The Village -- The Peasant again -- The Road-mender --
Among the Czechs -- Czechish Speech and Characteristics --
Crosses -- Horosedl -- The Old Cook -- More Praise of
England -- The Dinner -- A Journey-Companion -- Famous
Files -- A Mechaniker's Earnings -- Kruschowitz -- Rentsch
-- More Czechish Characteristics -- Neu Straschitz -- A
Word in Season from Old Fuller -- The Mechaniker departs.
A hilly site, gardens, orchards, and green slopes, houses scattered at
random among chestnuts and elders, and a general suspicion of Czechish
carelessness, give to Willenz a touch of the picturesque: at least,
when seen as I saw it, with the morning dew yet glistening on thatch,
and flowers, and branches. Cherry-trees form a continuous avenue up
the hill beyond, and here and there huts of fir branches were built
against a stem, to shelter the guard set to watch the ripened fruit,
and gatherers were busy aloft. You may pluck a cherry now and then
with impunity; but not from the trees marked by a wisp of straw
twisted round a conspicuous branch, for of those the fruit is sold,
and the watchman eyes them jealously.
Coming to the brow of the hill, I saw what seemed a giant standing on
a high bank above the road. It was the grizzly peasant magnified
through a thin haze. As soon as he saw me he came plunging down the
bank, gave me a cheerful "_Gut' Morgen_," seized my hand, and said, "I
have been waiting long to see you. I talk gladly with such as you, and
could not let you go without asking whether you will come back this
way. If so, then pray come to my house for a night. It is not far from
Schloss Petersburg. We will make you comfortable."
To return by the same road was no part of my plan, and when I told him
so, the old man's countenance fell; he pressed my hand tighter, and
cried, with a tone of disappointment, "Is it true? Ah! my wife will be
so sorry. I told her what you said, and she wanted to see you as much
as I."
As there was no help for it, we had another talk, he all the while
holding my hand as if fearful I should escape. The burden of his
discourse was "a good time coming," mingled, however, with a dread
that when it came it would not be half so desirable as the good old
times, and between the past and future his life was a torment.
"Whether you shall be miserable or not," I answered, "depends more on
yourself than on the rulers of Bohemia. Why should a man grumble who
has a house, and food, and land to cultivate? Only carry your
enjoyments home instead of consuming them by the way, and cheerfulness
will be there to gladden your wife as well as you."
"Yes; but in the old times----"
I bade him good-bye, and pursued my walk. Turning round just over the
brow of the hill, I saw him still in the same spot, gazing after me.
"Farewell, good friend!" he shouted, and strode away.
Half an hour later I came to a road-mender, who told me he earned
twenty kreutzers a day, and was quite content therewith. He had a wife
and child; never ate meat or drank beer; lived mostly on potatoes, and
was, nevertheless, strong and healthy, and by no means inclined to
quarrel with his lot. The road was a constant source of employment;
and if at times bad weather kept him at home for a day or two, his pay
went on all the same.
I mentioned my interview with the old peasant. "Ah!" he answered,
laughing, "it is always so. No grumbler like a _Bauer_. All the world
knows that peasants think everybody better off than themselves"--and
down came his hammer with crashing force on a lump of granite. Wayside
philosophy clearly had the best of it, and heartily approved the fable
of the _Mountain of Miseries_ which I narrated.
Every mile brings us more and more among the Czechs. Oval faces and
arched eyebrows become more numerous, and women's talk sounds shrill
and shrewish, as if angry or quarrelsome, as is remarked of the women
in Caernarvonshire; and yet it is nothing more than friendly
conversation. To a stranger the language sounds as unmusical as it is
difficult; and to learn it--you may as well hope to master Chinese.
Czechish names and handbills appear on the walls; the names of
villages, with the usual topographical particulars, are written up in
German and Czechish, of which behold a specimen:
[Illustration:
Ort und Gemeinde. _Misto á Obec._
Horzowitz.
Bezirk Jechnitz. _Okres Jesenice._
Kreis Saaz. _Krái Zatéc._
Königr. Böhm. _Kral: Ceské._]
In some of the villages no one but the landlord of the best inn can
speak German, and you have only your eyes by which to study the
natives and their ways. For my own part, my Czechish vocabulary being
foolishly short, I could not ask the villagers why they preferred
sluttishness to tidiness, though I longed to do so. It comprised three
words only: _Piwo_, _Chleb_, _Máslo_--Beer, Bread, Butter.
Crosses are frequent, erected at the corners where bye-roads branch
off. Not the huge wooden things you see in Tyrol; but light iron
crucifixes, graceful in form and brightly gilt, and mounted on a stone
pedestal. Nearly all have been set up by private individuals to
commemorate some family event: _By the married Pair_, you may read on
one; _Dedicated to the Honour of God, by two Sisters_, on another; _In
Memory of my Daughter, by Peter Schmidt, Bauer_, on a third--all
apparently from some pious motive.
While eating a crust under the pretentious sign, _Stadt Carlsbad_, at
Horosedl, I saw how the dowager hostess practised her domestic
economy. She was preparing dinner for the family, after her manner,
drawing her hand repeatedly across her nose, for the stove was hot and
the day sultry. She sliced cucumbers with an instrument resembling a
plane, sprinkled the slices with salt, then squeezed them well between
her hands, and exposed them to the sun in a shallow basket, one of
five or six which, woven almost as close and water-tight as
calabashes, served her as dishes. Then she grated a lump of hard brown
dough, and used the coarse grains to thicken the soup--a substitute
for vermicelli common among the peasantry.
The hostess, meanwhile, chatted with me and set the table. She
professed to admire the English, and thought it an honour that an
Englishman had once slept a night in her house, "although he had to
look into a book for all he wanted to say." She coincided entirely in
the Saxon schoolmaster's opinion, that all best things came from
England.
As the clock struck eleven in came half a dozen serving men and
maidens, and sat down to dinner with the master and mistress. The
dowager supplied them with soup, beef, a mountain of potato-dumplings,
and cucumber salad, and ate her portion apart with undoubting
appetite. An old beggar crept in and stood hat in hand imploring
charity for God's sake! She scolded him for his intrusion, and then
gave him a smoking hot dumpling and a word of sympathy, which he
received and acknowledged with humble thanks and the sign of the
cross.
It is a relief along this part of the road to see frequent hop
plantations, and here and there rocks as richly red as the crimson
cliffs of Sidmouth, while at rarer intervals a pale mass of sandstone
on a distant hill-slope puts on the appearance of an enormous
antediluvian fossil. I was pacing briskly along, enjoying a fresh
breeze that had sprung up, when I heard a voice behind me: "_Ach!_ at
last. I saw you from far, and said to myself, Perhaps that is a
journey-companion--let me overtake him."
Immediately a man, who walked as if he enjoyed the exercise, and wore
what looked like his Sunday suit, came up to my side, and proposed to
join company, so as to shorten the way with talk. We soon got through
the preliminaries, and started topics enough to last all the rest of
the day. The stranger notified himself as a _Mechaniker_ from Neudeck,
going to Prague on business for his master. He, too, had much to say
in praise of England. He had once worked with an Englishman, a certain
James, or _Ya-mes_, as he pronounced it, and had ever since held him
in the highest esteem and admiration. "That was a man!" he exclaimed;
"if all Englishmen are the same, no wonder their nation is so great."
English files also were not less praiseworthy--a fact of which
Sheffield ought to be proud, seeing that her handicraft has often been
reproached of late. "To dance," said the _Mechaniker_, "is not more
pleasure than to file with an English file. How it bites, and lasts so
long! Even an old one that has been thrown away for months is better
than a German file. One is honest steel--the other is too much like
lead." Some folk will, perhaps, feel surprised by this scrap of
experimental testimony in favour of Hallamshire.
We talked about wages. The _Mechaniker's_ earnings were six hundred
florins a year; a small sum, as it seems, to English notions for a
skilled workman in machinery--one held in high consideration by his
master. Ordinary workmen get one-third less; he was, therefore, well
content, and told me he could spare something for the savings bank,
but not so much as formerly, owing to the increased price of
provisions.
So with sundry discourse we came to Kruschowitz, where we dined,
looking out on thick belts of fruit-trees, that embower the village,
and relieve the pale green of little plantations of acacias that show
here and there among the bright-red roofs. Most of the houses exhibit
the Czechish style, which shuns height and dispenses with an upper
story. Then we went on at an after-dinner pace to Rentsch, where,
striking into the old road to Prague, now but little frequented, we
shortened the distance by four or five miles. All Czechish now, both
to eye and ear. A difference is perceptible in the fields, the
implements, sheds, and vehicles; they are not so neat or workmanlike
in appearance as in the German districts, and yet the broad crops of
wheat, already turning yellow, betoken glad abundance.
Now we found pleasant footpaths through the beech-woods that border
the road, and enjoyed the cool shade and the sound of rustling leaves.
The men we met had a slouching gait, and the women, wearing coarse,
baggy cotton stockings, and flimsy cotton gowns, and shabby kerchiefs
on their heads, were unmistakable dowdies--an appearance which has
come to be considered essentially Celtic. However, they failed not to
salute us with their "_dobrýtro_" (good day) as we passed.
The aspect of Neu Straschitz, the next village on our way, shows how
we are getting into the heart of the country--the land of the Czechs.
Wide streets, which make the low whitewashed houses look still lower
than they are; a great, uneven square, patched here and there with
ragged grass, bestrewn with rough logs of timber, ornamented at one
side by a row of saplings, unhappy looking, as if pining for the rank
of trees; on the other by a statue of St. John Nepomuk. Very lifeless!
No merry noise of children in summer evening gambols; no fathers and
mothers chatting in the cool lengthening shadows. The only living
creatures are a man, a woman, and a dog, all three as far apart as
possible. There is nothing stirring even around the _Bezirksamt_ or
the church.
Glazed windows are few: an opening in the wall, with a hinged shutter,
suffices for most of the houses. And for door they have a big archway
closed by heavy wooden gates, looking very inhospitable. Here and
there one of these gates stands a little open, and you may get a peep
at the interior, a square court, enclosed by stable, barn, and
dwelling, heaped with manure and ugly rubbish. No notion here, you
will say, of the fitness of things. Look at the wagon--a basket on
wheels--the wheelbarrow, the rakes, huddled away anyhow, as if they
were just as well in one place as another. Perhaps they are. Quaint
old Fuller says of the Devonshire cotters of his day, "Vain it is for
any to search their houses, being a work beneath the pains of a
sheriff, and above the power of any constable." You will, perhaps, say
the same here. Look in-doors! the same slovenliness prevails. The room
would be just as comfortable, or rather uncomfortable, if chairs and
table changed places; if the higgledy-piggledy at one end were
shifted to the other. The condition of the utensils is by no means
unimpeachable; and repelled by the pervading odour, you will not be
less thankful than proud that your lot is not cast among the Czechs.
The inn is an exception, and has the appearance of being too good for
the village. The _Kellnerinn_ told us we could have as many bedrooms
as we chose, for they were all empty. I was content with my day's
walk, about twenty-five miles; but the _Mechaniker_, impatient to
arrive at Prague, resolved to travel two hours farther; so, after he
had finished his tankard of beer, we shook hands, and he went on
alone, the _Kellnerinn_ assuring him as he departed that he would find
good sleeping quarters almost every half-hour.