rosaries of ducats and dollars sometimes proved too strong for the

virtue of the Austrian occupants of the Principalities, and many stories

did I hear, too many of them well authenticated, of poor girls being

stripped of their little fortune by the rude hand of a brutal

Kaiserlich. To judge from the quantity of coin, chiefly Turkish and

Austrian, displayed, by the ladies of the wedding-party, they were

rather well-to-do people of their class. The bride wore several of the

large gold Turkish coins, as big as Spanish ounces, to say nothing of a

quantity of smaller money. She was brought up to be shown to us, quite

as a matter of course, and kissed the hand of our bearded companion,

who, admonished by some little murmur of _Backshish!_ that reached his

ears, had to requite the compliment in specie. _Backshish_ is quite as

much in favour in the Christian provinces on the Danube as in any other

part of Turkey. I must say that, even if the bride’s kiss had been on

his lips instead of his hand, it would hardly have been worth the money,

for she was an ordinary-looking damsel, much surpassed in beauty by many

of her bridesmaids and companions. Doubtless she was lovely in the eyes

of the bridegroom, a sheepish but good-tempered-looking young fellow,

who seemed immensely gratified by the honour of our visit, and

especially by the condescension of the pseudo-boyard. We were given to

drink, and for aught I know, so rapidly did our popularity increase, we

should have been invited to supper, had not much whip-cracking, and

jingling, and shouting, warned us that our carriage was ready and our

time up. Our horses had had an hour and a half’s rest, thanks to which

they managed to perform the rest of the journey, and brought us, soon

after eight of the clock, to the barrier of Bucharest the well-beloved.

The undulating nature of the ground on which Bucharest is built renders

it difficult to obtain from any point of the environs a full view of the

city. One of the best I have seen is a lithograph published at Vienna,

taken from the river bank, and having the metropolitan church, which

stands on an eminence, in the centre of the picture. After passing the

barrier, one proceeds for a considerable distance over open ground,

diversified with gardens, but sparingly sprinkled with houses, and

giving little the idea of a town. Indeed, except in the very heart of

the place, in the great principal street, the Mogosöe, in the Leipsick

street and a few other shop streets, the Wallachian capital has much

more the look of a large straggling village than of a city. It seems as

if pains had been taken to avoid the compactness which, as economising

distances, is generally held desirable in a large town. It is full of

gardens and enclosures, and of open spaces of waste ground. Every house

of any size and pretensions has a garden, and usually a large one. The

effect produced is very rural and pleasing; the masses of brick and

mortar are few, foliage and flowers are everywhere. Earthquakes being of

no unfrequent occurrence here (although some years have elapsed since

one occurred sufficiently violent to do much damage), few houses are

built more than one story high. Thus it is easy to understand that

Bucharest, with a population of 100,000, or according to the highest

estimate 120,000 souls, includes within its barriers an area said to be

equal to two-thirds of that of Paris. Were it a commercial place, the

distances would be extremely inconvenient; as it is, and for the mere

purposes of social intercourse, the inhabitants spend a very large

portion of their time in carriages, the more so as it can hardly be said

that there is any particular quarter prescribed by fashion as the

residence of the upper classes, who are scattered in very opposite

directions. If it be true, as Sam Slick says, that the way to estimate a

capital is by its private carriages, Bucharest should rank pretty high,

for there, more than anywhere else, is a carriage almost a necessary of

life; and as the expense of keeping it is not great, forage being

abundant and horses cheap, most families in easy circumstances have at

least two vehicles—one for the husband, the other for the wife. When

there is only one the lady generally takes it, and the husband contents

himself with a hired birja—a light calèche, drawn by two horses, which

you engage by the day or hour. In most places this mode of engagement

would imply a very moderate rate of speed; but the birja-drivers, most

of whom are Russians, spurred by the hopes of a _backshish_, go at an

astonishing rate, and a foreigner is more apt—until he becomes aware of

their skill in driving and of the unfrequency of accidents—to check

their speed than to urge them to increased haste over the broken

pavement and many holes and round the sharp corners of the streets of

Bucharest.

One sees few old buildings in Bucharest, the last bad earthquake having

upset nearly all the lofty and ancient fabrics. There are many large

handsome houses, but the style of building is generally plain. The eye

with difficulty gets accustomed to the strange contrasts met with at

every step. Hard by spacious mansions, the residence of wealthy boyards,

one almost literally stumbles over low Bulgarian huts, constructed half

above and half under the ground. There are generally large courts in

front of the better class of houses, and down one side of them

frequently extends a range of low mean buildings, used as stables and

offices, which shock the eye by their juxtaposition to the principal and

handsome edifice. The streets are of extraordinary irregularity, and a

stranger is long in learning his way about the town; the more so as he

rarely walks, the mud in winter, and the dust, heat, and distances in

summer, putting that mode of locomotion nearly out of the question. The

badness of the pavement, and its total absence from a great portion of

the streets, is accounted for by the size of the town, which would

require an enormous paving rate to be levied on its comparatively scanty

population. Moreover, in Wallachia, and especially under its recent

ruler, money levied for useful public objects has but too often been

diverted from its original destination, and scandalously misapplied,

sometimes to purposes of political corruption. And even where public

works have been executed, it has been at an exaggerated cost, explicable

only by a system of robbery unparalleled elsewhere than in the East.

Thus the very handsome opera-house, quite worthy of a first-rate

European capital, filled the pockets of architects and contractors, and

government officials, and might have been erected three or four times

over for the sums that were embezzled and swallowed up in its

construction. The exhospodar Stirbey, in the sort of justification he

has recently published, boasts of this theatre as one of the benefits

conferred on Bucharest during his reign. As far as the fact of its

erection goes, there it stands, to speak for itself, an extremely

handsome house, luxuriously fitted up, with lobbies, staircases, and

saloons on a magnificent scale, and whose only fault is that, in their

anxiety for an imposing effect, the designers have made the boxes so

lofty that it never looks well filled. But touching the cost, Prince

Stirbey is mute, although it is well known in Wallachia how monstrous it

was, and how large a portion of it was absorbed by the most barefaced

peculation.

It is not only as regards the buildings composing it, but in a thousand

other respects, that Bucharest is _par excellence_ the city of

contrasts. Some of the most striking of these are vividly summed up in a

few lines by the late French Consul-general at Bucharest, M. Poujade, in

one of his interesting contributions to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.[5]

“One sees,” he says, “palaces, or at least handsome hotels, and

frightful hovels; carriages from the workshops of Binder or Clochez,

drawn by coachmen in sumptuous livery, and enormous Transylvanian carts,

enclosing a population like that of Noah’s Ark, and drawn by eight, ten,

twenty horses or mares, with their colts playing around them at full

liberty; fiery high-bred Russian and Hungarian horses, and huge red-eyed

buffaloes; elegant men and women dressed according to the latest

Parisian fashion, and peasants in much the same costume as the Dacians

wore two thousand years ago; dirty Albanians perambulating the streets

selling _braga_ (a fermented drink), and shops in which are displayed

the _bonbons_ of Boissier, and the gastronomical delicacies of Potel and

Chabot; monks smoking their pipes at the winehouse, and on the tombs, in

the cemeteries that exist in the very heart of the town, side-by-side

with gypsies, and with itinerant musicians (_laoutari_) dressed in long

flowing cloaks, the violin, mandoline, or pandean-pipes suspended to

their girdle, ready to sell their services at a baptism, a marriage, or

a burial. Oriental life, which is departing, and European life, which

replaces it, are here associated, and succeed each other as in a

panorama.” This is a very well dashed-off glimpse of Bucharest, with

true and lifelike tints, like one of Preziosi’s capital _aquarelles_ of

Constantinople streets. Such contrasts and details might be multiplied

almost infinitely; for the physiognomy of Bucharest has a thousand

different faces, both by day and by night. The gypsies alluded to by M.

Poujade are a singular feature of the sketch, tawny wild figures

dwelling by preference like ghouls in the graveyards, housing themselves

also under ragged canvass on those desert plots of ground which abound

in Bucharest, or taking up temporary quarters in the shells of

unfinished houses. A stranger, unacquainted with their dialect, can gain

but little insight into their usages and customs. Borrow should go

amongst them; he would find a rich field for observation. They work,

many of them, as bricklayers; the women hang about, tawny dishevelled

creatures, with infants tugging at their yellow breasts. The children,

when a little older, are almost like the young of animals. You are

driving down the busiest street of Bucharest on a sultry summer noon.

You have just passed an elegant carriage with a pair of spanking bays; a

most correct coachman on the box; a strapping _chasseur_, bearded,

befeathered, and sword-bearing, in the rumble; within, a couple of

princesses (the Wallachians freely translate their native titles into

the highest current in Western Europe) attired in the last fashions from

Longchamps: the whole turn-out would be perfectly in place in Hyde Park

or the Bois de Boulogne. From the door of a shop full of cravats,

perfumery, and other “nouveautés de Paris,” the mere sight of which

transports you to Regent Street or the Boulevards, a couple of dandies

with well-waxed mustaches have just waved to you a yellow-kid

salutation. Twenty paces further, in a shallow recess of the street, you

come to a bronze pump, under and around which are collected a group of

gypsy urchins, nearly of the same colour as the metal, with thin legs,

prominent abdomens, and monkey features, and all as naked as they were

born. It is hard to believe that any more exact link than this will ever

be found between man and the baboon. The creatures are in a state of

perfect animal enjoyment. The thermometer is at 100° in the shade at the

very least, and they are rushing in and out of the gush of bright cold

water from the fountain, their dingy bodies sparkling in the sun, their

monkey features grinning like chimney-piece ornaments. Their bath over,

they will run naked through the streets to where their mothers’ kettle

boils, and lie down to sleep in the dust, in the shadow of a tombstone.

One is tempted to think that, in that climate, a cool pump, a shady

nook, and the absence of raiment, constitute the perfection of human

happiness.

I believe that every foreigner who visits Bucharest in the fine season

carries away with him a most agreeable impression of the place. In

winter, when the snow lies deep, and the streets are sloughs, and the

wolves prowl hungrily in the fields around the town, and occasionally

risk themselves in the suburbs and carry off a stray child, the

attraction may be less, even though that is the gay season, when balls

and suppers abound, and masquerades occur almost every night. But in

early summer, before the scorching sun has embrowned the foliage and

driven away the wealthier of the inhabitants, nothing can be more

agreeable than this rural city, belted with pleasant meadows and

promenades, and nestling in a net-work of gardens and a bower of vines.

During my two months’ stay I saw many English and French pass through,

chiefly officers from the Crimea or Constantinople, who chose that route

home; and all seemed delighted with their visit, and appeared to depart

with regret. Bucharest is a city of idleness, and life there is arranged

so as to while away as agreeably as possible the superabundant leisure.

The usual dinner-hour is three or four o’clock, and after that meal many

persons go to take ice or a stroll in a large and delightful public

garden in the centre of the town—also a benefit bequeathed to Bucharest

by Prince Stirbey’s administration, at the cost of the unrequited labour

of thousands of unfortunate serfs. The best society, however, frequents

this garden but little, or remains there but a short time, proceeding,

about seven o’clock, to the agreeable drive known as the Chaussée, a

road out of the town which is a continuation of the main street, with

plantation and a garden on either side, and further on, an avenue of

trees separating it from luxuriant pastures. It is here that an idea is

best formed of the luxury and wealth of Bucharest, whither, in fact,

nearly all the rich people of the province repair to spend their money.

On the Chaussée assemble the fashionables of the Wallachian capital, a

few of the men mounted on fine horses, but most of them, and all the

ladies, in elegant carriages of Vienna and Paris build. This, of a

summer evening, is the focus of flirtation, and the source and centre of

not a little scandal. After a few turns up and down, at as rapid a pace

as the throng of vehicles will permit, the ladies generally draw up by

the side of the footpath, and either alight and walk, or receive visits

in their open carriages. Amongst the crowd of dashing equipages were

conspicuous, this last summer, those of the hospodar, known from afar by

the scarlet liveries of the servants, and those of the foreign

diplomatic agents, most of them with chasseurs or richly attired

Albanians. The numerous Austrian uniforms added to the animation of the

scene, some of the young staff-officers driving handsome curricles and

tilburies, whilst the crowd was completed by the humble but ubiquitous

birja. As the daylight waned, the crowd diminished, although, in the

fine summer evenings, not a few promenaders remained till after dark,

strolling amongst the trees, or seated in the carriages, enjoying the

pleasant coolness; and here and there vacant vehicles, whose absent

owners were well known, afforded pretext of malicious comment to

lingering scandal-mongers. Towards nine o’clock, the Chaussée was

generally nearly deserted, and, on driving into town, many of the

carriages might be seen drawn up at the door of the Tortoni of

Bucharest, from which excellent ices and refreshments were brought out

to the fair occupants. A few, braving the heat, would thence proceed to

the theatre, where a French company had replaced the Italians; whilst

the men betook themselves to the Rouman Circle, a newly established

club, or proceeded to join parties of a few friends, a sort of Spanish

conversational _tertulia_, which replace, when the season of gaiety is

over, assemblies of a more numerous and pretentious description.

Night in Bucharest is not without peculiarities which forcibly strike

the stranger. For those persons who insist upon pedestrian exercise, it

is the best time for a stroll, for although the heat often but partially

departs with daylight, the dust is less, and moreover at evening, the

Chaussée, the avenues to it, and some of the principal streets, as well

as those leading to the Tchismedjiou or public garden, are watered in a

sort of primitive way, by men with carts who draw off the water into

churn-shaped tubs and dash it over the thirsty soil and heated

pavements. Of a clear warm night, when the streets and gardens are

bathed in the bright silver light of a Wallachian moon, the people of

Bucharest may be said to live in the open air. Every window is open, and

they stand outside their houses or gossiping at the doors. They are an

early-rising population, and by eleven the streets are nearly deserted

and stillness reigns. One very curious practice which prevails is that

of sleeping in the streets. Walking along between ten and eleven one

warm dark evening (gas is unknown in Bucharest, and oil lamps are dim,

few, and far between) I suddenly found myself trampling upon cushions.

On investigation, the soft substance proved to be a mattress.

Fortunately no one was as yet sleeping on it. It occupied the whole

width of the narrow pavement, and I stepped off into the carriageway.

Just then a man issued from an open door, with a coverlet on his arm; he

was making his bed. Several other beds were arranged in succession close

to the walls of the houses; it was an _al fresco_ dormitory. Doubtless

in a hot climate the plan has its advantages, securing fresh air and

avoiding troublesome domestic insects. The risk of being trampled upon

is small in a city where scarcely a soul is seen in the streets after

midnight. I was informed, just as I was leaving Bucharest, that these

out-of-door slumberers are chiefly Jews, there very numerous, and that

they have a summer festival which lasts about a fortnight and

commemorates the passage of the desert by the children of Israel, during

which they do not sleep under a roof, and that a tradition exists

amongst them that a child conceived during that period will be the

Messiah. This tale was told me by Christians, and I by no means vouch

for its correctness, but it is curious, and I was afterwards sorry I had

not had time to ascertain positively, by inquiry of the Wallachian

Hebrews, whether such a custom and belief really exist amongst them.

Many of the street-sleepers have a small dog beside their couch, which

rushes out, barking furiously, if one inadvertently steps too near its

master’s couch. The precaution must, one would think, be as destructive

of slumber as it may be useful against marauders, the more so as the

bark of the vigilant sentry is usually echoed by that of numerous

vagrant curs of all breeds and sizes which at night infest the streets

of Bucharest, and frequently molest the pedestrian. It is very difficult

to throw stones at these animals, for there are none to be had, as the

benighted and exasperated stranger frequently finds when, returning late

to his lodging, he is beset by dogs of every description, from the

diminutive yelping terrier to animals of a really formidable size and

deep-mouthed aggressive bark, and stoops to seek a missile. These wild

ownerless dogs, formerly so numerous and even dangerous in

Constantinople, but now greatly thinned and wholly daunted there by the

deadly blows and rough usage they have received at the hands of French

soldiers and British mariners, are still plentiful at Bucharest, where,

however, they can hardly be considered dangerous; at least I never heard

of their devouring a human being in the latter place, as they have

occasionally been known to do in the Turkish capital—especially when the

said being had thought proper to take an overpowering quantity of strong

drink and to lie down in the gutter to sleep it off; but still they are

numerous, bold, and noisy enough to alarm a timid person, and one

sometimes hears the affrighted scream of a belated child or woman beset

by these persevering plagues. They are more troublesome than

bloodthirsty; but, although the noise they make is a most

sleep-destroying nuisance, nobody seems to think of taking measures to

expel them, even from his own premises. At the hotel where I lived,

half-a-dozen of them had taken up their quarters in the large courtyard

round which the house was built. Some of them were supposed, I believe,

to belong to hostlers or hangers-on about the establishment; but I could

not find out that their putative owners took any charge of them, and

certainly they did not prevent them from raising the most diabolical din

at hours when the inmates of the hotel might be supposed buried in

sleep, or at least courting it. The gates of the yard were often left

open; street-walking dogs would sneak in, predatorily minded and lured

by the rank odours of the Wallachian kitchen, and desperate conflicts

were the frequent result, the said canine encounters being attended with

an amount of barking, snarling, howling, and yelling, enough to waken

the dead. I do not believe it woke the Bucharestians, although the

complaints of the sleepless strangers staying in the house were loud and

frequent.

Beside the dogs, the most lively and noisy creature in the streets of

Bucharest of a night is the watchman or _chinny-accolo_, a compound word

which I write as pronounced, and possibly with much offence against

correct orthography. The newcomer to the Wallachian capital, returning

home late, is startled by the sudden apparition of a dilapidated figure

which emerges from a dark nook or crazy sentry-box, strikes a heavy

staff upon the pavement and hoarsely shouts _chinnyaccoloooo!_ the last

syllable being drawn out _ad libitum_, and relinquished as if with

regret. Then the figure usually repeats the _chinny_, with a short

exasperated stress on the first syllable, as if he were angry with or

insisting upon something. The foreigner has a vague idea that this

discordant and unintelligible cry is of the nature of a _Qui vive?_ or

_Who goes there?_—as in fact it is—but, observing that the vociferator

has no firearms, and consequently cannot requite silence with a shot,

and being moreover in total ignorance how he should reply, he usually

walks quietly on; and the guardian of the night, perceiving that he is

not a member of the dangerous classes, retreats into his nook and

suffers him to pass without further question. The Moldo-Wallachians are

an inoffensive and honest race—even now, that they have been to a

certain extent demoralised by foreign military occupations—crime is not

frequent amongst them, and the _chinnyaccolos_ have little to do. Now

and then they make a charge upon an unusually noisy troop of dogs, but

their principal employment seems to be that of covering up the sleepers

upon the pavement, when restless slumbers, the result perhaps of an

unquiet conscience or a heavy supper, may cause them to toss their

blankets abroad.

As, if I remember rightly, Murray’s Hand-book for Turkey, by no means

the best of his collection, is extremely brief and unsatisfactory in its

notice of Bucharest, I may perhaps be rendering a service to persons

whom this imperfect sketch of its attractions may induce to pay a summer

visit to that pleasant city, if I devote a few lines to the subject of

hotels. In the first place, it is to be observed that furnished lodgings

are not to be had in Bucharest,—at least they were unobtainable in the

spring and summer of 1856; but that was perhaps owing to the number of

Austrian officers who were billeted upon the houses of the inhabitants.

Unless, therefore, you had a friend to give you quarters, you had no

resource but to stop at an hotel. The best of these is the Hôtel de

Londres, a large house built expressly for an inn, and where one finds

good and lofty apartments, clean and tolerably well-furnished, at high

prices; but Bucharest, especially since the war, is by no means a cheap

place. The hotel is of enormous size, and full of long galleries and

spacious landing-places. The rooms are without bells, and the mode of

summoning the servants is original and inconvenient. On each

landing-place is a bell-rope, below which is a dial-plate, having around

it the numbers of the neighbouring rooms. When you require anything you

have to issue forth from your apartment, ring this bell, once for

waiter, twice for boots, thrice for chambermaid, and turn the needle of

the dial to the number of your room. But it frequently happens that

before the servant answers your call, somebody else gives a pull at the

rope, and shifts the needle to _his_ number; so that you soon find that

the only way of getting attended to is, after ringing, to lie in wait at

your door, and, on the appearance of the slave, to rush out, collar him

drag him into your room, and release him only upon his solemn promise to

do what you require before he even looks at the dial. This is not a

comfortable state of things; but bell-hangers are scarce in Wallachia,

and domestics generally bad. Even in the better class of private houses,

good attendance is secured only by keeping what in England would be

considered an unreasonable number of servants for the requirements of

the family. The Wallachian domestics are lazy, and imported foreigners

soon rival them in this respect. I tried the experiment of hiring one of

the latter sort, but found he would do nothing but sleep in the porter’s

lodge, and, when compelled to work, took sick immediately; so I was

compelled to get rid of him, and to revert to the system of lying in

ambush for waiters. Upon the whole, however, one may be worse put up

than at the Hôtel de Londres, where there is great civility, and a

desire to oblige; but hotel-keeping is a science that has still much

progress to make in the cities of Moldavia and Wallachia. I cannot say

much for the cooking; and the Hôtel de France, in the Mogosöe Street, is

in that respect considered superior, and passes for a first-rate French

restaurant, although in Vienna or Paris it would be set down as a

_gargote_, and indeed a good dinner is to be obtained there only by

ordering it beforehand, and paying rather more than you would for a

sumptuous banquet at the _Trois Frères_.

Early in the month of June, in a cloud of dust and a blaze of heat,

commenced and concluded the annual _mosh_ or fair of Bucharest. The

articles exposed for sale were not calculated to give an exalted idea of

the manufacturing progress of the province, whose best reliance for

prosperity is evidently upon its agricultural produce. The staple

commodities were wicker-baskets, of a wearisome monotony of form, pots

of red earth, not even glazed, and the rough-hewn, churn-shaped buckets

here universally used, in houses, baths, for street-watering, &c.

Anything more primitive than these various articles cannot be imagined;

they are just what one might expect to find amongst a newly-discovered

tribe of Indians, which, lurking in a remote corner of the backwoods,

had avoided all intercourse with the pale-faces. Any idea of ornament

seems utterly alien to the minds of the peasants who manufacture these

useful but uncouth objects, which are brought to town in carts as

antediluvian as themselves,—clumsy, heavy vehicles, roofed in with

boughs. The only other things I could discover in the fair which were

manifestly native productions (the toys and trumpets smelt of Germany),

were rings of coarse, coloured glass, to thrust over the hand and wear

as bracelets, much the sort of thing one might look for upon the ebon

arm of the Queen of the Cannibal Islands, or dangling from the obtuse

snout of some central-African slave-dealing sovereign. There were also

chimney-piece ornaments formed of clay, and representing zoological

monsters, of which traditions may possibly have been handed down from

the days of the Dacians. Shows there were, too: a camel ridden by a

monkey, and a gentleman who sat upon the topmost of a pyramid of

bottles, and balanced plates upon his nose and chin; and, in the corner

of a tent, the emanations from which were far from fragrant, Punch, the

ubiquitous, set up his house, attracted a delighted audience, and went

through the celebrated drama of his serio-comic existence, slightly

varied from the English version, but including even a larger amount of

domestic dissension, violent deaths, and desperate struggles with the

enemy of mankind; the whole winding up with the appearance of a

monstrous head—a cross, apparently, between a Skye terrier and a

snapping turtle—which caught the reprobate Polichinello by the nose, and

dragged him screaming into the showman’s box. The streets of the fair

were formed of huts of branches, some of them neatly enough made, and

comprising two rooms, but which quickly lost their fresh verdant aspect,

the foliage becoming embrowned by the sun, and coated with dust. Inside

these wigwams a promiscuous throng ate, drank, cooked their food,

danced, slept, suckled babies, played upon rude musical instruments, and

contrived to exist in an atmosphere and amongst odours that might have

stifled an habitual inhabitant of a slaver’s hold, or a daily passenger

through the richest streams of Galata. The mere smell of the sausages

dropping their unctuous superabundance into the wood-fires over which

they grizzled, was a week’s dinners to a hungry man. Except in the

evening, when the _beau monde_, deserting the Chaussée, drives to the

fair, the attendance is almost exclusively of the lower orders,—peasants

in their round sheepskin caps and antique costume, which has scarcely

varied since Trajan’s day, many of them stalwart, fine-looking men, with

features telling of their Italian origin; women in more various attire,

not generally very becoming, although one head-dress, consisting of a

thin white shawl gathered over the head, with the ends drooping behind,

is not ungraceful. The most original and characteristic female dress

there worn was the one I have already described,—the shirt, often of a

fine and transparent texture, sprinkled with stars or sprigs worked in

gold or silver, whilst round the waist are fastened petticoats and a

variety of coloured aprons, worn both before and behind. Besides the

peasantry, Wallachian soldiers in their ugly uniforms, nursemaids with

children, and a few white-coated Austrians, made up the morning

attendance at the fair. On the last day the fun terminated with an

evening entertainment annually given by the Aga or prefect of police, in

a space enclosed with hedges and flags, and lighted with coloured lamps,

where music played, and people walked about and ate ices under tents,

and where the hospodar came, with gorgeous liveries and a numerous

escort, to admire his own portrait hung up in a marquee, and where the

aga himself narrowly escaped apoplexy from the violence of his exertions

and effervescence of his hospitality; and people who had no tickets

jockeyed the sentries, leapt the ditches, and got in through gaps in the

hedges, until at last (this being essentially a popular festival) every

one was admitted who chose to walk in; and ragged boys and Wallachian

“roughs” were seen elbowing boyards of fabulous lineage, and making

disorderly and destructive onslaughts upon trays of sweetmeats; and,

finally, everybody got extremely dusty and tired, and began to wish he

had not come, and to long to escape; and there was a general rush for

everybody’s carriage, which nobody could find, and people betook

themselves to bed, and the _mosh_ was at an end in Bucharest for that

year.

At the period of my arrival in the Principalities, the Moldo-Wallachians

were in a fever of impatience to get rid of the Austrian occupation, to

them most odious. The war was over, and they could not understand why a

foreign army should still be imposed upon them, occasioning them great

expense and still greater annoyance. Absorbed by domestic

considerations, they did not appreciate or even discern those important

European ones which induced the Allies to maintain an Austrian force on

the Russian frontier until the terms of the Treaty of Paris should be

carried out. Much as they themselves have suffered from Muscovite bad

faith and encroachment, their exasperation at the prolonged presence of

their detested military guests blinded them to the probability that

Russia might seek to evade the conditions she had agreed to. It must be

owned that the conduct of the Austrian army of occupation had been such

as to explain the furious eagerness of the Moldo-Wallachians for its

departure. Its bearing had certainly not been that becoming friends and

allies in peaceable provinces inhabited by an extremely docile and quiet

race. Had the imperial legions conquered the country after fierce

opposition, and found themselves surrounded by scowling foes, whose

hatred was to be kept from dangerous manifestation by fear alone, their

conduct might have been comprehensible. But when they arrived there was

no particular ill-feeling towards them, and they had only themselves to

thank for the bitter one which afterwards arose. The general order by

which, at the end of last May, the Emperor of Austria congratulated his

army in Moldo-Wallachia on its military spirit and endurance of

privations, excited the laughter of all who were aware of the real

circumstances of the case. There was little to endure for troops whose

requirements and exactions were so great as to constitute a most onerous

burthen on the people; and it is but a poor military spirit that is

testified by cruel ill-treatment of unoffending civilians. At the very

time that the order appeared, no one could pass a few weeks in the

Principalities without becoming convinced, by personal observation, that

the general tone and demeanour of the Austrian soldiery in their

intercourse with the people were overbearing and aggravating, and that

the least show of opposition led to brutality and violence. The people

of those provinces are neither dogged nor disobliging; a word, if they

understand it, generally suffices to procure obedience where it is due;

but they are not particularly quick of comprehension, and, on the other

hand, the Austrians were prone to exact more than they were entitled to,

and to enforce, by blows, unreasonable demands or illunderstood orders.

If the behaviour of the officers was better, although this was by no

means invariably the case, few of them took pains to restrain their men,

but looked on with indifference and without interference. Of this I

could cite many examples which came under my own notice, and others

vouched for by indisputable testimony. On one of the first days of June,

an old white-haired Wallachian peasant was driving a cart through one of

the most frequented streets of Bucharest, when he somehow got in the way

of an Austrian soldier similarly engaged. He was immediately assailed in

the fiercest manner, thrown to the ground, and violently beaten. A

German shopkeeper, standing at his door, witnessed this cruelty and

appealed to an officer who was passing, entreating him to check it.

“_Das geht mich nicht an_”—it is no business of mine—was the cool reply,

and the soldier was left to satiate his fury. As for the bystanders

interfering, none would think of doing so, for the Austrians invariably

carry their side-arms, and instances are abundant of their promptitude

in using them against unarmed and defenceless persons. The Turkish

soldiers in the provinces used not to carry their bayonets and sabres

when off duty, but just before the return of Stirbey from Vienna to

Bucharest, and within a month afterwards, no less than sixty-nine of

them were wounded by Austrians, and it was found necessary to authorise

them to wear their side-arms. Last summer, a well-known English officer,

who holds high rank in the Turkish service, was riding in the suburbs of

Bucharest, in a sort of half uniform, but without arms, when he overtook

an Austrian soldier, carrying his musket sloped over his shoulder and

protruding far behind him. As he passed, the man made a sudden movement

of his body, which caused the musket to swing round and strike the

officer a violent blow. This was doubtless unintentional, but the blow

was so sharp that the officer involuntarily apostrophised the man in

English, forgetting that he would not understand him, and asked him what

he meant. Instead of apologising, the soldier looked steadily at him and

fixed his bayonet. There was nothing for it but to ride on, and

complaint to the fellow’s superiors would have been of little avail.

About this same time there occurred, at the Wallachian town of Busco, an

outrage in which three civilians were wounded, and whose circumstances

were rather curious. An Austrian soldier drank in a wine-shop, and,

notwithstanding the host’s opposition, left it without paying and ran

off. He was pursued, and, being somewhat intoxicated, he ran into a

mill-stream, where he would have been drowned but for the exertions of

his pursuers. Other soldiers came up, and the rescuers were sabred;

because, argued these military sophists, if their comrade had not been

pursued he would not have run, and consequently would not have fallen

into the water and nearly lost his life.

I had scarcely set foot in Moldavia when, at Galatz, numerous instances

of Austrian misconduct were related to me, my informants being some of

the principal local authorities, and their statements being corroborated

by a foreign consul, who was by no means ill-disposed to the Austrians,

and indeed took a more favourable view of their general conduct than

almost any other person I met with in the Principalities. But regard to

truth compelled him to admit that of the incidents in question. A

battalion had arrived two days before, to take its quarters in the town,

and on such occasions there were invariably complaints to the civil

authorities from persons who had been wounded or beaten by the soldiers.

It was no uncommon practice with them to accept money in lieu of lodging

from the persons on whom they were billeted, and then to go and insist

violently on admission into quarters to which they had no claim.

Instances were cited of gross misconduct on the part of officers. On two

different occasions these gentlemen, having had billets assigned them in

two of the best houses in the place, refused to accept the comfortable

rooms allotted to them, and insisted on occupying the apartment of the

lady of the house. Compliance being refused with the caprice of one of

them, he forgot himself so far as to draw his sword, and finding the

door of the room he coveted locked, he endeavoured to kick it open. The

mistress of the house, the Countess P—, behaved with great spirit. “Put

up your sword, sir,” she said; “your Emperor did not give it you to be

thus used.” It was very rare that the least redress could be obtained

for such insults and outrages, any more than for the many grave offences

against person and property, the robberies and murders, that were

clearly brought home to Austrian soldiers. In Wallachia especially, the

perpetrators of such crimes were certain of impunity; for Prince

Stirbey, long devoted to Russia, had become the tool of Austria, by

whose influence he hoped to be maintained in power after his term of

office should have expired. Had he done his duty as ruler of the

Principality, he would have made such forcible representations as must

assuredly have led to a diminution of the evil. Instead of this, with

him whatever the Austrians did was well done, and the strongest proofs

of their excesses, frequently laid before him, were by him smothered and

suppressed. This was notably the case with respect to a disgraceful

affair that occurred on the 31st May at Buseo, a town on the road from

Bucharest to the Wallachian frontier. A body of Austrian lancers,

marching through, required carts for their baggage. Some slight delay

occurred in providing them, and this being reported to the officer

commanding, he is said to have replied: “You have got arms; take carts.”

Thus licensed, the Austrians seized some carts which were just leaving

the town, laden with the baggage and military-chest of a Wallachian

regiment; the slender baggage-guard, although it made little show of

resistance, was mercilessly sabred, and some civilians and soldiers

without arms were also cut down. The prefect of the town was beaten and

ill-treated, and the officer commanding the Wallachians, who reached the

place after the affray was over, was charged and ridden down by the

playful Austrians. Prince Stirbey’s body-surgeon, sent over specially to

look to the wounded, reported, with the counter-signature of an Austrian

surgeon, that there were twenty Wallachians wounded, some very

dangerously. Amongst the twenty men there were upwards of a hundred and

twenty wounds; showing the deliberate cruelty and ferocity of the

Austrians, for not one-third of the wounded were armed when they were

thus barbarously assailed. The report of the medical men was seen by

various persons in Bucharest; the indignation was general, and was

shared and vehemently expressed even by some of the hospodar’s own

household and clique; it was thought impossible that so shameful a

massacre should be overlooked; nevertheless, no steps were taken to

obtain the punishment of the guilty. The first remark of the officer who

replaced the Wallachian minister-of-war, then absent, was, that the

Wallachians were wrong—that they should humour (_ménager_) the

Austrians. Stirbey said it was an unfortunate affair, and forbade the

newspapers to speak of it; and so it was hushed up, as all similar

occurrences had invariably been.

Abandoned by their prince and natural protector to the tender mercies of

foreign intruders and tyrants, the Wallachians testified their hatred

and anger by the only means in their power. They excluded the Austrians

from their society, and refused to have any intercourse with them. The

offensive strangers were sent to Coventry; only in a very few houses was

an Austrian uniform ever seen, and those were the houses of persons

known by their connection with or partiality to Austria, and who got

little credit with their fellow-countrymen by their deviation from the

rule tacitly but generally laid down. The Austrians knew that they were

detested, and requited the aversion shown them by being as insolent and

disagreeable as they could. For all parties it was a most uncomfortable

state of things, resulting in constant mutual annoyances. In June, the

Austrian infantry regiment of Constantine gave an entertainment to

General Coronini, then commanding in chief in the Principalities.

Marquees were pitched on a grassy plain, at a short distance from

Bucharest, and there were bands of music, rifle-practice, fireworks, and

other amusements. Numerous invitations were distributed, but scarcely

any Wallachians went, and the consequence was a lamentable deficiency of

ladies. A Wallachian nobleman of high rank, and notorious for his

Austrian addictions, gave a dinner to General Coronini before his

departure. It was not thought necessary to inform all the persons

invited of the occasion of the banquet; probably because it was thought

that, if they knew it, some of them would refuse to attend. The

consequence was that a portion of the guests, upon seeing whom they were

assembled to honour, considered that a trick had been played them; and

one of them, a member of one of the oldest and most distinguished

families of the country—not of Fanariot origin, but of pure Rouman

blood—kept his seat, and left his glass untasted, when the health of the

Austrian commander was proposed. I might cite many other examples of the

bad feeling and petty warfare between Wallachians and Austrians. The

physical superiority being all on the side of the armed foreigners, it

was seldom that force was opposed to their aggressions. The only

instance I remember was in the case of a plucky little French architect,

settled at Bucharest. Some soldiers in his house ill-treated his

servant-maid and child, and upon his interfering, one of them raised his

arm as if to strike him. But the Frenchman, although a very small man,

was a master in the science of the _savate_; his blood was up, and he

cared nothing for odds. A tremendous kick in the belly laid one soldier

on his back; another was knocked into a well in the yard, and a third

kicked out of the place. In short, the Frenchman completely cleared his

premises, but, for some time afterwards, he was obliged to have a sentry

to protect his house, for the Austrians came to force their way in and

massacre him.

The murder, in cold blood and broad daylight, by a party of Austrians,

of one of the French soldiers in charge of the telegraph, was followed

by a serious investigation, and the guilty persons were severely

punished. This was a lesson which doubtless had its effect. At about the

same time the number of Austrian troops in the Principalities was

diminished by the departure of several regiments. Stirbey also was

removed from power, to the great and universal joy of the Wallachians,

and was succeeded by Prince Alexander Ghika, a man of very moderate

capacity, but well-meaning and honest, and who certainly is incapable of

shielding or conniving at Austrian misconduct. Since then outrages have

been much less frequent, and the Moldo-Wallachians do not appear to have

particular grounds of complaint. A foreign military occupation is of

course, and must inevitably be, to a certain degree, a burthen and a

nuisance to the country that undergoes it.

Independently of the very sufficient reasons already exposed, the people

of the Principalities had, or believed themselves to have, a strong

political motive for desiring the departure of the Austrian army. A

project for the union of the two provinces under a foreign prince had

been put forward, and was ardently advocated and agitated by persons who

imagined that they saw in its realisation the regeneration of their

country. To this project the Austrian government was understood to be

decidedly opposed; the Austrian political agent at Bucharest declared

his disapproval of it in the most public and contemptuous manner, and

with that overbearing insolence of tone which the subserviency of the

hospodar emboldened him upon all occasions to assume; the Austrian

officers, including a body of engineers and their assistants, then

occupied in making a trigonometrical survey of the country, were

generally accused of inciting the lower orders against the Union. Such

opposition to a plan which they somewhat hastily believed would prove a

panacea for all the many griefs they have so long suffered under,

greatly increased the irritation of the Moldo-Wallachians. Their minds

were set upon the Union, and dazzled by visions of the prosperity and

power it was to bring in its train. They already beheld Rouman

nationality restored and established on a firm basis, and an

agricultural Belgium arising in the East, which should rival that of the

West in good government, tranquillity, and wealth. They beheld the men

of their race, of whom several millions now dwell in Transylvania,

Bukovina, the Banat, and Bessarabia, and also in Podolia, Hungary, and

Macedonia, flocking back to the provinces whence many of them originally

emigrated, and supplying the labour which alone is wanted to make

Moldo-Wallachia the granary of Europe. There can be no question that the

Roumans have preserved their nationality to an extent that is

surprising, when we consider the bloody struggle they have had to

maintain against Turks and Tartars, Poles and Magyars, and the numerous

races amongst which they have been scattered, often in far inferior

numbers. There seems to be an innate sentiment of nationality amongst

the lower orders, of which they themselves have not the intelligence. In

emigration (and, owing to the oppressions of foreign armies and native

chiefs, emigrations have been frequent and extensive) they preserve

their native usages, often even when bad, sooner than adopt foreign

ones. The same is the case with their language. In Bulgaria,

Transylvania, and elsewhere, they still speak the Rouman. One of the

most intelligent and distinguished of living Wallachians, John Ghika,

now governor of Samos, estimates the Rouman race (in an interesting

pamphlet, published at Paris under the anagrammatic pseudonyme of G.

Chainoi) at nearly twelve millions. Of these, barely five millions dwell

in Wallachia and Moldavia, where there is not only room for, but need

of, at least double the population. In presence of these facts and

figures, the chiefs of the national party in these provinces built up a

scheme, of which the principal heads were: the union of the two

Principalities into a constitutional monarchy, under a foreign prince

not belonging to the royal family of any one of the countries bordering

on Moldo-Wallachia,—that is to say, neither Austrian nor Russian; the

independence of the new kingdom to be guaranteed by the European powers;

a standing army sufficiently strong to defend the frontier in case of

foreign aggression, at least until such time as succours might arrive

from the guaranteeing powers. And that the rights of Turkey might not

wholly be lost sight of, it was proposed to continue paying her the

tribute to which she is entitled, or to buy it off by a sum once paid

down. Thus constituted, it was argued, Moldavia and Wallachia would form

a much more solid bulwark for Turkey against Russian aggression, than

they do in their present unsettled dependence.

This is the rose-colour view of the question of the Union taken by the

politicians of the Principalities, and especially by a knot of ardent

young men who would fain apply political theories imbibed during their

education and residence in foreign countries, and for which they do not

perceive that their own is not yet ripe. Nearly a year ago they had gone

so far as earnestly to discuss what prince should be placed over them,

and warmly to debate whether one or two legislative chambers were

preferable. Their eagerness blinded them to the fact that it would be

scarcely possible to form an electoral constituency worthy of the name.

The peasants, who compose the great mass of the population, are ignorant

and degraded to a degree which renders them wholly unfit to be intrusted

with the freeman’s rights of voting. They are by no means naturally

vicious or destitute of good qualities, but these have had neither fair

play nor cultivation. The Danubian serf—for, although nominally

emancipated, he is no better than a serf—has been systematically

oppressed and trampled upon. He is wholly uneducated, accustomed to

blind obedience, unrequited toil, and many stripes—in fact, a slave. To

give him a vote would be to place it at the disposal of the boyard on

whose estate he lives. There exists, certainly, a class of small

proprietors, especially in the mountainous parts of Wallachia, which

might be taken advantage of as a sort of link between the ignorant and

too often drunken peasant and the higher ranks. The artisans and people

of the towns might also have votes, but at the best it would be a lame

business, and it would be hard to prevent the real influence from being

concentrated in the hands of the boyards, who hitherto have shown

themselves anything but disposed to ameliorate the condition of their

inferiors, and who would thus have it in their power to impose upon the

constitutional sovereign such measures as were most to their own

advantage. Before seeking to establish in so backward a country as

Moldo-Wallachia that constitutional liberty for whose permanent

enjoyment so few of the most civilised kingdoms of Europe have as yet

shown themselves ripe, a vast deal has to be done by a government of a

more absolute nature. The intellectual progress of the people—or, it

should rather be said, their escape from utter moral darkness—needs to

be facilitated by juster dealing and material improvements. Schools and

roads are wanted, and a ruler who will check with a strong hand the

oppressions and cruelties of the boyards, and the villanies of the

middlemen and usurers to whom the unfortunate boor sells his future

labour for bread and brandy. The earnings of the peasants, especially of

those composing what are called the second and third classes, are so

small that their existence appears a miracle. In the event of failure of

crops, murrain amongst cattle, or any other of the serious but not

unfrequent calamities to which agriculturists are liable—also in the

event of a military occupation, which is worse than hail or rot—the most

fortunate class of peasants cannot expect to pull through the year

without incurring debt. As to the man of the lowest class, he is

invariably and at all times in debt. He gets small loans from the Jew

and Greek middlemen, at enormous interest, which is added to the capital

every two or three months. His only means of payment is by labour, for

which his taskmaster, profiting by his misery, credits him at a very low

rate, until, from less to more, he sinks into the condition of absolute

serfdom, and finds his whole year’s toil the property of another.

To examine in detail the social and political condition of the Danubian

Principalities, would cover much paper, and probably be of small

interest to English readers; but it may be possible to give in short

compass a clear general notion of their position relatively to Turkey.

The original treaties by which they accepted the protection and

suzerainty of the Porte, and which date from the sixteenth century, have

long since been infringed and set at naught. According to these

treaties, a tribute was to be the sole acknowledgment of Turkish

supremacy; the Sultan was forbidden to interfere in the local

administration, and the provinces were to elect their own princes. In

defiance of this contract, the elective right was long ago set aside,

the odious rule of the Greeks of the Fanar was introduced, and the post

of hospodar became the prize of the highest bidder. The office became so

profitable, owing to the unscrupulous means of enriching themselves

resorted to by these Fanariot princes, that it was soon the object of

eager competition. A system of intrigue and bribery was introduced which

gave rise to continual changes in the government of the Principalities,

and accustomed the Porte to look upon them as farms to be let to the

highest bidders. The Greek farmers were deposed and recalled whenever

the offers and promises of others of their countrymen appeared more

advantageous.

“From the period at which this system was introduced, to the beginning

of the present century,” says Wilkinson (whose work, although now of old

date, will be found valuable by persons desirous of tracing from an

early period the not uninteresting history of the Principalities),[6]

“being a space of ninety years, Wallachia alone has passed through the

hands of forty different princes, independently of the time it was

occupied by the Russians, from 1770 to 1774, by the Austrians and

Russians from 1789 to 1792, and by the Russians, again, from 1806 to

1812. The evils which naturally arose from such a state of things

weighed so heavily on the two nations, that the court of Russia, already

authorised by the treaty of Kainardjik[7] to interfere in their behalf,

insisted at the peace of Jassy, in 1792, that the Porte should engage to

maintain the princes of Moldavia and Wallachia in their respective

stations for the space of seven years, and should not molest them in any

manner previously to the expiration of that term.”