I saw yesterday, on the 31st of August, in the English Garden, dead
leaves whirling down to the ground, a too evident sign that the summer
weather is going. Indeed, it has been sour, chilly weather for a week
now, raining a little every day, and with a very autumn feeling in
the air. The nightly concerts in the beer-gardens must have shivering
listeners, if the bands do not, as many of them do, play within doors.
The line of droschke drivers, in front of the post-office colonnade,
hide the red facings of their coats under long overcoats, and stand in
cold expectancy beside their blanketed horses, which must need twice
the quantity of black-bread in this chilly air; for the horses here eat
bread, like people. I see the drivers every day slicing up the black
loaves, and feeding them, taking now and then a mouthful themselves,
wetting it down with a pull from the mug of beer that stands within
reach. And lastly (I am still speaking of the weather), the gay military
officers come abroad in long cloaks, to some extent concealing their
manly forms and smart uniforms, which I am sure they would not do,
except under the pressure of necessity.
Yet I think this raw weather is not to continue. It is only a rough
visit from the Tyrol, which will give place to kinder influences. We
came up here from hot Switzerland at the end of July, expecting to find
Munich a furnace. It will be dreadful in Munich everybody said. So we
left Luzerne, where it was warm, not daring to stay till the expected
rival sun, Victoria of England, should make the heat overpowering. But
the first week of August in Munich it was delicious weather,--clear,
sparkling, bracing air, with no chill in it and no languor in it, just
as you would say it ought to be on a high, gravelly plain, seventeen
hundred feet above the sea. Then came a week of what the Muncheners call
hot weather, with the thermometer up to eighty degrees Fahrenheit, and
the white wide streets and gray buildings in a glare of light; since
then, weather of the most uncertain sort.
Munich needs the sunlight. Not that it cannot better spare it than grimy
London; for its prevailing color is light gray, and its many-tinted and
frescoed fronts go far to relieve the most cheerless day. Yet Munich
attempts to be an architectural reproduction of classic times; and, in
order to achieve any success in this direction, it is necessary to have
the blue heavens and golden sunshine of Greece. The old portion of
the city has some remains of the Gothic, and abounds in archways and
rambling alleys, that suddenly become broad streets and then again
contract to the width of an alderman, and portions of the old wall
and city gates; old feudal towers stand in the market-place, and faded
frescoes on old clock-faces and over archways speak of other days of
splendor.
But the Munich of to-day is as if built to order,--raised in a day
by the command of one man. It was the old King Ludwig I., whose
flower-wreathed bust stands in these days in the vestibule of the
Glyptothek, in token of his recent death, who gave the impulse for all
this, though some of the best buildings and streets in the city
have been completed by his successors. The new city is laid out on a
magnificent scale of distances, with wide streets, fine, open squares,
plenty of room for gardens, both public and private; and the art
buildings and art monuments are well distributed; in fact, many a
stately building stands in such isolation that it seems to ask
every passer what it was put there for. Then, again, some of the new
adornments lack fitness of location or purpose. At the end of the broad,
monotonous Ludwig Strasse, and yet not at the end, for the road runs
straight on into the flat country between rows of slender trees, stands
the Siegesthor, or Gate of Victory, an imitation of the Constantine
arch at Rome. It is surmounted by a splendid group in bronze, by
Schwanthaler, Bavaria in her war-chariot, drawn by four lions; and it is
in itself, both in its proportions and its numerous sculptural figures
and bas-reliefs, a fine recognition of the valor “of the Bavarian army,”
to whom it is erected. Yet it is so dwarfed by its situation, that it
seems to have been placed in the middle of the street as an obstruction.
A walk runs on each side of it. The Propylaeum, another magnificent
gateway, thrown across the handsome Brienner Strasse, beyond the
Glyptothek, is an imitation of that on the Acropolis at Athens. It has
fine Doric columns on the outside, and Ionic within, and the pediment
groups are bas-reliefs, by Schwanthaler, representing scenes in modern
Greek history. The passageways for carriages are through the side
arches; and thus the “sidewalk” runs into the center of the street, and
foot-passers must twice cross the carriage-drive in going through the
gate. Such things as these give one the feeling that art has been forced
beyond use in Munich; and it is increased when one wanders through
the new churches, palaces, galleries, and finds frescoes so prodigally
crowded out of the way, and only occasionally opened rooms so overloaded
with them, and not always of the best, as to sacrifice all effect, and
leave one with the sense that some demon of unrest has driven painters
and sculptors and plasterers, night and day, to adorn the city at a
stroke; at least, to cover it with paint and bedeck it with marbles, and
to do it at once, leaving nothing for the sweet growth and blossoming of
time.
You see, it is easy to grumble, and especially in a cheerful, open,
light, and smiling city, crammed with works Of art, ancient and modern,
its architecture a study of all styles, and its foaming beer, said by
antiquarians to be a good deal better than the mead drunk in Odin's
halls, only seven and a half kreuzers the quart. Munich has so much,
that it, of course, contains much that can be criticised. The long, wide
Ludwig Strasse is a street of palaces,--a street built up by the old
king, and regarded by him with great pride. But all the buildings are
in the Romanesque style,--a repetition of one another to a monotonous
degree: only at the lower end are there any shops or shop-windows, and
a more dreary promenade need not be imagined. It has neither shade nor
fountains; and on a hot day you can see how the sun would pour into it,
and blind the passers. But few ever walk there at any time. A street
that leads nowhere, and has no gay windows, does not attract. Toward
the lower end, in the Odeon Platz, is the equestrian statue of Ludwig,
a royally commanding figure, with a page on either side. The street is
closed (so that it flows off on either side into streets of handsome
shops) by the Feldherrnhalle, Hall of the Generals, an imitation of the
beautiful Loggia dei Lanzi, at Florence, that as yet contains only two
statues, which seem lost in it. Here at noon, with parade of infantry,
comes a military band to play for half an hour; and there are always
plenty of idlers to listen to them. In the high arcade a colony of doves
is domesticated; and I like to watch them circling about and wheeling
round the spires of the over-decorated Theatine church opposite, and
perching on the heads of the statues on the facade.
The royal palace, near by, is a huddle of buildings and courts, that I
think nobody can describe or understand, built at different times and in
imitation of many styles. The front, toward the Hof Garden, a grassless
square of small trees, with open arcades on two sides for shops, and
partially decorated with frescoes of landscapes and historical subjects,
is “a building of festive halls,” a facade eight hundred feet long, in
the revived Italian style, and with a fine Ionic porch. The color is the
royal, dirty yellow.
On the Max Joseph Platz, which has a bronze statue of King Max, a seated
figure, and some elaborate bas-reliefs, is another front of the palace,
the Konigsbau, an imitation, not fully carried out, of the Pitti Palace,
at Florence. Between these is the old Residenz, adorned with fountain
groups and statues in bronze. On another side are the church and theater
of the Residenz. The interior of this court chapel is dazzling in
appearance: the pillars are, I think, imitation of variegated marble;
the sides are imitation of the same; the vaulting is covered with rich
frescoes on gold ground. The whole effect is rich, but it is not at all
sacred. Indeed, there is no church in Munich, except the old cathedral,
the Frauenkirche, with its high Gothic arches, stained windows, and
dusty old carvings, that gives one at all the sort of feeling that it is
supposed a church should give. The court chapel interior is boastingly
said to resemble St. Mark's, in Venice.
You see how far imitation of the classic and Italian is carried here
in Munich; so, as I said, the buildings need the southern sunlight.
Fortunately, they get the right quality much of the time. The
Glyptothek, a Grecian structure of one story, erected to hold the
treasures of classic sculpture that King Ludwig collected, has a
beautiful Ionic porch and pediment. On the outside are niches filled
with statues. In the pure sunshine and under a deep blue sky, its white
marble glows with an almost ethereal beauty. Opposite stands another
successful imitation of the Grecian style of architecture,--a building
with a Corinthian porch, also of white marble. These, with the
Propylaeum, before mentioned, come out wonderfully against a blue sky.
A few squares distant is the Pinakothek, with its treasures of old
pictures, and beyond it the New Pinakothek, containing works of modern
artists. Its exterior is decorated with frescoes, from designs by
Kaulbach: these certainly appear best in a sparkling light; though I am
bound to say that no light can make very much of them.
Yet Munich is not all imitation. Its finest street, the Maximilian,
built by the late king of that name, is of a novel and wholly modern
style of architecture, not an imitation, though it may remind some
of the new portions of Paris. It runs for three quarters of a mile,
beginning with the postoffice and its colonnades, with frescoes on
one side, and the Hof Theater, with its pediment frescoes, the largest
opera-house in Germany, I believe; with stately buildings adorned with
statues, and elegant shops, down to the swift-flowing Isar, which is
spanned by a handsome bridge; or rather by two bridges, for the Isar
is partly turned from its bed above, and made to turn wheels, and drive
machinery. At the lower end the street expands into a handsome platz,
with young shade trees, plats of grass, and gay beds of flowers. I look
out on it as I write; and I see across the Isar the college building
begun by Maximilian for the education of government officers; and I
see that it is still unfinished, indeed, a staring mass of brick, with
unsightly scaffolding and gaping windows. Money was left to complete
it; but the young king, who does not care for architecture, keeps only a
mason or two on the brick-work, and an artist on the exterior frescoes.
At this rate, the Cologne Cathedral will be finished and decay before
this is built. On either side of it, on the elevated bank of the river,
stretch beautiful grounds, with green lawns, fine trees, and well-kept
walks.
Not to mention the English Garden, in speaking of the outside aspects of
the city, would be a great oversight. It was laid out originally by the
munificent American, Count Rumford, and is called English, I suppose,
because it is not in the artificial Continental style. Paris has nothing
to compare with it for natural beauty,--Paris, which cannot let a tree
grow, but must clip it down to suit French taste. It is a noble park
four miles in length, and perhaps a quarter of that in width,--a park of
splendid old trees, grand, sweeping avenues, open glades of free-growing
grass, with delicious, shady walks, charming drives and rivers of water.
For the Isar is trained to flow through it in two rapid streams, under
bridges and over rapids, and by willow-hung banks. There is not wanting
even a lake; and there is, I am sorry to say, a temple on a mound, quite
in the classic style, from which one can see the sun set behind the many
spires of Munich. At the Chinese Tower two military bands play every
Saturday evening in the summer; and thither the carriages drive, and the
promenaders assemble there, between five and six o'clock; and while
the bands play, the Germans drink beer, and smoke cigars, and the
fashionably attired young men walk round and round the circle, and the
smart young soldiers exhibit their handsome uniforms, and stride about
with clanking swords.
We felicitated ourselves that we should have no lack of music when we
came to Munich. I think we have not; though the opera has only just
begun, and it is the vacation of the Conservatoire. There are first the
military bands: there is continually a parade somewhere, and the
streets are full of military music, and finely executed too. Then of
beer-gardens there is literally no end, and there are nightly concerts
in them. There are two brothers Hunn, each with his band, who, like the
ancient Huns, have taken the city; and its gardens are given over to
their unending waltzes, polkas, and opera medleys. Then there is the
church music on Sundays and holidays, which is largely of a military
character; at least, has the aid of drums and trumpets, and the whole
band of brass. For the first few days of our stay here we had rooms near
the Maximilian Platz and the Karl's Thor. I think there was some sort of
a yearly fair in progress, for the great platz was filled with temporary
booths: a circus had set itself up there, and there were innumerable
side-shows and lottery-stands; and I believe that each little shanty
and puppet-show had its band or fraction of a band, for there was never
heard such a tooting and blowing and scraping, such a pounding and
dinning and slang-whanging, since the day of stopping work on the Tower
of Babel. The circus band confined itself mostly to one tune; and as
it went all day long, and late into the night, we got to know it quite
well; at least, the bass notes of it, for the lighter tones came to us
indistinctly. You know that blurt, blurt, thump, thump, dissolute sort
of caravan tune. That was it.
The English Cafe was not far off, and there the Hunns and others also
made night melodious. The whole air was one throb and thrump. The only
refuge from it was to go into one of the gardens, and give yourself over
to one band. And so it was possible to have delightful music, and see
the honest Germans drink beer, and gossip in friendly fellowship and
with occasional hilarity. But music we had, early and late. We expected
quiet in our present quarters. The first morning, at six o'clock, we
were startled by the resonant notes of a military band, that set
the echoes flying between the houses, and a regiment of cavalry went
clanking down the street. But that is a not unwelcome morning serenade
and reveille. Not so agreeable is the young man next door, who gives
hilarious concerts to his friends, and sings and bangs his piano all day
Sunday; nor the screaming young woman opposite. Yet it is something to
be in an atmosphere of music.