_Frankfurt, Rosengasse 13, August 4, 1872._
MY DEAR FATHER,--You will perceive by the head of this page that we have
at last got into lodgings, and powerfully mean ones too. If I were to
call the street anything but _shady_, I should be boasting. The people
sit at their doors in shirt-sleeves, smoking as they do in Seven Dials
of a Sunday.
Last night we went to bed about ten, for the first time _householders_
in Germany--real Teutons, with no deception, spring, or false bottom.
About half-past one there began such a trumpeting, shouting, pealing of
bells, and scurrying hither and thither of feet as woke every person in
Frankfurt out of their first sleep with a vague sort of apprehension
that the last day was at hand. The whole street was alive, and we could
hear people talking in their rooms, or crying to passers-by from their
windows, all around us. At last I made out what a man was saying in the
next room. It was a fire in Sachsenhausen, he said (Sachsenhausen is the
suburb on the other side of the Main), and he wound up with one of the
most tremendous falsehoods on record, "_Hier alles ruht_--here all is
still." If it can be said to be still in an engine factory, or in the
stomach of a volcano when it is meditating an eruption, he might have
been justified in what he said, but not otherwise. The tumult continued
unabated for near an hour; but as one grew used to it, it gradually
resolved itself into three bells, answering each other at short
intervals across the town, a man shouting at ever shorter intervals and
with superhuman energy, "_Feuer--im Sachsenhausen_," and the almost
continuous winding of all manner of bugles and trumpets, sometimes in
stirring flourishes, and sometimes in mere tuneless wails. Occasionally
there was another rush of feet past the window, and once there was a
mighty drumming, down between us and the river, as though the soldiery
were turning out to keep the peace. This was all we had of the fire,
except a great cloud, all flushed red with the glare, above the roofs on
the other side of the Gasse; but it was quite enough to put me entirely
off my sleep and make me keenly alive to three or four gentlemen who
were strolling leisurely about my person, and every here and there
leaving me somewhat as a keepsake.... However, everything has its
compensation, and when day came at last, and the sparrows awoke with
trills and _carol-ets_, the dawn seemed to fall on me like a sleeping
draught. I went to the window and saw the sparrows about the eaves, and
a great troop of doves go strolling up the paven Gasse, seeking what
they may devour. And so to sleep, despite fleas and fire-alarms, and
clocks chiming the hours out of neighbouring houses at all sorts of odd
times and with the most charming want of unanimity.
We have got settled down in Frankfurt, and like the place very much.
Simpson and I seem to get on very well together. We suit each other
capitally; and it is an awful joke to be living (two would-be
advocates, and one a baronet) in this supremely mean abode.
The abode is, however, a great improvement on the hotel, and I think we
shall grow quite fond of it.--Ever your affectionate son,