Mems. for Chapter on Rhine: "Constantine the Great used to come here--so
did Agrippa. (N.B.--Try and find out something about Agrippa.) Caesar
had a good deal to do with the Rhine--also Nero's mother."
(To the reader.--The brevity of these memoranda renders their import, at
times, confusing. For instance, this means that Caesar and Nero's mother
both had a good deal to do with the Rhine; not that Caesar had a good
deal to do with Nero's mother. I explain this because I should be sorry
to convey any false impression concerning either the lady or Caesar.
Scandal is a thing abhorrent to my nature.)
Notes continued: "The Ubii did something on the right bank of the Rhine
at an early period, and afterwards were found on the other side. (Expect
the Ubii were a tribe; but make sure of this, as they might be something
in the fossil line.) Cologne was the cradle of German art. Talk about
art and the old masters. Treat them in a kindly and gentle spirit. They
are dead now. Saint Ursula was murdered at Cologne, with eleven thousand
virgin attendants. There must have been quite a party of them. Draw
powerful and pathetic imaginary picture of the slaughter. (N.B.--Find
out who murdered them all.) Say something about the Emperor Maximilian.
Call him 'the mighty Maximilian.' Mention Charlemagne (a good deal
should be made out of Charlemagne) and the Franks. (Find out all about
the Franks, and where they lived, and what has become of them.) Sketch
the various contests between the Romans and the Goths. (Read up 'Gibbon'
for this, unless you can get enough out of _Mangnall's Questions_.) Give
picturesque account--with comments--of the battles between the citizens
of Cologne and their haughty archbishops. (N.B.--Let them fight on a
bridge over the Rhine, unless it is distinctly stated somewhere that they
didn't.) Bring in the Minne-singers, especially Walter von Vogelweid;
make him sing under a castle-wall somewhere, and let the girl die. Talk
about Albert Durer. Criticise his style. Say it's flat. (If possible,
find out if it _is_ flat.) "The rat tower on the Rhine," near Bingen.
Describe the place and tell the whole story. Don't spin it out too long,
because everybody knows it. "The Brothers of Bornhofen," story connected
with the twin castles of Sterrenberg and Liebenstein, Conrad and
Heinrich--brothers--both love Hildegarde. She was very beautiful.
Heinrich generously refuses to marry the beautiful Hildegarde, and goes
away to the Crusades, leaving her to his brother Conrad. Conrad
considers over the matter for a year or two, and then _he_ decides that
he won't marry her either, but will leave her for his brother Heinrich,
and _he_ goes off to the Crusades, from whence he returns, a few years
later on, with a Grecian bride. The beautiful H., muddled up between the
pair of them, and the victim of too much generosity, gets sulky (don't
blame her), and shuts herself up in a lonely part of the castle, and
won't see anybody for years. Chivalrous Heinrich returns, and is wild
that his brother C. has not married the beautiful H. It does not occur
to him to marry the girl even then. The feverish yearning displayed by
each of these two brothers, that the other one should marry the beloved
Hildegarde, is very touching. Heinrich draws his sword, and throws
himself upon his brother C. to kill him. The beautiful Hildegarde,
however, throws herself between them and reconciliates them, and then,
convinced that neither of them means business, and naturally disgusted
with the whole affair, retires into a nunnery. Conrad's Grecian bride
subsequently throws herself away on another man, upon which Conrad throws
himself on his brother H.'s breast, and they swear eternal friendship.
(Make it pathetic. Pretend you have sat amid the ruins in the moonlight,
and give the scene--with ghosts.) "Rolandseck," near Bonn. Tell the
story of Roland and Hildegunde (see _Baedeker_, p. 66). Don't make it
too long, because it is so much like the other. Describe the funeral?
The "Watch Tower on the Rhine" below Audernach. Query, isn't there a
song about this? If so, put it in. Coblentz and Ehrenbreitstein. Great
fortresses. Call them "the Frowning Sentinels of the State." Make
reflections on the German army, also on war generally. Chat about
Frederick the Great. (Read Carlyle's history of him, and pick out the
interesting bits.) The Drachenfels. Quote Byron. Moralise about ruined
castles generally, and describe the middle ages, with your views and
opinions on same."
There is much more of it, but that is sufficient to let you see the
scheme I had in my head. I have not carried out my scheme, because, when
I came to reflect upon the matter, it seemed to me that the idea would
develop into something that would be more in the nature of a history of
Europe than a chapter in a tourist's diary, and I determined not to waste
my time upon it, until there arose a greater public demand for a new
History of Europe than there appears to exist at present.
"Besides," I argued to myself, "such a work would be just the very thing
with which to beguile the tedium of a long imprisonment. At some future
time I may be glad of a labour of this magnitude to occupy a period of
involuntary inaction."
"This is the sort of thing," I said to myself, "to save up for Holloway
or Pentonville."
It would have been a very enjoyable ride altogether, that evening's spin
along the banks of the Rhine, if I had not been haunted at the time by
the idea that I should have to write an account of it next day in my
diary. As it was, I enjoyed it as a man enjoys a dinner when he has got
to make a speech after it, or as a critic enjoys a play.
We passed such odd little villages every here and there. Little places
so crowded up between the railway and the river that there was no room in
them for any streets. All the houses were jumbled up together just
anyhow, and how any man who lived in the middle could get home without
climbing over half the other houses in the place I could not make out.
They were the sort of villages where a man's mother-in-law, coming to pay
him a visit, might wander around all day, hearing him, and even now and
then seeing him, yet never being able to get at him in consequence of not
knowing the way in.
A drunken man, living in one of these villages, could never hope to get
home. He would have to sit down outside, and wait till his head was
clear.
We witnessed the opening scenes of a very amusing little comedy at one of
the towns where the train drew up. The chief characters were played by
an active young goat, a small boy, an elderly man and a woman, parents of
the small boy and owners of the goat, and a dog.
First we heard a yell, and then, from out a cottage opposite the station,
bounded an innocent and happy goat, and gambolled around. A long rope,
one end of which was fastened to his neck, trailed behind him. After the
goat (in the double sense of the phrase) came a child. The child tried
to catch the goat by means of the rope, caught itself in the rope
instead, and went down with a bump and a screech. Whereupon a stout
woman, the boy's mother apparently, ran out from the cottage, and also
made for the goat. The goat flew down the road, and the woman flew after
it. At the first corner, the woman trod on the rope, and then _she_ went
down with a bump and a screech. Then the goat turned and ran up the
street, and, as it passed the cottage, the father ran out and tried to
stop it. He was an old man, but still seemed to have plenty of vigour in
him. He evidently guessed how his wife and child had gone down, and he
endeavoured to avoid the rope and to skip over it when it came near him.
But the goat's movements were too erratic for him. His turn came, and he
trod on the rope, and went down in the middle of the road, opposite his
own door, with a thud that shook us all up against each other as we stood
looking out of the carriage-window, and sat there and cursed the goat.
Then out ran a dog, barking furiously, and he went for the goat, and got
the end of the rope in his teeth and held on to it like grim death. Away
went the goat, at his end of the rope, and, with him, the dog at the
other end. Between them, they kept the rope about six inches above the
ground, and with it they remorselessly mowed down every living thing they
came across in that once peaceful village. In the course of less than
half a minute we counted fourteen persons sitting down in the middle of
the road. Eight of them were cursing the goat, four were cursing the
dog, and two of them were cursing the old man for keeping the goat, one
of these two, and the more violent one, being the man's own wife.
The train left at this juncture. We entreated the railway officials to
let us stop and see the show out. The play was becoming quite
interesting. It was so full of movement. But they said that we were
half-an-hour late as it was, and that they dared not.
We leaned out of the window, and watched for as long as we could; and
after the village was lost to view in the distance, we could still, by
listening carefully, hear the thuds, as one after another of the
inhabitants sat down and began to swear.
At about eleven o'clock we had some beer--you can generally obtain such
light refreshment as bottled beer and coffee and rolls from the guard on
a through long-distance train in Germany--took off our boots, and saying
"Good-night" to each other, made a great show of going to sleep. But we
never succeeded in getting there. They wanted to see one's ticket too
often for one to get fairly off.
Every few minutes, so it seemed to me, though in reality the intervals
may perhaps have been longer, a ghostly face would appear at the
carriage-window, and ask to see our tickets.
Whenever a German railway-guard feels lonesome, and does not know what
else to do with himself, he takes a walk round the train, and gets the
passengers to show him their tickets, after which he returns to his box
cheered and refreshed. Some people rave about sunsets and mountains and
old masters; but to the German railway-guard the world can show nothing
more satisfying, more inspiring, than the sight of a railway-ticket.
Nearly all the German railway officials have this same craving for
tickets. If only they get somebody to show them a railway-ticket, they
are happy. It seemed a harmless weakness of theirs, and B. and I decided
that it would be only kind to humour them in it during our stay.
Accordingly, whenever we saw a German railway official standing about,
looking sad and weary, we went up to him and showed him our tickets. The
sight was like a ray of sunshine to him; and all his care was immediately
forgotten. If we had not a ticket with us at the time, we went and
bought one. A mere single third to the next station would gladden him
sufficiently in most cases; but if the poor fellow appeared very
woe-begone, and as if he wanted more than ordinary cheering up, we got
him a second-class return.
For the purpose of our journey to Ober-Ammergau and back, we each carried
with us a folio containing some ten or twelve first-class tickets between
different towns, covering in all a distance of some thousand miles; and
one afternoon, at Munich, seeing a railway official, a cloak-room keeper,
who they told us had lately lost his aunt, and who looked exceptionally
dejected, I proposed to B. that we should take this man into a quiet
corner, and both of us show him all our tickets at once--the whole twenty
or twenty-four of them--and let him take them in his hand and look at
them for as long as he liked. I wanted to comfort him.
B., however, advised against the suggestion. He said that even if it did
not turn the man's head (and it was more than probable that it would), so
much jealousy would be created against him among the other railway people
throughout Germany, that his life would be made a misery to him.
So we bought and showed him a first-class return to the next station but
one; and it was quite pathetic to watch the poor fellow's face brighten
up at the sight, and to see the faint smile creep back to the lips from
which it had so long been absent.
But at times, one wishes that the German railway official would control
his passion for tickets--or, at least, keep it within due bounds.
Even the most kindly-hearted man grows tired of showing his ticket all
day and night long, and the middle of a wearisome journey is not the
proper time for a man to come to the carriage-window and clamour to see
your "billet."
You are weary and sleepy. You do not know where your ticket is. You are
not quite sure that you have got a ticket; or if you ever had one,
somebody has taken it away from you. You have put it by very carefully,
thinking that it would not be wanted for hours, and have forgotten where.
There are eleven pockets in the suit you have on, and five more in the
overcoat on the rack. Maybe, it is in one of those pockets. If not, it
is possibly in one of the bags--somewhere, or in your pocket-book, if you
only knew where that was, or your purse.
You begin a search. You stand up and shake yourself. Then you have
another feel all over. You look round in the course of the proceedings;
and the sight of the crowd of curious faces watching you, and of the man
in uniform waiting with his eye fixed severely upon you, convey to you,
in your then state of confusion, the momentary idea that this is a
police-court scene, and that if the ticket is found upon you, you will
probably get five years.
Upon this you vehemently protest your innocence.
"I tell you I haven't got it!" you exclaim;--"never seen the gentleman's
ticket. You let me go! I--"
Here the surprise of your fellow-passengers recalls you to yourself, and
you proceed on your exploration. You overhaul the bags, turning
everything out on to the floor, muttering curses on the whole railway
system of Germany as you do so. Then you feel in your boots. You make
everybody near you stand up to see if they are sitting upon it, and you
go down on your knees and grovel for it under the seat.
"You didn't throw it out of the window with your sandwiches, did you?"
asks your friend.
"No! Do you think I'm a fool?" you answer, irritably. "What should I
want to do that for?"
On going systematically over yourself for about the twentieth time, you
discover it in your waistcoat pocket, and for the next half-hour you sit
and wonder how you came to miss it on the previous nineteen occasions.
Meanwhile, during this trying scene, the conduct of the guard has
certainly not tended to allay your anxiety and nervousness. All the time
that you have been looking for your ticket, he has been doing silly
tricks on the step outside, imperilling his life by every means that
experience and ingenuity can suggest.
The train is going at the rate of thirty miles an hour, the express speed
in Germany, and a bridge comes in sight crossing over the line. On
seeing this bridge, the guard, holding on by the window, leans his body
as far back as ever it will go. You look at him, and then at the
rapidly-nearing bridge, and calculate that the arch will just take his
head off without injuring any other part of him whatever, and you wonder
whether the head will be jerked into the carriage or will fall outside.
When he is three inches off the bridge, he pulls himself up straight, and
the brickwork, as the train dashes through, kills a fly that was
trespassing on the upper part of his right ear.
Then, when the bridge is passed, and the train is skirting the very edge
of a precipice, so that a stone dropped just outside the window would
tumble straight down 300 feet, he suddenly lets go, and, balancing
himself on the foot-board without holding on to anything, commences to
dance a sort of Teutonic cellar-flap, and to warm his body by flinging
his arms about in the manner of cabmen on a cold day.
The first essential to comfortable railway travelling in Germany is to
make up your mind not to care a rap whether the guard gets killed in the
course of the journey or not. Any tender feeling towards the guard makes
railway travelling in the Fatherland a simple torture.
At five a.m. (how fair and sweet and fresh the earth looks in the early
morning! Those lazy people who lie in bed till eight or nine miss half
the beauty of the day, if they but knew it. It is only we who rise early
that really enjoy Nature properly) I gave up trying to get to sleep, and
made my way to the dressing-room at the end of the car, and had a wash.
It is difficult to wash in these little places, because the cars shake
so; and when you have got both your hands and half your head in the
basin, and are unable to protect yourself, the sides of the room, and the
water-tap and the soap-dish, and other cowardly things, take a mean
advantage of your helplessness to punch you as hard as ever they can; and
when you back away from these, the door swings open and slaps you from
behind.
I succeeded, however, in getting myself fairly wet all over, even if I
did nothing else, and then I looked about for a towel. Of course, there
was no towel. That is the trick. The idea of the railway authorities is
to lure the passenger, by providing him with soap and water and a basin,
into getting himself thoroughly soaked, and then to let it dawn upon him
that there is no towel. That is their notion of fun!
I thought of the handkerchiefs in my bag, but to get to them I should
have to pass compartments containing ladies, and I was only in early
morning dress.
So I had to wipe myself with a newspaper which I happened to have in my
pocket, and a more unsatisfactory thing to dry oneself upon I cannot
conceive.
I woke up B. when I got back to the carriage, and persuaded him to go and
have a wash; and in listening to the distant sound of his remarks when he
likewise discovered that there was no towel, the recollection of my own
discomfiture passed gently away.
Ah! how true it is, as good people tell us, that in thinking of the
sorrows of others, we learn to forget our own!
For fifty miles before one reaches Munich, the land is flat, stale, and
apparently very unprofitable, and there is little to interest the
looker-out. He sits straining his eyes towards the horizon, eagerly
longing for some sign of the city to come in sight.
It lies very low, however, and does all it can to escape observation; and
it is not until he is almost within its streets that he discovers it.