VIENNA IN 1844[26]
Improvements in Vienna.--Palladian style--Music.--Theatres.--Sir
Robert Gordon.--Prince Metternich.--Armen
Ball.--Dancing.--Strauss.--Austrian Policy.
Vienna has been more improved and embellished within the last few
years than during the previous quarter of a century. The Graben and
the Kohlmarket have been joined, and many old projecting houses have
been taken down, and replaced by new tenements, with the facades put
back, so as to facilitate the thoroughfare. Until very lately, almost
every public building and private palace in Vienna was in the
Frenchified style of the last century, when each petty prince in
Germany wished to have a miniature Versailles in his village capital.
All the new edifices are in the Palladian style; which is suitable,
not only to the climate, but to the narrow streets, where Greek
architecture would be lost for want of space, and where the great
height of the houses gives mass to this (the Palladian) style, without
the necessity of any considerable perspective. The circumstance of
many of the architects here being Italian, may probably, in some
measure, account for the general adoption of this style. It is
singular, that although Vienna possesses in St. Stephen's one of the
most beautiful specimens of Gothic architecture, not a single edifice
in this taste of recent date is to be seen, although a revival of it
is noticeable in several other parts of Germany.
Music is one of the necessaries of existence in Vienna, and the
internal consumption is apparently as great as ever: there is
now-a-days no Mozart or Haydn to supply imperishable fabrics for the
markets of the world; but the orchestras are as good as ever. The
Sinfonia-Eroica of Beethoven catching my eye in a programme, I failed
not to renew my homage to this prince of sweet and glorious sounds,
and was loyally indignant on hearing a fellow-countryman say, that,
though rich in harmony, he was poor in melody. No; Beethoven's wealth
is boundless; his riches embarrass him; he is the sultan of melody:
while others dally with their beauties to satiety, he wanders from
grace to grace, scarce pausing to enjoy. Is it possible to hear his
symphonies without recognizing in them the germs of innumerable modern
melodies, the precious metal which others beat out, wherewith to plate
their baser compositions,--exhaustless materials for the use of his
successors, like those noble temples which antiquity has raised in the
East, to become, in the sequel, the quarries from which whole cities
of lowlier dwellings are constructed?
At the Karnthner Thor I heard the Huguenots admirably performed.
Decorations excepted, I really thought it better done than at the
Academie Royale. Meyerbeer's brilliant and original conceptions, in
turning the chorus into an oral orchestra, are better realized. A
French vaudeville company performed on the alternate nights. Carl, the
rich Jew manager of the Wieden, and proprietor of the Leopold-Stadt
Theatre, is adding largely to his fortune, thanks to the rich and racy
drolleries of Nestroz and Schulz, who are the Matthews and Liston of
Vienna. The former of these excellent actors is certainly the most
successful farce-writer in Germany. Without any of Raimund's
sentimental-humorous dialogue, he has a far happier eye for character,
and only the untranslatable dialect of Vienna has preserved him from
foreign play-wrights.
Sir Robert Gordon, her Majesty's ambassador, whose unbounded and truly
sumptuous hospitalities are worthy of his high position, did me the
honour to take me to one of Princess Metternich's receptions, in the
apartments of the chancery of state, one side of which is devoted to
business, the other to the private residence of the minister. After
passing through a vestibule on the first floor, paved with marble, we
entered a well-lighted saloon of palatial altitude, at the further
end of which sat the youthful and fascinating princess, in
conversation with M. Bailli de Tatischeff ex-ambassador of Russia.
There, almost blind and bent double with the weight of eighty years,
sat the whilom profoundly sagacious diplomatist, whose accomplished
manners and quick perception of character have procured him a European
reputation. He quitted public business some years ago, but even in
retirement Vienna had its attractions for him. There is an
unaccountable fascination in a residence in this capital; those who
live long in it become _ipsis Vindobonensibus Vindobonensiores_.
Prince Metternich, who was busy when we entered with a group,
examining some views of Venice, received me with that quaker-like
simplicity which forms the last polish of the perfect gentleman and
man of the world; "_les extremes se touchent_," in manners as in
literature: but for the riband of the Golden Fleece, which crossed his
breast, there was nothing to remind me that I was conversing with the
statesman, who, after the armistice of Plesswitz, held the destinies
of all Europe in his hands. After some conversation, the prince asked
me to call upon him on a certain forenoon.
Most of the diplomatic corps were present, one of whom was the amiable
and well-known Marshal Saldanha, who, a few years ago, played so
prominent a part in the affairs of Portugal. The usual resources of
whist and the tea-buffet changed the conversational circle, and at
midnight there was a general movement to the Kleine Redouten Saal,
where the Armen Ball had attracted so crowded an assemblage, that more
than one archduchess had her share of elbowing. Strauss was in all his
glory; the long-drawn impassioned breathings of Lanner having ceased
for ever, the dulcet hilarity of his rival now reigns supreme; and his
music, when directed by himself, still abounds in those exquisite
little touches, that inspire _hope_ like the breath of a May morning.
Strange to say, the intoxicating waltz is gone out of vogue with the
humbler classes of Vienna,--its natal soil. Quadrilles, mazurkas, and
other exotics, are now danced by every "Stubenmad'l" in Lerchenfeld,
to the exclusion of the national dance.
On the third day after this, at the appointed hour, I waited upon Prince
Metternich. In the outer antechamber an elderly well-conditioned
red-faced usher, in loosely made clothes of fine black cloth, rose from
a table, and on my announcing myself, said, "If you will go into that
apartment, and take a seat, his Excellency will be disengaged in a short
time." I now entered a large apartment, looking out on the little garden
of the bastion: an officer, in a fresh new white Austrian uniform, stood
motionless and pensive at one of the windows, waiting his turn with a
most formidable roll of papers. The other individual in the room was a
Hungarian, who moved about, sat down, and rose up, with the most
restless impatience, twirled his mustachios, and kept up a most lively
conversation with a caged parrot which stood on the table.
Two large pictures, hanging from the wall opposite the windows, were a
full length portrait of the emperor in his robes, the other a picture
of St. John Nepomuck, the patron saint of Bohemia, holding an olive
branch in his hand. The apartment, although large, was very simply
furnished, but admirably decorated in subdued colours, in the Italian
manner. A great improvement has lately taken place in internal
decoration in Vienna, which corresponds with that of external
architecture. A few years ago, most large apartments were fitted up in
the style of Louis XV., which was worthy of the degenerate nobles and
crapulous financiers for whom it was invented, and was, in fact, a
sort of Byzantine of the boudoir, which succeeded the nobler and
simpler manner of the age of Louis XIV., and tormenting every straight
line into meretricious curves, ended with over-loading caricature
itself.
I found Prince Metternich in his cabinet, surrounded with book-cases,
filled mostly with works on history, statistics, and geography, and I
hope I am not committing any indiscretion in saying that his
conversation savoured more of the abstractions of history and
political philosophy than that of any other practical statesman I had
seen. I do not think that I am passing a dubious compliment, since M.
Guizot, the most eminently practical of the statesmen of France, is at
the same time the man who has most successfully illustrated the
effects of modifications of political institutions on the main current
of human happiness.
It must be admitted that Prince Metternich has a profound acquaintance
with the minutest sympathies and antipathies of all the European
races; and this is the quality most needed in the direction of an
empire which comprises not a nation, but a congregation of nations;
not cohering through sympathy with each other, but kept together by
the arts of statesmanship, and the bond of loyalty to the reigning
house. The ethnographical map of Europe is as clear in his mind's eye
as the boot of Italy, the hand of the Morea, and the shield of the
Spanish peninsula in those of a physical geographer. It is not
affirming too much to say that in many difficult questions in which
the _mezzo termine_ proposed by Austria has been acceded to by the
other powers, the solution has been due as much to the sagacity of the
individual, as to the less ambitious policy which generally
characterizes Austria.
The last time I saw this distinguished individual was in the month of
November following, on my way to England, I venture to give a scrap of
the conversation.
_Mett_. "The idea of Charlemagne was the formation of a vast state,
comprising heterogeneous nations united under one head; but with all
his genius he was unequal to the task of its accomplishment. Napoleon
entertained the same plan with his confederation of the Rhine; but all
such systems are ephemeral when power is centralized, and the minor
states are looked upon as instruments, and not as principals. Austria
is the only empire on record that has succeeded under those
circumstances. The cabinet of Austria, when it seeks the solution of
any internal question, invariably reverses the positions, and
hypothetically puts itself in the position of the provincial interest
under consideration. That is the secret of the prosperity of Austria."
_Author_. "I certainly have been often struck with the historical
fact, that 1830 produced revolutions then and subsequently in France,
Belgium, Poland, Spain, and innumerable smaller states; while in
Austria, with all its reputed combustible elements, not a single town
or village revolted."
_Mett_. "That tangible fact speaks for itself."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 26: This chapter was written in Vienna in the beginning of
1844; but I did not wish to break the current of my observations on
Servia by the record of my intervening journey to England.]