OUR LANDLORD BECOMES OUR GUIDE. PECULIAR SCENERY OF THIS PART OF
BOHEMIA. A VILLAGE BEER-HOUSE. TRAVELLING MECHANICS. ACCOUNT OF THE
TORPINDAS. TOILSOME MARCH. MARCHOVIDES. ENTERTAINMENT THERE.
Up to this moment the elements had behaved towards us with remarkable
kindness. We had, therefore, no right to complain, however deeply we
might lament the circumstance, when, on drawing up the window-blinds,
we ascertained that the rain was falling in torrents; and we felt that
we must needs face it. We therefore descended to the tap-room, after
discussing our cakes and coffee, and proceeded to bid our landlady
farewell. But neither she nor her husband would permit us to budge an
inch. The rain could not last. Only wait an hour, and the sky would be
clear, when our host himself would be our guide, and put us in a way of
reaching Liebenau much more agreeably, as well as with less fatigue,
than if we followed the high road. We could not resist this appeal, so
we sat still.
At length, about eight o'clock, though the rain had not entirely
ceased, the heavens looked so bright that we expressed an earnest
desire to push forward. As no mercenary motives had operated to produce
the previous opposition of our hosts, so now such opposition was at
once withdrawn; and the landlord, slinging his gun and pouch over his
shoulder, declared himself at our command. We took leave of the kind
landlady, not without tears on her side, and quitted Gabel, in all
probability, for ever.
We had been correctly warned as to the probable duration of the storm.
The rain, which fell in occasional showers when we first set out, soon
ceased entirely, and we had once more a clear and cloudless sky, with a
nice cool breeze just sufficiently powerful to refresh without
incommoding us. Our walk, likewise, was very interesting; for,
independently of the extreme beauty of the scene,--hills and dales,
forests and cultivated fields, deep glens and swelling table-lands,--we
passed over ground which had witnessed some sharp fighting during the
movements of the French army upon Dresden. The Allies, it appears,
manoeuvred well in this quarter; for, by showing numerous skeletons
of corps, they led Napoleon to imagine that a large army of Austrians,
Russians, and Prussians was here; and, while he watched them carefully,
they had well-nigh cut him off from his line of retreat. During these
demonstrations on both sides, foraging parties had been sent out from
Gabel, to sweep the neighbouring villages. These our guide had seen,
and one of them he followed so as to become eye-witness to an affair
which it had near a hamlet which we passed. He described the scattering
fire of the jagers, and the occasional dashes of the hussars, with
great animation, though, according to his showing, this, like other
rencounters of the sort, cost more powder than lives.
Having accompanied us at least two German miles,--that is, full ten
miles according to our English mode of computing distances,--the
landlord of the Hernhause stopped short, and prepared to take his
leave. We shook hands warmly, and I thought I heard his voice quiver
when, in return for a cast of flies, he thanked me. Nor must I permit
it to be believed, that the regrets were all on his side. I do not know
when my feelings have been more engaged among strangers, than by the
unaffected kindness of the people of Gabel,--a kindness on which we had
no right to calculate, however much we might be justified in looking
for civility in return for our money.
Once more, then, the world was before us, and seldom has it shone out
beneath the gaze of youth and inexperience more winningly than it did
under the influence of that delicious day. The rain of the preceding
night, and of the early part of the morning, had given to herb and tree
a fresher and a fairer green. The fallows wore no longer a parched-up
and dust-like hue, and the rivulets, swollen but not polluted, retained
their lucid character as they rolled on their way. From brake and bush,
from grove and hedge-row, thousands of unseen choristers filled the air
with melody, and the very oxen and horses, as they dragged their
ploughs, or toiled onwards with their wagons, seemed to acknowledge the
blessed influence which other creatures felt. We sat beneath the shade
of a small plantation to enjoy the scene, and then, with spirits
unconsciously elevated, and hearts not, I trust, insensible to the
glories of nature, and the goodness of nature's God, resumed our
pilgrimage.
Our route lay, throughout the whole of this day's progress, through
green fields, and over narrow footpaths. Not so much as once were we
driven to the necessity of following the high road; but taking our
observations carefully, and bearing with wonderful exactness from point
to point, we had already arrived within an hour's walk of Liebenau,
before we were aware. While compassing the space that intervened
between the village where our guide quitted us and this, which had been
marked down as our resting-place for the night, we passed many striking
and beautiful landscapes, such as I would willingly pause to describe,
were human language capable of describing them faithfully. Everywhere
around us, bold conical hills stood up, not a few of which bore upon
their summits the ruins of old castles, while all were more or less
clothed throughout with noble forests. For the portion of Bohemia which
we were now crossing, may with perfect truth be represented as a
succession of glorious valleys, overshadowed by not less glorious
mountains. The straths are all of them fertile to an extraordinary
degree, and as I have already stated, both they and the hill-sides
abound with inhabitants. Yet is the country a mountain district, in
every sense of the word, though the very mountains either are by
nature, or have by industry been rendered, uncommonly fertile.
The great defect in Bohemian scenery, is the absence of water. There is
scarcely a lake in the whole kingdom, and, with the exception of two or
three, such as the Elbe, the Iser, the Bober, &c., the rivers hardly
deserve to take rank with the larger class of our mountain streams.
Such a defect is sorely felt by him who, looking down from the brow of
a lofty hill over a wide plain, beholds perfection in every particular,
except that there is no water there; and when from the narrower ravines
you miss the lochs and tarns, which give to Cumberland and the
Highlands of Scotland their peculiar character, your disappointment
scarcely falls short of mortification. Perhaps, indeed, a double motive
may have operated with us to produce this feeling. Our eyes pined, in
the first place, for the object on which, in such situations, they had
been accustomed at home to repose; and secondly, our fishing-rods felt
like useless burdens in our hands. But it was not destined to be so for
ever, as I shall have occasion, in the course of my narrative, to show.
We had walked well and stoutly,--the sort of half-rest which we enjoyed
the day before giving fresh vigour to our limbs,--so that between two
and three o'clock we ventured to calculate that Liebenau could not be
far distant. Hunger and thirst were, however, beginning to be rather
inconveniently felt; and as our calculations might after all be
erroneous, we judged it prudent to seek, in a little ale-house by the
way-side, such refreshment as could be procured. Our hotel was of the
very humblest description; namely, the beer-house of a small hamlet,
and could furnish only brown bread, cheese, butter, and beer. These, in
the existing state of our appetites, went down famously; and a pipe of
good tobacco to wind up withal, was not out of place. Neither was even
this unpretending house of call destitute to us of subjects of
interest. We found when we entered the tap-room two young men asleep on
the benches, and a couple of large packs lying beside them. They awoke
shortly afterwards, and proved to be, as we had expected, journeymen
mechanics. For in Germany a custom universally prevails, that young
men, after serving their apprenticeship to the trade which they intend
to practise, go forth upon their travels, and dispose of their wares,
not only in remote towns and villages of their native state, but in
foreign lands. Some of these journeymen travel from Saxony, for
example, as far as Hamburg and Copenhagen. Several make their way into
France; and I have even heard of them penetrating both the wilds of
Russia, and the classical and fair fields of Italy. The consequence
is, that they return home with minds very much enlarged, and an
acquaintance, more or less accurate, not only with the systems of
commerce, but with the languages of foreign countries, and that a
stranger is surprised on entering a shop in Dresden or Zittau, to find
that French, and perhaps Italian and English, are understood by the
tradesman who keeps it.
The young men whom we found in occupation of the tap-room were by trade
cutlers. Natives of some obscure town in Prussian Silesia, of which I
have forgotten the name, they were wandering about through Bohemia with
the intention by-and-by of proceeding into Saxony, and so round by
Berlin and Potsdam to their homes. Their knapsacks, which they hastened
according to established usage to unbuckle, contained a plentiful
supply of knives, forks, scissors, and razors; but the poor fellows
were not successful in driving a bargain, for their charges were
exorbitantly high, and their goods of an indifferent quality. Even the
host himself bid but one-half their demand, and neither he nor we could
bring the merchants to our terms.
While we were haggling about an eighteen-penny clasp knife, the door of
the tap-room opened, and there entered an old man, clothed in rags,
with a wallet at his back and a long piked stick in his hand; who,
uncovering his head, knelt down upon the floor, and began to pray and
cross himself with surprising volubility. My young companion gave him a
piece of money, which checked his devotions only for a moment; for he
merely looked at it, nodded his head again, and resumed his muttering
with all possible eagerness. But at the termination of, perhaps, five
minutes, his prayers seemed to have been told out,--for he rose and
with a loud voice pronounced a benediction on the house and all that
were in it. This done, he turned about, and walked away.
The whole affair was to us so novel in its character, that the
questions which we put to the landlord were put eagerly, but our
eagerness proved to be uncalled for. "Story! God bless you! I have none
to tell, Sir." What we mistook for a striking incident, proved to be an
everyday occurrence in Bohemia, and our imaginary palmer or devotee but
a common beggar. And now, having touched on the subject, we proceeded
to sound the depth of our host's information on the subject of gypsies.
Where did they horde? how were we most likely to fall in with one of
their camps, and what sort of treatment might we expect to receive at
their hands? It was with some difficulty that we could make the honest
man comprehend the object which we had in view; and when he did catch
our meaning, his reply was brief and pithy. "The people you speak of we
call Torpindas. They are an idle worthless set of vagabonds. They have
no camps in Bohemia of which I ever heard,--neither is Bohemia their
home. They come out of Hungary, and beg their way far and near in the
summer months; going about in pairs or by threes, and sleeping at
nights under sheds, or on the floors of such tap-rooms as are opened to
them. I advise you to have as little to say to them as possible.
Avowedly, they are mere beggars, but their hands are always prompt for
picking and stealing, and they are said not to be over scrupulous in
using their knives." Here, then, if our informant spoke correctly, was
an end to one of the dreams which had prompted our incursion into
Bohemia. But though we gave him full credit for speaking what he
believed to be the truth, we took the liberty of questioning the
accuracy of his information, particularly in reference to the more
tremendous parts of it,--the hints touching the blood-thirsty
propensities of the Torpindas. For the Austrian police is a great deal
too vigilant to overlook, in any corner of the empire, the commission
of murder; at least, the habitual perpetration of such a crime by any
class of persons so marked as the gypsies. Though, therefore, we began
to fear that we might be pursuing a shadow, and that either there were
no gypsy camps to join, or that the excitement of such an adventure
would not compensate for the desagrémens attending it, we did not at
once lay aside our determination of making up to the first horde whom
we should meet, and striving to become their guests for four-and-twenty
hours, if not for longer.
We had now rested our allotted period, so we wished our companions good
luck, and resuming our march arrived in Liebenau about half-past four
o'clock. It is a clean, neat town; built along the side of a hill, and
commanding a fine view, across the intervening valley, of a bolder
range than its own; but of its means of accommodating strangers I
cannot speak. For the day was yet so young, and we felt so unusually
fresh and vigorous, that, after a brief consultation, it was agreed
between us to push on, if possible, some five or six miles farther. We
accordingly proceeded to the post-office; where, on consulting the head
of the department, we learned that about two stunden,--that is, about
six English miles further, on the way to Hoen Elbe, was a place called
Marchovides, where we should find excellent quarters for the night.
This was precisely the sort of intelligence which we could have wished
to receive, and we lost no time in acting upon it.
Would that I possessed the power of bringing before my reader's eye
even a faint representation of the magnificent scenery through which
this late march carried us. After climbing with infinite toil a long
and steep ridge, by crossing which a prodigious detour was to be saved,
we gained a point whence, on one hand, the eye could range over no
inconsiderable portion of Bohemia; while on the other, the snowy peaks
of the Riesengebirgen bounded the prospect, though still separated from
us by a wide breadth of highlands. Close at our feet, on either side,
were deep rich valleys, highly cultivated as usual, and swarming with
villages; while far away lay town and tower, castle and convent, forest
and green meadow, mountain and ravine, producing by their combinations
as glorious and diversified a panorama as it has ever been my good
fortune to behold. And yet I am not sure that even this scene, striking
as it seemed to be, was not cast into the shade, when, after dragging
our weary limbs across the hollow, and gaining the opposite ridge, we
opened out a prospect, narrower to be sure, but far surpassing, in
rugged grandeur, any on which we had as yet gazed. Another deep ravine
lay beneath us, dark with the forest which covered its base; beyond
which uprose a chain of jagged and pine-clad rocks, resembling in their
forms the fragments of some huge castle, or rather of an enormous city
of castles, shaken by an earthquake into ruins. Even now I am not
satisfied that among these tall and beetling crags there were no
remnants of man's handiwork; for the gloom of twilight was upon them
when I saw them first, and ere I had ceased to gaze it had well nigh
deepened into night.
Extreme fatigue is a serious damper to enthusiasm of any sort, and keen
as our relish of nature's more colossal forms might be, I am not sure
that we would not have exchanged, at that moment, the view of these
wonders, with all the train of thoughts arising out of them, for the
interior of a snug room in a village inn, and a mess of calves' flesh,
with a bottle of wine to drink after it. Of our village inn we as yet,
however, saw no symptoms; and wearily and slowly step followed step,
without, as it seemed, bringing us nearer to the object of our wishes.
At last, just as darkness had fairly set in, we met, at the brow of a
hill, a rustic, and received from him the gratifying intelligence that
Marchovides lay about a quarter of an hour's walk distant, in the
valley beyond. "And the gasthof," cried we, "what sort of a place is
it? Can we get supper, and beds, and a bottle of wine?" "Oh, yes,"
replied the countryman, "it is a capital quarter. Wine, and every other
thing that is good, may be had there for the asking." "This is as it
should be," said we one to another, while recalling our energies for a
final effort we hitched our packs higher upon our shoulders, and
quickened our pace.
We had not walked far along the descent when, through the thickening
gloom, numerous lights glancing from cottage windows made us aware that
we were approaching Marchovides. We made for one of the first of these
dwellings, inquired for the inn, had its situation accurately described
to us, and hurried towards it. The first impression made upon us by
this "excellent quarter," was far from favourable. It served the
two-fold purpose of a mill and a gasthof; and whatever the comparative
merits of the mill might be, the gasthof department was clearly not of
the highest order. Before the door stood a wagon, which the wagoner was
mending by the light of a lantern, while beneath the staircase a huge
archway showed itself, filled--as on a nearer inspection I, to my
horror, ascertained--with wagons also. "God help us," cried I, "we have
travelled far to reach a sorry resting-place; for I am greatly deceived
if this be not a house of call for wains, the drivers of which will
probably be our companions both at bed and board." First impressions
are not, however, at all times to be relied upon; so we did our best to
thrust aside the unpleasant anticipations which were beginning to crowd
upon us, and recollecting that there was no other alternative than
either to lodge here, or pass the night hungry and cheerless in the
open air, we put a bold face on the matter, and entered.
We had calculated justly, for things were not quite so bad as the
apparition of the wagons had led us to anticipate. The saloon, on the
threshold of which we stood, contained of living creatures only one
man, somewhat passed the middle of life, who seemed to be in the act of
making his toilette; an old woman busily engaged with her needle, three
wenches, who moved hither and thither, now poking about the stove, now
arranging dirty linen, apparently for the wash-tub, and one or two
children. Tables and benches there were, as usual; also water-buckets,
a few chairs, and a tub or two, while a line drawn the whole length of
the apartment, about a foot and a half from the roof, supported, in
graceful disarray, a profusion of coats, trousers, aprons, petticoats,
and stockings. To complete the picture, there were no candles burning,
not even a rosin taper; but here and there a piece of blazing bog-pine,
either stuck in some cranny, or borne about in the hands of a domestic,
cast over the scene a dark red light. I dare say we should have been
delighted with all this, had we been assured of obtaining an apartment,
into which, when tired of the sublime and beautiful, it might be
competent for us to retire; but being quite uncertain on that head, our
first measure was to question the sempstress touching both her ability
and inclination to accommodate us. Never surely was the spirit of
patient industry more strikingly illustrated than in the personage whom
we now addressed. Her needle did not cease to hold its course one
moment; scarcely, indeed, would she lift her eyes above her spectacles;
while, in a tone by no means conciliating, she informed us, that she
had no chamber, no flesh of any kind, no eggs, no white bread, nor any
other article which, in the vanity of our souls, we had rashly named.
"Why they told me these were excellent quarters!" said I, horrified out
of the exercise of my usual tactics.
"So they are!" was the answer; "this is a capital quarter."
"But you have no beds nor bed-rooms!"
"Oh yes, we have!"
"Won't you give us one, then?"
"No, I won't!"
"Why, my dear creature? Depend upon it, we will not run away with
them."
"Very likely; but we have none to give you all the same."
This was a poser, and my companion and I looked at one another with
rueful countenances; At length I resumed:--
"Your house seems to be a large one; how comes it that you have no
sleeping accommodation for your guests?"
"This is a large apartment," interposed the half-clad man from his
distant table; "we can accommodate plenty of guests that are not too
grand for us, here."
"Oho!" exclaimed I, "you can make up beds for us on the floor. That
will do well enough; and now for supper."
The facility with which I slid into their peculiar views of comfortable
sleeping accommodations seemed to have a very salutary effect upon the
tempers of our hosts; for the half-clad man turned out to be the
husband of the sewing woman, as well as a person of considerable
importance in his own neighbourhood. The old lady discovered that there
_were_ some eggs in the cupboard after all, and that certain slices of
bacon remained from a stock which had been laid in some time previously.
Moreover, the cellar contained some wine; neither very strong nor very
high flavoured, certainly, but sound and wholesome, as we discovered on
trial, and more acceptable to our palates than beer. To work,
therefore, the dame and her maidens went, and in half an hour we saw
before us, on a nice clean cloth, and by the flame of a farthing
rushlight, half a dozen eggs, sundry lumps of pork, some rye-bread and
butter, and a flask of white wine. They did not continue long in the
order of their integrity. The eggs disappeared in a twinkling. Several
fierce inroads were made into the bread and butter, and even the bacon
suffered considerably. As to the wine, it passed away like water
spilled upon the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But there
was another enemy pressing us sore, over and above hunger. We had
walked upwards of thirty English miles, and my companion especially
could scarcely keep his eyes open,--a circumstance which was not slow
in attracting the attention of our now obliging hostess, and for which
she hastened to provide. Some trusses of good clean straw were brought
into the room and spread upon the floor. Over these was laid a sort of
mattress, and the youngster, dressed as he was, cast his knapsack down
for a pillow, and threw himself on the couch thus prepared for him. In
five minutes he was just as happy as if he had rested on his own bed at
Schandau.
Meanwhile sundry persons, all of them young men, entered the tap-room,
and visions of wagoners snoring on the floor beside me began again to
haunt my imagination; when, to my great relief, I ascertained that
these were "the miller's men," who, having eaten their supper with the
female members of the family, would withdraw to their nests in the
cock-loft. And truly this affair of the domestics' supper was curious
enough. Heaven knows what the mess might be, which, being brought
piping hot from the oven, was planted down in a brown stew-pan, right
in the centre of one of the tables; but the appetites of the twelve
persons who forthwith gathered round it, spoon in hand, appeared
excellent. It was quite edifying to behold the order, and silence, and
regularity with which, one after another, they shovelled their
respective portions into their mouths; and how patiently they endured
the intense heat, which, judging from the hissing of the stew, must
have accompanied each ladleful. Finally, the dish being emptied, they
rose with one accord, and departed, the young men to their mattresses,
or, it may be, to their occupations about the mill,--the young women to
fulfil what remained of their daily tasks.
While this was going on, the landlord and I were keeping up an animated
conversation, of which I remember nothing more than that it turned
chiefly upon the state of his own family and affairs, and tended to
impress me with becoming notions of his dignity. Indeed, I may state,
once for all, that the landlord of a German inn, whether it be an hotel
in a capital, or like this at Marchovides, a beer-shop in a remote
village, is in his own eyes a person of very considerable importance.
While his wife, poor soul, performs all the menial offices about you,
which the domestics either cannot, or are not expected to perform, the
host himself is content to keep you in talk, which he not unfrequently
accomplishes by sitting down beside you, and helping you to discuss
your wine or beer. Nor does it inflict the slightest wound upon your
dignity, whatever your station in life may be, to fall in with his
humours. If you cut him short, you may miss the opportunity of learning
something which you could have wished to learn, and you are sure to
suffer from the diminished attention which is shown to you ever after.
If you indulge him, you may be bored for a while, it is true; but you
have the satisfaction of reflecting, that you neither wounded a private
man's feelings, nor offered wanton outrage to the customs of a
community.
Like my boy I was by this time getting tired and sleepy; and I cast
sundry wishful glances towards the heap of straw. The landlord
understood my situation, and hastened to assure me that we should have
the whole of the chamber to ourselves, and that if I would lie down,
the place should be cleared for us in a quarter of an hour. "For, to
tell you the truth," cried he, "we all sleep, my wife, and I, and the
children, and these wenches, in a little chamber beyond; the whole
house, large as you justly observed that it was, being occupied, either
as store-rooms for flour, or with the machinery of the mill." I begged
my friend not to put his household to the smallest inconvenience on my
account, and lying down beside my companion, closed my eyes.
I soon found, however, that sleep was out of the question. The
temperature of the apartment could not be less than a hundred degrees,
and there were so many dim lights and strange figures passing to and
fro, that all my efforts to abstract myself from them proved fruitless.
I therefore opened my eyes again, and lay to observe the issue. In a
short time landlord, landlady, and children withdrew. Then followed a
sort of clearing-up of odds and ends by the maidens, and last of all a
washing of feet and legs. This latter operation amused me exceedingly,
and I could not resist the inclination which I felt of complimenting
the lasses on their fair proportions. But they did not on that account
lower their drapery a jot. On the contrary they laughed heartily, and
chatted to me all the time their ablutions went forward, and wished me
a sound sleep as soon as they were finished. As they carried with them
the last of the torches, their wish was, in some measure, accomplished;
for my eyes, after repeated efforts, closed of their own accord, and
were not opened again, except during feverish and brief intervals, till
five o'clock next morning.