STILL-LIFE AT HERMANSTADT—A TRANSYLVANIAN CRANFORD.
Life at Hermanstadt always gave me the impression of living inside one
of those exquisitely minute Dutch paintings of still-life, in which
the anatomy of a lobster or the veins on a vine-leaf are rendered
with microscopic fidelity, and where such insignificant objects
as half-lemons or mouldy cheese-rinds are exalted to the rank of
centre-pieces.
During seven months of the year—from April till November—the idyllic
quiet of Hermanstadt was certainly not without its charms. So long
as the forest was green and the birds were singing, one did not feel
the want of other society, and the _répertoire_ of walks and rides
furnished variety sufficient for an active body and a contented mind.
It has often been remarked of Transylvania, that while resembling no
other country precisely, it partakes of the character of many, and
that within the space of half a dozen miles you may be reminded of as
many different lands. Thus one day your road will take you through a
little piece of Dutch scenery, a sluggish stream bordered by squat
willow-trees, with at intervals a sprinkling of quaint old Flemish
figures; another time it savors perhaps of Rhineland, as your path,
leading upward to the top of a sandy hill, loses itself in a labyrinth
of luxuriant vineyards; or else you may deem yourself on the Roman
Campagna, when, issuing forth on the vast tracts of waste-land, you
see shaggy buffaloes standing about in attitudes of lazy enjoyment,
leisurely cropping the sunburnt grass or voluptuously steeping their
bodies in the cooling bath of a green shining morass.
You may ride for hours in the shade of gnarled oak-trees, or, emerging
on to an open glade, indulge in a long-stretched gallop over the
velvety sward. In spring-time these grassy stretches are crowded thick
with scented violets, whose purple heads are crushed by dozens at each
stride of your horse; and in autumn, when the grass is close cropped,
these meadows become one vast playing-ground for legions of brown
field-mice, scampering away from under the horse’s feet, or peeping
at us with beady black eyes from out the porticos of their sheltering
holes.
But once the winter has fairly set in, when those same frisky brown
mice have retired to their strongholds in the bowels of the earth; when
the last flower has withered on its stalk, and birds of passage have
left the land; when streams have ceased babbling, and mill-wheels, made
captive by chains of glittering icicles, are forced to stand still;
when parasols have been exchanged for muffs, and the new toll-dog has
already been eaten by the wolf—then indeed a season of desperate
desolation settles down on the place. What is usually understood by
the word amusement does not here exist. There is a theatre, it is
true, but this is available in summer only; for as the crazy old tower
which has been turned into a temple of the muses cannot be heated, it
remains closed till the return of spring brings with the swallows some
theatrical company of third or fourth class to delight the population
during a space of some weeks. Now and then a shabby menagerie or still
shabbier circus finds its way to the place; and such minor attractions
as an educated seal, a fat lady, or a family of intelligent fleas,
offer themselves for the delectation of a distinguished public. I have
known persons who paid as many as six visits to the seal and eight to
the fat lady during this period of vital stagnation. Is not this bare
statement wellnigh pathetic in its dreary suggestiveness? What stronger
proof can there be of the mournful state of an intellect reduced to
seek comfort from seals or fat women?
[Illustration: STREET AT HERMANSTADT.]
Had it not been for the resources of the Bruckenthal library, life
would have hardly been endurable at this _saison morte_; but after all,
even reading has limits, and the question of what next to do was apt to
become puzzling to unfortunate mortals whose tastes did not happen to
lie in the directions of music, love, or cookery.
About the liveliest thing to be done was to go often to the _place_ on
market-days, and watch the endless succession of pictures always to be
found there. It is the sort of market-place which would be a perfect
godsend to any artist in search of models for his studio. No difficulty
here in collecting types of every sort: an amazing display of pretty
dark-eyed women in rich Oriental costumes; a still greater assortment
of shaggy, frowning figures armed with dagger and pistol, representing
every possible gradation of the Italian bandit or the mediæval bravo.
Here a sweet-faced young Roumanian woman, tenderly pressing a naked
sucking-pig to her breast, might sit for a portrait of the Madonna;
there a Saxon matron, prim and puritanical in her stiff old-fashioned
dress, is offering cider for sale in a harsh metallic voice; yonder
a row of old dames, who sit weaving funeral wreaths out of berries
and evergreens, would offer famous models for the Parques, or the
_Tricoteuses_ under the guillotine (it was just about here, by-the-way,
that the scaffold used to stand in olden times). Dishevelled gypsy
women are trying to dispose of coarse wooden spoons, or baskets
made out of shavings, no doubt combining their trade with a little
profitable pocket-picking; and half-naked gypsy children are searching
the mire for scraps of bread or vegetables which no well-bred dog would
condescend to regard.
There is no great choice of delicacies to be found at this Hermanstadt
market-place. Game is but rare, for reasons that I have mentioned
before, and the finer sorts of vegetables are entirely wanting. The
beef, veal, pork, and mutton, which form the whole _répertoire_ of the
butcher’s stall, cannot be compared to English meat, but have the great
advantage of being much cheaper—beef about 4_d._ and mutton 3_d._ per
lb. Eggs and butter are good and plentiful; and as for the milk, let
no one pretend to have tasted milk till he has been in Transylvania;
so thick, so rich, so exquisitely flavored is the milk of those
repulsive-looking and ferocious buffaloes, as good almost as cream
elsewhere, and for the rest of your life putting you out of conceit of
your vaunted Alderney or short-horn breeds, and making everything else
taste like skim-milk by comparison. Some people indeed there are, of
superdelicate digestions, who cannot stand buffaloes’ milk, and are
deterred by the delicate almond flavor usually considered to be its
greatest attraction.
The Transylvanian wines have been described and extolled by other
authors (Liebig, for instance), and deserve to be yet more widely
known. There are, of course, many different sorts and gradations, those
from the Kokel valley being the most highly prized. It is mostly
white, and even the common _vin du pays_ is distinguished by its rich
amber hue, making one think of liquid topazes, if ever topazes could be
melted down and sold at sixpence the gallon.
It is a noticeable and praiseworthy fact that at Hermanstadt there are
no beggars. It is the pride of the Saxons to be absolutely without
proletariat of the kind which seems as necessary an ingredient of other
town populations as rats and mice. Even the Roumanians, though poor,
are not addicted to begging, and, excepting the gypsies, I do not
recollect one single instance of meeting a beggar in or about the town.
Nor can the gypsies be called beggars by profession; no gypsy will
in cold blood set himself to go begging from door to door, though he
instinctively holds out his hand to any one who passes his tent.
Curious old legends occur to us while picking our way about the
streets, and more than one old house is pointed out as being inhabited
by ghosts. Also, Dr. Faust, of famous memory, is said to have long
resided at Hermanstadt, and of him a very old woman who died not long
ago used to relate as follows:
“My grandfather was serving as apprentice at the time when Dr. Faust
lived here, and told me many tales of the wonderful things the great
doctor used to do. Thus one day he played at bowls on the big Ring
(_place_) with large round stones, which as they rolled were changed
into human heads, and became stones again as soon as they stood still.
Another time he assumed the shape of the town parson, and as such
walked up and down the church roof, finally standing on his head at the
top of the steeple, to the terror and amazement of the people below;
then when the real parson made his appearance on the Ring, he jumped
down among the crowd in guise of a large black cat with fiery eyes,
which forthwith disappeared.
“Once, also, on occasion of a large cattle-fair, there was suddenly
heard the sound of military music, and, lo and behold! in place of
the sheep, calves, oxen, and horses, there marched past a regiment of
soldiers with flying colors and resounding music. The people rubbed
their eyes, scarce believing what they saw and heard; then, as still
they stared and gaped, the band-master gave a signal, the music turned
to a hundredfold bleating and bellowing, and the sheep, cattle, and
horses stood there as before.
“At last, as every one knows, Dr. Faust was carried off to hell. Our
Lord would gladly have saved him from this doom, for the doctor had
always a kind heart, and had done much good to the poor; but to save
him was impossible, for he had sold himself by contract to the devil,
who kept strict watch over him, and never let him out of sight.”
Also, as architect Dr. Faust was renowned throughout Transylvania, but
he often played tricks on the people, who grew to distrust him and
decline his services. The numerous Roman roads still to be met with
all over the country are attributed to Dr. Faust, who, it is said,
constructed them with the assistance of the evil one.
The shops at Hermanstadt are such as might be expected from its
geographical position and the sort of people inhabiting it; in fact,
you are agreeably surprised to find here fashions no more ancient than
of two years’ date. Shopkeepers here still retain the antediluvian
habit of eating their dinner as we hear of them doing some hundred
years ago. When twelve o’clock strikes every shop is closed, and you
would knock in vain against any of the barred-up doors; the streets
become suddenly empty, and a stranger arriving at that hour would
be prone to imagine himself to have stepped into a sleeping city.
There are two fairly good German booksellers, several photographers,
and sufficient choice of most other things to satisfy all reasonable
wants. Yet there were people among our acquaintances who, scarcely
more reasonable than children crying for the moon, used to fly into a
passion, and consider themselves ill-used, because they had failed to
procure some fashionable kind of note-paper, or the newest thing out in
studs.
Sometimes, it is true, the narrow circle of Hermanstadt traffic showed
its threadbare surface in the most amusing manner, as, for instance,
when in an evil hour I bethought myself of ordering a winter jacket
trimmed with otter-skin fur. Three skins would suffice for my purpose,
as the tailor had calculated; so, accordingly, I went the round of
all the fur-selling shops in the place. There were four of these who
kept fur among other goods, and by a curious coincidence each of them
confessed to possessing one otter only. Three out of the four could
not show me their skin; they were unable to lay hand on it at that
precise moment, it seemed, but if I would step round later in the day
it should be produced. Returning, therefore, some hours later, I found,
indeed, the promised otter in shop No. 2, but Nos. 3 and 4 were, for
some mysterious reason, unable to keep their word, putting me off again
to the following day; and by a strange accident the otter in shop No. 1
had now disappeared. Then ensued a wild-goose chase—or, I suppose,
I should call it a wild-otter hunt—all round the shops again for
several days, having glimpses of an otter now at one shop, now at
another, but never by any chance in two shops simultaneously, till at
last an energetic summons on my part to confront all four together, led
to the melancholy revelation that there existed but one single otter in
the whole town of Hermanstadt, the poor hard-worked animal alternately
figuring among the goods of four different tradesmen.
In olden times, as we are told, the furrier guild of Hermanstadt was
very illustrious. Its members once specially distinguished themselves
in a fray with the Turks by delivering their Comes, in danger of
being cut down. Since that time the guild enjoyed the distinction of
executing the sword-dance on solemn occasions, particularly at the
installation of each new Comes.
This anecdote occurred to my mind more than once in the course of my
otter-hunt; and I sadly reflected that the Comes would probably be left
to perish to-day, while the sword-dance would be apt to assume somewhat
shabby proportions if executed by the four greasy Jews, with their
solitary otter, which is all that remains of the once famous guild.[73]
Other provincial towns as small as or smaller than Hermanstadt can
always show a certain amount of resident families whose hospitable
houses are thrown open to strangers living there for a time. Here there
is nothing of the sort, the wealthier class being entirely made up
of Saxon burghers, who have no notions of friendly intercourse with
strangers. It is difficult to explain the reason of this ungracious
reserve, for they are neither wanting in intelligence nor in learning.
Their education is unquestionably superior to that of Poles or
Hungarians of the same class of life; but even when well informed
in all branches of science, music, and literature, and on the most
intimate terms with Goethe and Schiller, Mozart and Beethoven, they
can rarely be classed as gentlefolk, from their total lack of outward
polish and utter incomprehension of the commonest rules of social
intercourse. Even persons occupying the very highest positions in
Church and State are constantly giving offence by glaring breaches of
every-day etiquette. This proceeds, no doubt, from ignorance, from want
of natural tact, rather than from any intentional desire to slight; but
the result is unquestionably that strangers, who might certainly derive
much advantage from intercourse with some of these people, are deterred
from the attempt by the lack of encouragement with which they are met.
I should, however, be ungrateful were I not to acknowledge that
among the Transylvanian Saxons I learned to know several, to whose
acquaintance I shall always look back as a pleasant reminiscence. First
and foremost among these I should like to mention our worthy physician
Dr. Pildner von Steinburg, to whom I am indebted for many interesting
details of Saxon folk-lore. Also, I can count among the people I am
glad to have known more than one of the school professors and several
village pastors; and I am truly convinced that I might have extended my
acquaintance with pleasure and profit considerably had circumstances so
permitted. But precisely therein lies the difficulty. The Transylvanian
Saxon burgher is a very hard nut indeed to crack, and in order to get
at the sound kernel within, one has to encounter such a very tough
outside that few people care to attempt it. No doubt much of the
imposed code of etiquette of the civilized world is an empty sham which
lofty spirits should be able to dispense with; but unfortunately we
are so narrow-minded that we cannot entirely divest ourselves of the
prejudices in which we were brought up.
In other parts of Transylvania the country-seats of the Hungarian
nobility offer a pleasant diversion; but here there is nothing of the
sort, all the land about the place being in the hands of Saxon village
communities. Social life at Hermanstadt was therefore reduced to a few
military families, who either might or might not happen to suit one
another; and whoever has experience with this class will know that the
cases of non-suitability are, alas! by far the most frequent.
“Small towns are so much nicer—don’t you think so?” I heard a gushing
creature remark to a gentleman she was endeavoring to captivate. “One
gets to know people so much better than in large towns. Isn’t it true?”
“Very true,” he replied, dryly; “one gets to know and to dislike people
so much more thoroughly than in a large town.”
Of course there were exceptions; but even if you do succeed in finding
one or two friends whose society you care to cultivate, the case is
not really much better—for whose feelings, what affection could
stand the test of meeting their best friend six times a day in every
possible combination of weather, locality, and costume?—in church, on
the promenade, at the confectioner’s, and in every second shop, till
you have long exhausted your whole _répertoire_ of smiles, nods, and
ejaculatory salutations. What galvanized attempts were made at gayety
only served to bring out the social barrenness into stronger relief;
for how was it possible to get up interest in a ball when you knew
exactly beforehand what every woman would wear, what each man would
say, and which of them would dance together?
None of the military families then stationed at Hermanstadt happening
to have grown-up daughters, the absence of girls from most social
reunions gave them much of the effect of a third-class provincial
theatre, where the part of _soubrette_ is performed by a respectable
matron of fifty, and where Juliets and Ophelias are apt to be _passée_
and wrinkled. We hear so much about the corruption of large towns; but
for a good, steady, infallible underminer of morals, commend me to the
life of a dull little country town. People here began to flirt out of
very _ennui_ and desolation of spirit; beardless boys at a loss to
dispose of their soft green hearts, desperately offered them to women
twice their age; couples who had lived happily together in the whirl of
a dissipated capital now drifted asunder under the deadening influence
of this idyllic _tête-à-tête_, each seeking distraction in another
direction—the result of all this being an amount of middle-aged
flirtation exceedingly nauseous to behold. Each evening-party was thus
broken up into duets of these elderly lovers, while by daytime every
man walked with his neighbor’s wife beneath the bare elm-trees which
shaded the only dry walk near the town.
This is, perhaps, what Balzac means by saying that life in the
provinces is far more intense than in a capital—so intense, indeed,
as frequently to be entirely made up of unnatural dislikes and equally
unnatural likings; while that serene indifference which, after all, is
the only really comfortable feeling in life, has here no place.
Cranford-like, we all walked to and from the social meetings, which
took place at alternate houses. The distances were so short as not
to make it worth while getting in and out of a carriage, and people
who loved their horses did not care to drive them on a cold, dark
night over the slippery and uneven pavement of the town. Every party,
therefore, terminated by a Cinderella-like transformation scene—thick
wadded hoods, heavy fur cloaks, and monstrous clogs reducing us one and
all to shapeless bundles, as we walked home in the starlight over the
crisp, crunching snow.
As the winter advances the social gloom deepens, and the liveliest
spirits fall a prey to a sense of mild desperation. I began to realize
the possibility of paying endless visits to the seal or the fat lady,
and only wondered why no one had as yet hit upon the bright expedient
of buying the one or marrying the other, merely by way of bringing some
variety into his existence. Some women changed their cooks, and others
their lovers, merely for change’s sake; and as there was far greater
choice of the latter than of the former article—there being many men,
but of cooks very few—any woman known to be capable of roasting a hen
or making a plain rice-pudding became the centre of a dozen intrigues
woven round her greasy person. A single roe-deer appearing in the
market infallibly gave birth to three or four evening-parties within
the week. You were invited to sup on its saddle at the general’s, to
partake of the right haunch at the colonel’s house, and the left at
the major’s, and might deem yourself exceptionally lucky indeed if
not further compelled to study its anatomy at some other house or
houses—everywhere accompanied by the identical brown sauce, the same
slices of lemon, the self-same dresses, cards, and conversation!
Oh, roebuck, roebuck! why did you not remain in your own native forest?
Much better would it have been for yourself—and for us!
FOOTNOTES:
[73] Not only the furriers, but many other guilds, flourished here in
a remarkable degree, the goldsmiths in particular taking rank along
with Venetian and Genoese artists of the same period. After the middle
of last century, the guilds began to fall into decadence; and finally,
when the old restrictions on trade were abolished in 1860, they began
to disappear. Yet the guild system, in all its essentials, was here
kept up much longer than in any part of Germany; and even long after
it had nominally exploded, many little customs relating to the guilds
were still retained—as, for instance, that of all members sitting
together in church, each corporation having its arms painted up above
the seats. It is only within the last twenty years that this custom
has fallen into disuse, for Mr. Boner, writing in 1865, makes mention
of it as still extant. Also, to this day, in several of the Saxon
towns it is quite usual to see signboards bearing such inscriptions as
“lodging-house for joiners,” tailors, etc.