MUNICH TO THE ACHENSEE
If there were a country where the crowned heads of Europe in ball
costume sat in a magnificent hall, drinking nothing less than champagne,
while the court band discoursed bewitching music, and the electric
lights flashed on myriads of jewels, Bee and Mrs. Jimmie would declare
that sort of Bohemia to be quite in their line. And because that kind of
refined stupidity would bore Jimmie and me to the verge of extinction,
and because we really prefer an open-air concert-garden with beer, where
the people are likely to be any sort of cattle whom nobody would want to
know, yet who are interesting to speculate about, I really believe that
Bee and Mrs. Jimmie think we are a little low.
However, their impossible tastes being happily for us unattainable,
three hours after our arrival in Munich found Jimmie proudly marching
three sailor-hat and shirt-waist women into the Lowenbraukeller.
It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when we arrived, and we took
our seats at a little table in the terraced garden. A rosy-cheeked maid,
who evidently had violent objections to soap, brought us our beer, and
then we looked around. There was music, not very good, only a few people
smoking china pipes and not even drinking beer, a few idly reading the
paper, and a general air over everybody of Mr. Micawber waiting for
something to turn up.
Jimmie glanced around anxiously. The length of our stay depended upon
our ability to please Mrs. Jimmie and Bee, who were easily fatigued by
the populistic element of society.
"Nothin' doin'," growled Jimmie in my ear. "Wake 'em up, can't you?
Create a riot. Let's smash our beer-mugs, and shout 'Down with the
Kaiser!'"
"You'd find you would stay longer than you wanted to if you did that," I
said. "What do you suppose they are all _waiting_ for?"
Jimmie called the redolent maiden, and in German which made her quiver
put the question.
"At five o'clock they will open a fresh hogshead of beer--the
Lowenbrau," she answered him.
"_Fresh_ beer?" cried Jimmie. "How long has this been opened?"
"Since three."
"Great Scott!" whispered Jimmie. "Think of me brought up on a bottle,
coming to a land where men will sit for an hour to get beer the first
five minutes it is opened."
"See, they are opening it now," said the maid.
Sure enough, every man in the garden slowly rose and ambled leisurely to
a horse-trough in the centre of the garden in which lay perhaps a score
of mugs in running water. Each took a stein or two or three, depending
on his party, and formed in line in front of the counter across which
the beer was passed.
"Come, Jimmie," I said. "I'm going to get my own stein."
"Why do they do that?" asked Mrs. Jimmie, after we had got in line.
"It saves the half-cent charged for service," answered the maid.
"Now isn't she funny!" complained Bee of me as I returned beaming with
content. "She _likes_ to go and do a queer thing like that instead of
sitting still to be waited on, like a lady."
"Been waited on a million times like a lady," I ventured to respond. "It
isn't every day one _can_ get a cool mug and see the beer drawn fresh
and foaming like that. I felt like a Holbein painting."
Bee, as at Baden-Baden, plaintively gave the attendant a double fee to
show that meanness had not caused my apparently thrifty act. Then for
the first time in our lives we found what fresh beer really meant.
Even Bee and Mrs. Jimmie admitted that it was worth while coming, and
let me record in advance that when we got to Vienna, and they served us
an equally delicious beer in long thin glasses as delicate as an
eggshell, Bee grew so enthusiastic in the process of beer drinking that
Jimmie grew absurdly proud of his pupil, and professed to think that she
was "coming round after all." But Bee declared that it was the thinness
of the glasses which attracted her, and insisted that beer out of a
German stein was like trying to drink over a stone wall.
We went many times after that, generally in the evening, when the
concert was held in a hall which must have contained two thousand
people, even when all seated at little tables, and where the band would
have deafened you if the hall had not been so large. Here Jimmie and the
waitress prevailed upon us to taste the most inhuman dishes with names a
yard long, which the maid declared we would find to be "wunderschön."
We began in a spirit of adventure, but Jimmie's taste in food is so
depraved that if he followed the precedent all through his life,
Lombroso would class him as a degenerate. As it was, he soon had us
distanced. But we let him eat pickles and cherries and herring and cream
and tripe and garlic and pig's feet all stewed up together, while we
listened to the music, and planned what we would bury him in.
The pictures in Munich we loved. I must say that I enjoy the atmosphere
of the Munich school better than any other. There is a healthiness about
German realism that one is not afraid nor ashamed to admire. French
realism is like a suggestive story, expunged of all but the surface fun
for girls' hearing. You are afraid of the laugh it raises for fear there
is something beneath it all that you don't understand. But the modern
Munich galleries were not the task that picture galleries often are.
They were a sincere delight, and let me pause to say that Munich art was
one thing that we four were unanimous in praising and enjoying as a
happy and united family.
It was here that Jimmie proceeded to go mad over Verboeckhoven's sheep
pictures, and Mrs. Jimmie and Bee over the crown jewels in the Treasury
of the Alte Residenz. To be sure they _are_ fine. For example, there is
the famous "Pearl of the Palatinate," which is half black, and a
glorious blue diamond about twice as fine as the one owned by Lord
Francis Hope, which his family went to law to prevent his selling not
long ago, and a superb group of St. George and the dragon, the knight
being in chased gold, the dragon made entirely of jasper, and the whole
thing studded thickly with precious stones of every description. But,
except that these things are historic and kept in royal vaults, they are
no more wonderful than jewellers' exhibits at the expositions.
But if you want to be thoroughly mixed up on the Nibelungenlied, after
you think you have got those depraved old parties with their iniquitous
marriages and loose morals pretty well adjusted by a faithful attendance
at Walter Damrosch's lectures and Wagner operas, just go through the
Königsbau, and let one of those automatic conductors in uniform take you
through the Schnorr Nibelungen Frescoes, and from personal experience I
will guarantee that, when you have completed the rounds, you won't even
know who Siegfried is.
There is one thing particularly worth mentioning about Munich, and that
is that also in Alte Residenz, in the Festsaalbau, which faces on the
Hofgarten, and is 256 yards, not feet, long, are two small card rooms,
with what they call a "gallery of beauties."
Now everybody knows how disappointing professional beauties are. Think
over the names of actresses heralded as "beauties;" of belles, who have
been said to turn men's heads by the score; of Venuses, and Psyches, and
Madonnas of the galleries of Europe, and tell me your honest opinion.
Aren't most of them really--well, _trying,_ to say the least?
Titian's beauties all need an obesity remedy, and Jimmie criticises most
"beauties" so severely that we have got to searching them out, when we
are tired and cross, just to vent our spleen upon.
Jimmie's favourite story is the old, old one of the old woman who saw a
hippopotamus for the first time. She looked at him a moment in silence
and then said: "My! ain't he plain!"
It is pre-historic, that story, but it has saved our lives many a time
in Europe. It fits so many cases, and I mention it here just to prove my
point. Go, then, to the "Gallery of Beauties" in the Palace, and you
will find thirty-six portraits by Steiler, of thirty-six of the most
exquisite women conceivable to the mind of man. Some of these are
women, like the Empress of Austria, who were justly famed for a beauty
which is not often the gift of royalty. Others are women of whom you
have never heard, but so lovely that it would be impossible not to
remember their loveliness for ever and a day.
We all enthusiastically bought photographs of the painting of the
Empress Elizabeth at the age of eighteen, which to my mind is one of the
most exquisite faces ever put upon canvas, and then, highly elated with
our presentation of Munich to Mrs. Jimmie and Bee, we gaily wended our
way southward, following the river Isar for a time, until we reached
Innsbruck, on our way to the Achensee.
At Innsbruck we halted for a sentimental reason which I am not ashamed
to divulge, as the ridicule of the public would be sweet approval
compared to the way Jimmie wore himself to a shadow in the violence of
his jeers. But the fact is that the King Arthur of Tennyson has always
been one of my heroes, and in the Franciscan Church or the Hofkirche in
Innsbruck, there were twenty-eight heroic bronze statues, the finest of
these being of Arthur, König von England, by the famous Peter Vischer
of Nuremberg.
So in Innsbruck we paused for a few days, finding it delightful beyond
our ideas of it, and exquisitely picturesque, situated on both banks of
a dear little foaming, yellow river, with foot-bridges upon which you
may stand and watch it rage and churn, and around it on all sides rising
the mountains of the Bavarian Alps, which are not so near as to crowd
you. Mountains smother me as a rule.
Jimmie obligingly took us at once to the Hofkirche, to get to which we
passed under the Triumphal Gate, erected by the citizens on the occasion
of the entry of the Emperor Francis I. and the Empress Maria Theresa, to
commemorate the marriage of Prince Leopold, who afterward became the
Emperor Leopold II., with the Infanta Maria Ludovica. This magnificent
arch is of granite and will last thousands of years. It reminded me of
the Dewey Arch in New York--it was so different.
The Emperor Maximilian I. directed in his will that the Hofkirche should
be built, and in the centre of the nave he is represented kneeling by a
sumptuous bronze statue, surrounded by the statues I had come to see.
Jimmie declared that the marble sarcophagus upon which the statue of
Maximilian is placed was "worth the price of admission," but Jimmie's
opinion is of no value except when he is accidentally right, as in this
instance. He studied this and the monument of Andreas Hofer, whose
remains are buried here, under a magnificent sarcophagus of Tyrolese
marble, leaving us to our bronze statues.
I found my King Arthur perfectly satisfactory, much to my surprise, for
I am always prepared to be disappointed. Some of the statues are
ridiculous in the extreme, but these monstrosities served the better to
emphasise the dignity of King Arthur's pose and the nobility of his
countenance.
Just after you leave the Hofkirche, you find yourself just opposite to
the "Golden Dachl," which the natives tell you is a roof built of pure
gold, but which the skeptical declare to be copper gilded. This roof
covers a handsome Gothic balcony and blazes as splendidly as if it were
gold, as Bee and Mrs. Jimmie preferred to believe. It is said to have
cost seventy thousand dollars, and was built by Count Frederick of
Tyrol, who was called "The Count of the Empty Pockets," to refute his
nickname.
While we were taking infinite satisfaction in this little history, we
lost Jimmie. He emerged presently from a handsome shop near by followed
by a man bearing a large box.
"What have you been buying, Jimmie?" we demanded, suspiciously.
"Only a replica of Maximilian's statue," he answered, blandly.
"You mean a 'copy,' my darling," I corrected him, sweetly.
Now Jimmie loves a fight and so do I, so we immediately offered battle
to each other, Jimmie insisting on his replica, and I declaring that a
replica meant that the same artist must have made both the original and
the second article, which when made by another craftsman became a
"copy."
Jimmie got red in the face and abusive, while I remained cool and
exasperating. I was getting even with Jimmie for everything since Paris.
But conceive, if you can, my utter humiliation when, upon arriving at
the hotel, I discovered that the box contained, not Maximilian, but my
dear King Arthur, and that Jimmie had bought it for _me!_
I really cried.
"Jimmie," I said in a meek and lowly voice, "you are an angel--a bright,
beautiful, golden angel, and from now on, I'll call this a
replica,--when I'm talking to a wayfaring man. And I'll never, never
fight with you again!"
"Then gimme back that bronze man!" declared Jimmie. "If you give up the
battlefield I'll start home to-morrow!" Which shows you where I got
encouragement to be "ungentlemanly," as Jimmie calls me.
Innsbruck is the capital of Tyrol, and the whole country of Tyrol is
like a picture-book. Its history is so stirring, its country so
beautiful, its people are so picturesque. There are any number of dainty
little lakes lying in among its mountains, which are accessible to the
tourist, and therefore semi-public, by which I mean not as public as the
Swiss or Italian lakes. But up the Inn River a few miles, and completely
hidden from the tourist, being out of the way and little known to
Americans, there lies the most lovely lake of all, the Achensee, and all
around it the Tyrolese peasants, as they ought to be allowed to remain,
simple, primitive, natural. We wanted to see them dance. So regardless
of whether an iron bound itinerary would take us there next, we folded
away our maps, put our trust in our little yellow coupon ticket book,
and started for the Achensee. From the moment we began to see less of
tourists and more of the natives, Jimmie's and my spirits rose. Chiffon
and patent leather might belong to Bee and Mrs. Jimmie, but here in the
Austrian Tyrol, Jimmie and I were getting our innings.
We got off the train at Jenbach and left our trunks there. Then on the
same platform, but behind it, and a few yards beyond the station, there
is a curious little hunchbacked engine and an open car. Into this car we
climbed with our handbags, and beheld on the same seat with Mrs. Jimmie
a beautiful woman in a gown unmistakably from Paris, who looked so
familiar that we could scarcely keep from staring her out of
countenance. Finally Bee leaned across and whispered:
"Don't look, but isn't that Madame Carreño?"
Without heeding Bee's polite warning, I turned and pounced upon my idol.
"Madame Carreño!"
"My _dear_ child!"
"What in the world are you doing here?"
"Why I _live_ here! And you? How came _you_ to find your way to this
inaccessible spot?"
"We are going to the Achensee--to the Hotel Rhiner, to hear Fräulein
Therese--"
"You have heard of my little friend Therese, and you have come--how many
thousand miles?--to hear her sing and play on her zither?"
"To do all that, but mostly to see if she will tell me her love story."
"How do you know she had one?" inquired Madame Carreño, quickly.
"I heard of it in England. Some one who knew the duke told me."
"It was a lucky escape for her, and I think she will tell you all about
it. You see it happened, ah, so many years ago."
To my mind, Madame Carreño is the most wonderful genius of modern times
at the piano. I have heard all the others scores of times, so don't
argue with me. You may all worship whom you will, but the whole musical
part of my heart is at Madame Carreño's feet, with a small corner saved
for Vladimir de Pachmann, when he plays Chopin. She claims to be an
American, but she plays with a heart of a Slav, and as one whose untamed
spirit can never be held in leash even by her music. Her playing is so
intoxicating that it goes through my veins like wine. The last time I
heard her play was in an enormous hall in the West, when her audience
was composed of music lovers of every class and description. Just back
of me was a woman whose whole soul seemed to respond to Carreño's
hypnotic genius. Carreño had just finished Liszt's "Rhapsodic Hongroise"
No. 2, and had followed it up with a mad Tschaikowsky fragment. I was so
excited I was on the verge of tears when I heard the woman behind me
catch her breath with a sob and exclaim:
"My Lord! Ain't she got _vinegar_!"
I repeated this to Madame Carreño at Jenbach, and she seized my hands
and shouted with laughter. Such a grip as she has! Her hands are filled
with steel wires instead of muscles, and her arms have the strength of
an athlete in training.
The car propelled by the hunchbacked engine grated and bumped its way
over its cog-wheel road, pushing its delighted quota of passengers
higher and higher into the mountains. The Inn valley fell away from our
view, and wooded slopes, fir-trees, patches of snow on far hillsides,
and tiny hamlets took its place.
"Here and there among these little villages live my summer pupils," said
Madame Carreño. "I have six. One from San Francisco, one from Australia,
one from Paris, one from Geneva, and two from Russia--all young girls,
and with _such_ talent! They live all the way from Jenbach to the
Achensee, and come to see me once a week."
The train stopped with a final squeal of the chain, and a lurch which
loosened our joints.
Before us spread a sheet of water of such a blueness, such a limpid,
clear, deep sapphire blue as I never saw in water before.
Around it rose the hills of Tyrol, guarding it like sentinels.
It was the Achensee!