OUR LANDLADY AND WASHERWOMAN. THE EINSIEDLERSTEIN. ITS DUNGEONS AND
HALL. ITS HISTORY. INSCRIPTION OVER THE HERMIT'S GRAVE. LOSE OUR WAY.
GUIDED BY A PEASANT. HIS CONVERSATION. MISTAKEN FOR ITALIAN MUSICIANS.
GABEL.
Hayde, which is a burgh town, having its burgomaster and other civic
authorities, contains a population of between two and three thousand
souls, and can boast of a large warehouse, or handlung, in which are
exhibited and sold the mirrors and other articles in glass that are
fabricated at Burgstein. Like most German towns of the same size which
I have visited, it is exceedingly clean, and its environs are laid out
with a good deal of taste. For the Germans, while in winter they shut
themselves up in their houses, all the doors and windows of which are
kept hermetically sealed, seem to live, during the summer months, only
in the open air. Gardens are, therefore, their delight,--public
gardens, where such things exist,--in which the men may smoke and drink
their beer, the women sip their coffee, in society; or failing this,
slips of soil, close to the highway side, from which they are separated
only by a low railing,--so that the owners may behold from their open
summer-houses every object that shall pass and repass. And truly it is
a pleasant sight to see an entire population made happy by means so
simple and so innocent. For of excesses the Bohemians are seldom, if
ever, guilty. The men smoke incessantly, it is true, and some of them
consume in the course of a holyday a tolerably large allowance of beer.
But the beer is either very weak, or their heads are accustomed to it;
for it is as rare to behold a Bohemian peasant drunk at a merrymaking
or fête, as it is to find, under similar circumstances, an Englishman
of the same class sober.
After adjusting our toilet, and giving some linen to be washed, with
the distinct understanding that the articles so disposed of should be
restored at seven o'clock next morning, we first ate our supper, and
then strolled out. The graveyard, removed, as is usually the case in
this country, some little way out of town, attracted our attention, and
was admired for the extreme neatness with which it was planted and
otherwise kept. From the top of an eminence behind the inn, likewise,
we obtained a view of the surrounding country, which we should have
pronounced fine, had we not previously looked down upon it from Stein
Jena; and a public garden, as yet "alone in its glory," was traversed.
But we were too much fatigued to attempt more. We returned, therefore,
to our apartment; went to bed with the sun, and slept soundly till
half-past six o'clock on the following morning.
Lovers' vows, it is said, are like pie-crusts, made to be broken. So I
am sure are the promises of Bohemian washerwomen; at least our linen,
which ought to have made its appearance at seven, did not arrive till
nearly four hours afterwards, and we were compelled to prolong our halt
accordingly. At last, however, the slender, but to us invaluable cargo,
made its appearance, though still so imperfectly arranged, that the
stockings, being quite wet, we were obliged to sling outside our
knapsacks, while the damp shirts were left to dry, as they best might,
within. But the precious time which our dilatory laundress had wasted,
nothing could recall. We therefore felt ourselves under the necessity
of confining our day's operations to the inspection of a hermitage, or
einsiedlerstein, near Burgstein, with what was described to us as a
short and pleasant walk afterwards, as far as Gabel.
We quitted Hayde without regret; and though still foot-sore with
yesterday's travel, contrived to reach Burgstein, which is about three
English miles distant, between twelve and one o'clock. It is an
inconsiderable village, prettily situated under the felsen, or crags,
from which it derives its name; and can boast of its schloss, the
residence of Graff Kinsky, as yet a child. Like other buildings of the
kind which we had passed in our tour, the schloss at Burgstein
resembles a manufactory much more than a nobleman's palace; for it
stands close to the high road, is roofed over with flaring red tiles,
and shows in its dazzling white front a prodigious number of small
windows. Connected with it by an avenue of umbrageous planes, which
overshadow, perhaps, a couple of hundred yards of road to the rear, is
the mausoleum of the late count,--a most ungraceful pile, evidently
constructed after the model of an English dove-cot, and like the
schloss, shining in all the splendour of white walls and a scarlet
covering. But from such objects the traveller soon turns his eyes away,
that he may fix them on the bold and isolated crag, the summit of which
is crowned by what he naturally mistakes for masonry; but which, on a
more minute inspection, he discovers to be, for the most part, the rock
itself. There stands what is now described as the Einsiedlerstein,--that
is, the stony dwelling of the hermit; a grievous misnomer surely,--for
though the last occupant of that dwelling was doubtless a recluse, its
original purpose, which for many ages it served, was that of a
strong-hold, or castle. And perhaps nowhere, even in Germany, can a
more perfect specimen be pointed out of the sort of nest which used, in
the dark ages of feuds and forays, to shelter the robber-knights and
barons, to whom forays were at once a business and a pastime.
The Einsiedlerstein, or Hermit's Rock, is a bold and isolated crag,
which rises sheer and abrupt out of the plain to the height of,
perhaps, one hundred and fifty feet. It is separated from the fells, or
rugged hills, which form the northern boundary of the wide vale of
Hayde, by a space of about two or three hundred yards; sufficiently
wide to place it, in the days of cross-bows and ballistas, pretty well
beyond the reach of insult, but by far too narrow to be of the
slightest avail against cannon, and even musketry. In the face of the
rock a staircase is cut, by which you ascend to a door, of which the
key is kept at a cottage close by, where dwells also your cicerone, or
guide. The door being opened, you see before you a continuation of the
rocky staircase; with this difference in character, however, between
what is passed and what is to come,--that whereas you mounted to the
threshold under the canopy of heaven, you now move onwards, or rather
upwards, through a cavity cut in the face of the solid stone itself.
By-and-bye you come to a landing-place, beyond which, at the extremity
of a narrow passage, you behold what used to be the armoury of the
castle,--an arched hall, chiselled out, like the gallery which leads to
it, from the rock. Here are yet the grooves and niches within which
warriors, long since dead, used to suspend their spears and
battle-axes, their helmets and coats of mail; and here, in the face of
the stone, are chiselled out some armorial bearings; probably the
devices worn by the lord of the castle on his shield. We find a tiger
couchant, for example, not ungracefully executed; a gate or portcullis,
I believe in heraldry an honourable device; with the fragments of what
have evidently been other symbols, though time has laid on them his
defacing fingers so effectually that you cannot trace them out.
From the armoury you proceed round a curvature in the rock, which
conducts you into the open air, and gives you a view of the opposite
fells, to the dungeon,--a melancholy place, bearing to this hour
numberless records of the sufferings and the patience, and even the
ingenuity, of those by whom, in old times, it was tenanted. The late
Count Kinsky, the proprietor of the castle, caused a breach to be made
in the side of the dungeon, which you now enter through an arched
passage in the rock, though originally the captive was let down by a
rope from above. This arrangement has the two-fold effect of admitting
an increase of light into the den, and of affording a ready means of
access to such as might scruple to descend, collier-fashion, in a
basket. Having passed beneath the arch, you find yourself in a circular
cell some twenty feet or more beneath the surface of the earth, and
girdled in by walls of solid rock, out of which the hole must, with
infinite labour, have been chiselled. These walls are everywhere
scratched over with representations of wounded hearts, crucifixes,
death's-heads, and even of flowers with broken stems; all of them
clearly enough of very old fabrication, though unfortunately none of
them dated. How many gallant spirits have here pined and fretted
themselves into eternity; how many noble minds and sinewy arms have
long confinement and scanty fare, bowed down to this damp floor and
withered. What a record of misery and wrong would not these walls give
forth, were they for one little hour gifted with the power of speech,
like the talking woods in the fairy tale. And yet, evil as the times
were, when might, not right, was in the ascendant, they had their
redeeming excellencies too. Knightly honour, chivalrous abhorrence of
guile, the soul to endure, as well as the temper to inflict; these were
the qualities most prized by men, who, born and bred to lives of
constant warfare, held danger light, and looked upon peace as
inglorious. And then their religious faith! It might be gloomy, it
might be wild, it might be altogether misplaced or misdirected,--but it
was at least sincere; for it exerted an influence over their most
wayward humours; it urged them both to do and to suffer as none but men
who believed that they acted aright would have done. Let us not, then,
even when standing in the dungeon of a baron's hold, come to the
conclusion, that what we call the dark ages were ages of unmitigated
wrong. They might produce their tyrants and oppressors, whose power, in
proportion as it was resistless, would spread misery around; but they
produced also their vindicators of the oppressed; their Bayards and
Lancelots, _chévalliers sans peur et sans réproche_,--of whose spirit
of candour, and fair and open and honourable dealing, it might be well
if this our intellectual and utilitarian age had inherited even a
portion.
It will scarcely be expected that I am to conduct my reader through all
the crannies and recesses of the Einsiedlerstein. Sufficient for both
our purposes it will be to observe, that everything is in the most
perfect state of preservation, and that he who is desirous of obtaining
a tolerably accurate notion of the sort of style in which the barons of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries used to live, may find it worth
his while to make a journey even as far as Burgstein. Here is the
chapel, entire as when last the solemn mass was sung for the spirit of
some departed hero. There it is, hollowed out of the rock, with its
chancel and its transept, while near it are lodging-rooms of various
kinds; and underneath vaulted stables capable of containing perhaps
twenty horses. The well, too, that essential ingredient in a
strong-hold, still remains, though now it is dry; and on the back of
the kitchen fire-place the soot and smoke of other times have left
their traces. The only innovations effected, indeed, in the original
arrangements of the castle, are those which the hermit began; and which
the father of the present lord, the Count Kinsky, of whom I have
already spoken, has completed.
The history of the Burgstein, as far as I have been able to trace it,
is this. The name being a combination of the words birke and stein,
signifies the birchy-rock, an appellation which both now and in remote
times, would appear to have justly belonged to it, for its crest is
overgrown with birch trees, one at least of which is as fine a specimen
of the plant as it would be easy to discover either in Bohemia or
elsewhere. Its bold and isolated character seems to have pointed it out
as a fit situation for one of those keeps or strong-holds in which even
monarchs were, during the middle ages, glad at times to seek refuge,
and which constituted the groundwork of their power to chiefs of less
elevated rank. So early as the year 1250, a castle accordingly was
erected on it, in which the Baron von Ronow, a nobleman of vast
influence, held his court, and frequently entertained the King of
Bohemia himself, Wenzel I. By the caprice of his grandson, however, it
passed into the hands of the Knights Templars, who established there
one of their chief colleges, and, according to tradition, enacted many
and horrid rites, such as tended not a little to hurry on the ruin of
their order. When that catastrophe befel them, the sovereign seems to
have restored his prize to a noble of the same lineage with him who
willed it away, so that down to the year 1515, we find it in the
possession of a long line of Placek von Lippa und Berksteins. But heirs
male at length failed, and the heiress marrying a Baron Kollowart, the
lordship of this noble keep was transferred to a new line, which
transmitted it from father to son in uninterrupted succession, down to
the year 1670. To them succeeded, somehow or another, a race of Von
Rokortzowas, who again in 1710, made way for the house of Kinsky, and
in their possession it has ever since remained, neglected, indeed, till
of late, but holding time and decay alike at defiance.
Old chroniclers tell of many a lordly festival having been celebrated
within its walls. Repeatedly, too, it has withstood and repelled the
attacks of an enemy, once when an army of not less than fifteen
thousand men sat down before it, and a second time, when pressed by
thirteen thousand. But the invention of gunpowder, and still more
effectually the changes in men's manners which followed the discovery
of printing, slowly robbed it of its importance, till at last it was
deserted by its owners, who transferred their residence to the more
commodious, but far less picturesque mansion which they still continue
to inhabit. Then began a new race of tenants to occupy the rock, in
giving accommodation to whom the Graffs Kinsky doubtless believed that
they were benefiting their own souls, and doing their Maker laudable
service.
Towards the close of the seventeenth century, while the lordship of the
manor yet remained in the hands of the Kokortzowas, a bouerman, or
small landed proprietor, distinguished in the circle for his skill in
agriculture, suddenly took it into his head to become a hermit, and
fixed on the deserted rock as his place of residence. The gräfinn--for
a female seems then to have exercised the authority of count, gave
immediate attention to his wishes; and fitted up, at her own cost, such
a cell as the pious bouerman described. There, for some years, dwelt
Brother Constantine, telling his beads at stated periods, both by day
and night, and living abundantly on the alms which the pious of all
classes bestowed upon him. At his decease, an enthusiastic miller
stepped forward to fill the vacancy, and Brother Wentzel, so long as
the sands of life continued to run, was, to the good people of
Birkstein, and the districts around, all that Brother Constantine had
been. To him, in 1720, succeeded Brother Antony, or rather two
brothers, Antony and Jacob, who dwelt in cheerful community one with
another, praying before the same altar, and conversing during the hours
of relaxation, but, in strict propriety, occupying separate cells in
the rock. In 1735, however, Jacob died, when one Samuel Görner, a
modelist, and perspective maker, took his place. Some ingenious
representations of Mount Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre, executed in
wood by the hands of Brother Samuel, still remain, and are exhibited to
the stranger with becoming pride. And last of all came a weaver, hight
Müller, who at the age of twenty-two, devoted himself to a life of
seclusion, and dwelt apart upon the rock up to the year 1785. At that
time, the strong arm of power was stretched out, and hermits, as well
as many communities of monks, disappeared. Yet Joseph, who seems to
have been conscientiously attached to his calling and place of abode,
was not driven into exile. Being appointed parish-clerk to the church
of Birkstein, he continued to hold the office several years; and dying
at an advanced age was, by his own desire, buried in a grave which he
had dug out for himself in one of the cells on the rock. Such are the
circumstances which have contributed to cast into the shade the ancient
and warlike name of this curious piece of architecture, and to describe
as a hermit's cell, what was, in point of fact, one of the strongest
among the many and strong baronial castles with which Bohemia abounds.
The hermits have not sat in the seats of armed men so long, without
leaving numerous traces of their sojourn behind them. Three or four
caves are hollowed out in the rock, one of which contains a skull, a
rosary, and a narrow stone bedstead, overlaid with moss. In another,
besides the usual ornaments, such as crucifixes, &c., we found an image
of Brother Antony Müller, arrayed in his brown robe and hood, with
beads, a long gray beard, and bare feet, just as he is stated to have
exhibited himself in the land of the living. A third cave, or cell,
contains a representation of the same hermit's dead body, as it lay in
state,--for to the rock the corpse was carried both for exhibition and
interment; and finally, we have his grave,--a small heap of stones,
with a stone cross erected over them, and an epitaph inscribed on the
rock at his feet. I subjoin the original, and give, for the benefit of
such as may not be acquainted with the German, a loose translation.
Du hällst den Tod für deinen feind,
Du irrst; er ist dein bestest Freund:
Er ummt dir alle leibin ab
Und legt dich sanft in's stille grab.
Befreit dich von dir falschen wilt
Und wenn es dir nur selbst gefällt
So fühst er dich in himmel ein
Sag wellcher Freund kaun besser seyn.
Thou holdest death thy foe to be,
No foe, but best of friends, is he.
He lifts the evil from thy lot,
Lays thee where sorrow reacheth not.
From the false world he sets the free,
And if the progress pleaseth thee,
Guides thee to regions of the blest;
Of friends, then, is he not the best?
There remains one apartment more, which it would be unjustifiable in me
to omit particularly to notice, inasmuch as it holds a high place in
the estimation of the good people of Burgstein, and will, if it serve
no other purpose, force a smile from such young,--aye, and old persons,
too,--as may happen to inspect it. An ingenious mechanic, a workman in
the looking-glass manufactory hard by, has constructed a piece of
mechanism, in which all the known occupations, trades, and professions,
in the world, are described. His machine occupies four galleries that
surround an apartment built on purpose to receive it; and in the midst
is an elevated platform, on which the spectators take their stand. At
first they see only a rude representation of mountains and forests,
gardens, fallow fields, standing crops, cows, milk-maids, mills and
millers, ploughs, ploughmen, oxen, cities, soldiers, horses, carriages,
mines and miners, convents, monks, hermits, &c.,--all in a state of
quiescence. The pulling of a few strings, however, gives a totally
novel aspect to the face of affairs. Inanimate objects continue, of
course, at rest; but no sooner is the clock-work set a-going, than
music sounds, soldiers march, carriages rattle about, ploughs travel,
miners dig, mills go round, monks toll bells, hermits read and nod
their heads, milkmaids ply their occupation visibly and effectively
before your eyes,--aye, and the very bird-catcher pops out and in from
behind his screen, while a rustic having caught a schoolboy in his
apple-tree, applies his rod to the young thief's seat of honour, with
all the regularity of a drummer beating time. I defy the gravest person
living to abstain from laughter, when this universal bustle begins; for
no human being appears to be idle, and no single act seems to be
performed in vain.
The Graffs Kinsky seem, for some years back, to have paid a good deal
of attention to this noble relic of old times. The late count began a
chapel, I think in questionable taste, of which the walls now cover the
venerable and vaulted cavity, where knights and barons used to worship
long ago. He built, likewise, a sort of summer-house hard by,--of which
the flooring, red roof, and whitewashed walls, agree but indifferently
with the time-worn bearing of the castle itself. But though he has
added these excrescences, and erected a sort of platform in front of
the last, whence he and his friends might enjoy, at their pleasure, a
view of the surrounding country, he has taken nothing away; and the
public are much indebted to him, and to his successor, for the
liberality with which they are admitted to behold one of the most
curious specimens of baronial architecture, which is anywhere to be
found.
Nearly two hours having been spent in examining the different objects
just described, we began to feel that food and drink would be
acceptable; and our guide,--a civil woman,--having assured us that both
were to be procured in the cottage below, to it we adjourned. The bill
of fare, however, consisted merely of brown bread,--sour, as all German
brown bread is, and made of rye,--of butter and beer. Nobody has a
right to complain who has at his disposal a competent supply of good
brown bread and butter; but to our unpractised palates, the rye-meal,
and sour leaven, were not very inviting. Still we set to work, and
aided by a cat, and a fine bold fellow of a dunghill cock, both of whom
took post beside us, and insisted on sharing our meal, we made a pretty
considerable inroad into the good woman's vivres, whose butter and beer
were both of them excellent. This, with a rest of half an hour, made us
feel up to our work; so we disbursed our groschen or two, strapped on
our packs, and pursued our journey.
Gabel was our point, towards which from Hayde a good chaussée runs; but
we had no disposition to retrace our steps to Hayde,--so, trusting in
part to the map, in part to the directions which our good-natured
hostess gave us, we struck across the country at a venture. Probably we
did not commit a greater number of blunders than any other persons
similarly circumstanced would have done, but the way seemed at once
intricate and interminable. I doubt, indeed, whether we should have
succeeded in reaching our destination at all, had we not, by good
fortune, overtaken in the heart of a wood an honest countryman, who was
journeying towards his home in the fair village of Leipsige, and
volunteered to be so far our guide. We found him intelligent enough on
his own topic of agriculture, and well inclined to communicate to us
his family history; but he knew nothing about either Peter of Prague,
or the gypsies, and had never seen either Napoleon or his troops. We
were, therefore, forced to take his guidance on his own terms, and had
to thank him for probably some errors shunned, and a good deal of
anxiety avoided.
Leipsige,--our friend's place of abode,--is a long straggling dorf,
which extends, I should conceive, a full mile and a-half, along a
valley between the two steep green banks that mark out the course of a
pretty little stream. There is a bleach-field in it, and a manufactory
of linen thread, neither of which we delayed to examine; for the day
was wearing on, and, beautiful as the scenery was through which we had
to pass, we were desirous of reaching our halting-place as soon as
possible. At last, about six in the evening, after traversing several
deep forests, and crossing one or two hills, we beheld before us what
seemed to be a town of some size, with a large church built in the
Italian style, one schloss or palace just outside the suburbs,--and
another, much more imposing both in its architecture and situation,
some three-quarters of a mile removed. Concluding that this must be
Gabel, we made towards it; though, in order to avoid disappointment, we
questioned a well-dressed man whom we overtook, and received from him a
satisfactory answer. Our informant, however, was not content to give
information only,--he desired to obtain some also. What were we? We did
not belong to the country, that was certain; what were we? Italian
musicians? Now really I had no conception that in this thoroughly
English, or rather Scottish countenance, of mine, there had been so
much as one line which could induce even a Bohemian to mistake me for
an Italian, and I felt proportionably flattered, more particularly as
in attributing to me the qualifications of a musician, he paid as high
a compliment to my tastes as his first mistake paid to my features. We
made a very low obeisance, and assured him that we were neither
Italians nor musicians. What then? Were we stocking-weavers; and did
our load consist of stockings? This was too much for our gravity; for
the transition appeared to us as complete as could well be, so we
laughed heartily. But when we told him the truth, that we were English
gentlemen, walking for our own amusement, and desiring to make the
acquaintance of his countrymen, his manner became more polite and
obliging than ever. He directed us where to find the best
accommodations, offered to conduct us to the hotel in person, and would
hardly be persuaded that such service was unnecessary. We then parted,
we pushing on at a brisk rate for Gabel, and he, as we ascertained by
an occasional sly peep to the rear, standing on an eminence that he
might stare, as long as possible, after objects such as had never met
his gaze before,--a couple of Englishmen.