MUNICH—SECOND VISIT TO ITALY
We passed the summer of 1846 at Munich, we—that is my mother, my brother
Charles, and my sister—having taken a clean and comfortable lodging kept
by a Frenchman in the Promenade Gasse. Our life here was most enjoyable;
the inseparable companionship of my brother Charles was to me a source
of untold delight. Our pursuits and pleasures were all in common; we
studied the German language together under the tuition of a well-read
and accomplished master, and gained great proficiency by our almost
daily visits to the theatre. I say daily, because the performance began
at an early hour, and often ended before the daylight had waned, leaving
us at liberty to accompany my mother in her evening drive, or to spend
some hours at a friend’s house before retiring to rest. The dramatic
performances—which comprised many of the masterpieces of Schiller,
Kotzebue and Iffland, and other eminent writers—were very well given,
and the principal actor and actress of the day were a very handsome and
talented couple of the name of Dahl. He took the leading part in such
characters as Karl von Moor, in _The Robbers_, and the like, while his
pretty wife showed to great advantage in the heroines of the same
pieces, and was very much admired, especially by the king, Ludwig of
Bavaria, on whom the charms of female beauty were never thrown away.
The tragedies and comedies at the theatres were alternated with opera by
both German and Italian composers, and Charles and I seldom missed an
evening in the box which was kindly placed at our disposal by the
Sardinian Minister.
We became also zealous students of art in our daily visits to the
painting and sculpture galleries of that city of treasures, known by the
names of Pinacothek and Glyptothek. We passed most of our mornings in
these two museums, where the paintings are well arranged to mark the
progress of the art, and where every facility is afforded for the study
of the different schools and different periods. I think, before I left
Munich I knew every statue and picture by heart.
Whatever King Louis’ failings may have been, he was certainly a
benefactor to his capital, encouraging art and artists of all degrees,
painters, architects, musicians—a builder of palaces, of churches, a
patron of the coloured glass for which Munich was so distinguished in
his day, and to which was due a revived taste for painted windows in
every part of Europe.
[Sidenote: LOUIS OF BAVARIA]
The king’s own palace was decorated by frescoes representing scenes from
the “Niebelungen Lied,” and other subjects both of history and fiction
by such well-known artists as Cornelius and Kaulbach, while two rooms
were set apart for the portraits of contemporary beauties. Not a few of
these were rather of a shady reputation, but then there was a sprinkling
of homely-featured Royalties and other exemplary members of society,
designed to lend a respectable colouring to the whole.
An amusing story was told of His Majesty, with respect to this gallery.
King Louis was partial to the society of foreigners, and invariably
included the English in all invitations to his receptions. A lady was
presented to him one evening, and being very much struck with her
personal appearance, he requested her to be so good as to give the Court
portrait painter a sitting a few days hence, as he was desirous of
having her portrait in his collection. The lady smiled and hesitated,
but we all know what comes of hesitation. Half flattered, half alarmed,
not quite convinced of the prudence of the acquiescence, she demurred
for a few moments, when vanity prevailed, and our countrywoman gave her
consent. The next day the king—walking as was his wont unattended
through the streets of his capital—encountered the lady, who was bent on
a sight-seeing expedition. He paused, took off his hat, and made some
casual remark, which gave him time to examine the beauty of the
preceding evening. After an earnest scrutiny of her countenance, His
Majesty stammered out a species of apology to the effect that he would
not trouble her to give a sitting to his painter in ordinary. Alas! for
the disillusion which daylight had brought about with regard to the
candle-light beauty!
There were no end of stories extant about Louis of Bavaria. I was
assured that on the morning of his silver wedding, after presenting his
wife with the usual offerings of flowers, jewels, and what not, after
joining in the religious ceremony, which is very touching and impressive
in the German Church, the devoted husband gave the wife so black an eye
that it was a question if she could possibly appear at the evening
reception.
During the summer most of the society are absent from the capital, and
reside at their country estates, so that there were not many houses
which “received,” as the phrase was, during the hot season, but the one
which we constantly frequented made up to us for the absence of any
other. It was that of the Sardinian Minister, whose acquaintance we had
already made at Genoa. The Marchese Fabio Pallavicini and his wife
Marinetta, with their two sons, formed in themselves a most attractive
foundation for the agreeable reunions which were at this time swelled by
the officers of the neighbouring camp at Augsburg, and a frequent
contingent of travellers passing through on their way to the South.
Andri and Cesari, the two sons, had been my frequent partners and
members of our Genoese cavalcade, and it was a source of great pleasure
to meet them again, and to make an expedition, as we did one day, in
their company to see the review which the king was to hold at Augsberg.
The street of that town, which has so often been described as one of the
most picturesque in Europe, was beautifully decorated on that occasion,
for the houses actually looked as if they had been built in flowers. We
lingered on till late in the night, and escorted by some military
friends—one of whom, the noble and handsome Count Karl von Oetting,
still lives in my memory—we visited the whole camp and listened to the
beautiful part-singing of the troops as they sat at the doors of their
tents beneath the glorious moonlight of a July evening.
I, for one, was very sorry when that peaceful summer came to an end—and
yet how could I say so when our next destination was Rome! And what a
journey that was! never to be forgotten, in its beauty, its brilliancy.
Pope Gregory XVI. had just died, and was succeeded by the popular and
liberal Pontiff, Pius the Ninth, on whose accession all prison doors
flew open, all political offenders were released, and a festival of
three days was announced through every town in the Papal dominions.
Our journey from Munich lay by the twin lakes of Tegern and Aachen,
small but beautiful, their banks studded with a profusion of
wild-flowers, and the waters of the last-mentioned of a very peculiar
hue—what in old days was called mazarine blue or green—and the light
caught by the water gave the lake the appearance of a gem—a chrysolite
for instance.
[Sidenote: VINTAGE TIME]
When we reached the Italian frontier, our progress assumed an aspect of
triumph, for it was vintage time, and we were constantly encountering
peasants in the gayest dresses, driving wine-carts with casks and skins
full of ruddy liquor, the drivers carrying branches of vine and ivy, as
if Bacchus held high revelry. On our arrival at Ravenna, besides the
magnificence of the churches and basilica, with their wealth of mosaic
and their pride of tradition, there was the interest of a pilgrimage to
the tomb of Dante, and it would have been impossible to see Ravenna
under a more bewitching aspect, for it was the three-days’ festival.
Every house in the principal street had its balcony adorned with rich
silks, tapestry, and velvet, not unfrequently embroidered with gold,
while all the citizens were in gala dress, and the women, remarkable for
personal beauty and dignity of bearing, had donned their richest garb
and displayed their choicest ornaments of gold and silver, their
magnificent hair transfixed by bodkins, or spadini (of the sword and
target shape), many of them wearing innumerable rows of pearls round
their stately throats. Even in those days the national costume had been
much tampered with, but nothing was too good to do honour to their
beloved Pontiff, and the jewel-boxes of every household had been
ransacked for the occasion. All along our road the same scene presented
itself, making allowance, of course, for the difference of locality.
[Sidenote: RAVENNA]
We spent a morning of exquisite delight in the pine-forest in the
neighbourhood of Ravenna. Alas! I hear with deep concern that the chief
part of those magnificent trees is mouldering to decay. I remember
sitting at my mother’s feet for several hours, drinking in the calm and
beauty of the scene, while Shelley’s lines rose to my lips in his
description of another Pineta, the one at Pisa—
“How calm it was! The silence there
By such a chain was bound,
That even the busy Woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound
The unviolable quietness;
The breath of peace we drew,
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.”
There was a distant sound of the Adriatic, which mingled with the
whisper of the wind among the stone pines, and produced a weird music,
forming a species of scale, caused by the trees being all of the same
form, though of different altitudes. Numbers of wild-flowers studded the
ground, and moths and butterflies of variegated colours skimmed and
floated around us. How often did my mother and myself talk over that
delicious morning, when
“Banished from those Southern climes,
We thought and spake of other times.”
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