OLD-TIME TRAVEL WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR LIFE OF GENERAL SIR E. HAMLEY. LIFE OF GENERAL JOHN JACOB. HALF A CENTURY, OR CHANGE IN MEN AND MANNERS. LETTERS FROM THE WEST HIGHLANDS. LETTERS FROM WEST IRELAND. {Reprinted from The Times.) MOUNTAIN STREAM AND COVERT. .. St. Sebastian The Port looking seawards. Frontispiece OLD-TIME TRAVEL PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF THE CONTINENT FORTY YEARS AGO COM- PARED WITH EXPERIENCES OF THE PRESENT DAY BY ALEXANDER INNES SHAND WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. H. HALLAM MURRAY LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1903 i<7 PREFACE Memory is responsible for these recollections, as I never kept a diary or made a note. It is my great good fortune that my friend Mr Hallam Murray had filled portfolios with his fascinating water-colour drawings in going over much the same ground, and I hope the public may be as grateful for the selections from them as is the Author of the " Travel Notes." A.I.S., November 1903. 1 i> S ii\f;4 CONTENTS (HAT. fAUHi I. OLDER HOLLAND . 1 II. TRAVEL IN THE LOW COUNTRIES . 17 III. PASSPORTS— CUSTOMS— CURRENCY . . 39 IV. RHINELAND . 54 V. THE BATHS . 88 VI. THE TRAVELLER'S LIBRARY . . 123 VII. SWISS TOURING . 138 VIII. CHANGES IN GERMAN CITIES . . 174 IX. THE VETTURINO . 206 X. THE CITIES OP NORTHERN ITALY . 231 XI. OLDER ROME . . 2C0 XII. OLDER NAPLES .... . 296 XIII. SICILY . • . 319 XIV. BRITTANY . . 33.1 XV. IMPERIAL PARIS . 356 XVI. OLDER SPAIN .... . 378 IX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ST SEBASTIAN. THE PORT LOOKING EASTWARDS UTRECHT. THE FISH MARKET HAARLEM. THE AMSTERDAMSTER POORT . „ THE CATHEDRAL .... ANTWERP. THE BOUCHERIE .... DORTRECHT CHURCH HAARLEM. A TYPICAL DUTCH WINDMILL . GASTEIN. LOOKING DOWN THE VALLEY ST MORITZ IN WINTER. LOOKING UP THE VALLEY TOWARDS THE MALOJA PASS . A SCHEVENINGEN FISHING-BOAT . LUCERNE. THE COVERED MILL BRIDGE OVER THE REUSS .... BERNE. THE CLOCK GATEWAY LUCERNE. VIEW OF THE LAKE AND MOUNTAINS FROM THE SCHWEIZERHOF LAKE OF GENEVA FROM LAUSANNE SION. RHONE VALLEY .... THE MATTERHORN FROM THE RIFFEL . LAUSANNE. THE CASTLE AND CATHEDRAL ROTHENBURG. THE RATHHAUS DOOR . NUREMBERG. THE FRAUEN THOR Frontispiece To face page 2 if 16 M 18 »s 20 j) 32 ) » 54 88 ?) 118 > j 122 ?) 138 )i 142 )? 14(J 19 154 1 9 156 > J 160 J ) 170 ) J 171 1 1 178 XI xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUREMBERG. THE CASTLE AND NORTH WALL . To face page 184 „ THE CHURCH OF ST LAWRENCE . ,, 200 ROTHENBURG. THE RATHHUS DOOR FROM SCHMIDT STRASSE ,. 204 WURZBURG FROM THE BRIDGE .... , 206 VIAREGGIO. LOOKING INTO THE GULF OF SPEZIA (and showing the spot where Shelley's body was washed ashore) .. 218 MENTONE. AN OLD STREET ,, 220 HYERES. FROM "LES SALINS " .... ,, 226 MILAN. PORTA DI GENOVA ,, 236 FLORENCE. THE MERCATO VECCHIO. {Nov: de- stroyed) „ 240 THE PONTE VECCHIO .... ., 244 VENICE. A STREET SCENE „ 250 ,, SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE AND THE DOGANA ,, 252 ROME. THE APPROACH TO ROME FROM MONTE MARIO ,, 261 „ the LUDOVISI GARDENS. (Now destroyed) . ,, 272 .. THE CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA IN ARA CCELI ,, 288 FLORENCE. VIEW ACROSS THE PLAIN FROM BOBOLI GARDENS ,, 294 FROM POGGIO GHERARDO ... .. 318 ROSCOFF. THE HARBOCR ' „ 354 pasajes. (Showing the house occupied by Victor Hugo) ,, 378 FUENTERRABLV FROM THE IRUN ROAD . . 382 TOLEDO. LA PUERTA SANGRE .... ,, 390 GIBRALTAR. LOOKING WEST ,, 400 OLD TIME TRAVEL CHAPTER I OLDER HOLLAND Like London Stone, the centre of the Roman roads radiating through Britain or the Milliarium Aureum at the seat of the Empire, there is an ever memorable starting-point in old-time travel. It is the moment when you first set eyes on the Continent. With the faintest flicker of an imagination, you know something of the sensations of Columbus when he sighted his new world. The future is unknown, but you expect surprises, and are never disappointed. There is nothing of the sublime and little of the picturesque in the low-lying coasts of Holland, yet I doubt whether an Englishman can have a more impressive intro- duction to the Continent. You land in a country A 2 OLDER HOLLAND [<*a*. turned topsy-turvy, where all preconceived ideas are upset. The winds are always fighting the waters, and the pumps must be kept going lest the " Netherlands " should be swamped. " Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink." Before landing, if addicted to the pure element, you were solemnly warned to stick to the stone bottles from the springs of Utrecht or the fountains of Seltzer. Now the water companies have been laying down net-works of pipes from the eastward, and there is no lurking disease in the carafe on the dinner-table. Some fifty years ago the coast lights were few and relatively primitive — in fogs about as dense as those of Newfoundland, it needed skilful navigation to grope your way to the port and pick up the pilot. I arrived from Leith in the Ivanhoe, a venerable paddle-tub, which subsequently went down with all hands. We were more fortunate, though our escape from shipwreck was well-nigh as providential as the deliverance of St Paul. We carried a cargo of pig-iron, and it was said to have deranged the compasses. Anyhow, when the fog thinned a bit and our skipper got his bearings, we were half a score of miles to the north of the Maas, and perilously embayed among shoals and sandbanks. No one could have reproached him ^> o hi JS H l] FIRST IMPRESSIONS 3 with reckless navigation, for we had taken things as leisurely as Ulysses, but it may be doubted whether such an experience is possible now. Often have I wished since then that one could revive the intense vividness of those fresh im- pressions. Like snatches of old songs, crooned to you in the nursery, they cling to the memory, when much that is more recent has been effaced or grown dim. The Dutch phlegm of the pilot, in shaggy pea-jacket and dripping beaver hat, as he lounged on board in his own little cloud of tobacco from the china pipe, was in perfect keep- ing with the lifting vapours, with the leaden skies, and the sluggish flow of the turbid river, heavy with the mud of the Low Countries and the gravel of the Ardennes. As we steamed slowly by with the current, we had time enough to be depressed by the tameness of the flats, stretching away to a vague watery horizon, only broken by an occasional steeple or the sails of the innumer- able windmills, or enlivened by dreamy groups of the gaunt black and white cattle. Now dis- embarking at the Hook, with luggage booked through to Cologne or Frankfort, you are whirled into Rotterdam station before you have well ad- justed your wraps. 4 OLDER HOLLAND [chap. The longest voyage will come to an end, and at last we bring up at our moorings by the Boompjes. Since then Rotterdam, running Antwerp hard, has fairly distanced the Flemish port, and the gains of a rapidly-increasing commerce have been judiciously reinvested in wharves and docks and in deepening the river channels. The city has stretched out in commodious suburbs, and public gardens have been laid out by the most expert of the skilled Dutch horticulturists. But even fifty years ago, with a growing trade, it was one of the three great gates to Northern Europe. Hood, in his " Up the Rhine," called it "a sort of vulgar Venice," and in his time it still berthed many a ship from the Spice Islands, with bow-windowed poop and the build of those Indiamen in which Philip Vanderdecker went in search of the Flying Dutchman. When I strolled on them myself, I saw the Boompjes stacked with rare woods from the South Seas, and the fragrance of cinnamon and coffee was wafted from the bonded ware- houses. But all the bustle — such as it was — was on the river front, and the back canals that floated barges through the streets and gracilis were somniferous and odoriferous as the Grand Canal above the Rialto. If there were no palaces with i] CANALS IN ROTTERDAM 5 the salt seaweed clinging to their marble, there were trim houses with their tiny reflecting mirrors and bright brass knockers looking out upon stagnant water carpeted with duckweed. It was a strange blending of filth and cleanliness, of eccentric taste and stolid conservatism. The houses with their spotless steps smelt strongly of soap-suds ; the house barges were gaily decorated, and over the after- cabin were hanging flower gardens ; but ashore or afloat, the prevailing odours were salt herrings, rancid tobacco, and floating garbage. Since then Rotterdam has been waking up ; seemingly the canals are flushed at short in- tervals, and the Dutch, who were always a cleanly folk, have made creditable progress in scientific sanitation. In those days tourists were comparatively rare, and there were no cheap trippers. The road to Rhineland lay through Antwerp or Ostend, and there were no services of swift steamers with trains in correspondence by Harwich and the Hook or Queensborough and Flushing. Consequently the inns, for the most part, left much to be desired in accommodation and cuisine, though everything about them was scrupulously clean. Rotterdam, as the great landing-place, was rather an excep- 6 OLDER HOLLAND [ohap. tion ; there were two hotels of some pretensions — the new Bath and the Pays Bas ; yet even these were behind the times. The Bed Hand- Book, though many editions, had a stereotyped passage, stating that tea was to be had good in Holland and some of the great cities in Germany. The tea may have been good, but the making was detestable, and the milk — for cream there was none — was watery, as everything in the country. Indeed I never had a decent cup in any Conti- nental hotel till the Nord was opened at Cologne. My companion ordered coffee at the Bath, as a matter of course. What most impressed my inexperience was the wine carte. Claret, in the way of common drink, seemed the height of luxury. Disillusion followed when the tap was tried, for the Medoc, a fifth -rate growth of the Gironde, was a sad come-down from the Laflttes and the Leovilles of the old established firms in Edinburgh and Leith. In the matter of hotels, the Hague was a town apart, and cosmopolitan rather than Dutch ; the diplomats had introduced the French cuisine, and Paulez or the Bellevue had gay airs of French coquetry, with balconies bright with flowers, and vestibules scented with orange blossom. Nothing, on the other hand, could be more i] DUTCH INNS 7 homely than the hostelries in the commercial capital. At Amsterdam, Brack's Doelen looked across a narrow canal into the windows of Hardenberg's Old Bible. The quaint old names struck the note of the domestic economy; and though the fare was plentiful enough, Puritans might have been satisfied with its simplicity. Yet to the stranger, the novel arrangements had an attraction of their own, from the Gouda cheese on the breakfast table to the heterogeneously served dinner, which prepared one for the eccentricities of German tables d'hote. Elsewhere, the quarters were always matter of anxious speculation. You hoped the best, but feared the worst. At Leyden, for example, the scene of the memorable siege and the seat of the famous university, the best of the inns was so bad that it did not tempt you to linger. In Haarlem you fared somewhat better, for British buyers travelling in the bulb business had brought their hosts more up to the mark. But the most diversified experiences were in the dead cities of the Zuyder Zee. Eggs were forthcoming, and generally fowls ; as for cheeses, they were piled up like cannon-shot in the weigh-houses, and under cover on the quays. But unless you 8 OLDER HOLLAND [cH ap. turned up immediately after the market day, you had to put up with Lenten fare. Sometimes, as at Hoorn, we were tantalised by conjuring up a Barmecide feast, in pitiful contrast with the meagre reality. There we dined in a magnificent salon with gilded cornices and rare mahogany panelling. Those cornices were sadly tarnished, and the cracked mirror, that must have been priceless in its pristine splendour, distorted the features hideously. In a corner was a cabinet, which even then would have fetched much money in Wardour Street. A merry mansion, no doubt, in days of yore, when Van der Heist's gay cavaliers and portly burghers revelled over cele- brations of treaties of Munster. Since then the Dutch had been driven to economise : there were no resident magnates in historic Hoorn, and even the great North Holland canal had done little to revive prosperity in the moribund cities. As for that rare cabinet, doubtless it has gone long ago. Since then the speculative buyer and the roving amateur have made a pretty clean sweep of the curios of Old Holland. Even the Conserv- ative fishing folk of Marken have at last been tempted, at a price, to part with their cherished possessions, and Birmingham has done a lucrative i] MEDIEVAL COSTUMES 9 business in vamping up new lamps to sell for old. Then the costumes of North Holland, of Friesland and the islands, were still common in the streets of Amsterdam. I recollect the wedding party from Harlingen we met in the dimly-lighted rooms of the Treppenhuis. They might have stepped out of one of the pictures by Teniers or Ostade. The women were sheathed in cuirassed bodices of silver 'broidery, and their wealth of hair rose in towering structures, secured by a multiplicity of silver pins and skewers. Matrons and maidens wore golden chains, and the former carried frailer heirlooms in falls and pinners of exquisite lace. What a contrast with their working-day attire of mob-caps and the closely-reefed aprons that held the petticoats half-tucked up ! The men, who only opened their clothes-chests of a Sunday, were in such gala dress as they might have worn when they celebrated the deliverance of the United Provinces ; and the scent of lavender and rosemary that hung about them almost drowned the odours of tobacco and Schiedam. It was nothing of a sight in those days: no Dutchman turned his head. The Treppenhuis itself was a survival. It has gone, or been emptied of its treasures, and I am 10 OLDER HOLLAND [chap. sorry for it. The grand new gallery is an improve- ment, no doubt ; but centralization and improve- ments play the mischief with sentiment. The statesmen of Van der Heist and the burgomasters of Franz Hals hung appropriately on the walls of apartments they had trodden. For each detail in the Treppenhuis took you back to the Netherlands of the sixteenth century. There were portraits framed in Cordovan leather — prizes stripped from the cabins of Spanish galleons ; there were richly chased cups in gold, and tankards in silver, that might possibly have been wrought by the chisel of Cellini ; Venetian candelabra swinging from the golden ceilings ; Scandinavian drinking horns set with uncut jewels, and shelves loaded with illuminated missals, and rare volumes in vellum. The Treppenhuis was the microcosm of the glories and struggles of Holland — unique in its way as the Rome of St Peter's. The charm of the Dutch galleries was in this, that their life was still real to you. In slightly modernised dress the boors of Teniers and Ostade were still drinking in the pot-houses ; the fishing craft in the sea pieces of marine painters had scarcely changed their build or rig; the North Sea Canal was still undreamed of; there were few t] JUDICIOUS FRUGALITY 11 steam tugs, and no steam trawlers. Holland was only half awake. Amsterdam was planning new engineering works, but meantime, old piles were rotting, foundations subsiding, and channels silt- ing up. The sombre Jews' quarter could have changed little since Rembrandt had his abode there, to look out for studies of patriarchal heads and see Oriental lights and shadows from his studio windows. The Jews had been cherished as valuable citizens. In the way of usury, it would have been hard to get a living out of the Dutch- men, but they dealt in everything from diamonds to salt cod. Hard times, changes in trade routes, wars abroad and at home, and decline of colonial revenue had driven the Hollanders to economise ; and what struck one in the hotels and out of them was the general frugality. It is true that living was dear ; as the guide-books said, a guilder went scarcely farther than a franc or a shilling elsewhere ; but the sole extravagances of thriving commercial folk seemed to be in summer houses and flower gardens. Really nothing could have been more to their credit, for if they pinched in private expenses, they were prodigal in far-sighted public works. Many years later I happened to call one morning on Sir John Hawkshaw, whose acquaint- 12 OLDER HOLLAND [chap. ance T had made at the opening of the Suez Canal. He chanced to say that if I was interested in canals, I had better run over to Holland, as the trial trip through the North Sea Canal — which he had engineered — was to come off next day. That night I started for Harwich, and was in Amsterdam in time for the start, with a note of introduction to Sir John's representative. The President and Council were on board the steamer, and each steeple and windmill between the great sluice gates and the sea was decked out with a gorgeous display of bunting. The canal had been cut, regardless of cost: the mere outlay on those stupendous sluice gates was enormous. Nothing could exceed the kindly hospitality of the enter- tainers, but it was characteristic that we had light claret for champagne, and slices of cold beef for entrees, and entremets. En revanche there was an abundance of strong spirits and cigars. I remarked to one of the directors on a coquettish little villa, standing in a blaze of bloom below the canal level, that it was charming, but must be decidedly damp in autumn. " We are used to damp here, and know how to correct it," he replied, tossing off another caulker of Schiedam, and handing over his cigar-case with a smile. i] THE TREYKSCHUYT 13 The indefatigable industry of the Dutch has been as proverbial as their enterprise and frugality. The indomitable little nation, who called the Ocean to the relief of Leyden, and long disputed the sovereignty of the seas with England, has a record it would be hard to beat. But they took things leisurely, and the Holland of half a century ago might have taken the treykschuyt for its emblem. The treykschuyt was going out before my time, and I never travelled by it, though it was still plying between sleepy cities in the backwaters. It never professed the luxury of the Flemish canal boats, where the cuisine was so good and cheap, that some of our veterans, retired after the long war, are said to have passed their lives in going to and fro between Ostend and Brussels. But though slow, it was sure and extremely punctual. The single elephantine horse, from Friesland or the Gueldres marshes, might be relied on to do his three miles an hour, and the fare was about a penny a mile, w T ith a trifling tip to the postillion. Then came the railways, another of the engineer- ing triumphs of the amphibious race, when the quaking way was sometimes laid on submerged fascines, or on soil more treacherous than Chat Moss. The 24 miles from Leyden to Amsterdam 14 OLDER HOLLAND [chap. were covered at the unprecedented pace of 18 miles an hour. The merchants of Rotterdam and Amsterdam had been making money fast; their engineering had brought deep-sea steamers to their wharves ; the new docks were crowded with shipping, and with new facilities for suburban travel, they deserted the town mansion for the villa. Dr Carlyle remarked, a hundred and fifty years ago, that the pleasure-houses and flower gardens in the skirts of the towns showed " a pro- fusion of the rich and gaudy effects of opulence without taste." I fear that much the same might have been said a hundred years later, when the wealthy burghers went further afield for their villegiatura. Scheveningen became the Brighton of Rotterdam and the Hague, and began to attract the rank and royalty of Germany. Haarlem, on its spit of sand between the Y and the ocean, was the Richmond or Ascot of Amster- dam, with ozone in the breezes from whatever quarter they blew. Country houses had sprung up like mushrooms on the grund of the old Haarlem Meer. But the Dutchmen, with crude, aesthetic notions, had imported French architects and the cockneydom of Romainville or Enghien, as they imported Parisian fashions for their wives. After i] VANDALISM AT HAARLEM 15 all, architecture is matter of taste, and one need not greatly object to bastard Gothic, with Byzan- tine cupolas and mansarde roofs. But we must deplore the sacrilegious vandalism of the muni- cipalities, though growing towns will burst the girdle of their ramparts and sanitation has its claims. Leyden and Utrecht, the seats of venerable universities, have been changing, but Haarlem, to the lover of the picturesque, has been most sadly transmogrified by "improvements." One feels that the city of the martyrs and heroes of the siege should have been preserved, like Stonehenge, as a national monument. Naturally, sentiment did not appeal to its prosperous citizens, and they did not see that the sufferings of their progenitors should doom them to an eternity of crowding and self-sacrifice. In any case they would have been submerged in the spring-tides of prosperity. As money flowed in, the municipality moved with the times, and the quaint old town has been Haussmanised, though on no regular system. Gabled houses, restored after the siege, stand gable on, encroaching on narrow thoroughfares, and rubbing shoulders with bright-new edifices in red brick. Tramways run along brand-new boulevards where the canals have been filled up ; 16 OLDER HOLLAND [chap. i. and the embattled gateway that repelled the soldiers of Ferdinand of Toledo stands solitary in its picturesque isolation, like an obelisk or the ruins of Thebes or the temples at Tadmor in the wilderness. The ramparts have been levelled, the bastions swept away, and the town- crier in trappings of woe — last relic of the olden time — who used to make solemn announcement of funerals, may have vanished with the rest, for all I know to the contrary. The Amsterdamster Poort — Haarlem. To face p. 16 CHAPTER II TRAVEL IN THE LOW COUNTRIES Holland in every sense is a country by itself, and it was a pleasant change to Belgium. With all your admiration for the great qualities of the Dutch, and the dogged efforts that have assured their prosperity, you tire of the triste monotony of the scenery. Passing from Rotterdam to Antwerp, you understand at once how Holland and Zeeland held to their motto of luctor et emergo when the rest of the revolted provinces slipped back under the yoke of Spain. To the north of the Scheldt lives a hard-bitten generation, Calvinists by predestination, broken to immemorial endurance, and to the eternal battles with the winds and the waters. To the south were the rich plains of Flanders and Southern Brabant, swarming with a busy industrial population, sensuous by temperament, and Catholic by predilec- tion, for, like the seigneurs, they delighted in show b " 18 IN THE LOW COUNTRIES [chap and ceremonial. It was the land of the wealthiest chivalry in Europe, of the symbolical Order of the Golden Fleece, and the Battle of the Spurs of Gold, of sumptuous tournaments and gorgeous processions, of rich bishoprics and fat benefices, of flamboyant Gothic architecture, adorned by the great masters whose genius had been fostered by Church and Crown, by wealthy guilds and magnificent municipalities. For in the Flanders of that Battle of the Spurs, the burghers, like Jeshurun, had grown fat and kicked, and the overgrown hives of commerce and industry — from Bruges of the wool-staplers to Liege of the metal-workers — swarmed with a stinging populace, entrenched in their labyrinths of alleys and canals. The merchants in their domestic interiors rivalled the opulence of monarchs, and the toilers rose in response to the clanging of their belfries at each rise in the prices of bread and beer. Fifty years ago the Low Countries were still a land of good living and extraordinarily cheap. Since then there is rail from Rotterdam to Antwerp, and I doubt if any passenger steamers now take the water route through the half- submerged islands. In any case they can only count upon local traffic, nor could they afford to The Cathedral— Haarlem. To fact p. 18 n] LENTEN FARE AT BRUGES 19 run such a table as I remember. In its liberality as well as its charges, the change from Holland was marked. It prepared one for the luxuries and French cuisine of the Antwerp hotels — the L'Europe and the Grand Laboreur, to the latter of which, it may be remembered, Scott helped a Highland soldier when they began by misunderstanding each other in French, afterwards relapsing into the vernacular. It was the same everywhere, of course with more or less preten- sion, even in the inns in the remote Ardennes, where you put up for fishing or shooting. In Bruges, almost as much a city of the dead as Hoorn or Enkhuizen, there was one cheery spot, the salle a manger of the Hotel de Flandres, famous for its fish dinners of a Friday. In variety of fishes of the fresh water, at least, it rivalled the Ship at Greenwich, and the sauces which smothered the insipidity of perch and dace were transcendental. It used to be said that the fantastic decorations of the ceiling were significant of the strange viands figuring on the table. Be that as it may, the dinners were uncommonly good, and there was no lack of well-favoured priests to bless the fare, with fuller jowls than any Rhine salmon, and napkins tucked in under the folds of their 20 IN THE LOW COUNTRIES [chap. chins. At Brussels was a cluster of hotels round the Place Royale, which stood on great reputations and ran each other hard. All were celebrated in the War memories of 1815— and in fiction. It was at the Hotel du Pare that the elder Osborne put up when he went on his penitential pilgrimage to Waterloo, but I never knew it. Connoisseurs said that the Flandres, patronized by diplomatists, had a trifle the best of it ; but even Admiral Rous would have been puzzled to handicap the rivals. My house of resort was the Bellevue, and it would have been difficult to better it. At the six o'clock table d'hote, old Madame Proft took the head of her table in the good old Flemish or German fashion, supported by a couple of married sons and as many blooming daughters. The soup was sent up to the minute, and if you did not start fair, you had never a chance of recovering yourself. For a long hour there came a swift succession of dishes in duplicate ; entrees were followed by saddles and sirloins in pairs to satisfy English tastes ; the strawberry and melon beds of Boisfort were laid under contribution for the dessert ; and the charge, if I remember, was three francs. This in the most fashionable hotel of the gayest little capital in Europe. I know that my ■a. Cm u C < "C <} * ^ -.' t hi r - •'■■ -•-. % -ilii ;/ IS • "■] A BELGIAN STAGE-COACH 33 last sip of the black Belgian beer. Now the bock of the Strasburg brewing is to be had everywhere, and a blessed innovation it is for the Belgians, who are not a wine-growing nation. The coachman, who had worked on the Bristol and Brighton roads, swore confidentially under his breath at the cobbles to which he should have been well accustomed. He was proud of his horses, and with reason, for in their way they were a model team. They could never have gone the pace in the Age or the Comet ; they scarcely stood over fifteen hands ; but they were compact and deep-chested, well ribbed up, and, unhampered by bearing reins, they drew with the weight as much as the muscle. Their coats shone like silk and then* docked tails were bound up with bunches of ribbon. As a Briton, he was bound to draw comparisons to their dis- advantage ; but it was pretty to see how he humoured them and petted them with the lash twisted round the whipstick. Talking of those cobby coach-horses carries me off to Spa, where, after the gaieties of Brussels, one could relax in rural solitudes. For at Spa the innkeepers had a breed of well-bred, substantial ponies, said to be of Spanish origin and with a strong dash of blood. They were invaluable for c 34 IN THE LOW COUNTRIES [chap. excursions, whether you drove a lady to a picnic, or trotted out on the saddle with rod or gun, fishing - basket, or game - bag. Then you went by road or hill-track to outlying woods or streams, where now you can travel by rail. The Spa of those days, though " the Spaw " par excellence, and the first of continental baths frequented by foreign fashion, was decidedly primitive. I have said that the hotels have never been first-class, and then they were at least as good as they are now. AVhat struck you at once was the exceedingly homely arrange- ments of the gaming establishment, where in generations gone by the frequenters of White's and Brook's, Watier's and Crockford's, had lost fabulous sums when taking a course of the springs for gout or dyspepsia. In a long and rather ill-lighted room was a range of tables to suit any taste. At one end was a display of the leading and local journals, from the other came the ceaseless click of the roulette ball, and the cry of the croupier at Rouge et Noir — " Messieurs, faites votre jeu — Le jeu est fait." You were look- ing through letters of the Times correspondents — there were no telegrams in those days — or immersed in the columns of Galignani, when «•] CHARMS OF THE ARDENNES 35 Galignani was really Parisian and interesting, but for the life of you, you could not help lending an ear to the distractions of the tables. Involuntarily your fingers trifled with the Napoleons or five-franc pieces in your pockets : you strolled to the other end of the room: you staked, and you lost them. But at Spa, as at Baden, with sporting tastes and a certain self-control, you could lead a double life. At Baden the seductions of the Black Forest and its streams rivalled those of the Kursaal. You could put on shooting boots and slip out in rough toilette at the back door, to come back with a keen appetite for late dinner, or you could don patent leathers and a shiny suit of white twills, and fritter away time and money through the afternoon, ruining the digestion with ices and absinthe. So at Spa, the attractions of the Ardennes were great. You do not lose yourself at once, as at Baden, among forest glades, with beds of bracken and carpets of bilberries under colonnades of secular firs. But the scenery has a savage character of its own, the more striking for its contrast with the cultivated flats of Flanders. There was something of witchery in the very names of a region so rich in legend and tradition. If one 36 IN THE LOW COUNTRIES [chap. thought nothing of St Hubert or the Quatre Fils d'Aymon, you knew it had been touched by the magic of Shakespeare, and you remembered " Quentin Durward " and the lair of the Wild Boar. It was delightful to ride or drive on the rugged heaths and inhale the invigorating air. But I am bound to say that when fishing was the object, the expeditions were generally a dead failure. Each of them was a triumph of undying hope over sad experience. You stabled the pony and hurriedly put up the rod, that you might not lose a moment of a most favourable day. Nothing could be more tempting than the look of the water, with its pools and rushes and swirling backflows, but, like the emerald streams of the Pyrenees, it was cruelly deceptive, one reason being, that with the demand for trout at Spa, it was systematically poached and methodically netted. The wild shooting, on the contrary, was capital, and there was no great difficulty in getting permission, if you made friends with a local land- owner at the table d'hote or on the promenade. Then the Belgian sportsmen were pleased to make acquaintance with an English shooter, and though they stuck to strange ways and shot over queer dogs, which they held in the very highest estimation, they n.] WILD SHOOTING 37 were always on the look-out for a British wrinkle. One of the pleasantest days I ever had was in late autumn, when I offered a gentleman a lift who was plodding Spa-wards with gun and game-bag. The bag was pretty well stuffed. I expressed my admiration, and he delicately con- doled with me on an empty fishing-basket. My motives were mixed when I asked him to dine, but that dinner was an excellent investment. Before we parted I had accepted a pressing invitation and made an appointment. He welcomed me at a little inn, and insisted on " calling the bill " for a capital breakfast. It was rough shooting, but carefully watched, for the Belgians, even in the Ardennes, as in the highly- cultivated farms of Brabant, were jealous of any infringement of their rights. We were attended by an old chasseur, as familiar with the game, their haunts, and their habits, as any village shikari in Indian jungles. We bagged hares, partridges, a brace of wild pheasants, a leash of woodcock, and sundry snipe. It was the first week in October, so there was only one belated quail, but the contents of the bag show the character of the country. Nothing could be prettier, from the keen sportsman's point of view. There were heaths and morasses ; coppices of the 38 IN THE LOW COUNTRIES [chap.ii. water-loving alder and hanging coverts in the valleys, where the brooks would occasionally stagnate in swamp — resorts of the snipe and breeding - places of the wild duck. At that time shootings of the kind could be rented fabulously cheaply. The banker could generally refer you to some land-agent or solicitor, who was well-informed on the subject. I knew of one case where a man got fifty brace of partridges and half as many hares, to say nothing of rabbits, snipe, and waterfowl on a shooting, for which he paid one hundred and fifty francs, renewing the lease through successive seasons. Nor was that exceptional, and the rabbity dunes and sandhills went for next to nothing, but I doubt if the same could be said now. CHAPTER III PASSPORTS — CUSTOMS — CURRENCY When I started on my travels the passport had become a farce, though a thorn in the flesh and a perpetual nuisance. It no longer contained the personal description, often mortify- ing to the vanity, which Lever ridiculed delight- fully in " Harry Lorrequer." All the same, it was imperative to provide yourself with the voucher, and the Foreign Office document with its blazonry, was well worth the additional trifle of cost. Borrow tells how a good many years before, the signature of " Balmerston" impressed a Spanish policeman who could not decipher it. The possessor of a passport who had made the tour of Europe, became malgre lui, a rare collector of foreign stamps and autographs. Contemplating a tour after dropping in at Coutts' for your circular notes, the next thing was to betake yourself to Lee, over the way, who made all the necessary 39 40 PASSPORTS [chap arrangements on commission. He vouched for the applicant's respectability in Downing Street, and collected visas of every country you were at all likely to visit. As he impressed upon you, and it was confirmed by Murray, it was well to be on the safe side. Murray and Lee were quite right, for though Clarendon or Malmesbury might pass you over many frontiers with impunity, you never knew when you might be called over the coals. Any sulky subordinate whose supper had disagreed with him had much in his power; it was not pleasant at mirk midnight to be marched off to a police office in place of the hotel, and peremptorily ordered to retrace your steps to some town where you could procure the missing visa. The best consolation was that it was a case of live and let live, for the endorsing of passports was a comfortable perquisite which consuls on wretched salaries had every interest in maintaining. Lee mounted the passport on stout calico, knowing the wear and tear to which it was fore- doomed, and bound it in a pocket-book with many leaves. Other leaves were added in successive years, till mine had become quite a bulky volume. I have seldom regretted anything ni] AN OLD PASSPORT 41 more than the losing it. Landing at Tower Wharf and driving to Bury Street, in a weak moment I confided my hand-bag to the care of a cousin to whom I had been acting courier. The bag disappeared and the passport with it. It was replaced by another, which I still possess, but in that the many pages are melancholy blanks, for the second Napoleon had set his face against the system, and the sharp old surveillance had fallen into disuse. That lost passport was a record of recent changes : of wars and treaties that had revolutionised kingdoms, subverted dynasties, and effaced frontiers. Moreover, it was a personal remembrance — a short-hand record of romance, incident, and adventure. It reminded me of the shudder with which I first parted with my credentials at Venders. To be sure, my uneasi- ness was speedily relieved, when it was restored on the Prussian frontier at Herbesthal. To the last, when a more hardened tourist, I never felt altogether safe when I had handed it over by dim lantern light to some shady official of the Pope or the King of Naples, when conspiracy was rampant and suspicion in the air. I might have been reassured by knowing that the man could gain nothing by keeping it but would get some- 42 PASSPORTS [chap. thing by bringing it back, and in those days there was no hanger-on of Pio Nono or King Bomba who would not have risked his soul for a scudo. Yet sometimes then, even with passports strictly en regie, there were awkward complications. The regime in Tuscany was comparatively liberal, and the police gave little trouble. But one evening, after a vettura drive along the Eastern Riviera, I arrived at Florence with a companion. We were invited to descend at the gate and were walked into a guard-room. The officer in charge looked scrutinisingly at my companion — an Edinburgh advocate, of antiquarian and artistic tastes, who afterwards filled a high official position. To tell the truth, as Lord Lyons said of himself, when Minister at Rome, his dress was plain to meanness, and he wore a most villainous slouch grey hat. He laid down the hat on a table while his passport was being carefully scanned. An intelligent officer picked it up and read on the lining the name Mazzini — at that time a name to conjure the devil with — the fact being that it had been bought in Genoa from a namesake of the great revolu- tionary. Expostulation and explanations were vain ; it was useless for him to explain in fluent Italian that he could not be held responsible for *nj A SUSPICIOUS CHARACTER 43 the patronymic of the hatter ; he was kept for the night under lock and key, and when released by the interference of Her Majesty's Minister, had to be content with a grudging apology. If he did not wish to be mistaken for Mazzini, why did he wear the name in his hat? The customs are a trouble that will be always with the traveller, but they are less of a nuisance than they used to be. Diligences, posting and slower trains gave the officers more time to make themselves obnoxious. One had a first taste of that in going up the Maas, when the officials came on board at the mouth of the river. They smoked their pipes and turned everything topsy-turvy, though rather for occupation than anything else. The Zollverein was an unmixed blessing, for it embraced all Germany, with exception of the Austrian States. The starched Prussians did their duty austerely, but with them and the Frenchmen and the Austrians, you knew where you were. If not absolutely incorruptible, it was risky to offer a bribe. As for the easy-going Swiss, they never bothered about light luggage. Ladies with many boxes had their worries, no doubt. Rough hands might make wild work with delicate dresses, and on slight suspicion even underwear was indiscreetly 44 CUSTOMS [chap. exposed in search of jewellery or smuggled laces. There was reason for it, for sometimes a woman who imprudently wore a multiplicity of wrappings in July would be handed over to the female searchers, to come back much slimmer and lighter than she went. But the old traveller with a couple of portmanteaux had no trouble if he were honest. He had only to produce tobacco and declare. It was cheaper in the end ; it saved previous anxiety, to say nothing of salving the conscience. As a rule, the veterans of the clouane were shrewd judges of men. I remember a shady gentleman in seedy raiment trying on that dodge of showing a handful of black cigars with an inimitable air of candour, when my own light luggage had passed scot-free. The officer looked him over, threw out the contents of his box, and lighted on some packets of kid gloves and sundry boxes of Cabanas. On the other hand, there were articles, the import of which was absolutely for- bidden ; the temptation to smuggle was sometimes strong, but it was an excessively risky proceeding. I crossed over from Dover to Calais, and got into talk with a fellow-passenger whom I had known by name and sight. It was the time when Jules Gerard and Bombonnel had been hunting down the «*.] SPORTSMAN AND SMUGGLER 45 lions and leopards of the desert, and he was on his way to shoot in Algeria. He was the last man to have defrauded the customs, but he had a firm faith in English powder, which was taboo in France. Over a pea-jacket he wore one of the Inverness capes which were then the fashion, and it bulged out like a crinoline. I warned him that he was a walk- ing monstrosity, but he would not listen to reason and refused to jettison any part of his cargo. His hesitation when he declared he had nothing to declare was enough to betray him. The officer passed a hand down either side and then marched him off for unloading. Pocket after pocket was persuaded to disgorge till the counter was piled with canisters of Curtis and Harvey. It was likely to prove a troublesome business. For- tunately, I knew the British Consul and so did the Chief of the Customs; by free use of his name I passed my companion, but the goods were confiscated, the officer patriotically assuring the victim that far better powder was to be bought in Paris. To the south of the Alps there was no difficulty whatever. It was simply a question of bribery, and the tariff of corruption was low. I believe couriers in the service of English families 46 CUSTOMS [chap. had no more profitable perquisite than bribing the dogana for a trifle and charging it tenfold in the bills. I used to pity any one who travelled in Italy then, objecting on principle to imposition or corruption, and a hot-tempered man who cut up rough and refused to pay when awakened out of troubled slumbers was in equally evil case. You were perpetually, when posting or travelling by vettura, pulled up at the frontiers of petty states, and the grasping Jacks-in-office had much in then* power. When stopped of an evening at the octroi of some dead-alive town, and anxious to get to the inn and go to bed, your luggage might be handed down for inspection — there were always ruffians eager to assist in unpacking, and ready to help them- selves when your back was turned. The Austrian douaniers and the Tuscans were comparatively respectable, but things were even worse in Naples than in the Papal States, which is saying a great deal. The brigands who made the Apennines a terror to travellers had been put down, but they had passed into the service of the customs. Thirty years later things had not greatly im- proved under the regime of a United Italy. I once landed at Naples, sadly out of temper after a stormy voyage from Messina. Very foolishly i"] TROUBLE WITH THE OCTROI 47 I declined to tip the octroi searcher, who was in waiting at the gangway. I passed on, he passed the word, and three times was my portmanteau ransacked on the pier before I saw it put on the fiacre. The officers were strictly in their rights and it was idiotic to refuse to bribe them. In point of octrois the most objectionable country to travel in was Spain. Each province, from Catalonia to Andalusia, asserted its traditional independence by setting up barriers at the frontier. Each town and hamlet was as jealous of its neighbour as when Cervantes told the stoiy of the battle of the villages. They would overhaul a pair of saddle-bags in search of sausages or chocolate or any comestible liable to duty. But even at the gates of Paris you were never safe. Generally the stoppage of the fiacre was a mere formality, but once I was pulled up near the Gare du Nord by the most suspicious and con- scientious officer I have come across. He made the usual demand, which was answered in the negative. Then looking at me solemnly, as if he would search my heart, he said in sepulchral tones : " Vous etes bien sur, Monsieur, que vous n'avez pas de viande froide ? " Next to tobacco, Tauchnitz editions were the 48 CUSTOMS [chap. temptations of the tourist. The one taxed his conscience going abroad, and the other when coming home. To put a volume or two in your pockets came naturally to human frailty, but more wholesale transactions were perilous, and the Leipsic Baron has much to answer for. Once when my hand-bag was overhauled at Folke- stone, the officers made a trifling capture — really there was always considerable excuse, for the volumes were portable and pleasant reading. So thought my companion — a young clergyman, and now a church dignitary of high repute. He smiled maliciously at my discomfiture, for we had had a previous discussion on the subject, but his ordeal was to come. He had been travelling in the East and had a shameful quantity of baggage, among other things an enormous leather bag, which he boasted no officer had ever dared to fathom. There, under the upper layer of clothes, he had stowed away some cherished companions of his wanderings. A zealous officer unpacked that bag, came upon the deposit of the Tauchnitz, and turned out the contents. His comrades had gathered round to look on, and when a couple of half-torpid scorpions emerged, there was general sensation. My friend had m.] THE CURRENCY QUESTION 49 brought olive wood from the Mount, and water for christenings from the Jordan, but those speci- mens of Syrian zoology were more than he had bargained for. The confusions of the coinage were a constant worry. There was a legend of a man who went on changing a ten-pound note into the various currencies till it reached the vanishing point, which came much sooner than he expected and all in the regular course. But the inexperienced traveller, with no language but his own, had little chance with the natives. In Holland it was comparatively plain sailing, but when he reached the Rhine his troubles began. In the first place, when he went to cash a circular note, he had generally to engage a lacquais tie place to guide him to the bankers named in his letter of indication. They lived up darksome alleys or down odoriferous side streets. Their offices, often in a two-pair back, contrasted strangely with Coutts' or Drummond's, and with sometimes a solitary clerk they took existence leisurely. There was no crush at the counter; indeed there was no counter for a crush, and they knocked off work altogether when business was at the briskest in Fleet Street or the Strand, for they dined heavily at mid-day and indulged in D 50 CURRENCY t CHAP post-prandial tobacco. Sleepy Germany, in those days, was scarcely ahead of Italy, with its dolce far niente and siestas. Moreover, they were profoundly ignorant of ordinary matters of form, and preternaturally suspicious of foreigners. I remember at Coblentz wanting a witness to a transfer of stock, and naturally took it to the banker, with a note to be cashed. Vainly I explained that he incurred no liability : no per- suasion could induce him to sign. He said if the clerk chose to do so, he had no objections, and the clerk, who was a Teutonic translation of Newman Noggs, helped himself out of my cigar case, and set his name to the writing. As he had less than nothing to lose, he was reckless. The second thing that struck one, and it was a corollary to those mean surroundings, was the scarcity of gold. The mines in California, Australia, and South Africa were yet to be exploited, and if there was glut of gold anywhere, it was never in the Fatherland. Except at the gaming-tables, you seldom saw a Friedrich d'or or a Louis d'or, and you took your change either in ragged paper that would have scandalised a Scottish Bank, or in thalers, double the bulk of an English half-crown, which they scarcely exceeded in value. Evidently the silver "i] CONFUSIONS OF THE COINAGE 51 was frightfully debased, but the small change in goschen pieces was worn out of all recognition. They might have been struck in the Brandenburg mint in the Thirty Years' War, and circulated in the camps of Wallenstein and Gustavus. Above Coblentz matters were complicated by the florins of Nassau and the South German States, though the florins put the thalers to shame, and were respectable pieces of silver. But stewards of the Rhine steamers reaped a rich harvest from the confusion of the coinages, and the perplexed tourist would hold out a handful in despair and tell the extortioner to help himself. In Austria even silver was scarce ; the paper that passed current was always fluctuating, and sometimes threatened to depreciate like French assignats during the Terror. It was delightful to find yourself on the solid ground of decimal coinage in France and Switzerland. Travellers of our time sin against their mercies when they forget to be grateful for the German Empire and the unification of Italy. South of the Alpine Passes you looked back regretfully to the comparative simplicity of transactions on the Rhine. Johnson advised Boswell to look well at the change for a guinea, as he might 52 CURRENCY [<*"*■ always find some curious coin. With the multi- plicity of petty states and their venerable currency you were always happening on coins that must have been curious, could they only have been cleaned and deciphered. But wrangling over small change with a knavish landlord, or being woke up in a night-drive to pay for posting and to tip the driver, was far from favourable to numismatic research. Yet there are pleasant associations with those Roman scudi and Neopolitan carlini. I always associate the one with confetti for the carnival, with Roman scarves in blazing colours and the artistic jewellery of Castellani ; the other with the huge bouquets of camelias and violets which the girls sold for a bagatelle on the Chiaia and Santa Lucia. In Italy and Spain the infinitesimal values of the copper rubbish, the reckonings by fractions of soldi and by maravedis, showed the extreme poverty of these countries. In Spain the French five-franc pieces were almost as common as the Spanish duros, and both went a long way. In Germany the heavy coinage was only a nuisance ; in the Spanish byways and dehesas it was a positive danger. When you went on a riding tour you could only ballast the saddle-bags with in] THE CARES OF RICHES 53 it, and when officious ostlers or waiters disem- barrassed you of these, they always seemed to be judicially weighing the contents. I daresay they were often suspected unjustly ; in the lack of foreign travellers there was no such organised confederacy as in South Italy, where the brigands used to have their spies in each Albergo and Osteria. But in the Sierras, where there were no regular brigand bands, there was always a sprink- ling of the ratero or footpad. The safest plan was to reduce the silver to a minimum, which conduced to economy — if you knew your guide vou could take him into your confidence — and carry a reserve of gold in a belt strapped round the waist. I always wore that belt when travelling with the lightest possible luggage with troops in war time, and even in peace I have resorted to simple dodges for keeping my money safe. It was hazardous carrying circular notes or English bank-notes on the person, with the possibility of having the pocket picked, and there was even less security in the lock of a portmanteau. So I used to stow paper and specie between the blankets of the bed and the mattress, where they were safe from anything save a sudden fire. CHAPTER IV RH1NELAND The first glimpse of the Upper Rhine was an era, like the sighting of Holland, or, rather, like the vision of the dome of St Peter's rising over the desolate Campagna. Cologne was the Mecca of northern pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, as it is become a starting-point for latter-day tourists. The lower river had its stories of war and commerce, of battles with the ice crush and the spring inundations. Above Cologne you were in the land of romance, where legend and myth were interwoven with history. Year after year I used to look forward to the little table in the window of the Hotel de Hollande, to the cruet-stand with the amber oil and the queer-coloured vinegar, to the Rhine salmon, the rehbraten, the Rhine wine, and the glorious look-out on Byron's exulting and abounding river, as it swirled in turbid flood to the palpitating bridge of boats. The city of 51 A Typical Dutch Windmill— Haarlem. To face p. 54 ohap.iv.] LINGERING ROMANCE 55 the Three Kings and the Rhinestream were then in a transition period. The steamers, blowing off their steam, had replaced the dragon of the Drachenfels belching out flames and smoke, and they were a great convenience. But relatively, the river was almost as mediaeval as Campbell's Danube, with its untrodden shore. From Bonn to Bingen it was still " The Castled Rhine," as the Red Book used to call it. Whether in dilapidated townships that had once been flourishing free cities, or in the shattered watch - towers of the robber knights, who had been brought to their bearings by Rudolph of Halsberg, medievalism, ruin, and decay reigned supreme. The Kickleburys had gone up the river not long before, and Tom Hood's comic sketches in pen and pencil, with the long-haired students and spectacled meta- physical dreamers did not seem much of carica- tures. Bulwer could lead his pilgrims, fancy free, through a beast world, a fairy world, and the caverns of the gnomes without re- volting probabilities. For Germany, like Bar- barossa in the Untersberg, was slumbering still, and the demons of commercial enterprise were only straining at their chains. The guide-books 56 RHINELAND [ CH * P used to point a moral from the exceptional prosperity of Neuwied, where the Moravians had done good strokes of business in an old-fashioned sort of way. There were neither railways nor telegraph posts. The engineers had not blasted tunnels or damaged the scenery by blowing up sunken rocks in the river bed. The Lorelei had still a chance of luring victims to grief, though the ancient mariners she had tempted to shipwreck by her song and her charms were represented by a solitary salmon fisher, auto- matically making his casts with a drop-net gathered up at the corners. The Bingerloch was still a Charybdis of ill-fame to raftsmen floating the pine-tree stems from the Black Forest. The robber nests, with perhaps three exceptions, were still abandoned to the owls and the bats. A royal prince of the Hohenzollerns and Professor Beth- mann-Holweg had set the example of restoring two of them, and Stolzenfels, with the glowing frescoes, which have been fading since, had become a show place since His Prussian Majesty received our Queen there. Any other, with some scrap of rocky vineyard attached, was to be had for a song, if any one cared to buy. I remember the excitement caused by the report that a hair-brained Irishman w.] THE OLD RHINE BOAT 57 had given a few hundred florins for Lahnstein, and proposed to fit it up. A Rhine Castle often figured among the prizes in the Frankfort lotteries, but apparently the winners must have parted with their white elephants on any reasonable terms. Then, with steamers of moderate horse-power working upstream, there was every temptation to take things easily. A boat put off from each village of any size, took a double -hitch of the rope tossed down, and drew up behind the paddle- box. The boor or the village maiden with her basket came on board ; you stepped in, to be landed before some quaint little hostelry, and leaving your portmanteau behind, you slung your knap- sack, shouldered your fishing-rod and walked away. If you carried a sketch-book so much the better, and it was simply impossible to hurry. The Rhine is only to be seen to advantage from the battlements winding between the natural bastions on either bank. On the tablelands above were unsuspected villages, with farmsteadings and gabled cottages embowered in orchards, and in each valley was a brook, rich in trout and crayfish — now they have been remorselessly netted and poached — a hermitage or watch-tower, or a shattered abbey. The Rhine flows still between castled heights 58 RH1NELAND [chap. and vine-clad slopes, but it is no longer the same river. It is transmogrified and vulgarised, like the Tyneside of Bewick. To put it bluntly, commercial and industrial prosperity have played the mischief with it from Cologne to Mayence. The atmosphere is thick with sulphurous smoke from brickkilns and limekilns and innumerable tall chimneys. There are fleets of tugs and tramp steamers tying up at bustling wharves, and the men who have been making money, from Bremen to Diisseldorf, have been running up "eligible building sites " to fancy prices. A monstrosity of composite architecture crowns the den of the dragon. Academic Bonn has broken out of its leafy shades in suburban eruptions of cockney villadom. Everywhere, in summer, the piano of the boarding-school Miss, practising her scales, or the Englanderin out on holiday, who is a " paying guest," sounds from the pension, still half-shrouded in its walnut or cherry trees. The centre of all the changes has been at Cologne, and nowhere has there been a more startling transformation. It is the symbol of the regeneration and expansion of Germany. When I first saw the old city it had been slowly reviving for some thirty years, but still to all intents it iv] COLOGNE OF THE THREE KINGS 59 was a city of the dead. Victor Hugo had remarked on the busy trade of the river front of the town that was at once a military and com- mercial centre : what would he say could he have seen it now? There were still traces of the ancient wealth and grandeur, when the elector was the richest of the prelates of the Pfaffenstrasse, and when tributes flowed into his shrines from every country in Europe. The old Roman colony had been the Rome of the North, and it was said that Christian piety had raised three hundred and fifty- six church steeples. After the Reformation it became a stronghold of the Catholic reaction, and bigotry had done its worst. First it had banished the Jews, then it proscribed the Protestant weavers ; and the Calvinistic States- General, always in trouble with the Archbishop, had retaliated by laying an embargo on the Lower Rhine. When 1 saw the city those restrictions had been removed : the mines and ironworks of Westphalia were being developed, and the western railways had brought a great accession of traffic. But it had still much of the gloom of the grave- yard and the musty odours of the sacristy. The very names in the German of churches 60 RHINELAND [«** consecrated to forgotten saints had a strange savour of antiquarianism — the Ursula Kirche, the Gereon Kirche, the Pantaleon Kirche. The wor- shippers knelt on the gravestones of priests, and the walls, with their glass-fronted cupboards, were panelled with the bones of martyrs. Convent buildings, a world too wide for their occupants, stood secluded in vast enclosures surrounded by lofty walls. The venerable town was still in the old form of the bent bow of which the Rhine stream was the arc, but it had shrivelled within the walls and the Anlagen — melodious with nightingales in early summer — and there were great blank spaces overgrown with weeds. Victor Hugo declares that when he visited the cathedral there were brambles growing in the rifts of the facade and wild flowers flourishing in the archi- traves of the grand portal. When I saw it the restorers had gone in for thorough cleaning, and the munificent Louis of Bavaria had filled windows with stained glass from Munich ; but the crane on the roof was a standing appeal for alms, and the sacristan was ever on the prowl rattling a plate, when the smallest contributions were thank- fully accepted. It seemed a question of charity whether the fabric would not crumble down before ".] THE LEGENDS OF THE DOM 61 it was built up, and the dreams of its founders and architects were realised. Yet the citizens were proud of their cathedral and the world of legends connected with it. Dumas and Hugo and George Meredith have given those legends romantic shape. There is nothing more picturesque in Dumas' " Impressions of Travel " than the story how the unknown archi- tect outwitted Satan, though he was finally caught out on his one capital sin and missed the immor- tality of fame for which he had hazarded his soul. In those monkish legends the saints and their architectural 'proteges invariably get the better of the Devil. At his bridge of Andermatt, at Aix- la-Chapelle as in Cologne, Satan always showed himself a poor hand at a bargain, and with all his subtlety, was invariably the dupe when it came to settling up. The minster designed by the Devil was sanctified by the shrine of the Three Kings. It is a strange story how those wise men of the East found their final resting-place in the Rhenish Cathedral. The gift of Barbarossa to the Prince- Bishop did everything for Colognes mediaeval glory. The trains of the wealthy and powerful of the earth filled the city to overflowing : kings and princes, pious ladies and 62 RHINELAND t CHAP penitent ruffians under the ban of the Church, vied with others in the richness of their offerings, and doubtless the treasures were even greater than those of A Beckett at Canterbury, for the tomb of the Magi was the more accessible. Nothing shows more forcibly the reverence in which it was held than the fact that it escaped unpillaged down to the Reformation. Even the Lanzknechts and the Schwartzreiters, who, as Scott reminds us in " Quentin Durward," neither feared God nor regarded man, had respect to their oath when they swore by the Three Kings. The Archbishop used his privileges and abused them, but the spoilers came and the priests had to fly. The jewels and gold they saved were pawned or replaced with mosaics and trumpery imitations. Yet still the spot, sacred to super- stition, has some halo of its former splendour, and others, like Victor Hugo, see the " Arabian Nights " enshrined in the setting of the Gospels. The completion of the Gothic masterpiece of the North — completed contrary to all human expectation — is the visible sign of the awaken- ing of Germany. It was the crowning of the new political edifice, when Kaiser William was wearing the crown of Charlemagne. But steam iv] RESURRECTION AND THE BOOM 63 had anticipated the triumphs of the war, and the railways with their facility of transport have been the making of modern Cologne. Coming from the west to the great central station, at Cologne as at Rome, you make the circuit of the city. Nowhere, perhaps, do you look out on such labyrinths of lines and sidings, with truck- loads of goods from all parts of the Empire, for the companies and the State took time by the forelock, and secured a broad acreage when land was comparatively cheap. If they had waited they must have treated on very different terms. The city burst its bounds thirty years ago, and began to expand within the girdle of outlying forts. " Rings " as stately as those of Vienna, with facades frescoed like the arcades of Munich, in defiance of a singularly detestable climate, have risen far beyond the former Amlagen, leaving spaces between that will surely be filled up. Forty years ago town lots were a drug ; then came a sudden boom that reminds one of the South Sea mania or the rapid growth of Chicago. The wide-awake bought dilapidated mansions or neglected dust areas for a song, to sell them twelve months after- wards at cent, per cent. Still they kept on rising, and a succession of speculators were enriched. I 64 RHINELAND [chap. went over with a commission to look into the matter when the boom was at its height, with introductions from the traffic manager of the South Eastern, and was taken the round of the city by an official of the railway. He had made a comfortable little pile in the course of a year or two, and told stories of his bargains that made my mouth water. Unfortunately, the time for getting in on the ground floor or even on the upper stories had gone by, and since then, 1 believe, there has been some inevitable reaction. As significant as the completion of the cathe- dral is the growth of the hotel. In the olden time there were three of the first class — the Royal and the Hollande on the river, and the Disch in the town — all three were excellent, but quiet and unobtrusive. Latterly hotels have been springing up like mushrooms around the Domplatz ; and the Domhof, which used to be avowedly second- rate, has blossomed into an establishment of the foremost rank. But the rise of the Nord marked the turning point, and from the day of its opening, it filled through the season from entresol to attic. To my mind it is the most amusing caravanserai in Europe, for it taps the great flood of tourist iv.'] THE HOTEL DU NORD 65 traffic, and is the hotel-junction of innumerable diverging routes. There, unless you are a very regular visitor, you drop your individuality to be- come a number. There you may sit in the court- yard from noon to night, watching the crossing of the pilgrims from all parts of the globe, and certain of picking up acquaintances if you care for that. There you may see piles of the luggage of all countries, from Saratoga trunks, numbered by the dozen, to the Alpine knapsack and the literal " carpet "-bag of the hausfrau. The busy table d'hote is illustrative of the perpetual scurry — as the clamour of the porters and the rattle of the omnibuses — though I do not say that is a recom- mendation. For the menu and the cooking leave little to desire, but the meat is hurried up from the slaughter-house and the game from the fields. Everything goes forward at express speed. One evening, dining a la carte under the arcade, I praised a plat of rehrucke, which, for a wonder, was admirably kept. My compliment went wide of the mark — and the head-waiter and I were at cross-purposes. " Yes," he said complacently, " we pride ourselves on having everything quite fresh " — as if eggs and roe-venison were precisely on the same footing. The bustle of the Nord would E 66 RHINELAND [chap. have been a sacrilegious anachronism, when the sale of eau de Cologne and views of the cathedral were the staple industries, and when every lacquais de place was in the pay of some member of the prolific family Farina. But now Cologne, with its miles of river front, has a population equalling that of Vienna. The hanging gardens of the Royal and Bellevue at Bonn were a Pisgah whence you looked out on the Land of Promise. The river went winding towards Rolandseck and Kloster Nomen- werth, and the Seven Hills skirted the horizon. The old university town, with its 20,000 inhabi- tants more or less, was enlivened by the long- haired students, who listened to the prelections of spectacled professors. It was an aristocratic university, but there were many youths who looked forward to dull domesticity on limited incomes, and they were having their frugal fling while life was young and hopeful. At that time the Bonn pensions were cheap, and much resorted to by English ladies, unattached. I remember two old maiden relatives of my own complaining bitterly of their sleep being broken by Bacchanalian chants. You used to see the students at their best and wildest in a gasthaus opposite the Stern in iv] EVENINGS ON THE DRACHENFELS 67 the market-place, but they were always making parties of a summer eve to sup at the restaurant on the summit of the Drachenfels. There was scarcely an accessible picturesque site in the Rhineland that was not consecrated to beer and tobacco. No German maid or matron objected to one or the other. The girls and their chaperons knitted while the biirschen smoked and sung. Music there was, as a matter of course, and some- times an impromptu dance was started on the grass, when any formality of introduction was dispensed with. I always associate the Drachenfels with Mai- trank, and my pleasantest associations are with the month of May, when the flies were on and the trout were rising. Maitranh comes in with the spring wild flowers ; as with burrage in claret-cup, there is an infusion of them in Rhine wine, sweetened and slightly spiced. It is an insidious drink, though not intoxicating, and tells rather more on the liver than the head, like the rack punch Jos Sedley swallowed at Vauxhall. But in those happy days one had no liver. Talking of girls, and following in the footsteps of " Childe Harold," one could desire no more en- chanting guide than Byron. As the magnificent 68 RHINELAND [chap. stanzas on the Drachenfels were quoted in the guide- book, you had them at your ringer ends. But if you went there dreaming of the peasant girls with deep blue eyes, you were sadly disenchanted. With substantial waists and solid ankles, and in dresses much more prosaic than coquettish, they had taken to driving donkeys with their brothers, and their voices, broken in perpetual objurgation, were as harsh as the scream of the jay in the adjacent woods. The path winding up from Konigswinter to the Dragon's Rock prepared you for similar scenes on the Rigi, and reminded one of Sunday society on Hampstead Heath. In the height of the season the British cockney was in the ascendant ; there were comparatively few Americans and not many Germans from afar. The stream set up and down the hill, and it was strange that scarcely a soul diverged to the ruins of Cistercian Heisterbach. The Magpie Brook flowed at the back of the mountain, and there was an unpretentious little hostelry there, where trout and crayfish were to be had in perfection. More than once I have picked up pleasant German acquaintances there, and been seduced into indefinite pipes and talk till we had to pass the flying bridge at Mehlen by moonlight. iv] THE RHENISH HINTERLAND 69 " Childe Harold " is the most fascinating of com- panions, but in the turmoil of his spirits he hurried over the ground. I once walked all the banks from Bonn to Bingen, and it is the only way to appreciate the scenery. For the river flows in a ravine and the tablelands on either side are un- known country. You came on populous villages with picturesque churches, with fountains gushing from the living rock and clear streams running down the slopes of the main street, between orchards and homesteads, and heaps of manure. It is those villages that provide the veal and the pork, the poultry and vegetables you devour in the inns. And always, as I have said, where the scenery verges on the sublime, you walk along a natural battlement, bastioned by projecting cliffs, sur- mounted by some shattered fortress. It was literally a bird's-eye view, for example, when you looked down from beyond St Goar, and saw the Herzog von Nassau dwarfed in the depths, the Ruhrort towing a line of microscopic barges, or the raft with the smoke rising from the cooking fires, and the navigators busy as ants over the great sweeps at the stem and stern. The Seven Hills themselves, with the freaks of fire and volcanic forces well repaid leisurely ex- 70 RHINELAND [chap. ploration. But on my first ascent of the river, the first glimpse of real peasant life was at Andernach. I was wrong in saying that Neuwied engrossed industrial prosperity, for Andernach was quite a busy port. You looked out from the Gasthaus zur Lilic, which is gone, on piles of mill-stones from the quarries at Nieder Mendig, and on barges loading up with cement. It was a Sabbath after- noon, and the population was in gala dress and evidently in excitement. A Kirrness was going forward in a village opposite. Boats were putting off with loads of passengers. The moon was rising when we stepped into one of them, to be ferried across for a groschen or two. Our com- panions were a friendly monk from the Laacher See, who gave us an invitation to the Abbey, which we accepted, and a couple of peasant girls in laced bodices and brief petticoats, with silver ear-rings which the monk said were heir- looms, and silver skewers, the emblems of virginal purity, stuck through their oily back hair. They were unchaperoned, and among the belles of the evening, and entirely easy in their manners as they were voluble in their talk. The dancing place was a village green, illuminated partly by the moon and partly by oil lamps and tallow candles. On iv] A RHENISH KIRMESS 71 the benches before the beer house the elders were seated behind pipes with gaudy china bowls and earthen beer tankards. It was odd that in that land of wine, beer seemed to be the popular tipple. From the patriarchs to the hobbledehoys, the men were all rustics — shepherds, wine-dressers or small landowners. There was no sign of the artisan or of trade unionism, and probably not a man of them was mortgaged to a money-lender. Now the Jews of Frankfort and Mayence have the farmers and the labourers alike in their grasp from Mayence down to Cologne. Then they were poor but tolerably free from care, and perfectly simple and unsophisticated. The proof of it was that they welcomed the extraordinary advent of two English- men, and honoured us as Dr Faust was honoured at the village festivity. They would not hear of our paying for anything — all we could do was to tender our tobacco pouches — and in sheer civility we had to drench ourselves with indifferent beer. When we proposed looking out for partners, they were overwhelmed with our condescension, and the belles of the neighbourhood were peremptorily bidden to break off any previous engagements. It was a delicate situation when a girl was inclined to sulk and her admirer to scowl, but there was no 72 RHINELAND [«» getting out of it, and, indeed, it was anything but unmixed pleasure hauling the ladies round in the waltz on the rugged turf, and still more up-hill work making conversation. I doubt if we should have a similar welcome now that the Rhinelanders have been demoralised by acquaintance with troops of tourists personally conducted. On the way to Andernach you pass the Ahr Valley, a favourite resort of mine in many succes- sive years. Then it was charmingly peaceful and sequestered : you might fish for a long spring day and never see a soul in tweeds or broadcloth. Very fair fishing it was, with the swirls and back- waters beneath the hanging alders, and shoaling gravel to land the trout or grayling ; and there was a sensuous feeling of enjoyment in the air, for the valley sentimentally reeked of the red wine. On the sunny slopes the terraced banks were portioned out, and the stone facings were numbered in con- spicuous letters. I always carried a bottle of the rougher Ahrbleichart with the bread and cheese in the fishing-basket, and waited for the softer Walportzheimer till dinner. Dusty, rather footsore, and somewhat fagged, it was pleasant to walk under the embattled archway of Altenahr, and wend one's way to the homely hostelry, where the n] TROUTING IN THE AHR VALLEY 73 landlady had ever a beaming welcome. She had been busy over her spits and stewpans, but she was not above serving you your own trout, which the Swiss and Austrian innkeepers scorned to do. During dinner you might drink what you pleased. After dinner came the dusty flask of Walportzheimer, cradled, though in a ruder fashion, as at the Voisin or Phillipe's. The wines of the Ahr deserve their reputation, but they never had any notoriety in England, and now Apollinaris water has cut them out altogether. To tell the truth, I never heard of the springs of Apollinaris — per- haps, as Mr Weller remarked of the shepherd, " it was werry little of that beverage " I drank in those days. Sir Percy Anderson, of the Foreign Office, told me afterwards that he narrowly missed making a fortune. He appreciated their qualities, and thought of treating for them ; but, like Thackeray's ragged speculator in the ballad, he hadn't the money to pay the stamp. In other words, he had not the money to advertise, and he did not under- stand company promoting. Now, the Ahr spring has become the fashion. Rosbach was fairly beaten in the race ; the natural Seltzer was distanced years ago. Apollinaris is first, and the rest nowhere. Coblentz was capital headquarters. Not the 74 RHINELAND [chap. least recommendation was the collection of Tauch- nitzes', with which you replenished a traveller's library. The Moselle brought down the red soil from the Red Land, and it was pleasant enough to stem the current by Trarbach to Treves, though the steamer started at a most unholy hour, and sometimes came to a dead stoppage on a mud bank. I have been at Treves when torrential falls of rain were washing down landslips, such as Baker describes on the Atbara ; but when the water cleared there was excellent trouting in tributary streams that took you up into picturesque country, dotted over with Roman remains, left by the builders of the Black Gate. I am afraid one's steps more frequently tended towards Ems, with its more mundane attractions of the tables, the gardens, and the company. Steps, I say ad- visedly, for one of the most agreeable walks I know was by Ehrenbreitstein over the hill. Passing the frowning batteries, from the bleak uplands you dropped down on the enchanted valley, scented by flowers and stifled in its breathless surroundings. It was a pleasant break in a long summer day's walk, to stroll in and drop a few florins at the tables. Coutts's correspondent, who had a personal interest in the gambling, had a iv] THE NASSAU STATE PRISON 75 royal and extraordinary memory. If you cashed a single ten -pound note one season in passing, he addressed you as an old acquaintance when you came to him with another next year. Having lunched and lightened your pockets of loose change, and scrambled up the opposite ascent, there was a charming walk through the green- wood to the Marksburg. It was a quaint illus- tration of the survival of feudalism — of latter-day autocracy — in a petty state. Personally, His Serene Highness the Duke of Nassau was as genial a gentleman as you need wish to meet. He used to look in of a Sunday at the Kursaal in his capital, and dine at M. Benazet's excellent table, chatting or flirting with his neighbours, as the case might be. But the castle he had con- verted into a State prison, with its massive walls and gloomy dungeons, with its garnishing of heavy chains and rusty fetters, might have been envied by the Czar or the Shah. It was all like cracking a walnut with a Nasmyth hammer, for his State captives must have been committed for offences against his forest laws, which were certainly severe — some old woman who had been caught gathering- sticks, or a criminal who had taken a shot at a roe by moonlight. 76 RHINELAND [chap. If you went from Coblentz to Ems by road, and did not care to hire a carriage, you might take a seat in the Wiesbaden eilwagen, going thither by way of Limburg, Nassau, and Schwabach. A ponderous and primitive vehicle it was, seldom washed except on high days and holidays, with a team hitched up with rope traces, and a postillion in cocked hat, yellow jacket, and jack boots, with a horn slung to his shoulders in tasselled baldrick. The horses, by the way, and very sensibly, had no bearing reins, and carried their heads between their knees in pulling up hill. One incident I remember connected with that diligence, and it gave me matter for meditation. Like Colonel Altamont with his seductive Parisian countess, I never knew whether I had been let in or not. I made friends with an affable Hungarian, travelled with him for a few days, and afterwards at Frankfort lent him a few pounds, when Homburg had reduced him to temporary destitution. He pledged his honour to pay up at a certain place and time, and though I never saw or heard of him again, I incline to believe that he was as honourable as agreeable. But there was an odd sequel. Some years afterwards, at Misseri's ™j SCOTTISH EXILE IN COBLENTZ 77 Hotel in Constantinople, I was discussing Hun- garians with General Klapka — in exile since the Hungarian revolt — and said laughingly that I must have been swindled by a plausible country- man of his. The old warrior took it seriously, pulled out a pocket-book, when cash must have been scarce with him, and really lost his temper because he could not clear the score. Living was cheap at Coblentz, as everywhere on the Rhine, and English exiles, impecunious as the Scottish laird at Brussels, betook them- selves thither, as Royalists had done in the French Revolution. Another old Scotsman, whose estates were administered by trustees, used to come each evening to the Riese for a frugal supper. He had kept harriers and open house, had been a bon vivanl and a boon companion of Lord Panmure, when the conviviality of Brechin Castle, recorded in Constable's " Memoirs/' was notorious. Now, he kept the secret of his shabby lodging — the Rhine folk had no idea of domestic comfort — and if he dined anywhere, it was in some wretched gast- haus. His one indulgence was the evening hour at the hotel, and it was more than a doubtful pleasure, for the old gentleman, though homesick to death, came in the hope of meeting with one 78 RHINELAND [<***■ of his many acquaintances. Hard up, and with his extravagant instincts still strong in him, he never borrowed a shilling. In vain did his friends press their assistance, and he carried Scotch pride and self-respect so far that sipping the light wine that might have passed for vinegar he would not be tempted by their Rauenthaler or Liebfraumilch, and they would willingly have given him Johannis- berg or Steinberg. He drew the line at relief from the native tobacco, and over fragrant Havannahs he would sit and talk into the small hours, as he reviewed many a merry recollection with the tears welling up in his eyes. There were not a few men in those days, plausible fellows with easier consciences, who in more affluent circumstances were shirking their creditors ; they used to frequent the steamers for the sake of society, and prey upon a victim when they got the chance. Others were honest enough, but parsi- monious to meanness. 1 remember one dignified and portly gentleman, who was hampered with a wife and a good-looking daughter. He liked his comforts, and practised parsimony as a fine art. With the air and manners of a prince, he was the shabbiest man I ever met. He had made him- self excessively agreeable between Andernach and iv] PARSIMONY AND POMPOSITY 79 Coblentz, and we walked together across the quay to the Riese. Bargaining was not the fashion to the north of the Alps, but he set himself at once to beat the landlord down, and got a summary dismissal. Next he tried the Bellevue, with similar result, I presume, for from my window I saw him stalking before the ladies and a porter to the Three Kings next door. These Coblentz monarchs, by the way, are not the sainted Magi of Cologne, but the sons of Charlemagne, who shared his Empire among them, when they set their marks to the Treaty of Verdun. From the Kings, after a time, the porter came away cursing, so my friends had made good their footing. Next day, when I saw Pomposus, he made no secret as to the terms, which were a thaler and a half per head, service included. Even Cook or Gaze, with every re- duction for a company, could hardly do so well nowadays. That afternoon I ran up against Pom- posus at Stolzenfels, when his daughter's sketch- book fell into the river and the drawings were scattered. A boatman promptly pushed off and rescued them all — to be rewarded with a five- groschen piece. The man stood in speechless amazement, spat on the coin, and pitched it 80 RHINELAND [ CHA * into the river, then touched his hat to the ladies and turned on his heel. Decidedly he had the best of it, and their blushes made me pity them. For even then the tradition of the English milord, with caliche and fourgon and a courier scattering gold had not died out. It was not long before that Tom Hood quoted from the sensational serial in a Moselle journal the reward of something like a million sterling offered by a wealthy English widow for the recovery of a missing child. Flying past by train you see nothing now of the castled Rhine; and the tourist, personally conducted, gives slight thought to the romance. How can he ? If fortunately seated, he is admir- ing the reach where once was the rock of the Lorelei. The echo used to be wakened as matter of business by the whistle of the steamer, which slowed down to let you listen to the reverberations. Now, with an ear-piercing screech, you are shot into the blackness of a tunnel, which burrows beneath the dungeons of the ruin on the heights, associated with a dozen of wild legends and sober historical facts. Simrock, and Hugo, and Dumas, and Bulwer took things leisurely, and the glamour of their genius is flickering still over each nook and iv] ROMANCES OF THE RHINE 81 corner. If you only give yourself breathing time, there is matter for any number of day-dreams, and by merely consulting the guide-books recollec- tions come crowding thick upon you. Rheinfels, the grandest ruin on the Rhine, has been besieged and stormed times without number. The shat- tered walls of Boppard, and Bacharach, and of Ober- wesel with the bastioned towers left open on the city side, remind you of the perils of prosperity, when the trader carried his life in his hand, and the Robber Knights took ruthless toll of the traffic. Many an honest citizen left his bones locked in fetters, or was oiily set free for a ruinous ransom, and when the townsmen had hived honey enough behind their walls, there was always the proba- bility that a robber league would smoke them out. There is Schomberg, the stamm sckloss of a great race of soldiers of fortune and the home of the seven cruel sisters, whose songs were seductive as those of the syren of the Lorelei ; who, like her, had played false with the lovers they ensnared, and were turned into as many rocks and obstructions. There is AYelmich, where the soul of Victor Hugo was stirred to its depths, and where the supernatural bell sounds at midnight from the castle well, recall- ing the sacrilege of the Castellan, who had pillaged F 82 RHINELAND [chap. a convent and murdered the abbot, unconfessed. There are the Brother Castles, looking down on Kloster Bornhofen, with the tragical love-romance, which Bulwer immortalised in the " Pilgrims of the Rhine." And at Goarhausen the spirituel Dumas was never in happier vein than when he narrated the good Saint's short method with heretics, which recommended itself to the high- handed Charlemagne when he ferried the Emperor across. In mid-stream the Saint, who was the ferryman, questioned the passenger as to his belief. If he owned himself a heathen, he was promptly baptised, and then, to guard against a relapse, was tossed into the river and sent straight to Paradise. There is the Pfalz, where it is said that, according to constitutional practice, the ladies ol the Electors Palatine were sent to be confined in exceedingly cramped quarters. It was the standing protest of the secular prince against the encroach- ments of the three powerful Elector- Archbishops of Cologne, Treves, and Mayence. It is certain that, down to forty years ago, the Duke of Nassau, perpetuating old feudal practices, still taxed the traffic, levying dues on eveiy vessel navigating the Rhine. Less picturesque is the squalid Mause Tower, on its low, sodden island, where avenging iv] METTERNICH AND JULES JANIN 83 rats are said to have picked the bones of the wicked bishop, and which was really another custom-house. But it is historically memorable for an escape from drowning, which affected the future of Germany more than the conquests of Charlemagne or the conversions of St Goar. For Bismarck used to tell, with lively expressions of gratitude, how when bathing he was swept away in the current, and only saved himself by the skin of his teeth. As to the smiling Rheingau, with its sunny slopes and rich vineyards, Dumas has another capital story. Prince Metternich, who, according to Talleyrand, when contrasting him with Mazarin, " mentait toujours et ne trompait jamais," had a passion for autographs, and he wrote Jules Janin, " with all the forms of aristocratic courtesy which distinguished him," a request for the famous jour- nalist's signature. Janin's reply was brief and to the point. " Recu de Monsieur le Prince de Met- ternich vingt quatre bouteilles de Johannisberg, premiere qualite." As the journalist had written " spirituellement" the Prince executed himself gracefully. Heading all the wine lists of hotels in the Rhineland were Schloss Johannisberg and Steinberg Cabinet, at fabulous figures. In nineteen cases out of twenty that was humbug. Twice 84 RHINELAND [chap. only, as I believe, have I tasted the veritable vintage — once at the Englischer Hof at Mayence, when a bottle was produced on the passage of a diplomatist of the prince's school, who was a critical judge ; and again when the wine authentically came from a lot which had been presented to an English premier. But among what are technically branded as second growths, there are others which are good enough for ordinary mortals. In my opinion, the Rauenthaler hardly yields to any, and 1 know that many Germans agree with me. In the war- time I was travelling from Darmstadt to Metz with a detachment of Hesse -Darmstadt troops. The officers in the saloon carriage were the best of company, and overwhelmed me with civilities I was anxious to repay. The pace of the military train has since reconciled me to South-Eastern stoppages, and luxuries were running short when we drew up for hours at a junction. Talking with the restaurateur, I found he had some bottles of Rauenthaler, and I walked off with as many as I could conveniently carry. I shall never forget how a jovial captain of artillery smacked his lips as he rumbled out " Rauenthaler ! " before a cork was drawn. With Rauenthaler and song and sausages the night went by, till we looked out rv ] MAYENCE— A FEDERAL FORTRESS 85 next morning on the Spicheren heights, and what a young lieutenant prophetically remarked was "friiher Frankreich." And often, with some of the religious feeling for consecrated soil, have I climbed the slopes from Eltville on the Rhine, when walking through the Rauenthal vineyards to Schwabach, sending my baggage by the lum- bering omnibus. Cologne has scarcely changed more than Mayence. I used always to be sorry for the Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, who, under constraint, handed his town over to be garrisoned by the Confederation. Blue Prussians and White Aus- trians filled the beer gardens, and the hotel salons at supper time resounded with the clash of sabres and the clank of spurs. The citizens grumbled, with good reason, at being tucked up within the strait girdle of the forts. The railway ran in front of the hotels, along the street which skirted the river, making sleep next to impossible, unless you were half- suffocated in a bedroom to the back. When the summer traffic was at its height the narrow platforms in the low-roofed station were a surging crowd of sweating humanity. I chanced to be staying at Mayence when the news came of the Sedan surrender, with a great Rhenish wine mer- 86 RHINELAND [chap. chant, who had played the host to Bismarck. I had sat and sipped and smoked in the historic summer-house in which the Chancellor had smoked and swilled and talked with affected frankness. There he protested that he was against the annexa- tion of Alsace and Lorraine, but that Moltke and Von Roon would have their way. Well, when the news came of the surrender, there was a social party in a shabby gasthaus, including the Fathers of the City and a couple of Cabinet Ministers from Berlin. The town lit up with an impromptu illumination, and the populace were shouting themselves hoarse in the streets. The select assembly were no less jubilant, and the burgo- masters of Mayence were specially joyful. They took it for granted that with Metz and the French fortresses for bulwarks, their own works would be dismantled, and theirs would in verity be a free city. As to that, they have been sadly disillu- sioned. Mayence is still a place of arms and stronger than ever, though the fortifications have extended and been remodelled. But at least now there is ample breathing space within the enceinte. Formerly, when an express train came in, it was a rough-and-tumble scramble to extricate yourself and your luggage, and generally you iv] FETTERED BY FORTIFICATIONS 87 stumbled through mud or dust to the hotel, following a porter's truck at a foot's pace. Now you are more likely to be lost in the wilderness of the new station, and the cab-drivers reap the harvest that used to fall to the street porter. For cuisine — German cuisine — service, and cellars, there were few more comfortable hotels in Germany than the Englischer Hof and the Hollande. But they groaned under the close pressure of the fortifica- tions, and no one was ever tempted to linger long. CHAPTER V THE BATHS The Rhine is the highway to the German health resorts, which have enriched so many natives, and ruined so many foreigners. The eternal springs may still heal all manner of diseases, but, morality apart, they were far more lively places when the roulette ball went spinning merrily from morn to midnight, and the rouge et noir attracted more serious gamblers. Half your fellow- passen- gers on the Rhine boats either hoped to have a flutter at Wiesbaden or Homburg, or yielded to the insidious seductions of the tables. All classes were drawn into temptations. Sala, perhaps with a touch of personal portraiture, describes the "gay and gallant young Englishman, taking his pleasure abroad," with the wine gourd slung to his stalwart shoulders, indulging in free potations en route, and buoyed up with the golden dreams doomed to disappointment. Thackeray sketches Brown the 88 £ > 03 o o chap, v.] THE GAMBLING TABLES 89 bagman sitting side by side with Lord Kew, staking respectively their florins and rouleaux. All Lever's heroes are landed sooner or later at a game of which he had no little experience, and he refers incidentally to Electors and Grand Dukes cleared out when Dodd, junior, in a fabulous run of good fortune, was terrorizing the croupiers and breaking the banks. For a croupier suspected of " an unlucky hand " might confidently count on summary dismissal. Those golden days are gone, and the gaiety of cosmopolitans has been eclipsed. The society is outwardly respectable, and even when dissipated is comparatively dull. With the early hours, in spite of lawn tennis or croquet, excursions, dancing and dining, the diffi- culty is in getting through the tedious day. In the olden time there was no trouble in the matter ; there was always one standing resource, for, if you did not play, there was excitement in looking on. Moreover, the gains of the establishment were so great, that it could afford to be lavish of entertainments and prodigal in advertising. MM. Benazet and Blanc — they were always French specu- lators who ran the tables — spared no money in making things attractive for probable clients. They retained the most renowned chefs for their 90 THE BATHS t CHAP restaurants ; they engaged the most eminent artistes for operas and concerts ; they never haggled over terms with the conductors of their admirable Kapellen ; in the reading - rooms, sumptuously furnished with settees and arm-chairs, you could see all the journals of Europe. Round the Temples of Fortune, where they hatched the golden eggs, were Grecian edifices with frescoed colonnades ; they embellished their parterres with the rarest of bulbs and the most fragrant of flowers, and laid out any number of sequestered walks among shady groves, where lovers might do their wooing to the notes of thrush and nightingale. Mephistopheles had been called into consultation, and it was noteworthy that all the winding garden paths tended insidiously back towards the Kursaal. The sun-blaze was hot, the variegated sun-blinds were drawn down, and from within, dominating the hum of bees on the heliotrope beds, came the chink of coin and the clatter of the rakes. You hesitated, walked in, and were lost, even before the early table dlwte. It was very wrong, and the reform did not come too soon, but we must remember that we owe a debt of gratitude to the gamblers who wantonly and foolishly flung their money away. They bequeathed us the v] PRINCES AS SLEEPING PARTNERS 91 buildings and pleasure-grounds, which are now somewhat grudgingly keep up by municipalities, who mulct the abiding Kurgast with a head-tax. One is inclined to wish they had endowed them as well, but that was hardly to be expected. Nor can we withhold our sympathy from the needy poten- tates who used to be sleeping partners in those concerns. The Prince of Hesse-Homburg, with his grim old schloss, set in charming flower-beds, and a mere scrap of a territory, drew a princely revenue from a firm that ranked foremost in the gaming world as the Rothschilds in finance; and the Duke of Nassau and the Grand Duke of Baden added handsomely to ample incomes with less ex- cuse. At least these potentates showed parental consideration for their subjects, and sternly denied them the entry to the tables. The Elector of Hesse-Cassel, living in his German Versailles, was more liberal in his ideas. At his little rural Bath of Wilhelmsbad, a sweet spot secluded in the woodlands, a few miles from Frankfort, I have seen a waggoner pull up his team, and stump in with hob-nailed boots over the polished parquet, to lay down his florin at roulette and curse or bless his luck. Germany has been going ahead in commerce, but then it had a practical 92 THE BATHS C CHAr monopoly of that branch of industry. I think the only exception, save at Spa, was in republican Switzerland, where the Baths of Saxon tried vainly to tempt strangers to one of the most heaven- forsaken scenes in the sterile debris of the Rhone valley. And, by the way, at one time, Mr James Fazy, Member for Geneva, and a leader of radicals in the Swiss Parliament, had started a quiet gaming speculation of his own in a sumptuous mansion on the Quai des Bergues. The company at the tables was undeniably mixed, but much better order was kept than at Monte Carlo, and the administration was far more liberal. You might see an old lady clutching at her neighbour's stake, but quarrels were rare and soon settled. Rather than stand upon trifles, the head croupier paid twice over, for time was money, and soon the ball was spinning again. And when the table was set thick with pieces piled over each other, or a cheval on the numbers, there were frequent occasions for dispute, but the disputants were taught to control themselves. A certain equanimity of manner was de rigueur, and nothing can be more false to the facts than the sensational pictures of groups at the gambling tables with features distorted with despair and v] INCONSIDERATE SUICIDES 93 tragically melodramatic gestures. You might mark many a look of subdued misery, and some- times a smiling woman would rip up a glove with a convulsive movement of the finger. But, as a rule, the losers walked away to be sorrowful in secret, though one would not care to follow them into their bed-chambers. Few were so lost to decency as to blow out their brains in public, and indeed M. Benazet, in particular, set his face severely against suicide. Once I reached Wiesbaden the day after a young Dutch officer had shot himself, falling over the roulette table, and a very horrible scene it must have been. I was told that M. Benazet bustled in to superintend in person the removal of the body to the lavatory, by way of marking his resent- ment of the ungentlemanly outrage. In half an hour, with creditable promptitude, the damaged table had been replaced by another, and the game was going on as briskly as before. It was said that the Dutchman had only come with some fifty guilders, and perhaps it was but natural that the poorest gamblers should have taken their losses most to heart. It is one thing to be landed in a tight place and another to be abso- lutely beggared, with a bill at the hotel and no 94 THE BATHS [chap. return ticket. But in Germany, as at Monte Carlo, the Administration for its own sake was always ready to give a clamorous victim a send- off Of course, losing or winning well is much a matter of temperament and also of custom. There were grand seigneurs who had the grand manner, and seemed to feel that noblesse obliged ; I remember how nobly Lucien, Prince of Canino, and the old Elector of Hesse-Cassel, used to drop their gold. But the Jews who came over of an evening from Frankfort to Homburg prob- ably held to their money as much as most men, and they habitually played deep, yet nothing could surpass the imperturbability with which they parted with their rouleaux and thousand- franc notes. It was a queer company, and there were odd incidents. I remember the steward of a Rhine boat — I knew the man well by sight — coming in one evening at Wiesbaden in his professional jacket. He flung his florins about, he freely backed his luck, till he had gathered a heap of money before him. He was a good fellow, he was intoxicated with his good fortune, and pressed loans of florins upon his less fortunate neighbours. Quite a gallery of interested spectators had gathered v] THE GAMBLING FEVER 95 behind him. Naturally he would not go till he had lost every florin he had won. Then all the swagger and starch were taken out of him ; he tore his hair; he wept piteously, and prayed the men on whom he had pressed his loans to help him in his extremity. There are some with whom the gambling passion lies smouldering, ready to break out with volcanic force at the shortest notice. One evening I went over from Frankfort to Homburg — you passed more than one variegated barrier, indi- cating a change of frontiers on the short railway run — with a captain in Her Majesty's Black Watch, as steady a lad as one could wish to meet. He had never looked on at high play before, and the spectacle fired his Highland blood like an orgie of Ferintosh. He cut into the game, and the man was transformed ; the luck was with him, and in ten minutes he was the very incarnation of greed, clutching at the coins he drew in by handfuls, and piling them in the Highland bonnet which lay between his elbows on the table. Luckily for him, he went back again to be cleaned out next day, and I believe had the good sense to renounce such exciting speculation. Then there were the chevaliers de fortune, whose astounding luck was the terror of the 96 THE BATHS [chap. tables — who tilted, like Don Quixote, at all and sundry, and for a time with brilliant success. The stars of a brief season, they attracted all minor luminaries to their circuits, and there were always many backers of their miraculous runs. Garcia, for more than one season the bete noir of all the croupiers, was perhaps the most notable in my time. When he was in highest vein he once challenged the Bank at Homburg to increase its maximum of 600 louis ; as he was winning hand over hand the challenge could scarcely in honour be declined, and the Bank was broken. Of course those adventurers always tempted Fortune too far, having squandered like millionaires while the luck lasted. Beranger's couplet might have been the invariable dirge — "Encore une etoile qui file, qui file, Qui file et disparait." There were always hawks and vultures hanging about the rooms, watching their opportunity. The stranger, especially if he seemed green and un- sophisticated, when gathering a heap of gold or stowing away the crisp new bank-notes, was the cynosure of hungry eyes and the object of many insidious advances. The syren sitting next him would whisper soft advice in his ears ; the ancien v] SISTERS OF CHARITY 97 militaire, looking over his shoulder, would be lost in admiration of his magnificent game. They watched and followed when, flushed with success, he adjourned to the restaurant for refreshment and champagne. But it was the Sisters of Charity, questing for charitable local schemes, who were most frank in their appeals and most persevering in their prayers. They were importunate as their mendicant sisters in Paris, who used to knock at the door of your room in the hotel when you were dressing, and sometimes open it to apolo- gise, withdraw, and wait patiently if they surprised you at your ablutions. I believe those ladies of the Baths, though they competed with impenitent Magdalens, did considerable good by questionable methods, and took heavy toll of the Mammon of Unrighteousness. They knew the people it was futile to approach, and never troubled the Jew money-broker or the professional routier. But impromptu winners, warmed with wine, were often freehanded in a flow of high spirits; and, more- over, all gamblers are superstitious, and many would have deemed it unlucky to refuse. At Wiesbaden and Homburg the springs were highly commended by the faculty for all manner of diseases. At Wiesbaden you were sent to stew 98 THE BATHS [«**• in the tepid chicken broth, and at Homburg the powerful iron waters were beginning to attract hosts of over-eaten diners-out, of the enfeebled, and the dyspeptic. In natural attractions neither could vie with Baden, though Wiesbaden is on the skirts of picturesque Nassau, and Homburg boasts the attractions of the romantic Taunus. So the lessees of the tables, wise in their generation, tempted clients by underselling their rivals. At both the odds in favour of the Banks were scarcely half what they were at Baden. Certainly the system of smaller profits and greater business must have paid, for both Blanc and Benazet, after turning towns of brick or stone into marble, realised im- mense fortunes. Nevertheless, Baden always more than held its own, which would not have been sur- prising, considering its incontestable superiority in natural beauties. But its chief patrons were the French, who were seldom much in love with nature, and were content to confine themselves to a drive in the Lichtenthaler Allee or a donkey ride up the hill to the Alte Schloss. The facility of reaching it from Paris and the coquetry of the place, where art had done everything to embellish nature, suffi- ciently account for that. The odd thing was that the tables drew professionals and amateurs, though v] THE SORROWS OF THE GAMBLER 99 the chances in their favour were doubled when they went to the northern Baths. About's M. Le Roi, in his admirable " Trente et Quarante," was a type of the boulevardiers who repaired yearly to Baden to lose rather more than they could afford. For the time they would get into terribly tight places, and the straits of Le Roi and his aristo- cratic friends are not very greatly exaggerated. There was much anxious waiting for letters with remittances, in which the hotel-keepers, uneasy though still polite, took a keen personal interest. I must own to having been once in somewhat similar case myself, though I never dipped but merely trifled on the edge. Travelling by Spa, Wiesbaden, and Homburg, I had left a trail of loose florins behind, and at Baden I was brought to grief by a persistent burst of bad weather. The dripping glades of the forest had no attrac- tions, and one was driven to lounge under cover round the tables where Satan found mischief for idle hands. Finally, one wet day, I was pretty nearly stranded, longing to leave for Switzerland, but tethered by a bill. Apparently, my letter to Lombard Street had miscarried. That night I was preparing to leave the Kursaal when a terrific thunder-storm broke and we were all weather-bound, 100 THE BATHS [chap. The hour of midnight was approaching when the croupier announced the last three spins of the ball. On impulse or inspiration I staked one of my last napoleons on the carre. I won, and scattered the winnings on the adjacent numbers. I won again, did not tempt Providence a third time, cleared all my small losses, paid my bill, and took the train for Basle next morning. I am glad to say the lesson was not thrown away. I daresay the Baden waters are good for something, though I never came across any friend who drank them. All the same, the frescoed colon- nade was a delightful lounge of a bright summer morning, nor was anything more pleasant after breakfast than to take a book and seat yourself on the banks of the trickling Oos, between the fresh shorn lawn and the fragrant shrubbery. But what I liked about Baden was the double life you could lead. In the forenoon, in thick boots and homespun, you took the fishing-rod and wandered away to the Murgthal, through the lofty colonnades of clean-stemmed pines like the sombre aisles of some gothic cathedral, treading upon soft carpets of fir needles and green bilberry, or crushing your way through the fronds of the bracken. You cast your flies with better or worse luck ; ▼J BADEN IN THE WAR-TIME 101 you lunched in the parlour of some homely hostelry ; and in late afternoon, if the trout were not on the take, you put up your rod and made a glorious detour through the woodlands, to be landed at last in the Lichenthaler Allee Pleasantly tired, and with an angler's appetite, you went to dine a la carte in the salon — there were no late tables d'hote at Baden — with a long- necked flask of Markgrafler at your elbow, an excellent but economical beverage, for it was the wine of the country. Sauntering over to the gardens of the Conversationhaus for coffee in frock coat and thin boots, you were in a fairy scene, a sort of sublimated Cremorne, where gay toilettes and bright faces, rouged or au naturel, were illuminated by constellations of coloured lamps, and where respectability and rascality were inextri- cably confounded. The Austrian Jager band from Rastadt might be there, and there was always Koennemann's Kapelle, arranged regardless of ex- pense. When the gaming was abolished much of the glory had gone with the factitious glitter and glamour, but during the Franco - German War the change was depressing to a degree. French- women were there, but they were refugees from 102 THE BATHS f CHAP Paris or Lorraine or Alsace, with sons or husbands fighting at the front, and for the most part they were in deep mourning. I never saw so many pale faces or red eyes except at Luxemburg during the blockade of Metz. I made an expedi- tion from Baden to OfFenburg to have a distant view of the bombardment of Strasburg. I saw it afterwards on much closer terms. We could hear the dull report of the guns, and see the shells shooting up and falling round the towering spire of the Minster. Two elderly Frenchmen were seated on a bench near mine. As each shell exploded they doubled up as if it were aimed at themselves and groaned like Jews at the place of wailing at Jerusalem. How the great hotels paid their way through the evil times is a mystery. They not only held their own, but have enlarged themselves and multiplied ; and some, like the Hollande, formerly of the second- class, have expanded into palaces of the first order. But Baden, so richly dowered by nature, is the most beautiful of all German Baths, Ischl excepted. It was an agreeable change to leave those scenes of giddy dissipation to go into temporary retreat at one of the quieter Baths — the serious *•] RURAL NASSAU 103 health resorts. Sir Francis Head had written of the Briinnen of Nassau, in a little book that had a great vogue in its day. I followed in his track when I first penetrated the interior of the duchy, and was struck by the minute accuracy of his observations. Though the light soil was culti- vated and carried light crops, you might have been in the deserts of the Soudan, so far as signs of population went. As the horses dragged the postwagen over hill and down dale, for leagues on end you looked in vain for a village, and the land was absolutely unfenced — the fact being that the people were huddled together in villages sheltered in the depths of ravines. You saw the reason when you marked the trees, which had struggled up on the ridges, above the sky-line. They were trimmed square by the cutting gales from the north, which had warped the gnarled stems as with the Alpine Wettertannen. You were reminded of the stunted timber in some of those denes near Beachy Head, which are so many funnels for the fierce gusts from the channel, for the plateau, breaking into rolling downs and long lines of hillocks, has an elevation of some twelve hundred feet above the Rhine level, which explains the exceptional salubrity of Schwabach. The 104 THE BATHS t CHAP Bath itself, with its Briinnen, lies, like the surround- ing hamlets, in the bottom of a kettle- shaped hollow ; I saw nothing of it when I first rumbled down the long single street of the straggling town, which had stretched itself downwards in the course of centuries, before the springs were discovered by the doctors in what is now the fashionable suburb. Few baths, even in Alpine passes, have a shorter season ; hotel and lodging- house keepers make their hay while the sun should be tolerably warm, and then they put up their shutters. Schwabach, in depth of winter, blocked up in the snowdrifts, with its inhabitants hyber- nating like bears, without the nirvana of slumber, must be dismal as the mind of man can conceive. Of the many hotels, it was said that only the Post was left open, where the landlord's deputy kept himself warm over the kitchen fire, on the chance of entertaining some adventurous bagman. In early summer there is the belated spring cleaning ; facades are whitewashed, balconies are gaily painted and bloom out with hardy flowers like so many hanging gardens. Troops of waiters and bevies of chamber-maids are the harbingers of the summer flight of cur guests. In Schwabach of the olden time there was no sort of distraction except an *-J A BRACING BATH 105 occasional third-class concert, nor can it be said to be much more lively now ; nevertheless, it has exceptional attractions. In my opinion, with its crisp, clear air, its invigorating breezes, and its waters, no one of its rivals can approach it in bracing the enfeebled frame and giving tone to a debilitated system. The first time I made any stay there, I was in rude health enough, but it was a singularly dispiriting season. The rain, it rained steadily every day ; the wood- lands were dripping and the promenades were drenched. Invalids, with questionable prudence, turned out in waterproofs for their periodical visits to the springs. In sheer despair I took tickets for a course of the baths, and the very first dip gave me cause for congratulation. " Dip " I call it, but, flying in the face of the cautious medical prescriptions, I soaked myself for the full time allotted, before turning out for the next comer. Half floating in the heavy ferruginous water, repulsive to the sight and rather objectionable to the smell, I smoked a cigar and read a novel. Then I emerged from the exhilarating luxury of the douche, which stopped the breath and nearly knocked one out of time. I had gone in limp, low, and out of sorts ; after being rubbed down 106 THE BATHS [chap. I stepped out like the thoroughbred, who comes from a course of the curry-comb to his gallop on the Downs. It was as if you had been absorbing champagne through every pore, and the result was that I was tempted to turn aside to Schwabach, year after year. As for the application of the waters internally 1 can say little, for I never gave them a fair chance. When I chanced to pass the Weinbrunen or the Stahlbrunen I swallowed a glass or two, and, in contrast to the warm bath in which you soaked, they were beautifully limpid and sparkling. But I know that Schwabach was the only place where in later years I could get two solid dinners into the day. First, you sat down to the early table d'hote, and the second elaborate meal was called a supper, which was a pleasant way of salving the conscience. I tried the Hotel de Nassau, a capital house, in the main street, but afterwards put up with Herr Grebert, at the Allde Saal, which was unexcep- tionable, but somewhat more of a speculation. It looks out on a wooded bank above the shady alley which gives it its name. In a fine season nothing could be pleasanter than breakfasting at the tables under the trees. When the weather had set in for steady wet, nothing could be more depressing v] TEMPTATIONS OF TABLE D'HOTE 107 than the monotonous drip. But the host was a host in himself — he was a gentleman, and familiar with English ways, and had acquaintances who came to him year after year, so you were sure to find your- self in pays de connaissance. By the way, Prince Nicholas of Nassau was a habitue — he drove a rather scratch four-in-hand ; he used to bring his family to the Allee Saal every evening for supper, and I remember how we all were captivated by the beauty and grace of his elder daughter, now the Countess Torby, and wife of the Grand-Duke Michael. Invalids under the doctor's orders were sorely tempted, as at most of the German baths. Moder- ation was enjoined, and with appetites stimulated by bracing air and invigorating waters, they sat down every day to a dinner of many courses. Either red wine or white — 1 forget which — was strictly forbidden. There was no crowd of Ger- mans at the Allee Saal, and I saw nothing of the atrocious gluttony which Head had ascribed to the Teutons. Yet, with time hanging on the hands, meals became the milestones of the dragging day, and no doubt the effect of the waters was neutra- lised. I confidently recommend lodgings and having the dinner sent in from a restaurant as an alterna- 108 THE BATHS [chap. tive. Once I tried that way of mortifying the flesh, and never desire to try it again. The boy who brought the tray invariably loitered, giving the greases of German cookery time to coagulate. But it landed me on one occasion in a discovery, when I found that veal cutlets could not only be eatable but exquisite. I had fallen back on the resources of the lodging, and the young landlady volunteered a dish of which she might have said, as Dumas' Martigny innkeeper said of the steak from the bear that had swallowed the chasseur : " Vous m'en direz nouvelles." I have alluded to those cutlets because the Schwabach folk think little of their calves, but pride themselves on their pigs. The Schwein General, with his horn, is still a local dignitary as when Head celebrated him in the " Briinnen." Each second householder in the long street has a pigsty in his back premises, whence the brutes are summoned forth at daybreak by "blast of bugle horn." Lanky, lopsided animals they are, and no wonder, considering the amount of severe exercise they take and the miserable rations they starve upon. It was a pitiable sight to see them rooting among stones and stubbles, grubbing for parched roots, and hungrily snapping at beetles. They v] THE SWINE AND THE DEER 109 trotted home towards eve, having fattened on the searching winds, and turned eagerly to the scanty refuse in their troughs. Their feeding cost little, and I fancy they fetched a price ; but what a con- trast they were to the happier hogs of Westphalia and Estremadura, that, banqueting upon showers of acorns and beechnuts, bequeath their hams to Chevet or Morell. Those lanky swine were scarcely ornamental, but nothing lent such a charm to the woodland walk or the evening drive as the roe-deer. The roe as a rule keep to the recesses of the woods, and are seldom seen save in the gloaming or the early morning. At Schwabach they seem less timid than elsewhere : they come out on the skirts of the hanging coverts and coppices which are scattered everywhere between bare upland and emerald meadow, and they stray with the cattle on the borders of the tiny brooks, teeming with small trout and crayfish. Great bags of the roe used to be made at the ducal chasses before the duchy was absorbed in Prussia. Since then they have been thinned, but they are still abundant, and once I went out after them on rather a pot-hunting form of sport. In Germany they " call " the roe, as they call moose or caribou in Canada. I was in 110 THE BATHS [chap. charge of a forester who was an expert at the busi- ness. We crouched behind the bushes skirting a little glade, and he imitated the love-bleat of the doe to perfection. We waited and listened : then the cry was raised again. I had heard nothing, not the cracking of a twig or the rustle of a leaf, when a graceful buck made a bound out of the thicket, with his bright hazel eyes gazing round in dis- appointment. He dropped to a shot behind the shoulder. One always regrets the death of a roe, but that was an exceptionally cold-blooded murder, and I never could be induced to go roe-calling again. Another notable feature of the Schwabach fauna is the great orange-coloured snails. They would seem to have taken their tint from the ferruginous waters, which, Sir Francis Head some- what apocryphally tells us, leave a mark on the bather's pillow like that of a rusty cannon ball. It is certain those snails affect the water : you see them swarming around the brilnnen ; you meet them crawling along the gutters in the High Street ; and after one of the flying showers that are so frequent, they come out to sun themselves on the gravelled paths. If the Germans were as un- prejudiced in matters of cookery as the French, I believe they might turn those snails to good v] SNAKES AT SCHLANGENBAD 111 account ; they look more inviting for soup or fricassee than the Burgundian molluscs which are plats de predilection with the traiteurs of the Rue Montorgueil, and very likely they would be invalu- able in cases of consumption. If the snails are neglected at Schwabach, the snakes have made the reputation of Schlangenbad. It may be superstition, but they tell you that the vipers which swarm in the surrounding underwood have given the baths their wonderful properties as cosmetiques. Lubricating yourself with snake-slime does not sound seductive, but the fair sex will do much for the complexion. Romantically situated on a precipitous slope, and embosomed in umbrageous shades, I should rank Schlangenbad high among the dull Baths, for there is nothing in the world to do. Once I passed several days there, and have rather agreeable recollections of the place. But it was only because I had one of the brightest of companions in a soldier who had seen service all over the world, and had gone to wash the Schwabach rust out of his system. For dulness Kissingen ran Schlangenbad hard. I was there thirty years ago, and have never gone back, for the best of reasons. I know not how it may be now, but then we were all put on peni- 112 THE BATHS [chap. tential diet — the invalids and their unfortunate companions alike. Even butter was denied you at the best hotels, and as for the aspect of the country in a watery autumn, the mud baths and the peat baths were the symbols of it. The only permissible luxury was the light bread — like the Viennese, the Kissingen people prided themselves on their rolls, and the correct thing was to do your own market- ing at the stalls before the Pump-room, and carry the morning rolls back for breakfast. Perhaps it was the absence of butter, but I found the specialite overrated. Wildbad, in the Schwarzwald, sounds romantic, so I was tempted to try it, when told by Sir Richard Quain that I should be all the better for bracing. I fell in love with the valley at first sight, and out of love ere the end of the week. Sir George Dasent, in his "Jest and Earnest," glorified the melancholy humours of Wildbad. He told how the place prided itself on miraculous cures — how the cripple of the season was the honoured king, unless dethroned by a greater monster of deformity. I cannot say that in my sojourn any conspicuous sufferers were waiting to be healed in the pools of Bethesda, and you had not even the consolation of comparing your own debility with extremes of decrepitude. There was v CRIPPLES AT WILDBAD 113 nothing to suggest the Cour des miracles in " Notre Dame de Paris." The society was colourless, like the limpid water, which, unlike the strong iron of Schwabach, had no immediate effects. A new-comer bathed in faith and hope, though there were gouty devotees who declared that a yearly course gave them six months' absolute immunity from torture. But there, too, it was good discipline for defying temptation and mortifying the flesh. The regimen was almost as ascetic as at Kissingen, yet nowhere did you sit down to better dinners. The old Badhaus in the market-place looked forbidding enough, and possibly the German pensionnaires may have invol- untarily practised austerities, but at the Bellevue or the L'Europe the tables were spread with every delicacy. Moreover, the system was boring to extinction, for after the early bath you were ordered to go back to the blankets, and, above all things, to avoid reading or thought. Beyond the band, which with a crash under your windows awoke you at unholy hours, there were no amuse- ments, and the walking was limited to the pretty but monotonous pastoral valley. A more inviting stream for trout fishing than the Enz I have seldom seen, but I have been so often deluded by appearances on the Continent, that, though dis- H 114 THE BATHS [chap. heartened, I was scarcely disappointed. The most persevering of English fly-fishers, and he was a practised hand, never thought it worth while to carry a fishing-basket. There was a special reason for it, for though the trout had a rough time, and were always being evicted from their favourite lurking places, the river-bed was being ploughed up and the banks crumbled down, so that they had in- variably food in profusion. For the sensation of the place was going a few miles up stream to the sluice dams, and picnicking down on the long narrow rafts of pine trunks which were poled round the corners to shoot the rapids on their way to the Rhine. Except for damp feet and the chance of subsequent colds the bipeds were safe enough, but once I witnessed a lamentable tragedy. An English girl, the belle of the season, had taken a favourite bull terrier on board. The raft had caught between the bank and a snag, and the dog rushed forward, barking vociferously, to superintend the disentangling. The snag yielded of a sudden, the raft went with a rush, and he was precipitated into the seething turmoil. When he reappeared at the other end he was floating legs upwards, like one of those dogskin bladders with which the herring fishers buoy their nets. *] BATHS IN SWITZERLAND 115 It was dreary work, and stiff as well, scaling the wooded hills that shut in the valley, and threading the endless aisles of fir stems, with no prospect of arriving at a view or an outlet. The pleasantest recollection is of the latest expedition, when we drove to a jagdschloss on the ridge between Wurtemberg and Baden, looking down on the friendly and familiar Murgthal, for then the sense of home-sickness for the brightness of Baden became overpowering, and I vowed to change my quarters next day. The rise of Baths depends upon fashion, and a popular specialist in London or New York can make the immediate future of any place he " discovers." In old times I would not have wished my worst enemy worse luck than being doomed to a cure in one of the Swiss resorts. They were chiefly patronised by untravelled natives, and the accommodation was primitive as the food. The matrons knitted and the men smoked ; the girls, who mostly wore spectacles, went botanising with green cases strapped to their square shoulders, and, looking on wistfully at the demonstrative endearments of engaged couples, were sadly at a loss for eligible adorers. For reputation and brilliancy Ragatz was certainly 116 THE BATHS r<*A*. in the first rank, and I can never forget the dreary week when for my sins I was laid up there with a sprained ankle. Then, it was scarcely more lively than farther Pfeffers in its sombre seclusion, with the darksome approach between the beetling rocks and the brawling torrent. Now Ragatz is a centre of light and gaiety, with many-storied hotels brilliantly lighted and provided with sumptuous salons. Baths like Beatenberg and Engelberg, with their romantic surroundings, are pleasant enough headquarters when the weather is fine, but intolerable when the rain is plashing on the window-panes, when the " Alps " or little upland meadows, are saturated, and when each rivulet that bars the way is coming down in unfordable spate. Davos and the Engadine have been taken up by the doctors, who send consumptive patients to be treated by bracing cold in stirless air. With their summer and winter seasons they have double strings to their bows, and so the transformation scene in that remote Davos valley has been simply marvellous. It may be doubted whether the hospital extension has not been overdone, and experts suggest that the bacillus must be rampant in overheated hotels overcrowded with v-] EVENINGS IN THE ENGADINE 117 consumptives, not a few of them irretrievably con- demned, and only dallying with the inevitable. When the first explorers stumbled into it, they found delightful shelter from the bitter winds which howled down the passes. Now, in some sort, it is become the valley of the shadow of death, and, moreover, invalids when they leave in spring, must make a rush at great risk for more genial latitudes, and gradually brace the enervated frame before they face the inclemency of the early English summer. The atmos- phere of Davos is severity carried to stagna- tion, but there can be no mistake as to the bracing qualities of the Engadine. In my summer trips I had a prejudice against burden- ing myself with wraps, and only took a light waterproof, and lighter overcoat. My first visit to Pontresina was in a singularly dry summer, and more perfect weather no man need have desired. The days and the long hill walks were rarely enjoyable when you came back to the hotel with ravenous appetite, the edelweiss you had gathered adorning your hat, and all the body glowing with fervent heat. The tantalizing time came when you had bathed and dined. I know nothing more delightfully associated with Swiss 118 THE BATHS [chap touring than the summer evening, sipping your coffee out of doors and smoking your cigar, with the sense of a day's labour happily accomplished, and the hope of renewing your toils on the morrow. Often have I sat in the portico of the Schweitzerhof at Lucerne, or on the garden esplanade of the Trois Couronnes at Vevay, looking out on the stars reflected in the water and the shadowy outlines of the frowning hills, with the dark slopes that were streaked by silvery moonlight. You could only do the al fresco after dinner at the Engadine with the certainty of being chilled to the bone. Then the hotels were few, and the accommodation was primitive. In mine the only place to get warm was a subterraneous billiard-room, thick with the smoke of foul tobacco — a melancholy alternative to the life - giving mountain air you might have enjoyed in furs or a frieze ulster. Thrice in the sunny south I have been in similar case — once when I went to Granada in March, having been unable to per- suade any of the English visitors to Malaga to accompany me. They were wise, for they had time to wait. Again, when I had gone to Sicily in May, and having supplied myself with a summer wardrobe, put on a thick suit of well- ' fi 0. O n S X u O s o X a If 2 / ▼•] UNCOURTLY COSTUME 119 worn shooting clothes to wear in crossing the Channel, and to be cast away beyond the Mont Cenis. That year, spring came late in the south, and with unprecedented severity. I wore the suit for a mortal month, and only discarded it, when returning, on the Riviera di Levante. Finally, at the great Vienna Exhibition, I had the honour of being presented by Baron Schmidt to the Emperor in the shabbiest thick greatcoat I have ever been ashamed of. I had counted without the chances of a belated winter at Vienna, and could not well explain to his Imperial Majesty that I had a really respectable light overcoat at the hotel. The moral being that it is wise to be prepared for the worst, even if you have to tip porters for lugging about a bundle of impedimenta. In those days there was a winter in the Engadine, but no winter season. St Moritz was in its infancy ; no grand hotel had been built in the gusty gorge of the Maloia, and toboggan- ing, at peril of bruises and sprains, had not come into fashion. But to have done with the Baths, which would tempt one into Bavaria and Bohemia — in Bohemia, by the way, you get better coffee than anywhere out of older Paris — I may wind 120 THE BATHS [chap. up with a word on Ischl. Ischl is, to my mind, the most delectable of all the Baths, Baden not excepted. When I first saw it some forty years ago, it was in the glories of very early summer, nor had it yet begun to fill before the fashionable season. For as the weather waxed hot, Viennese fashion migrated thither in the suite of the Emperor, who dearly loved the place. No wonder, for it is surrounded by rock, lake, and stream ; it is environed by snow-topped mountains, and enveloped in noble forests. Francis Joseph was devoted to the chase, and the deer may be said to have come up to the doors ; they prowled about the steadings when the snows set in, taking toll of hay, roots, and corn-ricks. One day I was seated on the bank of the Traun, a couple of miles below the village; the fish were off the feed, and my rod was lying idle. There was a crashing of the boughs, and a stag bounded forth ; his tongue was hanging out, and his coat dripping, for he had evidently swam the river. Hard on his traces came a couple of hounds, labouring along with heads down and feathering sterns. No hunter followed, and whether the dogs ran into their deer I know not ; but he was evidently hard hit, though probably too far *■] THE TROUT OF THE TRAUN 121 behind. I asked afterwards, and found the Kaiser had been out that day, and possibly the deer was carrying away an imperial bullet. Ischl had latterly began to be the fashion, and the old- fashioned inns, the Post and the Kreutz, had been superseded by the Kaiserin Elisabeth, christened after the Empress. It was a handsome building, beautifully situated, with the great bay window of the breakfast room overhanging the river. It was burned down some years afterwards, to rise with greater splendour from its ashes. The cuisine was as good as at the Archduke Charles in Vienna, but what recommended it to me was that the landlord rented five miles of the Traun. Sir Humphrey Davy has made the lower waters near Gmunden classic. I have fished many of the streams in Europe, but I never caught such trout as those of the Traun. Once I fancied I must have hooked a grilse at least. When, after a hard struggle, I landed my captives, I found a couple of trout, each barely a pound, one on the tail fly, the other on the drop. Moreover, the river abounded in grayling, almost as vigorous as the trout at the first go-off, though they had small stomach for a fight, and soon knocked under. Ischl is in smiling scenery with meadow and 122 THE BATHS [chap. v. woodland, set in a frame of sublime surroundings. Bad Gastein is actually in a recess of the mountains, and the stern sublimity is brought home to the very door. The Ache leaping down the ravine, throws itself over the rocks in two magnificent cascades. The air and the limpid water wrought wonderful cures — invalids were attracted from all parts of Germany ; it was a regular resort of the rheumatic King of Prussia, and the scene of many a momentous interview and conference. But of all Baths, it was the least accessible — there was a twenty-mile drive against the collar from the nearest railway station, and the outsider was little tempted to repeat a flying visit. Besides, in those stormy altitudes you had specially to reckon with the weather, and the long gallery of glass, erected as a shelter from wet and cold, was unpleasantly suggestive of what you might expect. The doubts and disappoint- ments were the more tantalising that all around were glorious excursions. The peasants were a pious and simple folk, and if they made the most of a short and capricious season, it was small blame to them. But the remuneration of the mountain guides was moderate, and they were friendly, well-informed and conversible. A Scheveningen Fishing Boat. To face p. 122 CHAPTER VI THE TRAVELLERS' LIBRARY The solitary tourist must often be at a loss for companionship. I used to like to travel at my own wayward will, and often, when tempted to some eccentric divagation, parted regretfully from pleasant companions. Sometimes we signed odd articles of agreement, and once, for example, at Vienna, I arranged with a delightful chance acquaintance to accompany me on a run down the Danube, on the understanding that we looked in on the way home at Copenhagen to admire Thorwalden's sculptures. But the Solitary has to get through wet days, and dispose of weary evenings ; to kill long hours of waiting at railway junctions, and fight the demon of ennui in slow trains. Sebastian Yeo remarked very truly in " Westward Ho " that tobacco is the lone man's comfort ; but the man cannot be smoking for ever, especially when he has to fall back on 123 124 THE TRAVELLERS' LIBRARY [chap. Continental cigars. Reading is the alternative, and I can concientiously recommend solitary travel as the school to develop literary tastes. Fortunately for myself, I was always a voracious reader, but abroad I learned to be omnivorous. There is the old proverb that beggars cannot be choosers, and the supply of English books on the Continent was in many countries beggarly. Even Germany, with its innumerable professors and students, was woefully behindhand forty years ago in its own lighter literature. In Belgium the bookshops gravitated between ponderous tomes, the flimsiest French novels of the hour, and still looser publications which would have come within the compass of Lord Campbell's Act. Southey used to swear by Vanbiest, the great bookseller of Brussels ; but Southey bought editions of the Fathers and ecclesiastical historians by the hun- dredweight. If ever a foreigner deserved well of travelling English humanity, it was Baron Tauchnitz. The happy thought which helped his fortunes, and gave him his title of nobility, has made the happiness of the multitude of his fellow- mortals. On the Cathedral Square at Cologne, on the Zeil at Frankfort, in the Graben at Vienna, and, above all, at Baedeker's corner shop in Cob- vi] TAUCHNITZ EDITIONS 125 lentz, one hurried off to the well-known windows where the latest Tauchnitzes were displayed in a tempting row. Sometimes, through no fault of the Baron's, you were disappointed, and the supply had run short. Sometimes you were making arrangements for a prolonged knapsack trip when your equipment was of the slightest. Then you had to fall back upon standard authors, as in war-travel or Spanish rides you laid in reserves of iviirsterben or meat chocolate. A very good thing it was. You bought a volume of Shakespeare, or " Tom Jones," or " Roderick Random," severely compressed in small type. You had leisure not only to read, but to digest, to appreciate the masterly style of our older classics and the inimit- able pictures of old-time manners. Sometimes, to tell the truth, your author might bore you, but there was nothing for it but to tire and to begin again. In a modest way you were imitating Macaulay, who used to take iEschylus and Sir Charles Grandison or Clarissa Harlowe for his companions in a post-chaise journey. For myself, when on the rail with a capacious portmanteau, I preferred the practice of Scott, who ballasted his chaise when posting south from Abbotsford with the sensational works of his imitative con- 126 THE TRAVELLERS' LIBRARY [chap. temporaries. Reading or skimming, when getting over the ground, is very much a matter of moods. Tauchnitz gave ephemeral circulation abroad to many a novel of the day, which in England had fallen almost still-born from the press. His fluir was pretty sure, but he was sometimes mistaken, and, moreover, his taste might differ from yours. Often I have rued an indifferent bargain, and the waste of the thalers, when I broke down in the middle of a Tauchnitz in three volumes, after desperate efforts to struggle forward. But, on the other hand, how much value you had for your money in one of those condensed volumes of Fielding or Sterne ! Yet not unfrequently in Tauchnitz's choice of translations you were sold. The version you were familiar with in boyhood is sanctified for all time, nor have I ever taken to any English rendering of " Don Quixote," save that of Jarvis. One evening at Coblentz, when exceptionally bored, I was delighted to come upon " Sintram and his Companions." I carried it off in triumph to the Riese, and got ready to revive happy recollections over supper. The translation may have been well done, but it was not the Sintram I had known, and I threw it aside in disgust. Though there may have been something vi] NOVELS OF LOCALITY 127 in the change of tone, as the mind, with the wear and tear of life, passes out of the sentimental and romantic stages. Macaulay, in a letter, tells his favourite niece Margaret that a time will come when she will be disillusioned as to Sintram, and possibly Macaulay was right. You might differ from Tauchnitz as to his selections of the passing novels, but it was the fault of the retail bookseller if you could not pro- cure all the standard and popular authors — Dickens and Thackeray, Tennyson's " Idylls," Macaulay 's "History." No sooner had the latest serial of Lever or Trollope or Charles Reade appeared in Blackwood or The Cornhill, than it was issued at Leipsic simultaneously with the last instalment. The novels associating themselves with special localities had a permanent sale near the scenes they described. Thus " Davenport Dunn " was in vogue on the Rhine, the scene of Grog Davis' retreat to the village hostelry and the escapades of Annesley Beecher ; the " Dodd Family " and " The Daltons " had a long run in Baden ; and, in very different vein, " Doctor Antonio " had survived its English popularity among the palms of Bordighera and the olives of Mentone. Books in the German were too often dear and 128 THE TRAVELLERS' LIBRARY [chap. dull ; in German fiction there had been a reaction against romanticism, and for the most part the best-known novels of North Germany were prolix, prosaic, and intensely Philistine. They were always toil, and often sorrow ; that at least was my own feeling, but the traveller who is a man of moods is apt to be a captious critic. What a relief it was to turn to a volume of Heine's " Reisebilder," with the sparkle of the light lyrical style, and the ex- hilarating flights of fancy, whether you were wandering with the Hebrew poet in the woodland glades, or following him through historic cities or over battlefields in the footsteps of his idol, " der grosse Kaiser." Where could you find a more fascinating guide than Auerbach — another poet of Heine's race and creed — for rambles through the sylvan wilderness of the Schwartzwald, where your path was seldom crossed, save by the game- keeper, the woodman, or the charcoal-burner ? The volumes of his " Schwartzwalder Dorf- geschichte" in the knapsack were well worth the extra weight. You saw village life precisely as he painted it; you seemed to identify the very scenery he had described with the love of his ardent local patriotism, and you saw those swarthy charcoal-burners of his bending over their smoulder- **■] HOTEL LIBRARIES 129 ing fires, or prowling like gnomes of the forest around their huts. Nor has any painter given more vivid pictures of the beauties of these solitudes in summer or winter. It is seldom you get hold of a book that tempts you to burn your bed- curtains, but I remember setting fire to mine at Freiburg, when, in sheer weariness, I fell asleep over a seductive chapter of Auerbach. I have always wondered, by the way, why hotel-keepers should be so blind, in one respect, to their own interests. They make provision for your material comfort : they send touts to the stations to tempt you into their omnibuses, they spend endless money on advertising. But they seldom bait their traps with books, though, in Switzerland especially, your plans and movements are at the mercy of the weather. The sole exception I have known is in the Schweitzerhof at Lucerne, and I can answer for it personally that the Schweitzerhof system pays. Twice I was caught there, when a rainstorm blew up, after the portmanteau was packed and the bill was settled. Had the time been hanging heavily, I should have been hungry for change. But on one occasion I was in the middle of Mrs Wood's " Roland Yorke " — I don't say Mrs Wood was much of a classic, but she used to interest and amuse i 130 THE TRAVELLERS' LIBRARY [chap. me ; on another, to my shame be it said, I had first made acquaintance with Mark Twain's " Jumping Frog," and on both I was tempted to put the volumes in my pocket but refrained, pre- ferring to deal honestly by Herr Hauser, and defer my departure. The collection in the drawing-room did not rival the Bodleian, but it served its pur- pose as well. One of the few houses in England, to my knowledge, which offers a similar lure is the Grand Hotel at Eastbourne. The old Pavilion at Folkestone, and the Lord Warden at Dover, had their libraries too — with good reason, when you were often storm-bound and craning at the Channel passage. But the contents were mainly volumes of Blackwood and Fraser, Punch and the Illustrated London News, somewhat troublesome to read in the dim lamplight, and intolerably heavy in the hand. Nevertheless, at the Pavilion, I recollect being immersed in " The Student of Salamanca " in an old Blackwood, when a message came from the harbour that the steamer meant to put out. It was touch and go ; the arm-chair in the south-west corner was comfortable, though for many years the fourth leg had remained infirm, but I decided to gulp the passage and have done with it. For a couple of hours I never regretted o ."2 T3 Si o H chap, vii] TRAIN FOR THE OBERLAND 139 wherever a solitary eminence offers commanding points of view; magnificent hotels have been springing up everywhere ; rude shelter huts have been turned into commodious inns ; and, of an evening, where some mountain torrent takes a header over the precipice into the abyss, with the electric light and the showers of fireworks, you might fancy yourself at old Cremorne or Vauxhall. The Playground of Europe has been swamped with sightseers, and the sanctuaries where Chaos and Old Night once reigned supreme have been dese- crated and vulgarised. In Switzerland, as in the Rome of the Popes, one remembers the past regretfully. When I knew it first, the railway ran you into Basle or Geneva, and left you there. The only line in the interior was from Zurich to the baths of Baden. Years later I travelled by the first train that started for Thun from Berne ; it was of a Sunday, when all the world was making holiday, and the whole country-side was en fSte. Peasants in gala dress crowded the platforms to stare at the novelty. Shrewd enough to foresee a flush of prosperity, they lavished beer and cigars on guard and engine- driver. When I made acquaintance with Basle there was an admirable diligence service, though 140 SWISS TOURING [«hap. worked upon rather primitive lines. It encouraged early rising, involved considerable previous anxiety, and was a serious strain on weak constitutions. For Berne there were two departures daily : one by the direct road, which was comparatively tame ; and the other, more circuitous, by the picturesque Mimsterthal. There was always a scramble for seats, often booked for the coupe by letter many days in advance, though all travellers were promptly forwarded. The great yellow eilwagen was followed by a train of supplementary vehicles, dwindling as passengers dropped off. If you missed a place in the diligence itself, it was a toss-up how you were accommodated. In any case you were bound to be awake by times, and in dreams and nightmares, you were always listening for the knock at the door. The start was at five a.m. ; and, though your portmanteau had been duly despatched on the previous evening, the boots was by your bedside a full hour before. The coupe was the favourite place of the luxurious, who took out their sleep when the diligence had started, and there, with hermetically - sealed windows, they were little troubled by the dust. But the great thing for the admirer of the sublime and beautiful was to vii.] LONG DAYS IN THE DILIGENCE 141 secure a place in the banquette, which was shared with the intelligent conductor, though in a sultry summer, from start to finish, you travelled in sun- glare and powdery clouds. You had warning of what awaited you when the ponderous vehicle was wheeled out of the yard into the street. Unlike the English mails, the Wonders or the Quick- silvers, it was seldom washed, save of a Saturday night, and from the splinter bar to the tarpaulin which covered a mountain of luggage, it was thickly encrusted with dust. Yet scrupulous care was paid to essentials. The conductor was responsible for inspection of the springs ; the axles were examined and regularly oiled, for the descents were steep and the turnings sharp. That the descents were precipitous you might confidently surmise from the powerful brake and the ponderous sabot. The horses were stout and the rope traces strong, and easily to be spliced in case of an accident ; but the teams and the whole turn-out were as unlike as possible to anything that had started from the Bull and Mouth or the White Horse Cellar. With the perpetual ups and downs, the pace was moderate, and, with the conductor setting the example, you had many an opportunity of stretch- ing your legs. Satiated with romantic scenes, U2 SWISS TOURING C CHAP hungry and thirsty, drowsy and cramped, you woke up to new life with the rattle of the wheels when they roused the echoes of the stone arcades of Berne. It would be interesting to know how many tourists now take the trouble or go to the expense of chartering a carriage through the windings of the Mimsterthal ; how many care to break the journey to look in at the workshops of the watchmakers of Bienne, or diverge on a sentimental pilgrimage to the island- refuge of Rousseau. Yet the environs of the pretty little town of Bienne are full of interest, and I used to know them well, for more than once I have made Bienne my headquarters for fishing trips. The number, or rather the paucity, of tourists at that time may be roughly guaged by the dili- gence accommodation and the hotels. At Basle the Trois Rois, with its balconies hanging over the rush of the green river, where Vavasour, in Trollope's novel, made the proposal to his cousin, almost monopolised the English. The names of the others — the Cigogne, the Krone, the Sauvage, and the Kopf — were suggestive of foreign patronage, and the note appended to them in the guide-book was " not very clean." Now the Trois Rois has The Clock Tower — Berne. To face p. 142 vn] AN OLD SWISS LANDLORD 143 been in some measure eclipsed by the Euler, the Suisse, and other modernised establishments, more convenient to the central station ; and, to tell the truth, the furnishing of the Three Kings is some- what out at elbows. At Berne there were two excellent old-fashioned hostelries in the main street, with the signs of the Crown and the Falcon. I used to put up at the Falcon, and it was significant of the times that the friendly host always recog- nised and greeted me as an old acquaintance. He remembered my tastes and studied them. Once I was greatly touched by his paternal and dis- interested solicitude. He laid a hand on my shoulder when leaving, and told me he had been thinking I was wasting my life and what he was pleased to call my talents. I should be a happier man if I renounced roving, and went in for marriage. He was a genuine type of the old Swiss land- lord, who, though he looked sharply enough after the main chance, was more of the courteous gentleman than the profit-seeking host. Those innkeepers were often farmers or landowners, and by saving and judicious investments amassed considerable fortunes. But few of them were so fortunate as the speculative landlord of Klosterli, 144 SWISS TOURING [chap. who was advised by Ebel, author of the first of the veritable Swiss guides, to set up a tabernacle for sun-worshippers on the summit of the Rigi ; he acted on the advice, and became a multi- millionaire — in francs. I fancy the good host of the Falcon shook in his shoes when he saw the prospectus of the grand new Bernerhof, though he professed to fear nothing. I suspect he was optimistic, for shortly afterwards he retired, yet he lived to see the splendours of the Bernerhof outshone by more sumptuous rivals elsewhere. Berne, though the capital of the Federation, could be done in a day ; there are one or two superb coups oVoeil, and then you have seen the best of it. The centres of the swirling rush that has set in are at Zurich and Lucerne, Interlaken and Geneva. Interlaken is the Swiss Vanity Fair, where the hotel boom shows no signs of abating. Parisian fashions blend with the costumes of Ober- land girls, got up theatrically to sell local wares. Pedlars from the Milanese and Ticino unstrap their bundles in the halls of the hotels. The starting-point for the peaks and passes of the Oberland, it is the Capua where the toil-worn tourist reposes after unaccustomed labours. You are beset by troops of trippers, personally con- ™] A SWISS VANITY FAIR 145 ducted, who follow the bell-wether with the stolid self- suppression of the mountain cattle. You come across the girls' schools — I beg their pardon, the young ladies' seminaries — also personally conducted by prim governesses from New York and Chicago, and not infrequently, to your dire annoyance, they swamp the hospices of the Grimsel or the St Bernard. Forty years ago there were comfortable hotels where you were sure to meet acquaintances and arrange mountain excursions, but there was no uncomfortable crowd. For the pedestrian who liked his comforts, and loved the long, solitary ramble, Interlaken had the attractions of Baden in the Black Forest. You could break away on a morning walk into the wild scenery of the Ober- land, and come back of an evening for a lounge on the promenades, winding up with a concert or a dance. Often have I risen there at daybreak to walk up the valley of the Zweiliitchinen to Lauter- brunnen, leaving the key of my room with the porter, and slinging a light knapsack in case I should have to lie out. I was ready enough to break my fast at the Steinbock, where they invari- ably offered you a saute of chamois, suspiciously like he-goat steeped in vinegar. By that time the chars-a-bancs would come rattling up, ponies and K 146 SWISS TOURING [chap. porters were in request, and in the early afternoon when the sun grew hot, there was a group gathered before the one little inn on the Wengern Alp to watch the snow slides from the slopes of the Jtingfrau. A rough track led up past the Staubach to the humble inn at Miirren, which had not then been discovered by the University dons and head- masters, who have since taken to flight before the incursions of the barbarians. At Lucerne the Schweitzerhof was supreme. Only a few years before it had shifted from the town to the border of the lake. Since then it has gone on flourishing, throwing out dependances on either side. Some of my pleasantest Swiss recol- lections associate themselves with the informal club gatherings in its portico, where, in friendly chat after the late table d'hote over coffee and cigars, we have been comparing notes over the day's excur- sions and expeditions, or dreamily contemplating the starry heavens reflected in the shimmering water. Now the Schweitzerhof is only one of the best among many rivals. I was one of the first to sleep in the Englischerhof, when we could not find quarters next door ; and when we growled over excessive charges, we were reminded that we were carrying the new establishment on our unsupported vn] CHANGED TIMES AT LUCERNE 147 shoulders. Then came the National, which made a speciality of the cuisine, and connoisseurs still swear by the excellence of its chefs. But forty years ago the only serious competitor of the Schweitzerhof was the Balances, much affected by Germans of all ranks. I have seen the bills, and they were a long drop from the reasonable prices of the Schweitzerhof; but then at the best of the numerous jiensions you could be boarded for about six francs a day. In those days, when you had secured a front room at the Schweitzerhof you were in clover, and slow to move on. Now you are in the very vortex of the tornado of bustle, and can sympathise with the unceasing strain on harassed waiters and distracted boots. At cockcrow the steamers moored below the windows begin to shriek and the omnibuses to rattle. The growth of good business and the passenger traffic must be gratify- ing to the citizens; but now the lake banks at Lucerne as elsewhere are no places for the quiet man who likes to take things leisurely. In the old times, when the early boats had been sent off, he might turn over and go to sleep again. Now he is inclined to curse the Rigi and Pilate, which draw excursionists as the Shreckhorn attracts the 148 SWISS TOURING [chap thunderstorms. The splashing of paddles and the screech of the steam-pipes is incessant. With a couple of railways to the summit, the ascent of the Rigi is less fatiguing than that of the Monument. From the Kulm to the lake levels it is populous with inns, pensions, hydropathic establishments, and their dependencies. The Murray for 1838 describes the Kulm Haus as a barrack, with fifty beds and fair accommodation. Twenty years after- wards it was enlarged, and a second establishment was started on the Staffel to receive the overflow. For unless you made sure of a bed beforehand — one of the first Swiss telegraphs was carried up the mountain — if you did not consent to bivouac on the floor or a table, it was certain you would be turned from the door. All the provisions were taken up on ponies or on porters ; the fare, though simple, was sufficient, and the charges were extra- ordinarily low : a franc and a half for a bed — there were several in each small chamber — and three francs for the supper. The unsophisticated hosts had not learned to regulate supply on voci- ferous demand. Then, in settled weather, on the winding paths from Weggis or Arth, were long- drawn caravans set earnestly on the pilgrimage, with an agreeable blending of the humorous and *n-] A NIGHT ON THE RIGI 149 picturesque. Troops of ponies — what has become of them now ? — scores of chaises-a-porteurs, hordes of porters and hill-guides, were anxiously expecting the arrival of the boats. Beset by beggars and girls offering bouquets of Alpine roses and gentianellas, the race for the summit set in, with beds for the prizes. Stalwart Englishmen unattached strode forward in advance, and Frenchmen given over to the guide by their stirrup would follow on horseback in dust overcoats and patent leather boots. No sooner was supper cleared away than the floor was covered with bedding, and the crowd betook them- selves to troubled slumbers, till roused by the blast of the " horn of Uri " announcing the sunrise. All over the inn warnings were placarded against using the blankets as wrappers against the chill, and the suggestive rule was more honoured in the breach than the observance, for the fine was a very modest one. I do not know that much is lost by not risking a night on the Rigi, for the odds were always in favour of disappointment. Even if the weather were fair, the mists might linger and you missed the glories of the mountain view. With the rapid despatch by the atrial rail, you can bide your time and choose your weather, and the Rigi is most 150 SWISS TOURING [chap. perfectly enjoyable of a bright afternoon. There is no shivering in blankets and dripping fog on an empty stomach. The mountain panorama is more clearly visible ; the map of the plains and valleys unrolls itself beneath your feet, losing itself vaguely in the distant horizon, and each passing fleck of the azure skies is mirrored in the lakes. I know nothing more effective, from the artistic point of view, than the reflection of a floating cloud on the Lake of Zug ; the fleecy vapour falls in shadows of the deepest black ; it looks exactly as if you had been dropping ink on pellucid water. Rousseau said of Geneva, " Mon lac est le premier" and for a lengthened sojourn I agree with him — with Byron, Shelley, and Rogers. Lucerne is wilder, but there is a winning charm in Lake Leman, with its wooded and vine-clad shores and magnificent mountain backgrounds. Forty years ago the town of Geneva was never over- crowded. The Hotel des Bergues had just been built ; the older houses were the Couronne and the Ecu of many stories. The Metropole, with its magnificent proportions, inaugurated the new era. There was not much to tempt the tourist to loiter at Geneva, when he had not access to its cultured society, except the shops of the watchmakers and vn] OUCHY AND VEVAY 151 jewellers, where he was likely to drop more money than he could afford. The elegant little watches were cheap, and the jewellery was in exquisite taste. Beaute, among some fifty others, though he did not go back to prehistoric models, was almost as finished a master of his art as Castellani of Rome. Then the duties for travellers going home by France were not so heavy or so severely exacted as when Dumas went on his travels. He tells in one of his best stories how the Beaute of the day, renowned for his skill in smuggling, got the better of the Count de Saint- Cricq, Louis Phillipe's director of customs, who was travelling as a detective. The Count bought 30,000 francs worth of jewellery, on condition it was delivered free of duty in Paris. When he went up to his bed-room on arriving, he found his purchases on the dressing-table. Beaute had bribed his valet to stow them away among his luggage. Montreux had not then come into fashion with the doctors : there was no hideous scar cut for a railway in the face of the picturesque heights ; but Ouchy and Vevay were delightful resting-places, especially if you came with introductions. I never patronised the Hotel Gibbon at Lausanne, notwith- standing its commanding prospect and the classical 152 SWISS TOURING [chap. associations of the summer house in its garden. But I have passed many a pleasant week at Ouchy, though the only inn in those early days was the humble Anchor facing the little quai, with a wine shop and spirit bar under the flight of steps leading to the ground floor. Byron had been there before me and there he had written one of the cantos of " Childe Harold." It was rather a shock to my conservatism when I arrived one summer evening afterwards to find that the Beau Rivage had arisen in its splendour, and that the opening banquet was coming off that night. But making the best of things, I sent my card to one of the directors, and was invited to the festivities. Afterwards I abandoned my old love of the Anchor for the salons and gardens of the new establishment. The Beau Rivage was partly run under English auspices, and I knew various members of the Council, for at that time Ouchy was a centre of the pleasantest Anglo- Swiss society on the lake. Swiss and English had intermarried, and families were still to the fore who are mentioned in Dickens' letters, when he rented a villa half-way up the hill. There was M. de Cerjat, who could handle a four-in-hand as well as any English coachman; he had a nephew in the English navy, and was half an Englishman vn] CANTON VAUD AND RICH ALIENS 153 himself; there was Baron de Blonay, who had married an Englishwoman ; and old M. Haldimand, whose charming cottage once stood in a paradise of flowers beyond the grounds of the Beau Rivage, with Bairds and Goffs and many another. Since then all the seniors have died, and the legislators of Canton Vaud have done their best to drive away British residents. Now English lodgers in Lausanne may be counted by the hundred, but the settled proprietors of landed estate have been taxed beyond all endurance. I believe the Canton actually enacted that they should be taxed there on all the property, real or personal, they possessed elsewhere. I know that when a friend had arranged to sell his beautiful place to a prince of the Orleans family, the bargain was broken off at the eleventh hour, when the prince realised the burdens to which he would be subjected. Spring after spring I found a home at the Trois Couronnes of Vevay. Landlord after land- lord — Schmidts and Schneiders — made a fortune out of that house, and they deserved it. Invalids who did not care to face the Simplon or the sea voyage to South Italy passed the winter at Vevay ; families coming back from Italy, year after year, waited there till spring winds in England should 154 SWISS TOURING [chap. have blown over. You could hardly help being sociable, for the sunny strip of garden between lake and hotel was of limited dimensions. Steps led down from the garden to the water, where boats, like Venetian gondolas, lay in readiness, tempting you to moonlight promenades. Before you the Savoy Alps skirted the horizon — the Dent de Midi and the oddly -named Pain de Sucre the most conspicuous. In the daytime we used to go out sailing and fishing — the former a sure resource, the latter eminently speculative, though sometimes with trolling one caught good trout. Often I sculled across to St Gingolph, and once was very nearly brought to shipwreck when a squall blew down the Rhone valley from the Oberland, and lashed the lake into convulsions. Nowadays the amenity of the Trois Couronnes has been ruined by running an esplanade beneath the old terraced garden, and the newer Grand Hotel, though airy and with a free outlook all around, has not the dolce far niente charm of the Couronne as it used to be. To Byron's sojourn at Vevay we owe the " Prisoner of Chillon," but he found it dull. Quiet it is, of course, and all it has to show in the way of historical interest is the house and grave of • a c O > a v O H vri] SPRING IN LAKE LEMAN 155 Ludlow the Regicide, whose grey hairs went down to the grave in peace, for he escaped the assassins who executed vengeance on a fellow - fugitive. Tourists who go there in autumn never see it at its best, for then the slopes are scorched and the roads are deep in chalk dust. But in late spring nothing in Switzerland surpasses it. The air is scented with the fragrance of warm walnut leaves ; the hanging vineyards are festooned with the tender green of the tendrils ; the sheltered nooks of meadows are so many blooming parterres of wild flowers ; and when you climb above the walnuts through the belt of the firs, fresh breezes from the mountains are always about. And simple luxuries are still marvellously cheap, though they have risen in price of late years. On one visit I lived with the mother of a travelling com- panion in a comfortable pension for four francs a day. We had the white country wine a discretion — a growth like the Yvonne — and very good it was. From the tobacco factory, which stood hard by the church, we carried off boxes of Cabanas at ten francs ; if they were not quite up to the mark of those of Clercbonnet of Geneva, they were light and harmless, for you could smoke any number with impunity. 156 SWISS TOURING [chap. The direct route to Chamouny was from Geneva by Salenches, and the diligences were invariably overcrowded. I generally went from Vevay by way of the Rhone valley, stopping short of Martigny, with its midges, mosquitoes, and indif- ferent inns; striking off at Vernex, cutting into the Tete Noire, and carrying my own knapsack. The first bit of clambering is singularly romantic, and I once had a narrow escape there. A shower of small stones came down the hill, and when I was dodging them a sharp piece of rock, with the force of a cannon ball, knocked off my hat and grazed my temple. A scrambling troop of goats caused the bombardment. Of course, such stone- shots in the couloirs of the high Alps are common enough. That reminds me of another incident, rather more rare in Switzerland, which might have proved serious to our party. Four of us had fore- gathered at Kandersteg, and were going over the Gemmi. But the rains descended, and we tarried, hoping that the weather would clear. We were sitting over a rubber in the salle-a-manger, when the wooden structure was shaken bodily, as if grasped by a giant's hand. The crockery came down in a smash. Promptly we all hopped out of the window, realising that it was the violent $ * > c o G o • 1-1 en vu.] EARTHQUAKE AT LEUKERBAD 157 shock of an earthquake. The weather did clear, and we went on. As we scaled the dreary steep to the lonely inn of Schwarenbach, apropos of which Dumas has one of his most ludicrous fancies, the ground began to tremble and the hills to shake. It was not a mere scattering of grape- shot this time, but a sustained cannonade of heavy rocks, and much relieved we felt when we stood safe on a solid ridge. When we were supping with the company of invalids who were steaming them- selves at Leukerbad, there was another sensational scene. The great wooden hotel was shaken like the little inn of Kandersteg; nervous ladies went into hysterics, and were shamefully abandoned by able-bodied relations who made simultaneous rushes for the windows and doors. It was with difficulty some of them were persuaded not to camp out in the cold, preferring the chances of pleurisy or pneumonia to such a catastrophe as that of Lisbon. At Chamouny the hotels were the Londres and Angleterre and the Union ; but the annual autumnal rush was outstripping the accommoda- tion, and you were often thankful for primitive quarters in the cottages. The natives were alive to their privileges, and made the most of them, 158 SWISS TOURING Tchap. though friendly in the extreme. The guides were a close corporation, governed by strict rules, which were all arranged for their profit. Somewhat later these rules were relaxed in favour of practised Alpine men. In the olden time you might covet the services of some distinguished guide, a scion of one of the famous families, like the Balmats or the Tairraz, who could charm away the weariness of an evening among the snows by tales of the feats of himself and his father. But they came upon duty in turn, according to the order of application. The Syndi- cate saw to it that they were uncommonly well paid, and the ascent of the " Monarch of Moun- tains" — Blanc, as the Americans familiarly called him — was costly, and supposed to be dangerous enough to deter all but the daring. Four guides at 100 francs each, were de rigueur, with attendant porters weighted with wraps and provisions. No one ever made a better speculation of the ascent than Albert Smith, who was deified at Chamouny as one of its chief benefactors. And his pluck deserved the profits he made in the Egyptian Hall, for no short-winded tourist ever tried the climb when more woefully out of condition; and when he broke down below the summit, he was literally dragged to the top. But in those days any advent- mi] THE REVELATION AT ZERMATT 159 turer was lionised ; while making his preparations he was watched by telescopes through each stage of his progress, and had a royal reception when he came down in triumph. Visitors and village folk turned out to welcome him ; there was a salvo from the battery of brass cannon in the garden of the Londres, and showers of fireworks preceded a festal supper, where his health was enthusiastically toasted. I forget whether those charges went down in the bill, or whether the landlord paid, by way of advertisement. De Saussure's memorable ascent had drawn attention to Chamouny, and it grew gradually into greater and greater popularity. Moreover, it was comparatively accessible from Geneva, and the mighty mass of Mont Blanc was a magnet which drew irresistibly. Zermatt is a more remarkable example of the spasmodic advances of Switzerland by leaps and capricious bounds. There the rail- way has actually anticipated the road, landing you in a dazzling blaze of electric lights. Engelhardt may be said to have discovered it for tourists in 1835, but they had to beg quarters from the Cure till years afterwards an enterprising doctor started a modest auberge. Then the Hotel de Mont Cervan was opened in 1852, and two years later 160 SWISS TOURING [chap. Seiler set up the Monte Rosa. It was about that time 1 first walked up the valley, sleeping at Wisp and breakfasting at Stalden. It was a dismal day, and the mists were lying low upon the hillsides, when of a sudden the sun broke out, and showed what seemed the peak of the Matterhorn in all its glory. I was ineffably impressed. The fogs rolled down again, to be finally dissipated, and then I saw it was not the Matterhorn I had been admiring, but merely one of its outstanding spurs. The consequence was an indelible memory of the grandeur of the mountain, and I only marvelled why the Zermatt Valley had not been more seriously exploite before. I think it was the second week in June, but we were the first arrivals at the Monte Rosa. Seiler had a fatted lamb killed for us, and we supped lightly on the inwards. Since then each pass in the neighbourhood has been industriously worked ; and each formidable peak has been stripped of its exaggerated terrors, and there is no more favourite resort than Seilers inn among the glaciers. For many years an old friend — Hardy, of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, a famous mountaineer in retreat — regularly did the honours of the inn, and was known as the King of the Riffel. When he had given up mountaineering, he never travelled ""■ The Matterhorn from the Riffel. To face p. 160 J in raO THE KING OF THE RIFFEL 161 without his ice-axe in its leather sheath — the badge of his guild, and the symbol of his achievements. He had been rather spoiled by the adoration of admiring subjects where he was familiarly known, for his rough geniality won all hearts. Once I tempted him to regions in the Southern Cantons where they knew him not, and to the Oberland, where they had almost forgotten him, and it seriously ruffled his self-respect when he found himself treated as an ordinary tourist. With tunnelling and express trains, the romance of the Passes will soon be a thing of the past. There was never a carriage-way over the St Bernard, and for that reason it is perhaps the most romantic of all. There the chivalry of charity takes the most heroic form. Charlemagne, Francis the First, and Napoleon have successively crossed it, and there is no finer passage in Roger's " Italy" than that which describes the march of Hannibal. But the daring of kings and conquerors has been far surpassed by the heroic endurance of obscure monks, who resigned themselves to daily perils and to deaths from lingering disease, in sure and certain hope of rewards in the future. The cost of running the hospice is enormous ; the provisions are brought up from St Pierre or Aosta; the fuel has to be 162 SWISS TOURING [chap. fetched from the Val de Ferret ; and, at the eleva- tion of eight thousand feet, the fires are slow to burn and the kettle to boil. The house is kept open to all-comers, and even in winter, when the snow lies thirty feet deep, there is daily traffic over the Pass. Never was their hospitality more heavily taxed than when they entertained Napoleon and his army, and though the great conqueror was free-handed enough, it landed them in temporary insolvency. Depending chiefly on the generosity of their guests, it was embarrassing to loiter tact- fully behind the guide who showed the chapel and drop your contribution into the money-box. For once you could have wished to parade your liberality, and let your left hand know what your right hand was doing. I know I had that feeling very strongly, for I once sponged upon the good fathers for three nights. The days passed so pleasantly that I could not tear myself away. The clavandier or bursar, who did the honours of the refectory, was a man of the world, and the most agreeable of companions. He reminded you of one of those monks mentioned by Eothen, of marvellous social gifts, relegated for ambition or some other fault to an obscure convent in Syria. When he handed me over to one of the convent vn] THE DOGS OF ST BERNARD 163 servants for the ascent of Mont Velan, the day might, indeed, have been more agreeably passed, for another tourist who accompanied me lost head and breath, and we had to drag him bodily good part of the way back. When put to bed he declared he was dying ; but the clavandier turned doctor, and gave him strong brandy and water, instead of spiritual consolation. There was nothing to complain of in the convent fare, but the cellar was far from satisfactory. The cellars were deep in the ground, to prevent the wine freezing in winter ; but even in summer, on these heights, the half-iced red vintage of the Valais, with its essential earthy flavour, was far from an exhilarat- ing tipple. It went down more pleasantly when warmed with spice and sugar, as I sat over the fire of logs with the bursar late into the nights, and listened to his thrilling stories of storm and stress, peril and rescue. It seemed strange that the convent should have been repeatedly burned out, considering the solidity of the masonry in walls and corridors. He said that the sagacity of the dogs had been overrated, to the disparagement of their masters and the servants ; though they were invaluable guides in blinding blizzards, when the traveller, shrouded in the snow, was settling into 164 SWISS TOURING [chap. the death-sleep. When I was on my first visit there had been a run of misadventures. I believe there were some young dogs "at walk" about Martigny, but in the convent there was only a single bitch with one weakly puppy, and they were lying on the chamois -skin rugs at our feet. So I was glad to see, when I came back from Italy across the Simplon, a magnificent pair, male and female, sunning themselves on the steps of the subsidiary hospice below the crest. Now the best are to be found in England, and there is no fear of the breed dying out, since Albert Smith and other Englishmen have brought the race into fashion with us. The St Bernard draws at shows, like the hunter or shire horse, and fetches prices almost fabulous. My companion found going up Mont Velan a stiff climb, but I shall never forget my walk from the hospice down to Aosta. It was passing from a refrigerating chamber into a fiery furnace. The blaze of the mid-day sun beat down from the limestone cliffs, and I crawled into Aosta foot- sore, baked, and shrivelled. It was like Christian going down from the entertainment of the House Beautiful through the Valley of Humiliation into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The first thing I did was to get into a bath, and call for a **] SPRING ON THE PASSES 165 couple of bottles of Asti spumante. After uncork- ing the second I felt equal to a plate of figs, and in their bursting lusciousness they contrasted sug- gestively with the nuts we had been cracking at the hospice the night before. Napoleon, the great road-maker, crossed the St Bernard, but for sound strategical reasons he did not make a road there. Over the Simplon, as over the Cenis, he threw what Rogers, who travelled en amateur, calls "paths of pleasure, glittering in many a broken link." The works he left should have been as lasting as those of the conquering Romans who preceded him, and it is the misfortune of tourists of our time that they should have so soon been superseded by steam. What with ava- lanches and floods, they always needed a deal of repair, and the passage in early spring was some- times somewhat sensational. It was significant that on the French side of the Cenis — not the most formidable of the Passes — there were no fewer than twenty-three refuges, and elsewhere they were even more numerous. Everywhere, and far above the highest inn, a hospice, kept by self-sacrificing monks, nearly crowned the col, seeking indifferent shelter in some adjacent hollow. From the eastern slope of the Cenis you might be shot down in 166 SWISS TOURING [chap. sledges, steered by experts — a wild form of tobog- ganing, and not without its perils. With the spring diligences over the Southern Alps there was variety of excitement, though little real danger. Here and there the cantonniers were at work on some recent landslip, leaving barely enough road to give the diligence passage. Some- times the space left was on the side of the abyss, and then it was awkward ; but if the weather were anyway tolerable, the passengers were on foot when on the ascent, and cutting off the corners by side paths. On the sharp descent it was a different thing, and the lurching vehicle swayed and swung round ugly angles, only elusively guarded by detached stone pillars. Now and again the horses were slipping and stumbling in patches of snow or on sheets of ice, and it looked as if you were galloping into eternity. But the sturdy, strong-limbed teams were well broken, and the drivers, though they sometimes drove with shamefully loose reins, had the nerve of the coachmen of the Wild West, who skirted the verges of bottomless canons without condescending to the brake. Going up hill, you walked and kept warm ; going down, you were often chilled to the bone, for frieze ulsters and fur wrappings were little in fashion then, vn] FIRST VISIONS OF ITALY 167 and you buoyed yourself up with the prospect of hot cafe au lait at Chiavenna or Gonda. Still more cheering was the first sight of sunny Italy, with its blue lakes and rich garden grounds unrolling themselves before you. It is not easy to decide which approach to Italy is the most impressive. I give it myself in favour of the Spli'igen; there is a particular point where the distant woods and the trellised vines are framed in an arched setting of rugged black rock. Perhaps not the least striking features of the Simplon are the works of man — the massive masonry that buttresses the road and the refuges, and the great span of the bridging of the profound ravine to the north of the savage gorge of Gonda. The Spliigen on the northern slope boasts the almost unrivalled grandeur of the Via Mala. The Stelvio, lofty as it is, like the lower Brenner, is comparatively tame. The Julier and the Albula, leading from the Grisons into the Upper Engadine, dipping often into heaven -forsaken valleys, bleak and dismal as the lower course of the Alpine Rhone, have left but a memory of cramped legs and dreary monotony. Take it from end to end, I found the St Gothard the most enjoyable, especially on the home-like Swiss slopes, where 168 SWISS TOURING t CHAP you ascended the banks of the brawling Reuss from Fluelen to the Devil's Bridge, which, by the way, has its counterpart and namesake on the Cenis. But now the railway has revolutionised all that. A wondrous feat of engineering, it has struck a deadly blow at the picturesque. There, indeed, you see Roger's broken links, and are slow to believe that it is really the line you are travelling upon which is continually spinning round to look you in the face, like the frisky leader in a tandem. But where are the scenes you used to delight in when making the round of the Oberland on foot? I had foolishly for- gotten that in an interminable tunnel we were giving the go-by to Andermatt and the Devil's Bridge, nor was I consoled by the excellent breakfast, when recalling all we had missed, I looked forward to the darksome eclipses of the descent. A Brockendon of the present day would break his heart if he took the rail on a quest for the beauties of the Passes. Forty years ago the glories of the Alpine Club were at their zenith. Englishmen threw heart and soul into the work in which De Saussure, Bourrit, the Meyers, Agassiz, Studez, and other foreign scientists had been the pioneers. Rivalry among v"] THE ALPINE CLUB 169 friends and comrades rose to fever-heat ; carrying courage perhaps to foolhardiness, they scaled the peaks, searched industriously for dangerous passes never trodden before by human foot, explored crevassed glaciers, and trusted themselves to snow cornices which suspended them over bottom- less abysses, and might be mined and loosened by a sudden rise in the temperature. Even their mountain guides, familiar with weather signs and the chances of avalanches and stone cannonades in the couloirs, were as much abroad as their employers in the topography of those unexplored regions. They went in for a novel course of training in the use of the rope and the ice-axe. It says much for the nerve and coolness of both amateurs and professionals that there were so few fatal accidents ; but it is notable that the most daring and successful of the climbers were men distinguished for brain power and high culture. Among those who took the lead were Mr Justice Wills, Professor Tyndall, and Sir Leslie Stephen, and the competition was keenest among the fellows of colleges and tutors let loose for an autumn holiday. Nor did they hide their lights under a bushel. In " Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers," and in the Alpine Journals, they took free license 170 SWISS TOURING i™^- to record their exploits, and sometimes, as I have heard more than one of them admit, they may have indulged in picturesque exaggeration. But when a man had been astride on the knife -like arrete of the Finsteraarhorn, or balancing himself for dear life on the frosted rock slopes of the Matterhorn, it was allowable to make the most of the achieve- ment. For a time Alpine climbing became the rage, though many denounced it as mere tempting of Providence and suicidal courting of death. Perhaps the best defence is in Kennedy's story of his ascent of the Monte della Disgrazia. He was then the President of the Alpine Club. " There is an answer more than sufficient to confute those who say that these expeditions are without aim or purpose ; that those who undertake them do so solely for the purpose of saying that they have been at the top of a high mountain. I believe that they produce not only a highly bene- ficial effect upon the physical character, that they strengthen the constitution, and that they impart a hardihood to the frame which renders it almost impregnable to the attacks of disease ; but I believe they also produce an equally beneficial effect upon the moral character, that they excite a thoughtful forethought in preparation, that they impart a self-reliance in the moment of danger, and that they give a fertility in resource where difficulties are impending." ■s. 0) c a a t-i O C d 0} d si H vn] HEROES OF THE HEIGHTS 171 And no one illustrates and develops that theory more forcibly than Tyndall in his " Hours of Exer- cise in the Alps," or Stephen in his " Playground of Europe." Tyndall describes his sensations, when near losing his head, he was swept along in an avalanche ; and dilates on the exhilaration and suppressed rapture of his feelings when wan- dering alone in a labyrinth of crevasses. He was running a race against the falling shadows on his way back to his night quarters. The glow of the sunrises, the radiance of the sunsets, the colours of the clouds flashed back from the snowy summits, brought out all the poetry latent in the nature of a climber who had manfully tackled a formidable task. Anyhow, I remember how we who modestly kept to lower levels, and exulted in the crossing of such a pass as the Strahlek, looked with rever- ence on those heroes of the heights. It was a night to be marked in the memory when we came across one of those grand explorers, who had just come down with flayed face and slightly frost-bitten fingers from the Shreckhorn to the Adler at Grindelwald, or who was supping at the Monte Rosa Hotel after forcing the old Monte Moro Pass in a blizzard. And their enjoyment of luxury after hardship was intense ; a man who 172 SWISS TOURING [chap. was reserved and noways genial by nature would warm with good cheer and the mulled wine, and become retrospectively expansive. The ball was set rolling by Mr Justice Wills — a born mountaineer, who afterwards made his summer retreat in the Eagle's Nest in the Sixt Valley — when he took the Wetterhorn by storm in 1854 : it was the first ascent from the Grindelwald side. Monte Rosa was scaled in the following year ; the Shreck- horn and the Weisshorn in 1861 ; though the Matterhorn, defying successive attempts, held out till 1865. When Mr Ball published his exhaustive "Alpine Guide" (1863-68), scarcely a mountain or peak of any consideration had been left un- conquered, and many a previously untrodden Pass had become a familiar highway. Perhaps the celebrated guides were even more interesting, though less approachable. Some of them talked a somewhat unintelligible patois. Those from the French-speaking cantons were often voluble enough : the Germans for the most part were more self-contained and taciturn. Sprung from the chamois - hunters and hill shepherds, staunch and self-sacrificing, resourceful in danger, indefatigable in toil, and the incarnation of hardi- hood, they had formed bonds of close brotherhood vii] THE GUIDES 173 with their regular employers. Their services for the season were generally secured in advance, though the severe Chamouny rules imposed restrictions which were afterwards relaxed. Many of them had historic names, and their local reputa- tions were soon bruited abroad through the climbing world. There were the Balmats and Tairrazs of Mont Blanc, the Taugwalders and Andreggs of Zermatt, the Aimers and Bohrens of Grindelwald, Benner of the Grisons, and many another. It needed another Dumas — he professes to give the experiences of Jacques Balmat at second-hand in his " Impressions " — to do justice to their deeds, their escapes, and their idiosyncrasies. The fate of Benner, for example — he was one of the silent sort, and of a melancholy countenance which seemed to forebode his fate — was infinitely pathetic. It is related by Mr Gossett, who had engaged him for a February ascent of the Haut de Cry, in the Valais. The rash venture ended in grim tragedy, due to careless use of the rope. Crossing a couloir, the party were caught in a snow-slide ; Benner and one of his employers perished. Gossett, who was buried up to the neck and being fast frozen in, was saved by the two surviving guides, and his escape was a miracle. CHAPTER VIII CHANGES IN GERMAN CITIES Great have been the changes in the cities of Germany. The star of the Hapsburgs has paled before that of the Hohenzollerns, and after cen- turies of stagnation and confusion, the empire of Charlemagne was revived under Wilhelm. Something has been said of the awakening of the slumbering Rhine towns. Cologne has become a great commercial city. Mayence was relieved of the Austrian garrison, always regarded by the Hessians as foreigners. But nowhere have the changes been more marked than in the free city of Frankfort-on- Maine. Opulent as ever — perhaps more nourishing from the financial point of view — it has been rebuilding its mansions and extending its borders. New docks and immense stations receive the traffic of eight great railways. But it has been forced to part with its cherished inde- pendence; it has lost political importance, and 174 The Door of the Kathhaus — Rothenburg. To face f. 171 ^ iQ ^V' :; - , ^ , *» xAV< > a chap, viii l FRANKFORT-ON-MAINE 175 has sorrowfully resigned itself to a social eclipse. Forty years ago it was the seat of the Diet, the controlling Bourse of Germany, and what Vienna is now for the south-east — the political sounding- board of Europe. Then all the States of Europe sent their representatives thither: it was a school of diplomacy and a centre of intrigue. There were gay scenes in the broad Zeil of an afternoon, when it was crowded with official equipages — not a few of them pitifully shabby. On the other hand, there was an oligarchy of wealth, exclusive in its way as the aristocracy of birth. Chief among them were the Bethmans, the Sterns, the Beyfuses, and, above all, the Rothschilds. For Frankfort was the cradle of the Colossus of finance — who assured the Emperor of Germany that the House of Rothschild would always be on friendly relations with the House of Hapsburg — and long after the family had been manipulating millions, and influencing the issues of war and peace, the aged mother of the founder still clung piously to the Judengasse, the humours and squalor of which were so comically depicted by Doyle in his " Brown, Jones and Robinson." In that olden time Berlin was but a succursale of the Frankfort Bourse : a dependance of the great central stock -jobbing 176 CHANGES IN GERMAN CITIES [chap. establishment. Sparing no expense, Rothschilds and Bethmans had the earliest news from every quarter; special couriers were in waiting every- where for the latest intelligence, and their carrier- pigeons were continually on the wing. There were receptions, where financiers, ministers, and diplomatists met upon common ground, though perhaps as much business was unofficially trans- acted in interchange of visits of an evening at the opera. Sir Edward Malet has told us in his Reminiscences how ably Britain was represented by his father, and I have a grateful remembrance of the hospitality of the Legation, and of that of Herr Koch, banker, wine merchant, and British consul. The traveller with friends or introductions lighted at once on his feet. There were two capital clubs, that of the nobles and the Burger Verein, at either of which you might be intro- duced by a member; at both were a rare variety of journals in all the European languages, and the Verein had a restaurant where you could test the German cookery at its best. There you might see business men laying their heads together over their beer-tankards at the mid-day meal, talking stocks and discussing new enterprises, as at the Champeaux, ^'] THE HOUSE OF GOETHE 177 Place de la Bourse in Paris. Dumas, suggestively satirical as usual, tells an amusing story illustrative of the commercial atmosphere of the city. The novelist, on the search for the birthplace of Goethe, accosted a grave-looking gentleman. The worthy citizen shook his head. " I have been a banker here for forty years : I am familiar with all the houses, but I know nothing of the house of Goethe. It must have either gone bankrupt or have no sort of reputation." The leading hotels had a wealthy clientele of cosmopolitan connoisseurs. All were good, but the cellars and cuisine of the Russie under Sarg were second to none in Europe : he prided himself specially on the excellence and variety of his liqueurs, and the coffee was not to be surpassed at Tortoni's as Tortoni used to be under the Empire. That fragrant Mocha drew secretaries and attaches of legations, who could have found free tables elsewhere, and a pleasant and informal club would often assemble for supper after the opera. The Angleterre in the Rossmarkt, which ranked next with the historically - named Ronischer Kaiser, always reminded me of the old hostelries in Southwark, such as the Tabard, whence the pilgrims started for Canterbury. Not that there were waggons or stabling in the quad- M 178 CHANGES IN GERMAN CITIES t CHAP rangle, but the bell- wires communicated with bells on the outer walls, and the chimes began sounding from earliest morning. I had a revelation at Frankfort as to how well and how cheaply you might fare in those days if you stuck to German houses. Once when the hotels in the Zeil were overflowing I tried the Landberg, within a stone's throw, and I went there again. The patrons were chiefly commercial travellers, and invariably they have voracious appetites, with a critical taste in viands. At Messina — they overrun Sicily — I was absolutely staggered by the quantity of macaroni they shovelled down in scorching heat before pro- ceeding to serious business. At the one o'clock dinner at the Landberg the table groaned under the good cheer, with such an endless procession of courses as at the old Bellevue of Brussels, and the charge was a florin. The suppers a la carte, with everything solid and indigestible, from sauer- kraut and sausages to salade a la Russe, were quite as reasonable. Frankfort was garrisoned then by Austrians, Prussians and Bavarians. In the uniforms of white, dark blue, and sky blue, they took the guard alternately. The good-humoured Bavarians made themselves at home with the townspeople ; - The Frauen Thor — Nuremberg. To face p. 17S vin] THE FOREIGN GARRISON 179 the Prussians were hated like poison ; but the Austrians, detested at Mayence, were adored at Frankfort. The officers had made their way among the fair sex, and many marriages were arranged between birth and money-bags, but the popularity was chiefly owing to the Jager band, which played frequently on the Theatre Place and in the Gardens. So Austrian music did much to soothe the savage feelings of the Venetian and Veronese aristocracy, chafing under the foreign yoke. The Free City, in the days of its independence, only ruled some ten miles of territory. When you passed the shrubberies of the shady Anlagen, musical with choirs of nightingales in the spring, — and there were severe penalties on bird-nesting — you came on all sides on barriers striped with the colours of the surrounding Principalities. Through the Bockenheimer Thor of an evening went a con- tinuous stream of carriages, carrying Christians and Jews to the gaieties of the Homburg casino, or to tempt their luck at the tables. To the east was the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel's sylvan hell of Wilhelmsbad, in woodlands seductive for picnics. But my pleasantest associations were with the forest of Hesse-Darmstadt to the south — a forest 180 CHANGES IN GERMAN CITIES [chap. which stretches along the Odenwald through Baden to the Canton of Basle. At that time Frankfort was a great place of resort for young Englishmen who came to study German ; and subalterns who had been shelved after the Crimean War formed a little coterie by themselves. These sporting youngsters had made friends with the Darmstadt foresters, and many a pleasant excursion we had, not after game, but in pursuit of vermin. The woodmen would meet us by appointment at some gasthaus — where we gave them breakfast — with the long-bodied, crooked-legged dachshunds at their heels, and off we would go afterwards to the badger-holes or fox-earths, with shots en passant at hawk or squirrel. These badger-hounds are certainly built for burrowing, but I would back a game Scotch terrier against them, though I should not have dared to say so. Frankfort, though it has passed under the rule of the detested Prussians, is richer than ever, and its population has increased steadily in spite of emigration to America. There, as elsewhere in regenerated Germany, architects and builders have had a good time. Among the later public attrac- tions are a new opera-house, a new museum in the suburb of Sachsenhausen, and, above all, the mi] THE BIRTH OF BERLIN 181 suburban palm garden, which bought the Duke of Nassau's rare collection of plants when he sold the contents of his glass-houses at Biebrich. The grand concert hall is a lively scene of an evening when crowded with the citizens and well-to-do artisans, and very profitable is the consumption of beer and coffee, ices and tobacco. The cosmopolitan music is better than the commissariat. No doubt the caterers consult the tastes of their supper-guests, but when I went on an evil impulse to a late dinner a la carte, I found myself the only occupant of the vast galleries, sitting in a dim religious light, and an exceedingly indifferent dinner I had. But the prosperous city is sadly changed since the days of the Diet, when the golden youth of diplomacy entertained at the Russie. Berlin had never any attraction for me, or, as I should fancy, for any one else. Dumped down on a sandy plain, it was built to military order like St Petersburg, and laid out in blocks by brigades and battalions. The land being worth intrinsically nothing, the width of the leading thoroughfares was depressing, though afterwards the poorer quarters became overcrowded. There was no ground-fall, and the sewers, meandering on a level with the Spree, used to stink abominably. 182 CHANGES IN GERMAN CITIES [chap. The stunted trees in the Thiergarten struggled against northern gales and adverse influences, but no money had been spared to embellish the lagoons and pleasure-grounds of Potsdam and Charlotten- burg. Unter den Linden, with its stately avenue of limes, leading from the Arch of Victory to the congress of Heroes in marble grouped before the Royal Palace, was always a magnificent boulevard ; but even there, for long, the best hotels ran to length instead of height, and were far from imposing. Berlin, with its grey skies and search- ing winds, is a place where the tourist takes his pleasures rather sadly, nor is there the contagion of joyous good fellowship to carry him away. The only time I saw that military metropolis to advan- tage was when the Kaiser Wilhelm made his triumphant entry at the head of his victorious troops. He had left his capital the King of Prussia; he came back the German Emperor, and the exultation of the Brandenburghers knew no bounds. For once Unter den Linden was made impassable by shouting crowds, fringed with the glittering bayonets of the Landwehr and Landsturm, under Venetian streamers and festoons of laurel. The climax came in the memorable ceremony when William the Conqueror met the mil] THE BRANDENBURGHERS 183 estates of the realm in the White Hall of the Palace. The veteran Field-Marshal Von Wrangel, a shrivelled relic of half-forgotten wars, held the banner behind the Emperor, and Von Moltke, the organiser of the conquest, bore the sword of state. No : the Brandenburghers, bred on an inhos- pitable soil and in an ungenial climate, are not a joyous people, though, like all Germans, they are great patrons of the theatres and garden music- halls. One could always pass an amusing enough evening at the casinos in the Thiergarten, or in the minor theatres, where the bourgeois comedies were laughable and characteristic, though the local patois — Schmidt and Miiller used to talk it in " Kladderatch " — made them difficult to follow. One great change has taken place in the last thirty years, which does not add to the popular gaiety nor tend to diminish the death-rate. The lower orders used to soak themselves in harmless beer ; now they indulge in the vile potato brandy, almost as poisonous and quite as cheap as the trade gin which the Hanse towns export to Western Africa. Berlin, whose population has been ad- vancing by leaps and bounds, draining the agri- cultural districts and depopulating the villages, has the most turbulent proletariat in Europe. 184 CHANGES IN GERMAN CITIES [chap. Barcelona scarcely excepted. And the Judenhetze has some excuse, for it is a revolt of the Germans against the growing ascendancy of the wealthy Jew. It is the Jews who finance and control the press, and make advances on hard or usurious terms to the impecunious of all classes, from the junker to the mechanic. A contrast in every way was Old Vienna. Going south, you passed from shadow into sun- shine. No song in that city of mirth and music was more patriotically chorused than that with the refrain — " Es ist nur eine Kaiserstadt, Es ist nur eine Vien." So the traveller came prepared for enjoyment. There was no delusion as to the fascinations and singular beauties of the environs. Vienna is sur- rounded by magnificent natural parks, like that which industrial America has set apart for the de- lectation of tourists in the West, and by historical scenes consecrated by memories of the wars waged by the Cross against the Crescent. To the north- west is the Kahlenberg, whence a rocket gave notice to the beleaguered city of the relief brought by Sobieski and the Duke of Lorraine ; to the north the Marchfeldt, where Napoleon was brought to a The Castle and North Wall— Nuremberg. To fact p. 184 vin.] CHARMS OF VIENNA 185 check by an Austrian Archduke educated in his own school. The Marchfeldt is tame as the sands of Berlin, but the Viennese loved to make the most of a dubious victory, which flickered through the darkness with a gleam of hope. My first evening in the Kaiserstadt took me to the Volks- garten, where they were commemorating Aspern and the Archduke Charles with bouquets of fireworks and brilliant transparencies. Schonbrunn had more humiliating recollections, for there Napoleon, from the private apartments of the Roman Emperors, had dictated his arbitrary terms of peace. But Schonbrunn, with its gardens, its restaurants, and gasthauses was easily access- ible, and offered delightful shade and pleasant al fresco dinners of a summer afternoon. On none of the roads were the omnibuses, and after- wards the tramcars, more overcrowded, and no- where was the good humour of the Viennese more conspicuous than on those tramcars. On the platform at the back you could scarcely find footing, and if there were rules as to the number of passengers, by smiling consent they were reck- lessly overridden. To the southward cars and rail led into sequestered valleys, romantic as any in Tyrol or the Saltzkammergut, but with the 186 CHANGES IN GERMAN CITIES [chap. difference that everywhere there were supping places and dancing saloons, and every sort of provision for good eating and drinking. It was a land flowing with hill streams and cheap wine, for the Voslauer and other generous vintages are grown on each sunny slope. Above all, within a short drive was the Prater, the wildest and most picturesque recreation ground of any populous city. The favourite drives were crowded of an evening with fashionable equipages and equestrians. There were gigantic chasseurs in the barbaric splendour of mediaeval costume, and Austrian and Hungarian nobles mounted on hacks which would have drawn envious attention in Rotten Row, and fetched fancy prices at TattersalTs. But, unlike Hyde Park, there the populace were made welcome, and at the western end charbonnier etait maitre chez lui. Something like a perpetual Bartholomew Fair was going forward— it had a boom at Easter, Whit- sunday, and Michaelmas — with booths and shows and mountebanks ; there was continual frying of sausages and Viennese schnitzels and replenishing of beer-jugs. Yet if you wandered away down the course of the Danube, you might easily go astray in the bosky solitudes. You might rouse a startled deer from his lair, and beavers were said to build vin. OLDER VIENNA 187 their dams in the river, though I never had the luck to set eyes on one. No wonder the Viennese made the most of those outlets, for it must be owned that the city itself was somewhat grim and forbidding. The old fortifications had been laid out with shrubs and flowers, and the cannon which had belched fire on the Turks and the French had been con- signed as souvenirs to the arsenal with the match- locks and cuirasses. But the ancient town was still strictly laced in the girdle of the glacis, and con- tained barely 60,000 inhabitants. It was divided between pleasure and business. Industrials and artisans were housed in the suburbs of Marienhilf, the Landstrasse, the Leopoldstadt, and some thirty others of less extent. In the city itself, generally cramped and overcrowded, were breathing spaces here and there, and notably the Burgplatz before the Imperial Palace, which under the most aristo- cratic of regimes was open to everybody. Indeed, the several castes were so sharply defined, that there was no danger of condescension encouraging familiarity. The nobility was the most exclusive in Europe, and among themselves and at the court, pedigrees were carefully scrutinised and quarterings counted. As in Bavaria, the man of 188 CHANGES IN GERMAN CTTIES [™ AP rank and birth would invite a roturier neighbour to join his chasse, and ask him hospitably to dinner. That inferred nothing more than friendly recognition, if they met afterwards in the Graben or the Maximilian Strasse. Foreigners were on a somewhat different footing, and might be accepted as honorary members of the inner circle. The Hungarians had an enthusiasm for English sportsmen ; the Austrians had extraordinary ad- miration and respect for diplomats. Nevertheless, they drew the line severely at what they were pleased to call trade. I remember the late Sir Seymour Fitzgerald telling me of a case in point. A fellow attache of his was discovered to be a son of one of our leading financial families of long descent, though drawing its income from a city bank. With talent and money and agreeable manners to recommend him, he was cold- shouldered and ignored in all intercourse with the embassy, and the tact of a gifted ambassador found the social difficulty insurmountable. That " Graben " is suggestive of Old Vienna as a historic and mediaeval survival. All the names smacked of antiquity, of wars, and primitive simplicity. The most attractive shops were in the Graben or ditch. The best hotels were in vin] TIPPING IN VIENNA 189 the narrow Karnthez Strasse, where, between the cramped and lofty buildings, there was little air and less light. There were fashionable cafes and restau- rants in the Kohlmarkt. Palaces, legations, and clubs of the nobles were not in "streets," but in the gasses or lanes. On a reception night the crush of carriages made these narrow thoroughfares perilous for pedestrians. At all times, in muddy weather, with the narrow strips of pavement, it was impossible to avoid being splashed from hat to heel ; and if you did not travel with a valet or a courier, you must be liberal of tips to the boots. In fact, in Vienna, which was not otherwise very extra- vagant in those days, the tipping ran to a good deal of money. You tipped the servants when you went out to dinner ; you tipped daily at the restaurant in your own hotel, which was open to all - comers ; and the stately porter expected a preliminary retaining fee, with frequent refreshers if you prolonged your stay. To do him justice he was ready to give any sort of service, for a certain license was tolerated in the hotels, though less scandalously ostentatious than in those of Jassy or Bucharest. After the building boom, and during the Great Exhibition, the tipping became more of a tax than ever. At the Grand Hotel you were 190 CHANGES IN GERMAN CITIES [<***■ served by hordes of rapacious waiters, who had probably paid for their places, and gave the broadest hints after each separate meal. If you did not submit to be fleeced, they waited for their revenge. The late General Eber, then Times correspondent, took a philosophic view of it, saying that in scattering his florins and casting his bread upon the waters, he considered he was humanising South German humanity in the rough. In my favourite quarters at the Archduke Charles the service was a la carte, and the cuisine unimpeachable. In the autumn you had all sorts of game in perfection, for nothing surpasses the wild-bred pheasants of Bohemia or the hares and roe-deer, knocked over by the hundred or thousand in the battues. In Vienna all the world dined early — the state dinners at the Burgschloss gener- ally came off at 4 p.m. — and early supper was the time of conviviality, when viveurs began to make a night of it. There was a gay scene of an evening in the dining saloon of the Archduke, brilliant with the uniforms of Lancers, Hussars, and the Hungarian Bodyguard. Many of the officers were wealthy, and none paid much regard to money ; but it was notable that in one respect they were economical, from taste rather than from vhl] BEER AND MUSIC 191 frugality. There was seldom any of the popping of champagne corks which enlivened banquets at the Cafe Anglais or the Maison Doree at Paris. The favourite beverage was the amber -coloured Vienna beer, and they could hardly have done better. I used to keep down my bills by drinking it myself, or the Voslauer or Erlauer, which was little more expensive. Dreher with his flourishing brewery had realised what Johnson offered for sale at Thrale's — " the potentiality of becoming rich beyond the dreams of avarice." His beer was laid on to all the festal resorts, as Manchester and Glasgow fetch their water from Thirlmere or Loch Katrine. Moore sang that a Persian's heaven was easily made with black eyes and lemonade. Beer and music made the paradise of the Viennese. Very different the beer was from the dark brew of the Bavarians, and you saw the difference in the temperament of the people, for one was stolid and the other sprightly. Each evening, when the weather was fine, there was al fresco fete in the Volksgarten. Strauss and Lanner, through a couple of generations, had been educating the popular taste in lively melody. Johann Strauss, who led the orchestra in my early days, had inherited his 192 CHANGES IN GERMAN CITIES £«**• father's genius ; the lighter dance music and waltzes of almost pathetic sweetness were his specialities. When he made one of his many hits, the enthusiasm in the Central Hall ran to fever heat, till the vociferous applause threatened to crack the windows. At SpeiTs saloon a lower, or rather a more mixed, audience were still more demonstrative. When a song caught on, they yelled the choruses and drowned the accompani- ment ; they stamped their feet, clattered forks and glasses, and shook the tables till there was breakage of crockery. There everything passed in good humour, and damages were easily settled ; but there were night concerts of a lower depth, where orgie often degenerated into free fights, though they were under the surveillance of the armed police. The Viennese artisans had great artistic taste ; wages were low, as living was cheap, and they did their work leisurely. They excelled in wood- carving — in their trophies of flowers and fruit and game. It was as well worth while going a round of the leading upholsterers, as of the studios of the sculptors in Rome. Another speciality was in coquettish nicknacks — the costly trifles were given as wedding presents. Elephants' tusks, rhinoceros ™i.J KLITCH'S PIPES 193 horns, and walrus teeth found a ready market in Vienna. But what specially tempted the smoker in the Graben was the pipe-shops. Klitch, with his corps of clever carvers, was easily the first. In his windows there was a rare show of meerschaum wedded to such amber as you scarcely saw in the bazaars of Constantinople or Smyrna. One master- piece stood in his window for years, meant for ornament and ostentation rather than for use. On the stem behind the bowl was an exquisite model of St Stephen's Cathedral from basement to spire — a pipe far more cumbrous than that put in Master Humphrey's mouth in the engraving in the original edition of "The Clock." I always brought away some specimen of Klitch's handi- work; but there was one fatal objection to the enjoyment of those pipes — that with reasonably mild tobacco they would never colour. The workmanship would have been wasted on more porous material — it would have been committing the bas-reliefs of the Parthenon to facades of crumbling sandstone. What a transformation there was in the Vienna of the Exhibition year ! The old city had burst its bounds with a vengeance, and was loosely girdled with a circle of magnificent Rings. Specu- N 194 CHANGES IN GERMAN CITIES [°hap. lation in building and stock-jobbing had run riot. In the old days the paper currency had sometimes been at a discount of 30 per cent, or more — of late years credit had been inflated in the over- confidence that portended the collapse. It was significant that a superb new Bourse was opened with great cere- mony on the Western Ring a day after the fair, and on the eve of the general bankruptcy. The boom preceding the Krach had brought disappoint- ment and feverish apprehensions. Great landowners had committed themselves beyond their means ; frugal burghers had been tempted into the swim, and saw themselves being swamped with their lifelong savings. The wildest rumours were afloat, and there were even mutterings as to the stability of the Rothschilds. Speculators were scarcely re- assured by seeing the serenity of the old Baron, as he was drawn about the Exhibition grounds in his donkey chair, or by the genial bonhomie of Sir Anthony, who had a suite of rooms in the Grand Hotel. New hotels had been rising everywhere, and those in the Karnther Strasse had gone out of fashion and out of date. What a change there was in the Archduke Charles, where I occa- sionally dropped in for supper ! The gay uniforms were gone, and the saloon was as dull and almost vni] DRESDEN AS IT WAS 195 as deserted as a luncheon bar in the city of London after business hours. The rise in prices everywhere had been enormous, and though foreigners felt it most in the new caravanserais, it touched the citizens in their favourite resorts, where the charges used to be ridiculously cheap. There have been no such transformation scenes in the minor German capitals. Munich and Stutt- gart are much as they were ; the former had been lavishly beautified by the aesthetic tastes of the eccentric Wittelbachers, who drained the country to glorify the capital, and the latter lay half asleep among its vine-clad hills, enlivened and excited from time to time by family quarrels and court intrigues. Dresden, then as now, had a magnetic attraction for English folk. There was no more agreeable berth among legations of the second rank, Tuscany perhaps excepted, for a minister with a love for art and music, who liked a quiet life. The English residents, and those who wintered there, were of a superior class, though often straightened in circumstances, and they were warmly welcomed at a court, which, with its stately ceremonial, was neverthe- less simple and inexpensive in its habits. It was the sort of society described in "Vanity 196 CHANGES IN GERMAN CITIES [chap. Fair," where Tapeworm, our envoy at Pumper- nickel, took up Mrs George Osborne and her company. The tourist not pressed for time in spring or summer found it hard to tear himself away. Many a week I have passed at the Bellevue — never was name more appropriate — looking down from its beautiful gardens on the Elbe, and away to the hills of the Saxon Switzer- land. On rainy days there was the picture-gallery, with its Madonna di San Sisto, its Raphaels and Holbeins, on which you might muse and dream from cushioned lounges ; there was the Schatz- kammer, a seductive and suggestive school of his- tory, with its rare antiquities and inestimable jewels. On sultry afternoons, when disposed to indolence, you had the best ices and most fragrant coffee in the world on the Briihl Terrace, looking up the river to the Saxon Highlands, and kept awake by inspiriting martial music. And in the old opera-house, since burned down, with the sympathetic but severely critical audience, the varied repertoire was always being enriched by the latest operas of the masters. There, from a luxurious stall costing a florin, I heard the first presentation of Tannhduser, with the deafening crashes, which were somewhat doubtfully received. vin] SAXON SWITZERLAND 197 Wagner, idolised at Munich, was no great favourite with the Saxons. The scenes in the Saxon Switzerland in Whit- sun- week were things to be remembered. There was the strangest mingling of the prosaic and the sentimental, of the picturesque and the vulgar. It was a witches' Sabbath — the broad humours of a Bartholomew Fair in the most romantic surround- ings. All Dresden had broken loose for a holiday, and was piously indulging in the immemorial licence of eating, drinking, and smoking, singing patriotic songs and shouting choruses. Solemn professors and steady-going burghers looked on complacently when they did not chime in. Facetious students mounted the stone steps to the Prebischthor, and delivered bombastic dis- courses to a delighted audience. The steamers plying on the river were overcrowded like the Gravesend boats on a Sunday, and half-drunken fiddlers, scraping villainously out of time, reaped a rich harvest in coppers. Yet it was characteristic of the Germans that many of the trippers took their amusements sensibly, if not sadly. You came on family parties in sequestered glades, who had gone far from the madding crowds with their refreshment baskets ; and if you wandere d farther 198 CHANGES IN GERMAN CITIES [ C « AP there were pale-faced girls sketching, or spectacled scientists industriously netting butterflies or filling the green botanical cases slung to their shoulders. Dresden, though taking things easily and ex- piating political tergiversations, had been keeping pace with the times. It was a sharp transition to the old capitals of the Prince - Bishops in Franconia, and the dead-alive free cities of the Empire which had been merged in Bavaria. There was Wtirzburg, with its court-deserted palace, a Versailles in miniature, a melancholy memorial of vanished grandeur — to which one looked across from the salon of the Kronprinz over a flask ol the Steinwein — with its Romanesque cathedral and its thirty churches; and Bamberg, with its rival cathedral in identical style, adorned by the genius of Albert Diirer. I shall never forget the scene in the market-place there — a market-place as picturesque as the Grande Place of Brussels — when I opened my window in the freshness of the early morning. Not the Black Forest or Brittany Bretonnante, nor the Forest Cantons of a fete day, could show such a variety of mediaeval costume. It was not as if the peasantry were got up en fete, sporting all their heirlooms on their persons, like villagers of Friesland or fisher-folk of the Zuyder vni] AUGSBURG AND REGENSBURG 199 Zee ; but the antiquated cut of the every-day dress was set off in a variegated blaze of colours. In Augsburg and Regensburg there has been comparatively little change. In Augsburg, with little arriere pense'e, you can still tread the broad thoroughfare of the Maximilian Strasse, looking up at gabled mansions with their projecting eaves and their dormer windows, as rich burghers built them in their palmy days. You can still sip the local wines from the famed cellars of the Drei Mohren, in the very saloon, with its carved beams and gilded ceiling, in which the princely Fugger — a Sidonia of the Middle Ages — is said to have burned the bonds of his imperial guest in a blaze fragrant with clove and cinnamon. It is certain, at least, that Fugger financed Castille, when Charles, notwithstanding the wealth of the Indies, was impecunious as his grandfather Maximilian, and had to regulate his policy by his purse. At Augsburg there is much to remember and little to regret. Neither there nor at Regensburg has there been any great revival of prosperity, though both have begun to wake up. Regensburg is still the mediaeval town where emperors held their courts and where diets assembled. In the faded splen- dours of the Street of Ambassadors are still to be 200 CHANGES IN GERMAN CITIES t CHAP seen, over crumbling doorways, the winged lion of St Mark and the eagle of the Austrian Archdukes. Very different is the case at Nuremberg, and in the last forty years there have been sad changes for the better and the worse. For the better, so far as the citizens are concerned, for the municipality is flourishing again, borrowing and spending ; enterprise is active, business is brisk, and, as in England, the peasants of Franconian farms are attracted to the city by high wages and the better education which nurses social ambitions. Forty years ago Nuremberg was unique as Papal Rome : time had touched, but had scarcely altered it. Like Pompeii, it was an unimpaired memorial of a vanished past. In Wiirzburg and Bamberg, the snug seats of wealthy Prince- Bishops, you saw the spires of countless churches, the lofty roofs of innumerable convents and hospices, clustered around the episcopal palaces. In Nuremberg there were churches also, and of the noblest — for the palace of a priest there was the Castle of the Kaisers ; but trade, industry, and commerce had set their stamp upon the town. It was ruled by an oligarchy of patrician merchants, arbitrary and cruel as the Venetian secret councils, but who The Church of St. Lawrence — Nuremberg. Tu face p. 200 vni] OLDER NUREMBERG 201 nevertheless had to court and keep popularity by- lavish expenditure upon local objects. They had to plot and counterplot with envious intriguers, and, though there was no lion's mouth in the wall of the Rathhaus, they lived in the terror of malignant espionnage. Their riches overflowed into the streets, adorned with fountains as beautiful as that of the Trevi ; with the churches embel- lished with masterpieces of sculpture and metal- work, and with the most exquisite stained glass of the period. All that wealth of artistic treasure happily escaped the iconoclast, for the Nurem- bergers early embraced the Reformed doctrines. Unlike Regensburg, which stood seventeen sieges and was repeatedly stormed, Nuremberg, though beleaguered, was never carried by assault. Wallen- stein pillaged, but did not burn and destroy ; and, as Blucher flatteringly remarked of London when enter- tained by the Corporation, what a city it was for the sack ! It was for Germany what Bruges had been for the Netherlands : its merchants had their agents in every port, and owned or chartered galleons upon every sea. It needed no statistics to prove their former opulence ; you saw the evidences every- where in mansions and magazines, built for eternity rather than time, with their roods of lofty roof 202 CHANGES IN GERMAN CITIES [hap. obtruding themselves on the spacious thoroughfares. There were richly elaborated facades, surmounted by turrets and pointed gables — a blend of the bureau and place of business with the palace. There were ramifications of courts and quadrangles in the rear, with outlets on the lanes behind, where the wains were loaded with the bales and crates. All that accumulation of wealth demanded safeguards, and the city was encircled by walls of stupendous strength, and moats deep and wide flooded from the Pegnitz. But all that period of wealth and prosperity passed away, and until the age of rail and steel, followed by the industrial revival of Germany, life was as sluggish within the venerable walls as the river that ran through the town. Descendants of the old patricians were content to pinch and save ; to weave coarse cloths and to turn out cheap toys. The most affluent citizens did not go in for show, and the dress of the women of all ranks was sober, quaint, and old-fashioned. When you sauntered out of the Rothes Ross — a most comfortable old- fashioned inn — into the silent streets of an evening, they seemed haunted by the shade of Albert Durer. Indeed, from morning to eve they were infested by artists, amateur and professional; and vni] NUREMBERG'S REVIVAL 203 it was perhaps the only town in Europe where these good folks could sketch without impertinent surveillance. I have seen a lady sitting on a shawl in the Albrecht Diirer Platz, with only a couple of small boys looking over her shoulder. It was partly, perhaps, because the sight was so common, but chiefly because the townsfolk were drowsily apathetic. Now, to one's selfish sorrow, they have roused themselves with a vengeance, and have knocked their venerable city about in such a manner, that very unmistakably they have been making money, hand over hand. Most of the towns, even though stranded by a receding tide or simply standing- still, have been making slow yet sensible progress since the Middle Ages. Augsburg, Regensburg, and Wiirzburg had been almost stationary, but Nuremberg, in the course of centuries, had shrunk from 70,000 inhabitants to little less than a third of that number. Consequently there was ample elbow room for all; there was no letting houses at any reasonable rent, and the choicest building sites brought but a trifle in the estate market. The change came as suddenly as it was unforeseen. Nuremberg opened credits with Frankfort and Berlin, and banks in these cities started local 204 CHANGES IN GERMAN CITIES [c=ap. agencies. The Nurembergers really opened their eyes when finance companies offered strange facili- ties and began vigorously to compete for business. The boom was on like the May-fly in a Hampshire stream in a genial spring, but the speculation had solid foundation. Profits realised themselves auto- matically, and prosperity had come to stay. Sites and ground-rents have never risen to such prices as in revolutionised Cologne, but that boom burst through the mediasval barriers, and has breached the ancient walls. Factories and workshops, suburban villas in gardens and dwellings for the artisans have been rising in the meadows that were whitened by the tents of Gustavus Adolphus when he was play- ing out his losing match with the Duke of Friedland. The core of the old free city is still in tolerable preservation, but the shell has been shattered, and a picturesque idiosyncrasy has been ruined irretriev- ably. Without a seaport or navigable river, with neither coal fields nor iron mines near at hand, enterprise has triumphed over all disadvantages, and created a great manufacturing centre with machine factories and electrical works of world- wide reputation. Rothenburg, on the contrary, another grey city of the Empire, once ruling a principality of twelve square miles, is a relic of The Rathhaus— Rothenburg . from Schmidt Strasse. To face p. 204 vin.] ROTHENBURG 205 medievalism that has scarcely been tampered with. Time has touched it, but progress has passed it by, and with its walls and towers, and its grand old Rathhaus, it is a Nuremberg in miniature, as Nuremberg used to be. The railway had given it the go-by, and there was a nine-mile drive from the nearest station. The traveller found quarters at the Schwan : the venerable town is picturesquely situated on a hill above the Tauber, and the aesthetic visitor or the artist, now as then, has many a temptation to linger. The high Church of St James, with its architecture, sculptures, carvings and quaint paintings, in itself was enough to console one for two hours of jolting in the eikvagen. Unfortunately in one most character- istic feature the comparison with Nuremberg fails, for the Castle of Rothenburg was razed long ago, and all that remains to mark the site is the Chapel of St Blaize. CHAPTER IX THE VETTURINO With the confiscation of the Church temporalities and the laying of the railway lines, the vetturino vanished. The capacious vettura, with its leisurely ways, was an ideal form of old-time travel. You started at your own hour ; you loitered when and where you pleased. The vetturino acted as purser, and relieved you of all trouble, but he took his orders from his temporary masters. No one can complain of the excessive pace of Italian expresses, but now you are hustled by the rail from centre to centre. With a through ticket from Charing Cross, dining and sleeping cars make you independent of stoppages. Even busy men of culture, whose holi- days are brief, easily fall into American fashions. They never realise how much they miss, or how infinitely more enjoyable it would be to do their Italy by sections. But even in the olden time, admirable posting arrangements were 206 Wiirzburg, from the Bridge. To face p. 206 chap ix.] CHARM OF THE VETTURA 207 a strong inducement to put on the pace. The roads along the Riviera, in Tuscany, and more especially in retrograde Naples, might have been masterpieces of MacAdam. Brisk postillions rattled you onward from stage to stage in con- fident hope of a generous buono mano ; and in Sicily, as in Hungary, a half-savage driver would spring to his feet and whoop like a demon, as he sent half-broken horses down some steep incline, seldom troubling to put the brake on. Expostu- lations were vain, or were mistaken for incentives. There were timid travellers who shuddered and foreswore the post for the future, when they shunned the ugly angles of precipices, or had safely nego- tiated some high-arched bridge, spanning the depths of a brawling torrent. Bolder spirits were apt to be demoralised by the intoxication of rapid motion ; Dr Johnson's affection for the post-chaise became a passion, and they would make urgent private affairs the pretext for bargaining with the post-bureau. But the real lover of Italy, the dilettante devoted to its art, and enamoured of the classical beauties of its varied scenery, always clung fondly to the vettura. It was an eminently sociable conveyance. If the solitary tourist took a place in one of the public carriages, nothing could be more 208 THE VETTURINO [chap. uncomfortable. I tried it once, and even in point of economy it proved a failure, for I sacrificed the better part of the fare. The jaded and over- taxed horses seldom went out of a jog-trot, and often came to a standstill on the hills when they were not reinforced by a span of oxen. The driver was autocratic and crusty ; the halting-places were arranged without regard to the quality of the inns ; and then, though tolerably case-hardened before, I had the saddest experience of Italian cookery. But most of your fellow-travellers were indepen- dent of the set meals they must have regarded as Apician luxury. They fed promiscuously, at all hours, out of baskets and bundles, and the interior — the windows were hermetically sealed — was reek- ing of rancid oil and garlic. A child or two were crawling about your legs, and babies in arms were satisfying insatiable thirst. For in the primeval towns and villages we were continually picking up and setting down, and you came across companions of all classes. Lost among loose packages, you were stifled in fusty straw. When I crossed the Apennines in a bitterly cold night, a rough peasant, got up comfortably in sheepskins, savagely resented my wrapping a plaid round my legs. " Donna ! ' he contemptuously ejaculated, and though I did "0 THE NAPLES ROAD 209 not give up my plaid, for the sake of peace I practised the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, and metaphorically turned my cheek to the smiter. Very different it was when you had arranged a congenial party. For the Naples road, you de- liberately chose your friends, the familiar associates of the Roman season. Six was the ideal number — four in the interior, two in the banquette; so you could count on your rubber in the evening, with a spare couple to cut in. The most enjoyable of my various drives from Rome to Naples was when the other five were members of the same regi- ment, and accepted me as an honorary member of the mess. They were men of the world, and some of Her Majesty's hard bargains, and there was no pipeclay in the talk. Rather weary of Rome, though looking forward to a return for Holy Week, we were all longing for a change, breathing more freely when we had left the walls behind. The first night was passed at Cisterna, capital of the vast domains once ruled by the great family of the Gaetani. I knew the gloomy hostelry well, as I had made it my headquarters for snipe-shoot- ing. Next morning there was an early start, and it was a luxury to have no bother about the bill, which was settled by the vetturino. It was a dreary 210 THE VETTURINO t CHAP drive across the Pontine marshes from Nettuno to Terracina. Drowsy after a late rubber, there was a sense of sinister excitement in the warning of a friendly doctor against going to sleep on the Enchanted Ground. The air was soporific, and you were always nodding and waking up again. Yet the sedgy expanse, the home of the wild boar and the buffalo, with the innumerable water-fowl of many species, with the hawks sweeping in circles high in the air, and the ravens and carrion crows croaking dismally, had a fascination of its own. The sun rising like an orb of dull copper, then brighten- ing into a glorious blaze, drew up the mists, wreath- ing them in fantastic forms, and colouring them with lurid lights. The reed-thatched huts were few and far between ; here and there you came across a solitary herdsman or woodman, with a far-away look in his listless eyes, which scarce glanced at the passing carriage. If the figures between Civita Vecchia and Rome had been wasted and the faces cadaverous, here the people at the post-houses were walking skeletons and the livid complexions were corpse-like. The classical name of Forum Appii still survived in a ruckle of tumble-down buildings, and it struck you that the Christians of Rome gave a signal proof of affection to the Apostle when «•] AN IMPROMPTU PICNIC 211 they came on foot to welcome him at the Three Taverns ; though, indeed, they lived always in terror of death, and probably these wastes were then less pestilential. Through the forenoon we had sulked in silence in clouds of tobacco-smoke, keeping sad or sen- timental reflections to ourselves, and correcting the damp of the atmosphere with cognac. At Terracina we emerged with buoyant spirits into a brilliant transformation scene. One of the delights of the vettura travel was the constant meetings with friends, and the impromptu picnics, got up on the spur of the moment. The first thing we saw on arrival at the inn was another vehicle, even more capacious than our own, which had started earlier from Cisterna, and the first thing we heard echoing down the darksome passages and stair- cases were peals of joyous laughter. A family of lively and exceedingly pretty girls were on their way to Naples in care of a good-natured old aunt, who was notable for intelligent attention to the commissariat, and did not look too prudishly after her charges. Gallant officers shook themselves and brightened up, to be forthwith enlisted as porters and carriers. Baskets were brought forth, weighted with bottles and packed with pates and •212 THE VETTURINO t CHAP confectionery from Nazzari's. The Pontine Marshes were a thousand miles away. Flirtations, scarcely interrupted, were renewed where they had been left off. The old lady, looking like a jolly female Bacchus, was mounted with some effort on a steady donkey, which was led with some trouble in rear of the party. .And then, under a cloudless sky, with the azure sea behind, we scaled the heights among beds of thyme and bursting wild- flowers to a crest where, looking seaward to the Ponza Isles, the cloth was spread for luncheon. A strolling pifferaro who had attached himself to us volunteered to pipe, and though the carpet of grey shale and green turf was somewhat rough, and the music better suited to an osteria than to a ball-room, I doubt whether there had been a merrier dance that winter in Rome. At any rate it was answerable for one happy marriage. Mola di Gaeta was a charming halting-place, replete with classical memories, with comfortable rooms, a respectable cuisine, a capital cellar, and a sulky landlord. But the vetturino was upon honour ; cigar-cases and spirit-flasks had put him in rare good humour, and it was his business to throw oil on troubled waters. Indeed these vetturini, when well - managed, were the most "1 NEAPOLITAN VINTAGES 213 efficient of couriers, and you had the best the house could supply at two-thirds of the charges when you were posting. Mola was famous for its sardines and mullets, and, above all, the full-flavoured Formian from the sunny vineyards on the seaward slopes was not unworthy of the reputation it had enjoyed for a score of centuries. It came up in bottles instead of amphorae ; it was not bedevilled by honey, spices or other blends ; though luscious, the sweetness was tempered by age, and there was not a headache in it next morning. Nevertheless, perhaps a little of it goes a long way, like old East Indian Madeira and the deleterious Jurancon of the Gave de Pau. Certainly, if it ever figured in Neapolitan wine cartes, it was seldom or ever asked for. But as for local wines, what with the Laehrymae Christi grown on the Vesuvian lava, and the Capri, visitors to Naples have no reason to com- plain either of cost or quality. When I shivered through a winter at Sorrento, although the cold and damp were scarcely suited to them, I never cared to change. The medicated Marsala in popular use is a poor alternative, for the best Marsala is doctored for the markets. The genuine wine is of the faintest straw colour. I tried it once when driving from Palermo to Suggestum ; a passing 214 THE VETTURINO [chap. waggoner offered to tap one of his casks for us, and to our shame we consented. The hospitable Mr Ingham, head of the great Marsala house, avowed that they had to modify it for British palates, as the Oporto merchants transmogrify grapes of the Douro into the loaded beverage we know as Port. But the Lachrymae and the Capri are pure. The one associates itself with " native " oysters in the island osteria of the Lucrine Lake, the other with sardines fresh from the nets, served with frizzled parsley, preceding macaroni boiled in milk and sprinkled with Parmesan — a veritable Neapolitan breakfast. Our vetturino expedition to Paestum was ex- citing, or at least racy of the Campanian soil. Not long before, the brigands had made a grand coup, and carried off a couple of Englishmen. They had been released on paying a heavy ransom, and the authorities were all on the alert. Even in com- paratively quiet times the floating brigand rumours were always exaggerated in the capital. The winter I spent at Sorrento I learned to my surprise from local journals that I had been tempting Providence when I took my walks abroad, and they seldom ended before dusk. Never a soul save peaceful peasants crossed my path, and I knew I was quite as »•] AN ARMED EXPEDITION 215 safe as in Pall Mall. But when we went to Passtum there seemed more substance in the smoking-room talk. It made my soldier-friends keener than ever on the excursion, but they took their campaigning precautions, and of course our vetturino raised his charges. We were duly equipped with revolvers and ammunition, and it was arranged that in the cover where the last capture had came off, we should go on foot, and send a vedette in advance of the main body. We might have saved our money and spared our trouble. At each turn of the road there were patrols of mounted gend- armerie — magnificent-looking men, though, like all the troops of King Bomba, most reliable in cere- monial parade ; furthermore, there were pickets of light cavalry, and for once the solitude of his temples in the plague-stricken swamps was enlivened by the camp-fire songs of soldiers under canvas in the colonnades of the fane of the Sea-god. As was then the fashion, in response to diplomatic representations, the Neapolitans had shut the door when the horse was stolen, and they were mount- ing guard over the mosquitoes when the brigands had scattered to their mountain retreats. The direct route from Rome to Florence by Siena was relatively dull, though it lay through 216 THE VETTURINO [ O c CD a u o a; H *•] THE AUSTRIANS IN MILAN 237 quartered in Italy, and the scions of princely and wealthy houses were liberal of their money. There they differed from the military aristocracy of Prussia, who were for the most part poor, and who in garrison in German cities, such as Frank- fort and Mayence, swaggered about the streets with the airs of conquerors, and treated the bourgeoisie with supercilious contempt. Their respective characters were reflected in the colours of their uniforms — the sombre Prussian blue and the gay and glittering white. The Austrians in Milan, as in Verona, Vicenza, Padua, and Venice, had the cafes which they monopolised, their restaurants and the salons of hotels, from which the Italians kept aloof. The cleavage between the higher ranks was sharp and deep ; but the Italian ladies were inclined to look with kindly eyes on the light-hearted Teutons and Magyars, and it seemed strange that there were not quarrels and love tragedies. But amorous intercourse with the fair sex was confined to the exchange of oeillades, and such a thing as a mixed marriage was unfortu- nately unheard of. What struck the stranger was that the foreigners did their dragooning gently and to the sound of music. Their admirable bands charmed the sullen spirits of the Italians, who 238 CITIES OF NORTHERN ITALY [chap. delight in melody. I remember that specially impressed me at Verona, a gloomy city, with sombre streets paved with cobble-stones, and dark alleys odoriferous with unspeakable filth. The sight- seeing of the morning had been rather a dreary business ; the amphitheatre and the many monu- ments of remote antiquity, the tombs of the Scaligers, the memories of Dante eating the bitter bread of the exile, and of that unhappy love affair of Romeo and Juliet were not specially enlivening. I came back to the early table d'hote at the inn, and the long and indifferently -lighted salon was not out of keeping with a town that had the air of a charnel-house. But the upper half of the long table was reserved ; there came the clash of spurs and the clank of sabres on the stone staircase. With the rush of jovial hussars, you were in a cheery military mess. A white-haired colonel took the chair, and was the most hilarious of the company. The regimental band was playing a light selection below the windows ; the civilians who dropped in to dine brightened up, and yielded to the influence, and for once I saw Italians on sociable terms with the foreigners. Florence was the brightest of Italian cities, Naples not excepted. The city of the factions and *■] FLORENCE OF GRAND DUKES 239 street fights, the birth-place of the Renaissance, and the centre of light and leading under the Medicis, was lively as ever five-and-forty years ago, and intellectual to boot. When the rest of Italy was groaning under foreign rule, under the abuses of the Papal regime and the brutalities of the Neapolitan Bourbons, Florence was flourishing under the beneficent rule of its Grand Dukes. Always volatile and prone to emeutes and revolution, the Florentines wel- comed the annexation to Piedmont, though they had sent few soldiers into the battle-field. In 1860 I happened to drive into Florence on the very day when the fall of the dynasty was finally recognised. Our carriage crossed the Piazza della Signoria when the workmen were taking down the Grand Ducal arms from the facade of the Uffizi Palace. Recognising our nationality, they turned to grin and wave their hands, in assurance of English sympathy with their liberation. In the evening there were fireworks in the Cascine, and the lights of a brilliant illumination were flashed back from the bosom of the Arno. Well, the Florentines have had their will; they have seen their city crowned the capital, and then abandoned ; and perhaps, like the Milanese, they 240 CITIES OF NORTHERN ITALY [cH ap. have come to realise that they have changed King Log for King Stork. They were always liberally inclined, and they are still tolerably loyal, but the taxation has increased six-fold since they sent Leopold II. on his travels. He had ample private revenues, and spent them freely, and nothing could be pleasanter than his cultured little court, where all were welcomed who came decently introduced. The Florence of those days was a city of quiet gaiety, a museum of antiquity that had scarcely been tampered with, and an unsullied dream of beauty. Its charms had inspired the English poets from Milton to Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Everywhere you came on the monuments of medievalism blending and contrasting with the signs of modern progress. There were the palaces which were the strongholds of the great nobles, when in their fortified quarters they shared the city among them, as the Barons of the Campagna in medieval Rome. Luca Pitti, in especial, seems to have built for eternity, with masses of rugged stone, stupendous as the blocks of the pyramids. Hard by, the Porta Santa Maria, leading to the unique Ponte Vecchio, glittered with the show of the shops in the Palais Royal, but with treasures ' - The Mercato Vecchio — Florence (now destroyed). To face p. 240 x] LEVER IN FLORENCE 241 of age and price in place of tinsel and trumpery. Charles Lever hit it off happily in his " Daltons," and no man knew Florence better. I have seen him there, by the way, when he dropped in daily at Donay's, when he loved to get up a little dinner at the Luna, and when heading his cortege of children in the Cascine, in scarlet habits and mounted on piebald or cream-coloured ponies, he used to draw the eyes of all, as he liked to do, and was often mistaken for a circus master. In the " Daltons " he talks of " the little low shops, all glittering with gold and gems — the gorgeous tiaras of diamonds — the richly- enamelled cups and vases aside of the grotesque articles of peasant costume . . . the strings of Oriental pearls, all thrown about in a rich profusion." Florence, though light of heart, was not what could be called a lightsome city. Anciently it had been crowded within its walls, and like all southern towns the object was to exclude the sunshine from the narrow streets, with their obtruding upper stories and projecting eaves. It was the more exhilarating to emerge on the breezy Lung d'Arno, or on the bustling piazzas. What memo- ries were evoked in the Piazza della Signoria, picturesque as the Grande Place of Brussels, and 242 CITIES OF NORTHERN ITALY [chap. which had witnessed still more sinister tragedies ! Under the Loggia dei Lanzi were the master- pieces of the sculptors from Benvenuto Cellini to Canova, all " standing naked in the open air," like those that adorned the groves of Blarney. There was the Piazza di Santa Croce, before the Valhalla of Italian immortals — Dante, Galileo, Michel Angelo, Machiavelli, Alfieri, and many another. Yet looking down on what some one then styled " the smokeless city " from the heights of Fiesole — where, by the way, you could buy the style of baron for a few score of florins — everywhere you saw the grey of the buildings relieved by the dark foliage of oak and cypress. Then it was framed in a setting of terraced olive gardens, of gleaming white balustrades, of marble fountains and of sculptured figures, which had a marvellously attractive effect in the distance, though they may have been sur- passed by the Perseus and the David of the Loggia dei Lanzi. These summer residences wore the signs of abounding prosperity. The lands of the nobles were lightly taxed, and the Grand Duke, if he kept open house, set no example of prodigality. But Florence had been the cradle of successful banking and speculative finance, and the three *-J FLORENTINE PROSPERITY 243 balls of the magnificent Medicis are still the signs of the pawnbrokers. The Buendelmonti, the leaders in many a bloody street broil, amassed their enormous riches by fortunate loans. In Corsica they became the Buonapartes who gave birth to Napoleon, and Napoleon might have rivalled the Rothschilds had he turned his genius to money - broking. Wages were good, and living was cheap. The artistic artisan was much in demand, with the jewellery and mosaic workers of the Ponte Vecchio. In no capital, perhaps, could a foreign bachelor so happily combine com- fort with economy if he went into apartments. I always put up at the Hotel d'Arno, where the charges were far from extortionate. But if I went of a morning to the Cafe Donay, the fashionable restaurant, as I often did, I could breakfast for half the money. Donay 's was famous for ices and for coffee ; in the latter respect it has lamentably fallen off in these latter days. In the afternoons it was crowded, to be deserted when the gay world was driving down the Via Tornabuoni and setting its face towards the Cascine. In the giro of car- riages and riders there you saw simply everybody ; you flirted and gossiped and made arrangements for the evening, to the songs of the nightingales, amid 244 CITIES OF NORTHERN ITALY [chap. the appeals of the flower girls. Talking to some fair Florentine, it was difficult to decline the offer of a bouquet, and impossible to haggle over price. At worst the flowers were even less expensive than the theatre stalls, which cost next to nothing. There were some dozen of theatres, great and small, and though they filled from pit to gallery, the puzzle was how the managers could run them to a profit. But the leading members of stock companies were modest in their claims, and the minor lights, supers, and figurantes were paid a mere trifle. In 1863 Victor Emmanuel shifted his capital from Turin to Florence, and the Tuscans began crowing triumphantly. A great future was assured them ; rents rose at a terrific rate, and the building boom broke out in all its fury. Many a local speculator had to rue those golden gleams. So Adolphus Trollope, in his " Reminiscences," gives an object-lesson in the fluctuation of prices, when he tells what he spent on a suburban villa, and the comparative trifle for which he threw it away. In the temporary descent of the Vandals from Piedmont, many a fair tree was felled and many a shady grove was grubbed ; and lasting memorials of the passage of the barbarians were the demolition of the ancient walls and the ■a. O C U O o IS o o > a o a. 0) H *•] SURVIVAL OF MIDDLE AGES 245 "restoration" of the venerable Gothic front of Santa Croce. Yet, to use an expressive phrase, the Florentines have always kept a stiff upper lip, and what specially struck a shrewd American observer was that they still dressed as they used to do, and they had always dressed well. It is to be suspected that, like the Neapolitans, who sun themselves on the Chiaia, if the fashionables make a fair show abroad, they must pinch at home. There is still one survival of mediaeval manners which links the present with the past of Lorenzo and Savonarola. The masked brothers of the Misericordia still go their nightly rounds, bearing the bier to the cemetery, chanting solemn requiems, and illuminating street and alley with the flare of their smoking torches. But in New Florence, as in Paris, the naming or re-naming of the streets are indicative of revolution and poli- tical change, and as you can whistle up a cab or take a tramcar in the Piazza della Signoria, so you drive along the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, the Via Garibaldi, and the Via Cavour. Pisa and Padua, stagnating in their social back- waters, are still dead-alive as the stranded cities of the Zuyder Zee. In Pisa I remember the diffi- culty of getting a circular note cashed at the 246 CITIES OF NORTHERN ITALY [chap. banker's, when the chief had prolonged his siesta, giving orders not to be disturbed, and when his clerk had apparently taken an indefinite furlough, leaving only the house - porter in charge. It seemed as if the city had been sleeping for centuries. To the English stranger it was haunted by the memories of Byron and Shelley, Trelawney and Leigh Hunt. Going literally a little further afield, carried back by the recollec- tions of the glorious past of the trading and fighting republic, you breathed the air of the charnel-house in the unrivalled group of ecclesi- astical monuments. The leaning tower seemed to symbolise the maritime rival of Genoa totter- ing towards its fall. In the cloisters of the Campo Santo, on the sacred soil brought as ballast from the Holy Land on the galleys, were Orcagna's ghastly and ghostly frescoes of Hell, Death, and Corruption. Like Melrose, it was a scene to be visited by moonlight, and the least im- pressionable of mortals could not resist the in- fluences of that haunted, suburban solitude. You felt almost sacrilegious as you sat and smoked a cigar on the steps of the Baptistery in the flooding brilliance of an Italian moon ; and the croaking of the frogs in the Campo Santo was a more x] PADUA OF THE BLACK ART 24? appropriate symphony than the song of the nightin- gales that enlivened the Cascine of Florence. I was never tempted to linger in Padua. The oldest of the cities of Northern Italy, the seat of one of the most famous of mediaeval univer- sities, had still a depressing atmosphere of academic gloom, and suggested a vast convent abandoned by the monks, with its buildings like Pietro Cozzo's palace in the market-place — solid structures as the giant cities of Bashan, but superficially fallen out of repair. Everywhere, for those who cared to seek for them, were the traces and relics of illustrious men — of great scholars and churchmen, of sculptors and painters. With the loggie and dark rows of arches sup- porting the houses, even in its palmy days Padua must have worn a sepulchral aspect, and was a congenial resort for the professors of the Black Art, who held converse with the powers of Evil, at once their masters and their slaves. I own that the greatest attraction was the Cafe Pedrocchi, for in its decay and in the middle of the 19th century, Padua boasted the most renowned and the most palatial of those essentially Italian establishments. It had risen on the ruins of a Roman edifice, and may have eclipsed the splendours of the palace it 248 CITIES OF NORTHERN ITALY [chap. had replaced. Nowhere else could you spend two or three coppers on coffee or iced lemonade in Arabesque halls that suggested the wonders of the Arabian Nights ; and Pedrocchi, who made a fortune — no one knows exactly how — has left a name to go down to posterity with that of Lorenzo the Magnificent. From Padua to Venice was but a stride, skim- ming over land and lagoon. It was pleasant to break the journey at Padua, for if you travelled from Lombardy without a halt, the line was one of the hottest, the dustiest, and the chalkiest in Europe. You were always aggravating an un- quenchable thirst with iced glasses of all manner of seductive innocent drinks. It was a delight- ful relief to emerge on the lagoons, and inhale the breezes from the Adriatic. The Dogana used to give a deal of bother, for there were heavy custom exactions on the frontier, and there was searching scrutiny at the Venetian octroi. But there were no steam-launches in waiting at the station ; you stepped into a gondola, and were at once in Old Venice. The black, hearse-like cover- ing of the gondola was mournfully significant, and it was a marvel that the Austrians did not suppress it. Milan was wealthy, and Florence both affluent *J A MOURNING CITY 249 and gay ; but Venice was poverty-stricken, and veritably a city of mourning. " Silent rowed the tuneless gondolier," and the melancholy of his warning cry of " Stali, Prene ! " as he shaved each sharp turn, was harmonious as the moan of the screech-owl in some shattered abbey. And when I first saw the city it was in the height of a cholera epidemic, when most of the well-to-do citizens had fled, and when death was busy in the poorer quar- ters. I put up then at the Hotel de FEurope on the Grand Canal — a capital house, with an ephemeral existence. My bedroom was on the ground floor ; there was not a strip of ledge between wall and water, and in the nights of a sultry July, of course, I slept with the windows open. In the heat it would have been hard to sleep soundly in any case, and constantly I was roused by the plash of the oar. If you rose to look out you saw no cortege ; in a single gondola, or with a couple at most, the corpse was being carried to the burial. In these circumstances, perhaps from the ro- mantic point of view, you saw Venice as Venice was to the best advantage. Then the factitious gaiety — the rouge on the pallid cheeks of the moribund — had disappeared. The Austrians, who spent money freely in happier times, went about 250 CITIES OF NORTHERN ITALY [<***• their military duties gravely, and though the bands still played of an afternoon in the Place of St Mark, they played to the officers, the waiters and the pigeons. But at no time under Austrian rule was Venice contented, or even resigned. The foreign yoke pressed upon it with exceptional rigour. Milan, Florence and Verona drew their wealth from the rich lands of Lombardy and Tuscany. Trade flourished there, and could afford to pay the moderate taxes. Venice had thriven by commerce, and now the commerce was dead. The bar was silting up ; the capacious harbour was shipless ; Trieste, favoured by Government, had drained away the trade. I said that most of the well-to-do had fled, but the majority of the middle classes struggled on from hand to mouth, and could not afford to go. Taine, who looked closely into matters, gave some suggestive figures ; he says that the desponding people had ceased to work ; that of 120,000 inhabitants, a third were on the pauper roll. The taxes were crushing. A house with a rental of 1000 florins paid a tax of 400. In general, real estate was rated at a third of its receipts. Most oppressive and unjust of all was the income-tax. The merchant paid the esti- I CD o 'S CD > a (/I < *] CRUSHING TAXES 251 mated twentieth of his profits ; his employes the twentieth of their salaries. The estimated gains might prove a loss, but he was mulcted in advance, and could not recover. If he had underestimated, he incurred a heavy penalty, and he was beset by spies and informers, who were rewarded on his conviction. It is difficult, indeed, to explain the exceptional severity of the Austrian dealings with Venice ; for elsewhere they adjusted the burden to the back, and soothed the patriotic susceptibilities of their Italian subjects, if they did not conciliate their affections. For the resentful animosity of the Venetians of all classes was the result and not the cause of that grievous oppression. As to that sullen animosity there could be no mistake. When I was there with the cholera, all the theatres were closed ; but in ordinary times, in the city of Goldoni, the drama had been dying, like everything else. In the Milan of Radetzsky, as in Florence of the Grand Dukes, many theatres were overcrowded every evening. In Venice all the leading houses were closed, and notably the famous Fenice. The manager might have filled galleries and pit, but his company must have played to empty boxes. In Milan and Naples, poor nobles pinched at home that they might hire 252 CITIES OF NORTHERN ITALY [«•» a box or stall at the Scala or the San Carlo. Any noble Venetian would have been sent to Coventry who showed his face at the theatre. In that city of stagnant waters and stifling back slums it was not in human nature to shun the Place of St Mark's on a summer evening, though the detested foreigner furnished the music. Florian's and the other cafes overflowed on to the pavement. But Austrians and Italians kept jealously apart, re- signed to biting their gloves, because duelling was forbidden, but scowling across the way in impotent anger. Thanks to the indefatigable brush of Canaletti, every gallery in Europe presents us with panoramas of the Queen of the Adriatic. To Englishmen the dome of Santa Maria della Salute is familiar as that of St Paul's, and they know the Riva Schiavoni as well as the Thames Embankment. But the sea- borne city must be seen that we may realise the splendour of her past. In Amsterdam, as in Venice, untold sums have been sunk to secure a foundation ; that was a work of necessity. But in utilitarian Amsterdam the superstructures are of brick ; in Venice everything is of marble, brought from a distance, regardless of cost. Palaces, churches, bridges were of marble, and in the floating city, ■ o • »-< c > C O a a jo 03 o c cS *J VENETIAN ARCHITECTURE 253 moored on the lagoons, the architecture is everlast- ing as the Coliseum or the Pyramids. Palaces and public buildings are adorned and embroidered with an exuberant wealth of carving, with colonnades, balconies, gilded cornices, and frettings of fantastic Oriental lacework. As in the rock temples of Petra, there is the flush of colours, and the sobriety of grey and white is relieved by porphyry and serpentine and rose-coloured blocks, flashing back the sunbeams. The Place of St Mark, where the Byzantine blends with the Gothic, with its domes, minarets, and Saracenic arabesques is a glittering show of jewellery en suite, where the cathedral church with its mosaics, its marble columns, and its bas-reliefs, is the central and most lustrous gem. It is a museum of trophies won by the republic in war and trade ; a Pantheon of memories rather than of tombs and monuments, for, unlike Santa Croce of Florence, few of the great lie buried there. It is only the chief among many churches, which if not so absolutely unique, are scarcely less gorgeous. The Campanile is gone, seen from afar as a land- mark by seamen being piloted through channels and shoals — it is rising again from its ruins — but great as was the fall, and heavy the loss, a single edifice is scarcely to be missed where there are so 254 CITIES OF NORTHERN ITALY [chap. many to marvel at. The Grand Canal, winding in a graceful beauty line, like one of those sinuous sea- channels, is a waterway, without a vestige of side pavement, between historical palaces. The Foscari, the Balbi, the Grimaldi, the Moccrenigo — each has its deathless name, commemorating some race of warriors and statesmen, who traded wholesale in the wares of the world, and glorified commerce in the age of chivalry. They annexed kingdoms, colonised barbarous islands, constructed commodious harbours, financed fighting kings and adventurers on usurious terms, and, when occasion offered, never missed the chance of making profitable " corners " in silks and spices. The whole story of Venice is a romance of marvels or miracles. She sunk her foundations in malarious lagoons. She traded in piracy in an unprecedented fashion, for she seized upon territories in place of ships. She based the most stable of constitutions on tyranny, oppression and suspicion. She made ostentatious display of her vast wealth, and flaunted her luxury in the face of rapacious and warlike neighbours ; she trusted her defence to the arms of mercenaries ; yet through all the vicissitudes of European countries, through the incursions of the Eastern and Northern bar- barians, through the wars of the Middle Ages, *■] THE DAYS OF DISSIPATION 255 through the strife of the Emperors with the French for the dominion of Italy, the little state still treated on equal terms with Pontiffs, Kings, and Kaisers, and the corrupt oligarchy maintained its independence till Napoleon remodelled the map of Europe. By the law of retribution, the Venetians have been expiating the sins and follies of their fathers. In the days of its decadence, fallen from power, Venice was wealthy still, and the most voluptuous and licentious of cities. The scandalous memoirs of Casanova, those of Goldoni, and the travels of President de Broues, are as true to the life as the paintings of Canaletti. With as many churches in proportion to the population as Rome itself, the Venetians were Pagan and Epicurean as the Flor- entines of the Renaissance. The city was wholly given over to gaiety and dissipation. There was banqueting with the blaze of costumes and the glitter of golden plate, as we see it in the paintings of Paul Veronese and Tintoretto. The marriage vows were made only to be laughed at, and such troops of courtesans as followed the armies of Wallenstein or Tilly were crowded nightly to- gether under the colonnades of St Mark. The carnival lasted for half the year. The mask, the 256 CITIES OF NORTHERN ITALY [chap. domino and the covered gondola lent themselves to intrigue. Though husbands seldom troubled to vindicate their honour, there was no more lucrative trade than that of the professional bravo. Ladies of noble houses were carried off by gallants who believed in the backing of autocratic oligarchs. Byron may have made a fanfaronnade of the follies that clouded his genius, but his letters show that even in his time the manners of the city had changed but little. When garrisoned by the Austrians it wore externally a more decorous aspect; and now, as when Augustus Hare wrote some twenty years ago, it is one of the most ostentatiously religious cities in Italy, where prayer never ceases and the Sacrament is continually exposed. Whether the heart had changed was another question, but fifty years ago Venice was wearing the garments of heaviness, and repenting in sackcloth, though since then she has brightened up consider- ably. Then, as the gondola glided over the Grand Canal, the feeling was, " How have the mighty fallen ! " Nowhere were the evidences of degrada- tion more conspicuous. The stately palaces had been going a-begging ; here and there one had been swept, garnished and decorated by a Russian «■] DEGRADED PALACES 257 prince, or a retired prima donna who had made fortune in foreign lands. The grandest and most capacious had been appropriated for barracks ; under the talons of the double-headed eagle of the Hapsburgs their soldiers hung out their washing, and the balconies were tapestried with shirts and socks. The exquisite Casa Doro — not the House of Gold, but named after the Dori who had owned it — was not the least squalid. Next to the Lion's Mouth, always open to such anonymous denun- ciations as had sent Alp, the Adrian renegade, to take service with the Turks, the most sombre memories were evoked by the Orfano Canal, familiar in the olden time as the Bosphorus, with nocturnal tragedies of the sack and dagger, and where murdered corpses, " unhouseled and un- annealed," were consigned to the depths of the stagnant waters. When you longed to stretch the legs and have a breath of fresh air, it was a pleasant change to the Lido, the island-breakwater which fences Venice against the sea. The stretch of sands where Byron used to ride had disappeared, like the better part of his favourite pine-forest at Ravenna. Now there were vineyards and gardens, and in the early spring the arcades were sheeted R 258 CITIES OF NORTHERN ITALY [chap. in pink and white blossoms. But beyond there was still a long sweep of beach, solitary and silent, except for the cries of the sea-fowl. Another souvenir of the former solitude was the graveyard of the Jews, to which the bodies of the accursed race had been hurried ignominiously from their ghetto. The site was strangely appropriate to the fate of the chosen people, who scorned the promises and invoked the curse. It may have suggested to Byron the most pathetic of the " Hebrew Melodies." When I stumbled on it unexpectedly, I was reminded of another resting-place of the Hebrew outcasts, even more romantically situated, though the surroundings are very different. Riding over the downs from the Sweet Waters of Europe to Pera, you exchanged the light canter over the springy turf for an unfenced collection of slippery paving-stones. When you looked at the fresher of them, you saw they were mossy grave slabs, in- scribed with Oriental characters. Elsewhere, and away from that beach, there was nothing but life on the Lido. Little steamers, overcrowded as penny boats on the Thames, were plying at short in- tervals from the Riva dei Schiavoni ; tables were at a premium in the verandahs of the cafes and osterias ; minstrels, puppet shows, and mendicants 1 SEA-GIRT AND UNCHANGEABLE 259 were gathering a harvest of soldi, and, in short, the scene was a Venetian version of Ramsgate sands in the season, as painted by Frith. But unlike Rome or any other city, Venice can never be essentially changed. The water sets bounds which cannot be passed. There will always be the labyrinth of winding canals ; of alleys shut in by towering buildings, with the light filtering down from strips of blue sky. There must always be the cramped breathing-places — the arbitrarily-shaped cwwpi before the churches, imitations or parodies of the Place of St Mark. Unless razed to the pile foundations and abso- lutely rebuilt, Venice of United Italy must remain the Venice of the Doges. CHAPTER XI OLDER ROME The Dome of St Peter's is a landmark in the memory. It dominates everything in the environs of Rome, like the roof of Cologne Cathedral rising over the Rhine plain ; like the spire of Strasburg soaring over the flats stretching beneath the Berg- strasse ; like " King Ida's Castle," which breaks the horizon from each height in eastern Northumbria. But St Peter's has a sacred and significant attrac- tion of its own, for it is the symbol of the strange triumph of the Cross, of the rise of the Popes on the fall of the Caesars. You had seen the Dome in your dreams, and in many a painting and engraving. Doubtless, when it dawned on the corporeal vision, the most impressive approach was from Civita Castellana, when rolling southward in the caleche or in the lumbering diligence, the giant proportions gradually grew on you, and you slowly realised the colossal bulk. The Pyramids would seem a 260 s (2 c o s o o -G u rt O J-. < si H > chap, xi.] ST PETER'S 261 sheer folly of the Pharaohs, were it not for their stupendous size, but the great basilica of Chris- tendom is a masterpiece. The basilica keeps growing upon you till you begin slowly to compre- hend ; but it is only when you pass the threshold, and stand gazing into the area of the sublime interior, that the limbs of the cherubs supporting the stone basin of holy water give you some vague scale for the measurement of the superb proportions. I did not sight the Dome by daylight when posting from Civita Castellana, though the sight became familiar afterwards in each ride and walk in Rome's romantic environs. I landed at Civita Yecchia, and in the circumstances doubt if I lost anything, for the sight came as a surprise, and as an almost oppressive sensation. The time had dragged, there was a tedious prelude, I was looking forward to supper and bed, and had forgotten all about St Peter's. After a rough passage, we had cast anchor in the harbour early in the afternoon. Though we could not moor to them, thanks to the absence of dredging, before the quarantine officers signed a clean bill of health, and while the passports were subjected to search- ing scrutiny, we had ample time to admire the 2G2 OLDER ROME t CHAI> broad wharves and massive piers, constructed by the munificence of Pontifices Maximi, who had left their mark and superscription on magnificent edifices, woefully out of repair. The wharves were deserted, as those of Ferrol, once the great military port and naval arsenal of the Spain of the Indies, but when I saw it, sheltering a solitary corvette and a gunboat. The only imports to Civita Vecchia then were coal from Newcastle and groceries from Leghorn. As for exports, the rich soil of the Campagna was mostly lying fallow, and Rome did rather more than consume its own corn and oil. You landed in a boat, as was almost invariably the case at Italian ports, and that was the first opportunity for extortion. There was a warm greeting from a rabble of beggars, who over- whelmed you with blessings, to be changed into curses when, turning a deaf ear, you were ushered by the Papal gendarmes — very fine-looking fellows they were — into the custom-house. If you were wise, you began the system of corruption which carries you comfortably through Southern Europe. If, worried by sea-sickness and the wrangle with the harbour sharks, you declined to bribe, it was the worse for you. In any case the custom officials knew their country-folk, and your luggage had to "•] A ROMAN POST-CHAISE 263 be corded and plombe at a fixed tariff, in a currency of which you were childishly ignorant. Out of the doors of the dogana, you were by no means clear. Though your passport had been duly stamped in London by a pontifical agent, that charge was only good for disembarking, and now it must be vised again for the capital. By this time the twilight was darkening — a rapid process in those parts. The inns of Civita Vecchia were detestable as they were dear, and you had to make your bargain for a conveyance. For something like twenty scudi, as I should say, we secured a ramshackle old chaise, with ragged leathern cushions and cracked windows. It was driven by a sallow postilion, in high jack- boots and gorgeous yellow jacket, with a broad hat adorned with a peacock's feather ; it was drawn by three screws, harnessed abreast, with scarcely a spare or a sound leg in the lot. Each had his peal of bells, and they were fantastically caparisoned, with nodding plumes attached to the head-stalls. The traces were rope, which was convenient, as they could be easily spliced when they snapped. The luggage was secured behind with lock and chain, and off we rattled at a most unexpected pace. As Dumas remarked of his chevaux morts at Naples, " Les morts vout vite." 264 OLDER ROME t CHAP Soon a brilliant moon silvered the landscape. To the right was the expanse of reed-fringed sea, to the left the eternal line of stiff ox-fences, with the grey Campagna lying in phantom-like shadow behind. At Palo, half way, we changed horses, and it was time. Kinglake wrote of the " splen- dour and havock of the East " ; here you had further glimpses of the squalor and decay of the Papal States. The square, grim fortress of the Odes- calchi frowned on a miserable osteria and a rickle of tumbling out-buildings. The ostlers who led out the new team were hollow-cheeked, fever- stricken spectres, for Palo is a solitary settlement in an inferno of agues and fevers. Thenceforward, even to Rome, was neither house nor hovel. Still the ox-fences, now on either hand — and stiff fencing that seaward country was, when the Roman hounds took westward, instead of holding to the east. The demons of the malaria seemed to take palpable shape, as the mists wreathed up from the stagnant pools in the hollows. What with cognac and cigars to correct the damp, the drive, nevertheless was not too disagree- able, and when we looked out of the window, ever ahead like a pole-star was the brilliant swinging lamp, in an omnibus chartered by a party of friends. m] A WAKING DREAM 265 Their high spirits had given us a fresh start from Palo. A young lady and the more youthful chaperon who had her in charge, were to be the married and maiden belles of the Roman season. Then we went to sleep, and then we woke up. We were at the gate of Rome, and parleying with the guardians. I had but vague notion of the topo- graphy, and only knew that we were being jolted over rough stones. Of a sudden we swept round a corner upon smoother paving ; there was the plash and murmur of falling water. I looked out and back on the vast facade of the noble basilica ; there was the Egyptian obelisk, towering over the fountains enclosed in the double sweep of Bernini's colonnades, under the falling shadows of the Vatican. Still half asleep, it was a dream realised, and such a sensation as one seldom experiences. So, I repeat, that it was a far more effective entry than if we had been demoralised by a distant view, and deliberately prepared to be confronted with St Peter's. But the postilion was cracking his whip, and on we went, with sensation succeeding sensation. We rolled along the banks of the yellow Tiber, though then it was flashing in silver in the moonbeams. We skirted the Trastevere, and crossed the bridge, 266 OLDER ROME [chap under the shadow of Hadrian's mausoleum ; we dived into a network of narrow streets, dimly lighted below by oil lamps flickering at the cross- ings or corners, or before shrines of the Virgin and the saints, till we were landed at the Angleterre in the Bocca di Leone, which, as befitted a Roman hostelry, had an antique cachet of its own. The Rome of the Popes was a city by itself, and never can we look upon the like again. The wrecks of the classic past have passed through the hands of the jerry-builder, and new brooms have been sweeping away old abuses, with little regard to the sanctity of time-honoured associations. In the veritable Rome superstition reigned supreme, and the priestly conservatism inclined to retrogres- sion. The city entrenched upon the Seven Hills stood impregnable to the iconoclasts and their advanced ideas. The malaria guarded the out- works in the environs, and it was symbolical that the Church set its face against tillage, and objected to breaking up the pastoral wastes which nourished flocks of ragged sheep and bred fevers and agues. There were no railways, no tramcars, only a few struggling gas lamps in the Corso. In the matter of internal transport, though fares were really ridi- culously cheap, you had to drive your bargains in xi] THE PAPAL HIERARCHY 267 Oriental fashion. Now you can go from the Pincian to St Peter's for three half-pence, but I doubt whether the change is for the better. Sen- timent says the last venerated shrine of all that was antiquated and effete should have been cherished as an unique object of pilgrimage. Older Rome was a strange blending of pomp and misery, of wealth and squalor. The princes of the Church were blazing in scarlet or robed in purple and fine linen. You saw the cardinals in their lumbering coaches of state, with the crimson umbrella laid over the roof, being helped out beyond the gates by their acolytes to take a stroll with two or three footmen as an escort. They represented the apostles who had carried their lives in their hands — the primitive missionaries who had been sent forth without purse or scrip or a change of raiment. Battalions of monks — Franciscans, Benedictines, Dominicans — were congregated and disciplined in their barrack - convents. Some of these orders were richly endowed ; others, like Edie Ochiltree, were licensed beggars, and strong in the sanction of gown, badge, and sandals, intolerable nuisances they were. Nothing showed the strength of spiritual ascendency more than that these questers penetrated into kitchens on rare festal 268 OLDER ROME [chap. occasions, and forced grasping Roman cooks to sacrifice their perquisites. They brought back baskets and pails filled with such incongruous fragments as furnished the plat de luxe, to which Rudolph treated the chorineur in Sue's " Mysteries of Paris." It may have been partly matter of policy, but it must be admitted that the richer fraternities were generous in alms or dole-giving. Every day at noon and night the group of regular pensioners gathered round the convent door. So I remember once in Naples turning a corner out of a dark alley into a broad conventual piazza, when I intruded on a party seated on the pavement, where hunches of bread and steaming basins of soup were being served out to all and sundry. The guests were clutching the basins to their bosoms, and snarling at each other like hungry hyenas ; for the Church fostered beggary as it systematically discouraged industry. There were no openings in liberal professions, and little legiti- mate trade ; of course, petty commerce was indis- pensable. The monks, though knocked up at all hours from prime to matins, had a fellow-feeling for the idle ; like the Neapolitan lazzaroni, they were content with little, so long as they were not com- pelled to work for it. Their absolution, following xi] INSANITATION 269 confession, covered a multitude of sins. You always fancied in those days that the cloaked and muffled figure, possibly guarding his mouth against the noxious night air, might be a bandit or bravo, ready to turn his hand to anything for half-a-dozen scudi. Antonelli, the all-powerful Secretary of State, might be supposed to be not out of sym- pathy, with the bandits, for, as About bitterly remarked in the " Question Romaine," he came of a robber-race at Somnino, and had brought pre- datory traditions to the Papal administration. In that book of About's we have the best pictures of the Rome of Pio Nono, as in his " Tolla " he touches happily the humour and pathos of the social life of the aristocracy, who were kept in tight leading-strings by the clergy. There was no sanitary board, and the filth of the smaller streets was indescribable. The Corso, the Babuino, and the foreign quarters were, com- paratively, exceptions. Elsewhere each Roman citizen did what was good in his own eyes ; when the refuse thrown out of his abode was not washed down the gutters to the Tiber, it accumulated in odoriferous heaps before his door. These were fre- quented through the day by lean dogs like those of " The Siege of Corinth," and after nightfall the squalling cats held high carnival. 270 OLDER ROME [chap. But there was the other side of the picture. Everywhere, outside the churches, was the pic- turesqueness of decay, and the terror and solemnity of death reigned in the surrounding Campagna. The crumbling walls had taken the grey tints of time : the tiled roofs were green - moulded like a ripe Stilton ; the long walls that shut in vast garden spaces, as you ascended to the Lateran or the Quirinal, were tapestried with orange mosses and fringed witli drooping ferns. The fountains, with their time-stained marble and groups of dilapidated figures, might have been haunted by the naiads of the ancient mythology, when the gossiping washerwomen had left their work, and the laughing girls had ceased to draw water. The gardens of the suburban villas, like those of the Doria Pamphili, were lonesome enough ; but the sense of solitude culminated in the Farnese Gardens, in the heart of the city — the Palace of the Caesars — where you might listen after nightfall to the hooting of the owls, and hear the bark of the prowling dog-fox. Long since they have been cut up for excavations which have enriched the museums. Then you forced your way through tangled thickets of thorny scrub and luxurious weeds, now and again breaking your knees against some hidden «•] PROGRESS AND DESECRATION 271 mass of masonry, or stumbling into a pit, at eminent peril of a fractured leg. Then the Forum, like Nineveh when Layard first saw it, stood many a foot above its present level, and was an unopened treasure-house of possible research. Then Rome was begirt by its walls, and only accessible through its gates. There were villas in their garden parks, but no suburbs. The modern basilica of St Paul, with its glorious frescoes, standing far beyond the walls, was deserted in summer even by the acclimated clergy, exorcised from their quarter by the fiend of the malaria. From each eminence you looked out on a pic- turesque desolation that no other civilised country would have tolerated. Last time I was in Rome, after ordering breakfast at a hotel on the Quirinal, I strolled out to the portico of St John Lateran, commanding a superb view of the Campagna, skirted by the Albin Hills, gleaming with white towns and villages. That morning the view was shrouded in the wreaths of smoke from the chim- neys of a sugar bakery. A more gratifying sign of material progress, but as sadly out of touch with sentimental reminiscences, was the railway that sweeps round the walls, through tombs and aque- ducts and the cottages of artisans. In no pleasant 272 OLDER ROME [chap humour, I went back to breakfast, to be rubbed the wrong way still further. In sheer curiosity I had left my old friends of the Angleterre or Londres for one of the brand-new hotels. I knew well that the jerry-builder had been abroad, but here he had been doing his scamped work with a vengeance. In place of the massive, old, vaulted and pillared morning-room of the Angleterre, my meal was served in a lofty salon, where the ceiling was already cracking and falling. It was significant of everything that had been going on in that quarter. The speculator and company promoter, like the German Biblical critics, were destructive as Attila, but had no talent for construction. Old Rome, as the old stave says, will stand with the Coliseum and outlast the world. The new Rome of the kingdom is already in collapse, but the damage that has been done is inestimable and ineffaceable. I am no enthusiast for the old order, but laying reck- less hands on Rome was sacrilegious as restoring the Transfiguration or remodelling the Laocoon. As a single and striking example, look at the Villa Ludovisi. The proprietor, a conservative and a staunch clerical, was tempted by a price to sell his beautiful birthright to the builders. The shady cypress avenues were levelled, the stately palms The Ludovisi Gardens (now destroyed). To face p. 212 a] THE COLISEUM RESTORED 273 grubbed up and transported — I know not if they are now flourishing in other soil — the grand domain was given over to villadom, and it is small satis- faction to remember that the speculators have come to signal grief. The builders had done their worst in the Quirinal ; the walls of the city had fallen, like those of Jericho, to the blast of tin trumpets in deceptive prospectuses ; railway promoters had ruthlessly driven their iron road through aqueduct arches and venerable survivals of the Middle Ages, any one of which would have made the fortune of an English provincial town. But the greatest shock was the first glance at the renovated Coliseum. The Coliseum was the immemorial emblem of the stability of the Eternal City — " While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand " — and it was only wise to see to its strength, though it could never have gone to the ground like the Campanile of Venice. But it might have been buttressed with better material than the glaring red bricks, which give it the aspect of an American brewery or a Metropolitan tabernacle. The quarries whence the Flavian Caesars brought the blocks of grey travertine — they were quarried in turn by the barons of the S 274 OLDER ROME [ CHAP Campagna to construct their intra-mural fortresses in the days of anarchy — were still accessible. Yet bricks exposed to weather will take the tints of time, and with an embarrassed budget these buttresses might have been excusable. But there is neither excuse nor extenuation for the Vandalism which had a free hand in the interior. Forty years ago the vast amphitheatre was picturesque in its abandon, as the Palace of the Cassars or any rift in the Sabine hills. Forest trees had struck their roots deep in the fissures ; the stone benches that had been crowded with spectators of the shows were shrouded in patches of luxuriant jungle. There were hangings of maiden-hair and cushions of lichen. Within earshot of the noisy traffic in the thorough- fares, it was a refuge for shy, wild creatures, reminding one of the prophet's denunciation of the fall of Babylon the great. Foxes littered in the recesses of the vomitaria ; it was an aviary where the hawks were nesting with the doves ; and when the broken cooing of the cushats ceased in the gloaming, the nightingales began their serenade, and the owls answered the hooting of their kinsfolk on the Palatine. Dumas, with his dramatic instincts, could have chosen no better place for the noc- turnal meeting of Monte Cristo with his brigand xi] ROMAN GAIETIES 275 protege who kept house in the Catacombs. Whether you visited it alone when flooded by moonlight, or with a merry party when it was fitfully lit up by the flare of the torches, the most thoughtless must have had a long moment of pause, and the musings could never be effaced from the memory. But the new brooms made their sweep. It might have been well to thin the timber that was sapping the walls, but the wild flowers and the fragrant shrubs were ruthlessly grubbed up ; the birds were scared back to the reeds of the Campagna ; the snakes and the lizards had a rough time of it ; and now the romantic pilgrim has a bitter grievance against restorers who have conscientiously done their best to obliterate the sentimental. Eothen remarks on the difficulty of working up feelings of reverence at the appropriate moment. Assuredly it is more difficult to sustain them in a rush of worldly distractions. The young visitor to Papal Rome was thrown at once into a double life. There was an agreeable and rather select English society indulging in dances, dinners, and picnics. Some of the families were old residents ; others had returned, winter after winter, and they were in relations with Roman nobles or princes of the 276 OLDER ROME t CHA1> Church. Not a few of the great houses were impoverished, and neither Roman laymen nor clerics were famous for hospitality. But there were palaces which still kept up some shadow of the hereditary state, and there were receptions of cardinals which were always crowded. It was difficult to get the entree to the inner circle, but your English friends could pass you into the outer ring. It was well that you dined before you dressed, for you could not look for a supper. There was some feast of soul, but no flow of champagne; sobriety reigned supreme, and the refreshments were of the lightest. Yet men of light and leading were mixing in the motley crowd, and the gloom of the sombre reception halls was relieved by the blaze and sparkle of ancestral diamonds. At the cardinals' receptions cowled and corded monks elbowed the Church princes in their scarlet and the monsignori in purple. The ambassadors were covered with orders and resplen- dent with stars. Mr Lyons, then unofficial charge d'affaires, detached from Florence, was an ex- ception — when he could be persuaded to leave his rubber at the club, he often appeared in plain evening costume. Antonelli, the Secretary of the State, and its master, was then the cynosure of all a] ANTONELLI AND D' ANDRE A 277 eyes. No man had a more winning manner, or was more fluent with small-talk. He was wont to attach himself to one of the prettiest women ; and certainly he could pride himself on his success with the sex. Vain as a woman himself, his slender fingers were covered with gems, of which he had a remarkable collection, and he always thrust for- ward the silk-stockinged leg and the shapely foot in the diamond-buckled shoe. Cardinal d' Andrea was a rarer guest ; he headed the opposition and the reactionary section of the College. Had he lived, he would have had a fair chance of the triple crown ; but, indeed, as leader of the Liberals, he was so formidable a candidate that probably he would have been shelved for a nonentity. The Austrian and French Embassies were very gay. Countess Colleredo was the more select in her invitations, and I felt greatly flattered when I had an invitation to one of her brilliant fancy balls. Brilliant it was in every sense, for never on a gala night at any grand opera have I seen such a glorious flash of diamonds. Castellani, with whom I had afterwards a quiet talk at Vienna on the subject, had much to tell of these historic Roman stones, for he had had the re-setting of the most of them. The French legation opened its doors more 278 OLDER ROME [chap. widely. The Due de Grammont was then at the height of popularity, and his handsome person- ality was sympathetic. He deserved his reputation as the wittiest of viveurs ; afterwards they used to tell the story of his first supper with the Prince of Orange at the Cafe Anglais on the Boulevards. The unfortunate heir to the Netherlands had heard of his fame as a good companion, and had courted acquaintance. The Duke came to supper, and was respectfully reserved ; the Prince was disappointed and said as much. "Eh bien, Citron," said de Grammont, dropping his mask, and forthwith launched into a speech savouring of argot. But as Scott said of Cceur de Lion in " Ivanhoe," it is unsafe to trifle with royalty ; the Prince resented the sobriquet that stuck, and the intimacy was blighted in the bud. The Duke had married a lady of Highland birth, and he made English strangers specially welcome. He had the lighter gifts of the diplomatist, and was emphatically a man of the world ; but those who knew him fore- told he would come to grief should he plunge beyond his depth into politics. More amusing, perhaps, than those more exclusive receptions were the business balls given by Prince Torlonia — the Polonia of "Vanity Fair." Everyone was to be «•] MASKED BALLS 279 seen there, from diplomats and monseigneurs to the bird of passage who was introduced by a respectable letter of credit. In contrast to those of the old Roman nobles, the suppers were superb, and champagne flowed generously, though the quality may have run down between the upper and lower tables. The great banker was an enterprising Morgan, fighting with indifferent success against clerical reaction, Roman lack of enterprise, and formidable material obstacles. For he contem- plated and partially initiated grandiose schemes for the drainage of the marshes and the navigation of the lower Tiber. Then there were the charity balls given in the Palazzo Braschi and elsewhere under aristocratic patronage. They were masked and costume, and any one was free to come who could buy a ticket. As strange a medley as those at Covent Garden, they never degenerated into mad frolic, and no one would have dared to attempt the cancan. But scandal said they gave much occasion for adventure, and there could be no question about it, if boasters as to romantic bonnes fortunes were to be believed. In Rome there was always a great gathering of Bohemians. The artists of many nations flocked thither to study immortal works and sit at the feet 280 OLDER ROME [chap. of famous modern masters. The Cafe" Greco was their headquarters. Where and how they dined was often a mystery, but in spite of somewhat dissipated habits, they were an early-rising genera- tion, and always mustered at the Greco for early breakfast. They rallied again at supper-time, to smoke and chat into the small hours. A pic- turesque set of aesthetic ruffians they were, affect- ing brigand-like eccentricities of attire, generally bearded like the pard, with slouch hats shading their shaggy locks. But they looked a deal fiercer than they were, and really were a kindly set of fellows, ever ready to help a friend when the Mont de Piete failed him. So long as Gibson lived, the venerated doyen of the alien artist confraternity, they were kept in some sort of decent order. When he died, leaving no successor, I believe they rather broke loose. For, as in English journalism, where one man edits the Times or Spectator and another does penny-a-lining, there was a wide range in the guild. There were sculptors and painters of world-wide fame, whom all men delighted to honour ; whose studios were beset by eager sight hunters and who were embarrassed with commis- sions. When I was taken to see Gibson, he was at the height of his celebrity ; his tinted Venus «•! THE SCULPTORS 281 had provoked infinite discussion, though, like Hiram Power's Greek Slave, she had won hosts of fervent admirers. Then the old man's strength was beginning to break, and he was more difficult of approach than formerly. But I was fortunate in the acquaintance of Spence, his favourite pupil, and with Spence, who had the run of his studio, he was always ready to talk freely. Spence him- self had attained no small distinction, when his promising career was prematurely cut short. His studio was in the sinisterly named Via degli Incura- bili, and it was there I was introduced to the secrets of his art, and saw the moulding of amor- phous shapes which were to develop into classical beauty. He was busied on his great group of Moses drawn from the bulrushes. I was curious as to his models, and he made an appointment when I was to see a Roman beauty. I turned up duly at the time, and was sadly disappointed when the promised beauty was a smiling baby, who was lying — not sitting — for the lawgiver in his cradle. Two other associations I have with Spence, and they pleased me more. One was a rare specimen of good Roman wine, made with exceptional care in the farm where he passed his villegiatura ; the other, dishes of white truffles, simply boiled like 282 OLDER ROME [<***• potatoes, and served like potatoes with their skins in a snowy napkin. Another pupil of Gibson's, of whom he was very proud, was the American Miss Hosmer, whose seat on horseback was as sure as her hand on the graving tool, and who was never so happy as when doing the honours of the Cam- pagna at a gallop. I might have made much more of rather exceptional opportunities, but by acquaintance with Macdonald, Tenerani, and Shake- speare Wood, was confined to a visit to their respective studios. I might have made more, as I say, of my oppor- tunities, and the wanton waste of my first winter in Rome has always been matter of remorse, though I partially redeemed it in the next season. Picnics, days with the hounds, and long riding excursions are delightful in fine weather, but the winter climate is depressing and by no means conducive to effort. The skies are grey, and the air is heavy and enervating. If you neglect regular exercise, as I learned to my cost, you are likely to get lamentably out of condition. The comforts and company of the English club in the Via Condotti were a fatal snare. Unfortunately it was very convenient to the hotel in the Bocca di Leone. For Rome, with its vast extent and a] THE ENGLISH CLUB 283 straggling streets, had none of the bright Cafe resting-places of Paris. The Greco was a resort by itself, thirled, as the Scotch say, to its Bohemians, and far from attractive. The aboriginal establish- ments were sombre and squalid ; you swept the shrouding curtain aside to find slipshod waiters, sloppy tumblers, and deleterious drinks — the chocolate excepted. If you were a fastidious smoker, your nostrils were offended by the smell of foul tobacco, and the society in general econo- mised upon soap. The club, on the contrary, was run upon English lines, with attentive waiters and handsome furnishing. But the magnet that drew me was the whist-table. In early forenoon the tables were set out, and the stakes were seductively moderate. Moreover, you squandered valuable time in the best of company ; the most regular of habitue's was Mr Lyons. I see him now, slouching over his hand, and his piquant remarks and ready wit were always enlivening. The club carried you com- fortably on to dinner, and then came the table dlwte at the Angleterre — in the salon, with massive pillars encroaching on the table, and agreeably sug- gestive of the Eternal City. Thence there was an adjournment to the smoking-room before dressing for anything that might be going on in the 284 OLDER ROME [chap. evening. There was invariably a knot of cronies of similar tastes and pursuits, and strangers were made free of the company. One was always grateful for a good dinner given by English residents in apartments ; but, to tell the truth, the quiet evening entertainments, with music or charades, or " carpet dances " on marble floors, were decidedly dull. En revanche there was the resource of the theatre. There was nothing in Rome that could compare with the Scala of Milan, the Fenice of Venice, or the San Carlo of Naples. But you might hear the best singers, applaud the best actors, and see very passable pets of the ballet at fabulously low figures. At the fashion- able Apollo or the Valle you paid only three pauls (fifteen pence) as the price of a stall, and at the minor theatres the plebs had places in the gallery for two or three baiocchi. Future European celebrities made their debut in Italy, and the im- presario, who had to look closely to his gains, engaged singers and actors for a term of years. For those three pauls I have enjoyed the begin- nings of Ristori, who then almost confined herself to comedy, interpreting with sparkling vivacity the characters of Moliere and Goldoni. It was afterwards in Paris and London that she betook xi.] THE HOTELS 285 herself to tragedy. Above all, she excelled in the Elmire of " Tartuffe," and Story has remarked on that in his " Roba di Roma." The Angleterre was emphatically the bachelor's hotel, and very comfortable quarters. It was reasonable besides, which was more than could be said for the Europe, the favourite resort of wealthy families. When the Angleterre was full, which was frequently the case, I have lodged at the Londra, a house in the Piazza di Spagna, where the cheery view of the modern Forum was tempered by higher bills. It was at the Londra, by the way, that Monte Cristo put up when he had his interview with the protege he saved from the garotte, who conducted him with Franz d'Epinay to the Catacombs. All these hotels were of Rome and Roman; Pastrini, whom Dumas sketches with humorous realism, was the type of the old Roman landlord, ready to do any- thing for valued guests, so long as he could make his money out of them. My first dejeuner a la fourchette at the Angle- terre gave a discouraging idea of the Roman cuisine, though it chimed in with first impressions of the dead-alive city. What were served as filets de bceuf might have been buffalo steaks from the 286 OLDER ROME [™Ar marshes, and the vegetables of a ghastly green looked as if they might have been grown in a graveyard. But either we were out of luck or out of condition after a rackety sea-voyage, for, in reality, the cuisine was far from bad, and the markets were well supplied, especially with fruits and vegetables in summer and autumn. At all seasons, a stroll round the Piazza Navona, or in the precincts of the Pantheon, was intensely interesting to the sportsman and naturalist. Little could be said for the mutton and beef, but the game of all kinds made a splendid show, and the variety of beasts and birds was endless. There were boar and buffalo from the sedgy swamps ; there were deer from the hills ; I have seen rats among the frogs and lizards on the humbler stalls, and I have no doubt there were any number of dogs and cats, though, skinned and cut up, they might have passed with a stranger for hares or rabbits. The birds ranged from the wildgoose and heron to ortolans, beccaflcos, and robins. The rare abundance of feathered tribes was an emphatic contradiction to the impression that singing birds are scarce in Italy. The fact is that they are naturally silent when strangers are generally abroad. They are in such multitudes «•] ROMAN COOKERY 287 that they are perpetually being netted or snared for the table, with no perceptible diminution in their numbers. Rogers was unfortunate in the lean thrushes served him at Terracina ; but everywhere, in inns ashore and on the Italian steamers, the grive is a standing roti, and a good one. But there are thrushes and thrushes, and the Romans, who never neglected the field-fare, had a special partiality for the redwing ; for the redwing is one of the most piquantly delicate of birds, scarcely yielding in its genre to beccafico or ortolan, as Charles St John had discovered before, and noted in his " Natural History in Moray." And nowhere were duck and teal to be had in greater perfection. It was the thing then to get up a Roman dinner at the Minerva, a house greatly patronised by the foreign priesthood. The piece de resistance was hure du sanglier in barberry sauce ; the remove was porcupine, with herbs in a white dressing. It always struck me as insipid, with a slightly sickly flavour, like the fawn of the fallow deer. Some of the made dishes were curious, and decidedly suspicious. Undecipherable as time-faded palimp- sests, they were nevertheless savoury ; for the Italians eat everything, save the hide or the feathers, the teeth or the claws, and their patient 288 OLDER ROME [<«**. cooks have a marvellous gift of manipulating what the paupers of other countries would reject. The varied display of game on the market booths naturally inspired a desire to look them up in their retreats. I have assisted at chasses of the boar in the Tuscan Maremma, though I never tackled him in the swamps and fens of the Campagna. But I have gone after snipe and ducks in the marshes, when we used to put up at the grim old hostelry of Cisterna — the first sleeping-place of the vettura on the Naples road. Nothing could have been more romantically picturesque than the shooting ground, though it well deserved its malarious reputation ; with the wild-swine and the water-fowl, it nourished fevers and agues. The reeds and sedges flourished in exuberant luxuriance in glades that in summer- time must have been impenetrable jungle, where water-loving trees struck down snake-like roots to throw up fresh shoots, like mangroves in the Niger Delta. The hovels of the rare inhabit- ants were so many dens, reeking with pestilence ; the morning mists wreathed up in dense grey smoke-clouds till dispersed by the noonday sun, and our hollow- cheeked guide seemed a gliding spectre, though he had sturdy legs of his own, The Church of S. Maria in Ara Cueli — Rome. To face p. 288 aj CARNIVAL TIME 289 and leaped lightly from tussock to tussock. The sport was as novel as it was exciting, and we were tempted to prolong our sojourns. We made fair bags of wild-fowl and snipe, though many a shot was missed, thanks to the tangled thickets and the treacherous footing ; and, as we fortified ourselves for the early start with port and quinine, we never had the slightest touch of fever. The attractions of the season which drew foreigners in crowds were the Carnival and Holy Week. At the Carnival all Rome went mad, and Romans of all ranks were reaping their harvest. Hotels and apartments were overflow- ing; carriages, as the opening day drew near, were not to be hired upon any terms. Each window and balcony on the Corso had been secured ; there was a run upon the decorators for furnishings and draperies ; all the dressmakers were overworked in devising and supplying fantastic costumes. Confetti and moccoli had been provided by the ton; the gardens and fields within a radius of a hundred miles had been stripped to supply violets and bouquets. On the morning, when the flower-girls were pre- cipitating themselves on the carriage-wheels, the fragrance of their blooming basketfuls overpowered T 290 OLDER ROME t CHAP - the odours of the gutters. On the morning all the Piazza di Spagna was early astir, for the lessees of windows in the Corso had to find their places before the side streets were blocked by the crush, and the long procession of carriages had set in in unbroken flow. Endless parties had been made up in bewitching or grotesque dresses, and they had to meet betimes in the brakes or barouches, where they sat embedded in baskets of flowers, with ample stock of chalky ammunition. For obvious reasons, when confetti swept the Corso like canister shot, white was the general wear, but it was brightened by brilliant sashes and knots of ribbon of every hue. As carriages were continually brought to a standstill, the battle broke up into hand-to-hand bombardments, and before the end of the week you had made acquaintance with many special enemies. But there was a gentler side to the war, and sometimes from a balcony a bouquet of violets would come floating down, directed to its destination by a beaming smile. Then some cavalier would lay his hand on his heart, with a humble bow and a " Gracia, Principessa ; Gracia, Contessa." The stranger who was well befriended was sometimes in his carriage, and as often out of a] ROYALTIES IN THE CORSO 291 it, paying visits to the balconies, as to boxes in the opera. Sometimes he was graciously beckoned up, with a sign equivalent to a command. As at the Venetian dinner of the dispossessed monarchs in " Candide," there were always exiled royalties in Rome. More than one winter Queen Christina of Spain was there, living in quiet affluence as Madame Mufioz, and sparkling in jewels of priceless value, said to be heirlooms of the Spanish crown. A conspicuous figure in a grand balcony, she sat surrounded by courtiers of many nations. A beaming, good- natured face she had ; but tossing ring - doves attached to bouquets from the balcony suggested cruel memories of the bull-fights and the Autos-da-fe. One season no one threw himself more heartily into the fun than the Prince of Wales. How well I remember his boyish exhilaration, as he flung about the confetti and flowers by handfuls, with the Duke of St Albans sitting by his side, and Augustus Lumley running behind the carriage, now and again jumping on to the step. But all festivities must come to an end, and that week of mad frolic put a strain upon everything and everybody. How some of the starveling horses held out is a puzzle, but on the whole, perhaps 292 OLDEK ROME [chap. they might have been envied by the ten or a dozen of their compeers, entered for the con- cluding horse-race. The dog of the Derby was not in it with these. Started at the Porta del Populo, they galloped down to the Piazza Colonna, maddened by the roar of shouting multitudes, scourged by the spiked balls, which were rattling about their sobbing flanks, slipping, stumbling and recovering themselves on the greasy pavements, with horror and terror in their staring eyeballs. The wild revelry came to an end in a blaze of light, and for once in the year the dim Corso was brilliantly illuminated. Lanterns were festooned on windows or balconies, and the occupants of carriages and the mob of people on foot each carried a wax-taper or moccolo. The frolic was to blow them out, and they were per- petually being extinguished and re-lighted. Streams of wax ruined the gaily-fancied dresses — a good thing for the dressmakers of the next season. And the thieves and young hooligans had grand opportunities, for custom not only permitted, but commanded them to hustle you. Each well-got- up stranger was a centre of attraction, drawing rascality as moths fly to the flame of a candle ; «■] ILLUMINATION OF ST PETER'S 293 and if you were wise, you left your watch at home, and, above all, the new breast-pin in Etruscan mould you had just bought at Castellani's. With the darkening dusk a radiance rose on the south-west, lighting the horizon with rapidly- growing brilliancy till the heavens in that direction were clear as in the day. It was a grand effect when the innumerable lanterns that gemmed the dome of St Peter's were all aglare, and no one gave a thought to the perils of the lamplighters, tempted to risk their lives for a paltry wage. But the Popes who patronised the barbaric horse- race held in that, as in other things, to sanctified traditions ; it was seldom a season passed with- out more than one fatal accident ; and as for the injured, picked up with smashed bones, there were hospitals to receive and priests to shrive them. During the penances and fasts of Lent, we English, for the most part, took flight for Naples, to be back for the Holy Week, before devout Catholics refreshed themselves with the joys of Easter. Regretfully the reigning Pontiff, self-con- demned to imprisonment in the Vatican, must have looked back to the glorified days of his predecessors, when there was no rival authority overshadowing them from the Quirinal, when the whole Christian 294 OLDER ROME t CT ^ world came by delegation to their feet, and when Romans, wearing or affecting the garb of devotion, crushed each other before the portico of the basil- ica to receive the apostolic blessing. Yet certainly forty years ago, if the Romans were not devout, they wore the semblance of sanctity. I have seen women dropping on their knees in the great Piazza, when the mob strove to give them breathing-room, and seemed sympathetic. The scenes in the interior of the cathedral on days of high ceremony were solemn and impressive. Foreigners of influence came as to a show, securing front places ; there were Englishmen in military, diplomatic, and deputy- lieutenant uniforms mixed with the Catholic throng, hedged in by the Swiss halberdiers in their quaint mediaeval uniforms, and by the Guarda Nobile, recruited from Italians of rank. But if the foreigners came to gape and stare, they left the church in reverential mood. The venerable Pope, borne down the basilica shoulder-high beneath the emblematic canopy of peacock feathers, failing in health, with lines of care on his brow and ghastly pallor on his face, played his part with sublime dignity as the spiritual father of Christen- dom. And when he was carried out on the portico, and the indulgences fluttered down to be eagerly fi O a 0) o t/3 c 0> "a u O ~o o ra Si c o c • »-< cS I— ' Cu 03 in O fc-. o «■] THE RAIN OF INDULGENCES 295 scrambled for, one was inclined to envy the super- stition and credulity which had found peace and assurance of salvation in the bosom of an infallible Church. The brigand or the bravo could make a fresh professional start with an easy conscience if he secured one of those inestimable documents, know- ing that hie celestial papers were strictly en regie. CHAPTER XII OLDER NAPLES " Vedi Napoli e poi mori " — see Naples and then die — is a saying that much depends on the cir- cumstances in which you see the city. I have seen it in the depths of a blustering winter, when a storm of rain and sleet was driving along the Chiaia, when Vesuvius and Capri were veiled in cloud, and when the thinly- clad lazzaroni had "shrunk to close-heads," and were shivering in extremities of cold and hunger. Happily, I first saw the reverse of the picture, when we had driven from Rome after Holy Week, and Naples was verging on its normal condition. For the height of sultry summer is the time to understand in its characteristic fulness the languid Neapolitan life, where the art of doing little as lazily as possible has been brought to perfection. No- where short of the South Seas, where they grow their bread on the trees, can the impecunious lead 295 chap, xri.] SEA-FRONT IN SPRING 297 a more voluptuous existence. But in spring the joyous city is waking up from hybernation through the weary winter. For once a moderate amount of effort is a veritable pleasure; the fashionable butterflies are fluttering abroad, and all the small street industries are in full swing. In old days the entry by the Northern Gate, on the Capuan road, was all that could be desired. The first object that struck you was the great and ghastly poorhouse — the Albergo dei Poveri. Nor were you permitted to drive down the superb thoroughfare of the Toledo, with its streams of carriages and its glittering shops, for the police severely regulated the traffic. The dusty vettura was directed by side ways till it struck the Santa Lucia, whence it rumbled along to the Chiaia, where the best hotels were situated. Disappointed or disgusted by squalid sights, you emerged of a sudden into the sun-blaze, which lights one of the most glorious landscapes in Europe. In front of you Capri was floating in a heat-haze between sea and cerulean sky ; on either hand, far as eye could reach, extended the sweep of the populous beach from the Cape of Sorrento to the Promontory of Misenum. White villas glistened from their hanging - gardens on 298 OLDER NAPLES [chap. the one side ; on the other was an unbroken range of the humble habitations of fisher-folk and vine-dressers, familiarized through generations with the terrors of impending Vesuvius. The life of the darksome lanes and alleys had gathered out to the sea-front : fishwives were squabbling with customers in the open market-place ; boats were shooting across the inner harbour from steamers blowing off the steam ; officials at the landing- steps were bullying strangers and market boats, examining passports, levying customs, and exact- ing bribes ; over- weighted calesinos, drawn by a single horse — lame on three of his legs — at a hand gallop, were rattling eastward with their per- spiring freights, a hulking lazzarone or two slung in the dusty net between the axles ; the crawling cabriolets and cittadine were looking out for fares, and everywhere the foreigner was beset by flower- girls, offering basketfuls of violets and bouquets of camelias for a carlino. The Neapolitan improvi- satore had gone before my time — at least, I never saw or heard one — but you passed on from the music of pijferari in highland costume from the Abruzzi, who were gathering in a harvest of grani on the quays, to the strains of the military bands in the Villa Reale, where the gates were jealously closed »i.] THE RULE OF KING BOMBA 299 against the populace, only admitted on the annual festival of Our Lady of the Piedigrotta. Probably, had King Ferdinand not been in- tensely conservative, he would have relaxed that rule. Like his grandfather of the same name, who prided himself on being " king of the lazzaroni," Ferdinand the Second courted and petted the rabble. Well aware of his unpopularity with the middle classes, who had a monopoly of intelligence and progressive ideas, he had locked the most troublesome of them up in his prisons ; but he was always in mortal apprehension of the explosion of the volcano, and he knew the value of the Neapoli- tan mob. Massaniello was not forgotten at Caserta or Capo di Monte. However, setting aside the bother of the passport system, King Bomba made his capital agreeable for strangers. His son, the Count of Capua, was really popular, and I have often heard him cheered as he passed in his mail phaeton, built in Long Acre and drawn by English steppers. But that passport system was a nuisance of pin-pricks ; it brought no safety to the state and it contributed little to the revenue, for the fees were chiefly embezzled. If you neglected to have a vise from the Neapolitan Minister before leaving Rome, you were turned back from the gates of 300 OLDER NAPLES [<***• Naples. I recall the case of an invalid lady who had neglected the formality when leaving Palermo, and after a stormy passage was brought more dead than alive to the landing-place. The rule was so strictly enforced that for once a Neapolitan official proved incorruptible, and she was sent summarily back to the steamer. Happily her husband com- municated with Dr Rosskilly, a genial veteran who had practised in Naples for nearly half a century, and thanks to his influence with the British Embassy the matter was managed somehow, and the lady's life was saved. If you declared your intention of remaining more than a couple of days, they made you buy a permission of residence ; and as you had to pay before you came in, you had to pay again before you were let out. Four vises were in- dispensable : that of your own Embassy, that of the country to which you were bound, and those of the police and of the Neapolitan Foreign Office. Moreover, if you contemplated a tour in the Nea- politan dominions, it was safer to indicate the route you meant to take, under peril of being stopped by some Jack in office. That last regulation saved me a great deal of travel and money, as I never cared to be tied down to arrangements. And the intendente's or satraps of the provinces were arbi- ml] THE FACCHINI 301 trary and absolute in their degrees as the King. When the traveller got into any kind of trouble, it was a toss-up how justice might be administered. The proconsul might be an Anglomaniac, in which case the Englishman would have handsome apologies, and be invited to a reception — never to a dinner. Or he might be an Anglophobe, and then the victim was kept a prisoner at large — at best till the Foreign Office in the capital could be communicated with. Next to the nuisance of the passports came that of the facchini. The old-fashioned lazzaroni, who caused Murat so much anxiety, who found their Paradise, as Dumas describes it, in a sunbeam or a strip of shade ; who lived, according to the season, on the pizze or the cocomero ; who believed devoutly in the omnipotence of St Joseph and St Januarius, had well-nigh vanished, like the improvisatore or the Parisian grisette. But the facchini were their modern representatives, with more of their vice and less of their virtues. Facchini was, in fact, a free translation of rough, bravo, ne'er-do-well, street robber. With no regular occupation, he preyed in a sneaking fashion on the public at large. Almost invariably he was in the pay of the Camorra, but, like the 302 OLDER NAPLES C CHAP penny-a-liner journalist, his pay depended on his luck and on accidents. It was from the facchini the visitor had his first welcome, for they clustered at the city gates. Like the London crossing- sweepers, they had an honourable understanding among themselves, and threw themselves on the carriages by relays. As bees in the swarming time, they clustered on the baggage behind, which, if you were wise, was securely chained and padlocked. It was vain to protest ; it was a cosa di Napoli. And when you reached a fashionable hotel — it was idle to appeal to the waiters or landlord for protection. Even Martin Zir would only rub his hands and deprecatingly shrug his shoulders. The facchini were affiliated to the omnipotent Camorra, so they rushed everything, from big portmanteaus to bundles of rugs ; trod the snowy stair-carpets with dusty sandals, and in- truded their persons, infested with vermin from the fondi, into the spotless sanctity of the bed-chamber. Of course, the wrangle over pay was left to the landlord, and he naturally conciliated these ruffians at the traveller's expense. Since the rail ran the vettura off the road, they have changed their skin but not their habits. Now they wear the livery of the railway companies, and if they only broke ™0 THE BEGGARS 303 the rule against asking for gratuities, one might well be content; but they are expert in thieving as ever, and it is to be feared they stand in with the guards, for no luggage van is secure from them. Those who know them best most mistrust them. I was travelling to Sorrento from Naples with a party, weighted with the usual amount of feminine belongings. Just as the train was start- ing, the door of our compartment was opened, and an avalanche of bags and portmanteaus — luggage registered and paid for — shot into it. The guard, who must have been an exceptionally honest man, explained and demonstrated at Castellamare, that by great violence all these might be so far dragged open as to admit a hand, declaring that he would not answer for them when his back was turned. The facchini worrying you on your arrival gave you warning of what was to be expected from the beggars. Beggars beset the seats on the Chiaia and swarmed at the doors of the cafes. All through Italy the nuisance was great, but at Naples it was worst of all. Urchins, adepts at pocket-picking, with angelic faces begrimed with filth, who might have stepped out of Murillo's Andalusian pictures, were on the watch for cigar- 304 OLDER NAPLES [chap. ends, and nodded significantly towards the sugar- basin if they liked your looks. I remember stopping at Cosenza, in what is still known as " the famine year," when the starving outcasts actually raided the bread in the restaurant from your hands, and snatched the food from the tables. In reality, the chronic misery in Naples was almost as great, though the lowest classes were as used to starving as eels to skinning ; and the police, who had nothing to get by them, kept them in check. That city of sunshine had its darker side, which few strangers penetrated or cared to understand. The best description of it which I have come across was given by Axel Munthe, in the " Letters from a Mourning City." He was a Scandinavian doctor, who ministered to the poorest in the cholera epidemic of 1884. Nothing can be more appalling than his pictures of the lot of the 130,000 paupers who vegetated in back slums and noisome cellars. There was neither light nor air: the intolerable stenches bred pestilence, and there was the typhoid fever, even more deadly to the unsuspecting foreigner than the malaria of the Roman Cam- pagna. Nor has Naples greatly changed for the better under its northern masters. The sanitation is little less disgraceful, though the declivities of «■] THE NOBLE PAUPERS 305 the amphitheatre give every facility for drainage and the ample supply of living water. Nowhere was there a more striking display of the contrasts of wealth and poverty. On ordinary occasions the grand theatre of San Carlo was run on strictly economical lines. You sat out the operas of Rossini or Donizetti in a dim religious light. But once I had the rare good fortune to see the San Carlo on a gala night. It was blazing with the lights from innumerable lustres, and they were reflected in the boxes from such a blaze of diamonds as even the old patrician houses of Rome could scarcely show. It was significant of the state of Neapolitan society. The law of primogeniture had been ruining the nobility, and few families were really rich. But all made heroic efforts to keep up appearances, and they were ready to sub- mit to any sacrifices before parting with the valu- able heirlooms which were the badges of their past. Dumas, Edmond About, and many another sarcastic Frenchman have satirised the penurious habits of the ostentatious impecunious. They starved in private that they might flaunt in public. They lived little better than the lazzaroni — on macaroni and salt fish ; they dispensed with serious breakfast, and contented themselves with a frugal dinner and u 3G0 OLDER NAPLES [chap. the lightest of suppers, that they might drive out with lavender gloves in an antiquated cabriolet with a dilapidated attendant. Out of doors they frittered away the time between the carriage, the theatre, and the casino ; and if they ever indulged in an extravagance, it was when tempted by the demon of play. As for the minor theatres, they were cheap enough ; at the Parthenope or the San Carlino, where they played farces and burlesques in Neapolitan patois, you could hire a box for a piastre and a pit-stall for a couple of carlini. And Naples of the Bourbons was the purgatory of the middle classes, justly suspected by the Government, for they were seething with suppressed discontent. There was no opening in the liberal professions ; there were no industries except salting fish and making macaroni ; and the commerce was con- fined to some passenger-boats and coasting craft. Separated by one great gulf from the pleasure- loving aristocracy, and by another from the ignorant and apathetic lazzaroni, they were expecting the liberator who was yet to come. Every now and again a thrill ran through the more enlightened democracy when some Poerio, who had been imprudent of speech, was consigned to a dungeon and irons. *"■! THE CAJMORRA 307 If the Government was tyrannical, the Camorra was autocratic. There was neither safety nor profit for those who were not affiliated to that secret Terror, which had its agents everywhere. All tradesmen were at its mercy ; all servants were terrorised ; it was notorious that the chiefs of the police were potent members of the Society. It was more than any man's life was worth to seek redress, or try to bring a criminal to justice. No state taxes were more punctiliously paid than those which were remorselessly levied by the Society. Axel Munthe gives a remarkable instance of the authority it exerted. Though his one object was to minister to the sick, he dared not have ventured into the fondaci and sottoterrani, where they lay dying untended on filthy boards, had he not had the chance of doing a good turn to a noted Camorrist. That ruffian took him under his protection, shadowing him like a guardian angel in nocturnal visits to the dens where the police could not have ventured. The Camorra, all-powerful as it was, sometimes condescended to keep up appearances. A notorious criminal, caught red-handed, might be tried and condemned. It was at once a vindication and a mockery of justice, for no prison could hold him, and sooner or later 308 OLDER NAPLES [chap he got the key of the fields. Generally it was sooner rather than later ; for even when profusely supplied with drink and delicacies, the prison was an uncomfortable abode. Still, under the re- generated kingdom of Italy the prisons leave much to desire. They are often old convents or monasteries; they are always overcrowded. The prisoners mix indiscriminately in the court- yards, as in the Newgate of Jonathan Wild and Jack Sheppard, where they can concert plans of escape with their friends, or hatch conspiracies for overpowering the gaolers. One winter, five-and- thirty years ago, I often passed the gaol of Castellamare. There was no glass in the windows which overlooked the high-road, and behind the bars were the squalid or villanous faces of captives, lowering baskets like our poor debtors in the Fleet, clamorous for food or coin, and, above all, for tobacco. Yet Castellamare is a naval arsenal, and near to the southern capital. The numbers of those who escaped were innumerable, but I never heard of a gaoler called to account. The poor of Naples took no thought for the morrow ; they never knew how they were to live, but they did know where they were to rest at last. The daily burial at the Campo Santo *n.] THE PAT FEUS' FUNERALS 309 Vecchio was a sight and scene to be remembered. There was a flagged court-yard, enclosed by bare walls, on the breezy heights above the city. Nothing could be more glorious than the distant views, or more ghastly than the sepulchral fore- ground. There were 365 pits, each sealed with a massive stone, and one of them was opened each day in the year at a fixed hour in the afternoon. As you climbed the heights, you came upon rude biers being hurried up by the bearers. The day I went there — for it was not a sight to see twice — there were one or two open shells, but no regular coffin. The corpses were tossed down round the mouth of the pit, among loathsome beetles dis- entombed, and scrambling to get out of the way. Among a dozen or so of bodies, two especially struck me. One was a woman who had been assassinated the night before, and whose night- dress was saturated with blood ; the other, a most beautiful little girl, with long, golden ringlets. The priest on duty was a sordid caricature of the overtasked chaplains who undertake the customary ceremonial at our great suburban cemeteries. As matter of form, he rattled through a hasty Mass, and carelessly flirted the holy water on the corpses. Then they were shot by the sextons into the 310 OLDER NAPLES &***■ depths of the pit. and a cartload of quicklime was thrown down on the top of them. The covering slab was replaced to be cemented, and that pit was to be left undisturbed for another twelvemonths. Under the Bourbons, the brigands in many districts on the mainland had it pretty much their own way ; the high road to Rome was safe enough, and their old frontier haunts at Itri and Fondi were kept under strict surveillance. We could go snipe-shooting with perfect safety from Cisterna, although the surrounding woods were wont to be their favourite ambushing ground on the Roman side of the frontier. But they still terror- ized mountainous Calabria, and habitually worked the roads towards the far south. In every inn, if the landlord was not in league with them, one or two of the understrappers were in their pay ; and the peasantry and hill- shepherds, who sup- plied them with food and information, were their involuntary and often reluctant accomplices. I have made mention of my first visit to the temples of Paestum, where there had very recently been a successful capture of a couple of Englishmen, when we made out the pleasant drive as quietly as if we had been going on a drag to dine at the Star and xii.] THE BRIGANDS 311 Garter. I own to a feeling of more uneasiness on another occasion, when I accompanied the post courier from Naples to Reggio in his light carri- age, which was a tight fit for two. My companion sat with a blunderbuss between his knees, and there was a small armoury in the net swinging from the roof. It was then we baited at Cotenza in the famine-time, and the poor, maddened by star- vation, were the most formidable enemies we came across. Victor Emmanuel's carabineers and bersaglieri had nearly succeeded in putting down brigandage, but the echoes of the old times were still resounding in the columns of the press and in the smoking-rooms of the Naples hotels. I am going to say something of the winter I passed at Sorrento. I broke the stagnation of life in that chilly and sunless solitude by frequent trips to the city ; and whenever I dropped in at the Victoria or the Grande Bretagne for luncheon, the slightest suggestion would turn the talk to the brigands who had their dens under St Angelo of the Three Peaks, and raided the peninsula between Pompeii and Scarracatoio. All I could say was that, according to an invariable custom, I arranged my walks so as to come home for late dinner, and that my only trouble was in 312 OLDER NAPLES [«u* avoiding trespass on the cultivated ground, girdled with fig and almond trees, and guarded by watch- ful dogs. That wintering at Sorrento was a fatal folly, due to sentimental memories. We had gone to Southern Italy for reasons of health, and in an evil hour we left the Conca d'Oro of Palermo, and the comforts of Signor Ragusa's " Trinacria." Ragusa warned us, but we would not be warned. I remembered Sorrento as I had seen it in the spring-time, when you picked oranges in scented bowers on the garden cliffs of the Hotel Tasso ; when balmy zephyrs breathed soft ozone from the bay, and the steep slopes were blushing with violets or blazing with scarlet anemones. Nor were we choked off in the fading splendours of November, though everything seemed to be portending a sad sea change. We left the hotel, which at least was well heated, to hire a sumptuous suite of apart- ments in the Villa Rupe or Falcone, which over- hangs the deep ravine by the bridge. It was well in the little world of the town, and nothing could possibly be more romantic. You looked down into the chasm from colonnaded verandahs, over a precipice clothed with orange-trees, with their clus- tering golden fruit. The apartments were cheap su-] SIBERIAN SORRENTO 313 enough in all conscience, for when every summer residence was standing untenanted, not even an Italian house-agent could persuade you it was the height of the season. Unfortunately we had signed a contract for a term, and there we sat and shivered for three dreary months out of the four for which we had taken it. It might have been voluptuous with the thermometer standing at 96° in the shade. Everything had been constructed to keep out the sun. The walls were massive as those of a mediaeval fortress ; the windows of the principal rooms had a northern exposure ; the marble floors were magnificent, but there was not a shred of carpet in the halls except before the solitary fire- place in the great salon. Coal was scarce and wood was dear, and it roared up the chimney with reck- less extravagance. The lady's-maid used to go about her occupations carrying a tiny charcoal stove. At that time I chanced to be writing a novel for the CornJdll, and the most admirable chapters of that immortal work were conceived in a thick great- coat, buttoned up to the tl roat ; in warm knitted stockings and double-soled boots. The villa felt like a family vault, or a parish church that gets one touch of warming for the Sunday. Yet the climate was damp, rather than cold. You might 314 OLDER NAPLES [chap. as well have been in the dripping Hebrides. It rained relentlessly, though it dried quickly. At high noon the sun-god would often take a flying shot at us, when the water ran off the stony paths which led up the hills, between walled vineyards and orange-groves. And if you climbed to the ruined Deserta, on the most commanding eminence you might enjoy resplendent, but tantalizing views, from Ischia round by Capri to the Highlands of Salerno. It was hard living in every sense. Servants had migrated with the summer sojourners, and we had an extraordinary piece of good luck in captur- ing a superannuated cook who was too feeble to flit. He had long passed his prime, but he was a master of his art, and a marvel of that exemplary patience which is the soul of satisfactory cookery. He was turned down in a superb range of furnaces — stone pits which would have sufficed for banquets had the great villa been overcrowded. He amused him- self all day over a handful or two of charcoal, and the results were astounding. He would send up his entree of liver and bacon, which savoured of ortolans or beccaficos. He was great in savoury omelettes of anchovy or parmesan, but his crowning triumph was a sweet souffle ; he always tottered in *n.] COMMISSARIAT DIFFICULTIES 315 with it himself to the dining-room, and it collapsed like a pricked balloon if not eaten in the moment of projection. As he was responsible for the com- missariat as well as the cooking, his anxieties were unceasing. There was no beef to be bought on that oxless promontory, and the mutton was detest- able. On the other hand, the chestnut-fed pork was to be had in perfection, and the Sorrentese rival the Westphalians in the manufacture of sausages ; but these delicacies pall upon one after a time. Of course, old Guiseppe was an adept in the mani- pulation of the maccaroni, with which the High Street was festooned on the few sunny afternoons. The only times when he took leave of absence from his flesh-pots was when he went out on the quest for poultry, and once he triumphed in a master- stroke of successful diplomacy when he came home jubilant with a plump young turkey. That winter in Sorrento was desperately dull, and it was doubtful relief breaking out for ex- peditions to Naples. The railway stopped at Castellamare, and when you chartered a convey- ance, the horse braced tightly up in the shafts should, in common humanity, have been consigned to the knacker's yard. Driving down the hills was bad enough, but the coming back was a strain on the 316 OLDER NAPLES t™ nerves and the conscience. Of course you walked the best part of the way. You had been buffeted by stormy winds on the Santa Lucia and the Chiaia, and now you faced a watery gale from the Tyrrhene sea, which had probably been blowing persistently for days, and had changed the road, where it was not a rocky water-course, into a holding bed of viscous slime. Italy is the Purgatory of animals, and old Naples used to be the Hell. Even on the Riviera, in the full glare of fashionable foreign publicity, you see galled horses flogged till the blood flows, breaking down under the im- possible draught of blocks of marble or granite. The Italians argue that, as animals have no souls, they must consequently have no sensations. But taking human nature for what it is, it is impossible not to have a certain sympathy with the drivers, who are underfed and over-driven like their un- fortunate beasts. It is the employers and skinflint contractors who must bear the blame, with the aristocracy and middle classes who look on in- differently at atrocities that should excite their indignation. Sorrento in its spring toilette was a Paradise, but it is only one of the endless excursions which were for ever tempting you out of Naples city. xn] NEAPOLITAN WINES 317 Steam intercourse with the islands of the Bay was irregular, but you could always make the passage to Ischia or Capri in the market-boats, when there was generally an amateur musician on board, who played an accompaniment to the wild chants of the peasants. Ischia, with its volcanic soil and semi-tropical luxuriance, had had long immunity from the explosions and earthquakes which were soon to spread death and desolation broadcast; and Capri, where you could live en 'pension and en prince for next to nothing, had its colonies of invalids and artists, who welcomed any intercourse with the outer world, and laid themselves out to do the honours to casual visitors. There were charming picnics to His Majesty's boar-park in the Astroni crater — where, by the way, I had my worst experience of a scorpion's bite — and to the island-restaurant on the Lucrine Lake, where we feasted on the Lucrine oysters, with draughts from the flasks of the Capri or Lachryma Christi. In the hotels the native wines were absurdly neglected, and at the dinner-table three guests out of four used to patronise the medicated Marsala. But the white Capri and the red Lach- ryma from grapes warmed on the volcanic slopes can dispense, in their native richness, with 318 OLDER NAPLES [chap, at artificial strengthening, and are admirably suited to the climate. I drank them all through that damp winter at Sorrento, and would ask for nothing better. The intelligent traveller should adapt his tastes to the specialities of the country. Passing through Naples not many years ago, I revived sentimental memories and evoked fond recollec- tions of half-forgotten companions, with an ideal Neapolitan breakfast at the Grand Hotel. The menu was maccaroni boiled in milk, sardines fresh from the net, served with frizzled parsley, and a flask of the white Capri, several years in bottle. O u O o '5c &c o 2U o u o a o CHAPTER XIII SICILY In Naples the tourist found railways and good roads, though the railway takes a circuitous route to the toe of the Boot. In Sicily, five-and-forty years ago, there were only nine miles of rail, and few highways traversed by public vehicles, vetture or post- carriages. When he struck into the bridle- paths, he betook himself to horse or mule. The contrast was great between the civilisation of the chief cities, with their grand memorials of the splendours of Spanish viceroys, and the state of the interior. Landing at Palermo, you were lapped in all reasonable luxury, and rejoicing in the middle of winter in one of the finest climates in the world. The Trinacria and the Hotel de France were as comfortable as any hotels in Southern Europe. At the former I hurt the feelings of my worthy friend, Signor Ragusa, by objecting to the mattresses with elastic springs, 319 320 SICILY [chap. which he had imported from Paris, regardless of expense. Ragusa was a walking hand-book to all that was worth seeing in the island ; the worst of him was that he was fanatically patriotic. He could not hear of there being any public insecurity, when the suburban mile from the capital to Morreale was picketed and patrolled by mounted police. He was patriotically dis- interested, for his object seemed to be to get rid of his guests, by making light of the hardships they must encounter, and encouraging them to court adventure. For the most energetic were tempted to succumb to the sensuous charms of sunny Palermo. Lying in the lap of the Conca d'Oro, screened by the soaring summit of the Monte Pelegrino from the strong winds of the west, it was the centre of an amphitheatre flowing with oil and wine, scented with orange and almond blossoms. The Marina, with its marble flags and balustrades, its fountains and statuary, the Flora with its flowering shrubs, skirted on one side by the sea, on the other by a range of flat-roofed palaces, were among the most en- chanting promenades in Europe. Yet within rifle-shot, the gardens were seamed by torrent beds, bringing down floods from the mountains, xm.i TOWN AND COUNTRY 321 when the rains had set in. So it was at Messina, where there were light foot-bridges over the mountain streets, and at Catania, where the water-courses ran between rugged banks of lava. Nowhere else were the limits so sharply defined as in Sicily, between the busy towns and the country solitudes. Misgovernment and the im- memorial institution of brigandage had made the people huddle together for mutual protection. In Palermo, keen upon walking as I was, I found it trying, day after day, to get beyond the inter- minable stretch of mean suburbs, with the paving of rough cobble-stones. At Messina you were brought up abruptly by the precipitous heights, crowned by the historical castle which had stood so many sieges. In the environs of Catania you were adrift among frozen seas of lava from the craters of Etna. Yet in each sheltered hollow, or where there was a rood of available soil, vegeta- tion flourished in exuberant luxuriance, and near the cities, where there was a ready market for the produce, each rood was turned to profitable account. In the country agriculture had lamentably retrograded since Sicily was the granary of Rome. The plough and the harrow were more primitive x 322 SICILY t CHAP than those described in the Georgics. The great nobles who owned vast tracts of territory had left their domains to the charge of stewards, who were often corrupt and apt to be tyrannical. There was scarcely such a thing as a yeomanry or a substantial class of farmers. Mediaeval castles were ruined or long deserted ; it was seldom you saw a solitary homestead. A wealthy noble or notoriously well-to-do farmer would have been kidnapped and held to ransom by the nearest band of brigands. The squandering of time and strength was excessive, for the labourers living in scattered hamlets walked miles daily to their work which often lasted for sixteen hours. Not unfrequently the hamlets were so far apart, that the labourers in harvest-time camped out or sought shelter in caves. Trade was paralysed, for no train of pack mules could venture to cross country without an escort, and the Govern- ment did not lend its soldiers for nothing. The only people who went about with easy minds were the shepherds and goat-herds, and they were almost invariably the spies of the banditti. Everything was neglected ; with any quantity of water running to waste, whole districts were desolated by drought and deserted ; harbours zin-] BACKWARD CIVILIZATION 323 were undredged, swamps were undrained, and rivers were unbridged — as you knew to your cost when you came to ford them. No neglect could altogether counteract the advantages of soil and climate, but even suburban gardeners handed down their fruit trees as heirlooms, and the sole exceptions were in the Conca d'Oro, which was cultivated with exceptional skill. The state of the island was obvious to the most cursory of observers, but much of what I say is on the authority of Mr Goodwin, for many years our Consul at Palermo. I made his acquaintance in painful circumstances, on my second visit in 1870, and the acquaintance was short enough, for I only saw him once. Commissioned to write some letters to The Times, I called and had a cordial reception. Though ailing, he seemed in fair health and good spirits, and we had a long and interesting conversation. When I left he handed me a volume of his notes, and I little thought that I should have to return them to his executors. But two days after I had seen him, Mr Goodwin was dead. In 1870 things were at the worst, and Garibaldi and his gallant red-shirts had left con- fusion worse confounded behind them. Para- 324 SICILY t CHAP doxical as it may seem, Sicily had seldom been so well ordered as in the later years of the Bour- bons. The arbitrary methods which prepared the Neapolitans for revolution gave the Sicilians un- wonted tranquillity, and brigandage was virtu- ally put down. The island was mapped out in districts, each put in charge of a squadron of cavalry. The captain was held absolutely respon- sible for any crime committed in his district, and was supposed to make good any losses incurred. How he may have managed that, with pay in arrears, is a mystery, but it is certain the system worked to admiration. The brigand chiefs found their occupation gone ; the rank-and-file had to choose between migration and honest courses. The law courts had constant employment, and crown counsel and judges were given to under- stand that the King expected convictions. In 1860, when Garibaldi landed at Marsala, there were 12,000 convicts under lock and key. Before he carried the war into Calabria, all had either been released or escaped. So, in 1870, restoring order was no longer an affair of police or cavalry patrols ; it was a regular campaign waged by the regular army. Though the troops might turn up anywhere at any moment, there was a universal *ni] THE MAFIA AND BRIGANDS 325 reign of terror. Landowners were subsidising the robbers who were their ruin; struggling agri- culturists were laid under contribution, and when their sheep and cattle disappeared, they had to grin and bear their losses. Then, under constitu- tional government, the courts were terrorised, not by the King but by the Mafia. The most notorious criminal, when affiliated, could face his trial with equanimity. There was a remarkable example of that in 1864, when the renowned Angelo Puglino was betrayed and arrested. Puglino had had a chequered and adventurous career. He had been schoolmaster — galley-slave — Garibaldian. Then he had taken to the hills and became the most redoubtable of brigands. He ruled his band of desperadoes with an iron hand, and pistolled them himself for the slightest infraction of his laws. Crafty as he was cruel, he long eluded his pursuers. When caught, in a trial that dragged on for four months, innumerable murders were proved against him. He was merely condemned to confinement for life, and soon gave his jailers the slip. Sixteen of the band, scarcely less guilty than himself, were let off with short sentences. The Mafia was at least as powerful in Sicily as the Camorra in Naples. When I went to some 326 SICILY [«*ap. public entertainments and private receptions at Palermo, I was warned that it was well to be dis- creet in the expression of opinion, however safe you might think yourself with a friendly interlocutor. Its octopus-arms reached all over the island, and the wretched peasant who shivered with cold in winter, and with fever in summer, was as much in terror as the men responsible for order in Palermo, or the magistrates who administered justice. About sixteen years ago I went to Messina on a commercial mission, to endeavour to arrange a law-suit between an Englishman and a Sicilian company. The case was clear in favour of the Englishman ; the witnesses had been un- officially " precognosced," as they say in Scotland, by the plaintiff's attorney, and their evidence was irresistible. But there was no persuading them to appear in the courts, and you could not blame them. One of the most essential happened to be the housekeeper of our vice-consul. Mr Rainford, who gave me every assistance, had to own that the poor woman's lips were sealed. One morning, on her way to market, she had been threatened by a ruffian with an open knife, who flourished it over her cheeks and forehead, and told her she knew what to expect if she came forward. xni] SICILIAN CONVEYANCES 327 The Mafia did not concern itself with harmless tourists, and the brigands, when I chanced to cross the interior, were kept so well in hand that one gave little thought to them. But the hardships, though well recompensed by the scenery and the glorious air, were not inconsiderable. After a single trial, you cut the public conveyance. There were diligences on the main road from Palermo to Catania, and on its branches to Syracuse and Messina ; but they crawled at a wretched pace, and the company was far from delectable. The corriere, which carried three inside besides the post-courier, went quicker ; but the luggage was strictly limited, and if the portmanteau was heavy, it had to be left behind. And the courier invari- ably hurried you perversely when you were des- perately reckoning on the chance of getting some sort of refection. Posting was infinitely prefer- able, nor did it come dear when there were a couple of travellers, and, as I have remarked in a former chapter, there was a dash of adventure in it. As with Sicilian beds there was no temptation to loiter, you were inclined to push forward through dusk and dark. Taking three horses was de rigueur, and there were stages where four were prescribed by the ordinances. There was always 328 SICILY [chap. delay in bringing out the relay, but once in the traces they made up for lost time. The light, rickety carriage rattled behind them like a tin kettle tied to a dog's tail. The wild driver, wrapped in sheepskin like a Wallachian shepherd, would crack his whip over his head and whoop to his horses like a man possessed. The better the pace, the bigger the buono mano. The lean horses, though on short allowance of hay or maize, were full of fire and go. You dashed down the steep street of the village — these villages are always perched on hills — you hardly pulled up for the flooded ford in the valley, and when you scrambled up the opposite bank, there might be a foot or so of water in the hold of the carriage. If you did not see to the commissariat in advance, you were sure to be on short commons. In Sicily of the Saracens old traditions lingered, and the post-houses, save in size, much resembled Oriental caravanserais. Even at Calatafimi or Castel Giovanni they offered shelter, but scarcely professed to provide food. You were fortunate if you found anything besides bread, but, to do them justice, the bread was excellent. If you were in luck you might get eggs and an omelette, or such a skinny fowl as is to be cornered in the compound *nr] SICILIAN INNS 329 of an Indian rest-house. But the commissariat did not matter so much ; it was your own fault if you had not made provision, and with cakes of meat- chocolate, as I have found in Spain, you can hold starvation at arm's-length for days. But the filth of those detestable dens was indescribable. When I rode on out-of-the-way bridle-paths, the first business of the courier-guide was to scrape the brick flooring with a hoe, to dash pailfuls of water over the walls, and to cleanse the table. The cracked plates were passed under careful super- vision, and I carried my own knife, fork, and spoon. The sleeping accommodation was the worst part of it. Sometimes the roof was far from water-tight, and often shutters supplied the place of glass in the windows. After supping sparingly, you climbed a ladder to furnish out a feast for the bugs. I don't know why the polite writer should scruple to name things which are a brutal reality. In Sicilian inns they were famine-stricken as the labourers, and more prolific. Even in a Syracuse hotel of deserved reputation, I once passed a night in a charming chamber, with sheets of spotless white and curtains of snowy dimity. In the morning, after hard hunts and a ruthless massacre, those sheets and curtains were flecked with crimson, as if red spots 330 SICILY t CHAP - at regular distances had been a part of the original pattern. Another redeeming feature in those inns, besides the white bread, was the red wine. Vine culture in the island was terribly backward, though the sweet wines of Syracuse were good of their sort, and as for the Marsala, as I have said, it was manipulated for the English market. But the ordinary wines of the country, slovenly made as they were, had not only body, but rather a pleasant bouquet. To my taste, they were infinitely prefer- able to the earth-flavoured wines of the Valais, on the strength of which we used to go excursions from Chamounix or in the Oberland ; or the harsh wines of Piedmont, with a sub-smack of the barberry, which rasped the throat like a file, when they fortified you for expeditions at the back of Mont Blanc. Riding in Sicily was a capital digestive — when you got used to it. The mules were more sure- footed than the ponies, and there was no getting to the bottom of them. Steadily doing their three miles, hour after hour, they would sulkily plod for- ward, with a monotonous motion like clockwork. It was something like the jolting stride of a camel, shaking you up and jarring the spine. As you sat xm.] THE SCENERY 331 perched, or rather squatted, on the square packs of wood and canvas, precariously secured by rotten rope, how you sighed for an English saddle with its girths ! Knotted loops were a poor substitute for stirrups, and for a second ride I had the great good luck to pick up a pair of venerable English stirrups at Catania. Yet I repeat that all those minor sorrows were outweighed by the scenery and the splendid air. There was no inducement to lie in bed, and you were in the saddle with the break of dawn. The vapours came rolling out of the depths, the great shadow of the Mongiebello, falling over a third of the island, gradually lightened as the sun-blaze broke out in its strength. The heat drew out the aromatic fragrance of heath and copse, but as you topped each height, it was tempered by the fresh breezes from the distant sea. Each lofty eminence was crowned with towers or convents, or with villages that showed picturesquely in the distance, though they were the abodes of poverty and squalor. Now you were riding waist-high through swampy reed-beds with flowering rushes ; then you emerged on rich meadows pastured by white cattle ; next, ascending along a precipitous path, you were mounting through woods of chestnut or stone-pine, 332 SICILY t CHAP and again, as you descended between prickly hedges of the aloe, you were in such rich sylvan glades with murmuring rills as might have seen the rape of Proserpine. The soft landscapes should have been painted by Claude Lorraine — the sterner and more savage by Salvator Rosa. Nothing was more suggestive of the backward state of Sicily and the apathy of the Sicilians than the lack of decent accommodation near objects of architectural or historical interest that should have attracted crowds of tourists. You had to rough it when you went to admire the giant temples of Girgenti. Segeste was within tolerably easy reach of Palermo, yet the expedition had to be self-sufficing. At Castellamare, its ancient port, there was no inn of any kind. At Calatafimi, the nearest town of any size, the locanda was poverty-stricken beyond belief. From the amphitheatre of Taormina, look- ing across the straits, the sea-view is perhaps the most superb in Europe ; unquestionably it beats the more confined Bay of Naples, and, in my opinion, is scarcely rivalled by the prospects over the Bosphorus from the heights behind Stamboul. Now Taormina boasts an excellent hotel, and not before it was time. When I slept there first, I made my toilette, in the morning, to the great xni] THE MONGIEBELLO 333 excitement and delight of a group of children lying on their faces. Except for the honour of the thing, there might as well have been no door, for there was a foot of space between the bottom and the brick floor. Fortunately at Syracuse and Catania, fairly thriving ports, there was no reason to com- plain of the quarters. Catania, besides, did a brisk business in silk- weaving and cotton- spinning, and The Golden Crown was a capital house. It was fortunate, because not only was there much to study in the way of antiquities and architecture, and in the picturesque and scientific aspect of the environs, but the visitor was probably contemplating an expedition up Etna, which depended greatly on the weather. In winter or early spring there was no getting easily above the giant's waist-belt — his head and shoulders were hooded in snow ; for Etna, though always smouldering, does not keep stoking the fires like Vesuvius, or spitting flames and stones like Stromboli. The successive cataracts it has sent down on Catania show how it can rage when in real earnest, but it has a spiteful habit of playing ugly tricks and breaking out in the most unex- pected places. The quiet village may any morn- ing be hoisted on the top of a new cone, such as the Monte Rosso in the Phlegraean Fields near Naples. 334 SICILY [° HAP ™l I can recall no more romantic mule ride than that from Catania to Nicolosi. In the lower zone the land had been fertilized from the entrails of Etna ; thickly populated and industriously tilled, it was an ideal scene of peace, plenty, and pros- perity. Hamlets, cottages, and churches, peeping out of chestnut groves, and embowered in the foliage of vines, olives, and oranges, were built of lava blocks, quarried from the lava floods which had swamped fields and gardens as fertile as their own. But that scenery has been described a hundred times in the guide-books. What interested me most were the blackened walls of the Convent of S. Nicolo dell' Arena, the scene of one of the most humorous of Dumas' imaginings, where the Graf von Werder, that zealous gastronomist, foregathered with the brigand band on the strength of the cardinal's letter of introduction. Moreover, like Dumas, in the little inn I had the privilege of making the acquaintance of Dr Joseph Gemmel- laro, most enthusiastic of local naturalists and geologists, who was always eager to do the honours of his mountain. He was then well stricken in years, nor did he long survive. CHAPTER XIV BRITTANY In the middle of last century and after, Brittany was still strangely neglected. The Channel passage from Southampton was exceptionally disagreeable ; there were no railways ; off the highways the roads were deplorable, and when you left the by-roads you found yourself astray upon desolate heaths, or were lost in a labyrinth of lanes, leading nowhere in particular. It was seldom you came across a fellow-tourist or were surprised by an English voice in your inn. Never- theless the country had been discovered and colo- nised by English in search of comfort combined with economy. There were settlements of your country folk at Avranches over the Norman border, at Dinan, St Servan, and Quimper, where you could rest and refresh yourself in their society. I remember arriving at sleepy Dinan on a Saturday evening, and being absolutely astounded 335 336 BRITTANY [chap. next morning at church by the crowded congrega- tion in West End fashions, a trifle out of date. A few daring adventurers ventured farther afield, renting dilapidated chateaux at fabulously low rents. Those recluses had to dispense even with French society, and went in for luxurious frugality, with fair shooting and some fishing. To my fancy, that seclusion was rather overdoing the thing, but the casual visitor was richly rewarded, nor had he any great reason to complain of hardships. On the contrary, in the most modest inns, he lived in a profusion of luxuries. The commis voyageurs were their chief patrons, and, as I have remarked before, no men understood good living better. I first entered Brittany from Southern France with a well-known gourmet, and one of our first break- fasts was at the Pavilion d'en Haut at Auray. We had been reading Weld's book, and looked forward to the meal of many courses he de- scribed. It was not altogether so lavish as we had been led to expect, but there were six or eight dishes, and the sea -fish — especially the mullets and the sardines — surpassed, as might have been expected, those of the Ship at Greenwich. And the bills ! It was never a case of the mauvais quart dlieure ; it was a moment of jubila- «v.] BRETON BILLS 337 tion over the ridiculous sum total. I forget the amount of the reckoning at Auray, but I know at Lannion, where the cook was a cordon bleu, we breakfasted, dined, and indulged otherwise a indiscretion, for four francs a day. I talk of bills, but in some village hostelries there were no bills, for the host could neither write nor cypher. You supped and slept and broke your fast, and were told you had a franc or two to pay. But it must be owned that the solids were better than the liquors. The Breton cider, served in earthenware, was harsh as the eastern winds, and sour as the peasants' black loaves of buckwheat. However, there was generally something else to fall back upon. You soon came to the conviction that time was unconsidered, and an American putting a flying girdle round Europe would have been driven to insanity and suicide. The public con- veyances were of primitive construction, and always overcrowded and overloaded. The rope harness was always snapping and the springs giving way. The bloused conductor would adjourn with the company to the kitchen of the guinguette, to smoke and drink cider while horses were being changed. It was more trying 338 BRITTANY [<*«*■ still when you chartered a cabriolet or patache for some forest drive to a castle or ruined cloister. The rickety vehicle, with its tattered leathern cushions, had been patched up and pieced together till it was a marvel of tenacious fragility. The sturdy little horse did his best, but after rain — and West Brittany is wet as West Ireland — the rutted roads were too much for him. With pluck and perseverance he would ultimately pull through, but you were generally belated on your return. Then you understood the solitude of those Breton woods — their terrors when they were haunted by wolves, brigands, and the superstitious imaginings cherished in a sombre race by the sighing of the night winds, the creaking of the boughs, the moaning of the screech-owls, and the cries of the sea-birds flighting landward before the impending storm. Roads and carriage -wheels are useful, like railways, to take you from point to point, but in Brittany, beyond all countries, you had to use your legs. Indeed, very much of it would be otherwise impracticable. You soon understood how the Chouannerie held its own there against the best troops of Republic and Consulate under their best generals. It is all one entrenched xiv.] the CHOU ANN ERIE 339 camp, a complication of impregnable positions. On each farm is a multitude of capricious en- closures, with stone walls or turf banks that might be lined with the musket or held by the pike. The lanes, like that described by Gilbert White dipping down to Selborne, are so many covered ways, in which irregulars could vanish out of sight and fire — grooved by traffic immemorial and flooded by the brooks and land springs. When the floods are out they can only be negotiated by paths high overhead, skirting the thickets ; and each farm with its outbuildings is a fortress, built of blocks of grey granite. In fact, Brittany was a quarry, covered more or less thickly with soil, and more thickly bestrewed with boulders ; the great thing was to clear the loose fragments out of the way of the cultivator, and so the walls of the feudal castles of Rohans, Mont- forts or Chateaubriants, were from 12 to 20 feet in thickness. I used to put up at some inn where they made you comfortable, and wander out for long days with rod and fishing-bag. I cannot say that the sport repaid one, for though the streamlets looked all that the soul of angler could desire, even then there was a deal of poaching. You seldom killed 340 BRITTANY [chap. trout over half a pound, and often had to be content with a few small coarse fish. But the trouting was only the pretext for a delightful ramble. So far as speech went, I might as well have been speechless, for of course I knew not a word of the Breton patois; but though it was embarrassing to play the role of the deaf and dumb, on principle I would sometimes draw the Breton in his cottage. The men were sullen of aspect, and obviously suspicious, but I will say that they were invariably hospitable. They would cut into the great home loaf, lying platterless on the rough table, which at mid-day was welcome enough, and hand you a jug of the detestable cider, or of milk frothing from the dairy. The milk and the sugar-loaf-shaped blocks of golden butter looked deliciously tempting. The draw- back was the filth of the good folk and of their abodes, and to this day I look suspiciously on Brittany butter when I see it in London windows. The flooring was that of an Irish cabin : the heavier oaken rafters were begrimed with smoke, and in the solid table holes were sometimes scooped out to serve as basins for the soup. On the other hand, as was often the case in Kentish or Sussex cottages, there were not unfrequently *»■] THE FARM-FOLK 341 cupboards of rare carving, or chests with elaborate metal- work, to hold garments and ornaments handed down as heirlooms, and these were pro- bably the spoils of some convent or castle pillaged during the Revolution. As for their everyday clothes, they were never changed, unless when the outer layer was shifted for Sundays or fetes ; and though there was the murmur of running water all around, it was seldom put to personal use. The dunghill was an invariable feature : you had to tread delicately like Agag in approaching the door. In fact, the charm of olden Brittany was its intense conservatism and medievalism — in insani- tary habits, in primitive manners, and in pictur- esque costume ; that is to say, in the three western departments, sharply divided from those of the East, {is the Province is from Normandy. Combs were as scarce as forks, and if there was one trade which did not pay, it was that of the barber, unless he cumulated the functions of the apothecary and leech. The men wore their shaggy locks falling over their shoulders, and even with the ladies the coiffeur was little in request. Unmarried girls made it a point of modesty not to show a tress under the towering structure of lace cap ; and the magnificent chevelures were hidden out of sight 342 BRITTANY [<***• which they would sell for a song to the wandering hair merchant. The guerillas of the Chouannerie often fought bare-headed, under thatch that would turn the edge of a sabre. But if the barber did no business, the tailor was overweighted with work. The wandering mendicant was not made more welcome, and both were professional purveyors of gossip. The tailor, who was invariably employed in delicate matri- monial negotiations, became a sort of family con- fessor on his circuit. The Breton's daily wear was savage and substantial, as that of his Armorican ancestors. His coat of tough leather and his sheepskin cloak were warranted to withstand all weathers ; but his gay gala dress was always being renewed, for it was drenched at the festivals, or ruined in the debauches to which he was addicted. At fete or pardon he was got up like a stage brigand, in jacket and vest of gorgeous cotton velvet, bespangled with silver buttons. The loose breeches of brown cloth were secured at the waist by a broad leathern girdle with silver clasp, and though he dispensed with the mediaeval points, he sported clusters of coloured ribbons. The cut of the costume, albeit of similar type, differed materially in different districts. The xiv] FETES AND PARDONS 343 women were more careful of valuable heirlooms. Their caps and bodices were preciously decorated as those of the peasants of the Zuyder Zee ; they were embroidered and richly bedecked with gold and silver laces. Even when the wearers must have come from miserable cottages, they glittered with ornaments of curious workmanship, which they could never be prevailed on to part with. I did buy one exquisite silver cross, but it was in the Passage Choiseul at Paris, where I was strolling between the acts at the Bouffes. Half in fun, I walked in to haggle with the jeweller, and he sold it me on the second evening for a comparative trifle. It was well worth while in those more primitive days to go far for a fete or a pardon ; indeed the one closely resembled the other, though at the pardon religion, or superstition, was the pretext, and at the other joviality was uncontrolled and unashamed. At both there were booths and shows and mountebanks. At both there was a deal of heavy eating, with free indulgence in strong liquors. At both, as you approached the scene by the cross-roads, you were caught up in a stream of rude vehicles and of pedestrians, clad in the gay garments of gladness which contrasted 344 BRITTANY [ CHAi strangely with sombre woodlands and sullen heaths. But in the congregations bound for the pardons, as with Jews going up for the feasts to Jerusalem, the religious element tempered the mirth. The Breton's religion was of the most gloomy cast ; his patriotism was largely due to superstition and immemorial subservience to priestcraft. He was made up of contradictions. He piously com- mitted himself to God, when he put out from the rock-bound coast, with the poetical prayer : " My boat is so little and your sea so great " ; and he devised all manner of diabolical dodges to lure mariners to shipwreck. He followed up a vendetta with the vindictiveness of the Corsican, and in war he would murder helpless prisoners in cold blood. Yet, whether for crime or peccadillo, he felt the need of disburdening his conscience by confession and expiation. Expiation, as taught by his Church, took the form of offer- ings at the altars, and the pardon was at the shrine of some saint held in high local repute. The drinking, the dancing, and the fighting were preceded by prayers and solemn processions ; and hard by the high altar, with its crucifix and candles, was the box, with the priest on guard, which was the receptacle for silver or coppers. *iv.] THE PIOUS BEGGAR 34.5 In those pseudo-pious performances the Bretons showed themselves closely akin to the priest- ridden Irish. At the pardon of Pioermel you might have been at the pilgrimage to the Purgatory Island on Lough Dearg, as described by Carleton in his " Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry." Moreover, the most conspicuous personality, next to the priest, was common to both countries. Brittany was the paradise of privileged beggars — the professional stroller who affected something of sanctity, as Carleton's " Darby More." Always in his glory at the pardon, where he reaped his richest harvest, he wandered from hamlet to hovel, welcomed everywhere to the warmest corner at the hearth. He sold relics and charms, he brought the freshest gossip, he was great in superstitious legend, and impressed his simple hosts by mutterings, prayers, and blessings over the meat, in unintelligible gibberish. Possibly he was as often an enthusiast as an impostor ; if not, he played his part to perfection. It is significant of the depth of the religious sentiment, that the outlandish names of half- mythical Breton saints have been perpetuated in those of historical celebrities. Tanneguy 346 BRITTANY [chap. Duchatel was christened after St Tanguay of the Leonnais ; St Triphine stood sponsor to the lady of Bertrand du Guesclin — said to have been gifted with her godmother's supernatural powers; and Balzac, by the way, borrowed from St Corentin the name of the Machiavelli of the political police, who served his apprenticeship to intrigue and espionnage, in the " Chouans." Even in the days of absolute dukes and autocratic seigneurs, the Church had always been potent in Armorica. Devotion sanctified, though it did not soften, the savage manners of the Bretons. The monks inherited the authority of the Druids. Next to the stupendous monuments of unknown races and forgotten creeds, nothing impresses the stranger more than the richness and chastened beauty of ecclesiastical edifices in towns that have long fallen into decay, and in remote parishes that are now half depopulated. As for crosses, the country was once covered with them ; they were cast down by the hundred when the Republic repressed the revolts, and the Blues, like the iconoclasts of the Netherlands, made wild work with the Calvaries. It was no thanks to those wreckers that much of the best has survived : but the green Kersanton, wrought xiv] THE POOR STUDENT 347 easily when fresh hewn by the chisel in fantasti- cally rlorid design, as at the lovely Fool's Chapel of Folgoat, is adamantine when time has done its hardening. Yet Brittany was the poorest province of France, and if forced labour was cheap, artists of genius must have been tempted thither by generous patrons. St Pol de Leon, stranded now on a barren shore, startles and surprises with the grandeur of its churches. With its convents and monasteries, turned to humble uses or mouldering in decay, it suggests Salamanca or Saragossa; and besides the stormy sea and these faded splendours, there is much to remind one of the Scottish St Andrews. At St Pol de Leon, as at St Andrews, we should expect to see the poor student; for the cloistered shades, with the calm broken only by the growling of the surf, should be the chosen seats of academical seclusion. But it is at the modernized St Brieuc that the tourist, entering from the north, first comes across the Kloarec. There have been changes in the last forty years, but I saw the Kloarec, or poor student, at St Brieuc, much as Souvestre depicted him. The colleges where he used to study and starve were at St Brieuc, Vannes, Quimper, and Treguier. The Breton 348 BRITTANY [ CHAP peasant, like the Scottish small farmer or crofter, had his ambitions. Rude himself, and saving to avarice, he economized more severely to send a son into the Church. The lad went to college, distracted between aspirations and regrets ; the hard life in the uncongenial town was a martyr- dom, and homesick as Souvestre has described him, lie loved to take his ragged books to the fields, where, lulled into listlessness by the song of the birds, he forgot his studies in sad retrospection. When he took orders, like the Irish priest, he went to parochial work, sympathizing with the sentiments and superstitions of the peasants from whom he sprung. Fanatical for the Church and the faith, he was the soul of the Chouan insurrec- tion. He sanctified the butcheries of disarmed prisoners, and absolved the assassin who shot an enemy in the back. The Blues, associating religion with royalism and the ruthless oppressions of the old regime, did their utmost to tear it up by the roots, wreaking their vengeance on all saintly memorials of the dark ages, and everywhere the aesthetic tourist has to lament that internecine strife. The monuments of Christian piety were swept by the besom of destruction, but the rough-hewn xiv.] RELICS OF PAGANISM 349 relics of Paganism defy the destroyer. Defaced they cannot be, for there is nothing to deface. When fallen, they have been undermined by the rains, and where they have disappeared, they have been utilized in their pristine form by some prac- tical farmer. But even at Carnac — a quarry of " standing stones " in itself— the damage has been comparatively trifling. Generally the clergy of the Catholic Church prospected the fairest sites for abbeys and monasteries. The priests of the old religions, on the contrary, sought to shroud the mysteries of their sanguinary rites in unholy soli- tudes. You came upon the menhir or the dolmen on the storm-beaten promontory, or on the barren and blasted waste that kept the cultivator at arm's length. I remember few things more impressive than arriving at Carnac in the dusk, for our patache had broken down en route, and we came late to the little public. There was the whistle of the curlew, the clamour of the stooping lapwings, and for once and the only time, I saw cuckoos flitting about in coveys. Hoisting stones big as chapels to the top of the Great Pyramid must always exer- cise the minds of modern mechanics ; but it was as difficult to realise the picture of that lonely heath, swarming with laborious human life, and with teams 350 BRITTANY [chap. of strong oxen, dragging the ponderous blocks. Now the farm-steadings are sparsely scattered through the wastes, and the most fertile meadows are pastured by a breed of dwarf cattle. More astounding still than the rude obelisks of Carnac was the block that lies embedded in the island of Gavr Innis, stupendous as any column in the Karnac of the Nile. Had there been nothing else to see, it well repaid the voyage from Auray into the Sea of Morbihan, in squally weather in an undecked fishing-boat, though I have no great liking for sea-cruises in any shape. We started before daylight, to suit the tides, and the boatmen, even more lugubrious than Bretons in general, took no cheerful view of our prospects. Squinting up at ihe skies, the patron predicted foul weather — a prophecy which proved fallacious, for we had a glorious day. In very tolerable French he descanted besides on winds and cur- rents, which might keep us prisoners, after we had threaded the islands and shot the narrows, and floated out into the open sea- arm. It was the sort of warning with which boatmen always try your nerves, before entering the low arch of the blue grotto of Capri, or one of the caves in the Shetlands, or on the coast of Sutherland. One could xiv ] OYSTER DREDGING 351 well imagine what it might be on a wild day in autumn, but everything passed as pleasantly as possible. Grey rocks and grim sand-banks were gilded by a glowing sun, and there was no lack of lively company. We found the scene just as Weld had described it, with a fleet from Auray dredging up oysters, and a gun-boat looking on to see fair-play. Our own dredge was down, and though the luncheon - basket was well stored, it was neglected for those delicious Morbihan oysters, which are said to have rivalled the Colchester " natives " in the Roman markets — though, indeed, neither Lucullus nor Apicius need have gone fur- ther than their own Lucrine Lake. Ford, in his " Handbook for Spain," recommends various tours for different enthusiasts — military, artistic, ecclesi- astical, etc. The Catholic epicure might do far worse than take a trip round Southern Brittany in the Lenten season. He would be hard to please if he were not satisfied, after going to Auray for oysters, to Vannes for sardines, to Douarnez for crabs, lobsters, and langoustes ; perhaps, I should add, to Brest for periwinkles, where those shellfish figured at the tables cVhdte at the chief hotel, with papers of hairpins for assistance in picking them out. 352 BRITTANY f HAP Talking of Brest, the great sight in old days, next to the war-ships floating majestically in the magnificent harbour, was the galleys, and a hideous and revolting spectacle it was. Men still spoke of " the galleys," though the wretched convicts were no longer chained to the oar, but condemned to land labour. Coupled like hounds, in heavy irons, they were marched out in gangs, under guard of musketeers. At night they lay down, still coupled in the irons, on double ranges of sloping wooden beds, with thin mattresses and thinner blankets. The galleries were enfiladed by carronades, with gunners standing at attention. You saw the scum and dregs of criminal France, and every evil passion found expression in the faces of that vile assem- blage of reprobates. You could imagine the sort of friendship that sprang up between chain-mates set on escape, as Dumas has touched it off in " Monte Cristo." You saw how men acquired the inveterate drag of the leg, of which Balzac made effective use in the " Incarnation de Vautrin," where the soi-disant Spanish priest was suspected as a cheval de retour. In the "Journals" of Thomas Raikes there is a vivid description of a chain-gang starting from the central prison in Paris on the dreary pilgrimage to the place of torment, and. «v.] BRETONS OF THE COAST 353 for the life of me, I could not help pitying "les miser ables " ; for, whatever the crime, the penalty seemed excessive, and the guillotine would have been a merciful alternative. You knew, besides, that there was a horrible mixture of black and speckled sheep, and that there must be many a decent Breton there, who had only struck a hasty blow in hot blood ; and for that sort of offence, if I sat on the Breton bench, I should be inclined to let the culprit down easily. Espe- cially with the Breton of the coast, one should consider his breeding, his traditions, and his sur- roundings. The fisherman whose bark floated over the gloomy Baie des Trespasses, haunted by the spirits of the dead on All Saints' Eve, and who got his livelihood by braving the storms of the Atlantic, could hardly fail to be morose. His fathers, encouraged by the priests who took their tithes, had practised all manner of detestable dodges to bring mariners to grief on the inhospit- able shores. They were the Corsairs who, under such captains as Jean Bart or Duguay Trouin, sailed out of St Malo, Roscoff, and Morlaix, to carry their flag, as they boasted, " over every sea," and to be a terror to skippers in the English Channel. Cool and daring in emergencies, they were to be 354 BRITTANY C CHAr the piloters of the fleet by which Napoleon may or may not have hoped to achieve the conquest of England. Forty years ago the law had got its grip on them, and they should have known the consequences of a mortal vendetta and a fatal stab. But when you saw a group clustered in the kitchen of the inn at RoscofF or Douarnez, with their stern faces and the far-away look in their eyes, sitting round a smouldering fire in the height of summer, taking their pleasure and their liquor sadly, you saw that, as they lived in the shadow of death, they would set as little store by the lives of others as by their own. I have many a pleasant memory of the primitive Breton inns, but among the brightest are those attaching to Lannion and Quimperle. At Lannion you were literally, as they say at Morlaix, " between garret and garden " ; the windows at the back were on a level with the terrace, shaded by apple and mulberry trees, flushed in a bloom of roses and fra- grant with stocks and gillyflowers. The state bed- room and the little salon, hung with quaint old tapestry, looked out across the street on the " Cafe Restaurant, tenu par Querou," which tempted the roughest of amateur artists to try his hand at a sketch when the weather was wet. And with the £ a o O oi u a o X «v.] AN ABBEY-INN 355 savoury odours from the kitchen in your nostrils, you could hardly realise you were living luxuriously for a trifle over four francs a day. As for the Lion d'Or at Quimperle, the cuisine was about as recherche, and the addition decidedly more reason- able than those of its fashionable namesake at Paris. More enchanting headquarters for a variety of enticing excursions there could not be. The architecture, the rooms, their decorations, and their furnishing, took you back to the Middle Ages, for the Elizabethan-looking old house used to be tenanted by the dignified abbots of St Croix. Their spirits must have haunted it still, for, spite of the temptations to excursions, you were inevi- tibly seduced into indolence. There were seats where novels might be neglected, and shades where pipes might be smoked. Under the great bay windows a close-shaven lawn sloped down to a rippling trout-stream, and though the trout were shy from frequent casting over them, as that bit of water was preserved, there was really fair fishing. Quimperle was an ideal place for a honeymoon, when the bridegroom was aesthetic and the bride sentimental. CHAPTER XV IMPERIAL PARIS The fall of the Second Empire had far-reaching consequences for Paris. Under Louis Napoleon it was at its apogee as the capital of gaiety and dissipation. It was the Mecca of enthusiasts in the race of pleasure, but since then London has been ousting it from the pride of place. Fifty years ago it was being changed from brick to marble, and the destructive genius of Hausmann was in the ascendant. Demolition was every- where going forward; teams of grey Norman horses were dragging heavy wagons through clouds of dust in the fashionable quarters. Speculators who "stood in" with the Court and the municipality were buying up doomed blocks of buildings, to resell at fancy prices. The Rue de Rivoli was to be prolonged ; four new boulevards and five new barracks were in con- templation. While wealth flowed in like a flood, 350 chap, xv.] IMPERIAL PARASITES 357 all classes were joyous, and the capital was swamped in highly-paid labour. L Empire, cetait la paix, and France had entered on a period of assured prosperity. Perhaps the man who most shrewdly realized the instability of the Imperial structure was the Emperor himself. He knew the Parisians who had voted the plebiscite craved for panem et circences, and although his personal tastes were of the simplest, he was bound to fool them to the top of their bent. The citizen king had pinched and saved : the Emperor lavished with a liberal hand. The great offices of State were largely paid, but the pay was trivial compared to the perquisites. Early political and municipal information was worth untold gold to speculators in high office. When De Morny's stud was brought to the hammer at his death, he had one hundred and fifty horses in his stables, and horse- flesh was not the most costly of his tastes. Imperial Paris was a magnet of irresistible attrac- tion for the railway bosses of the States, for the millionaires of Southern America who had made fortunes in mines or revolutions, and who regilded their damaged reputations in a society indifferent to morals ; for Russians who had long leave of absence, and for boyards who were sated with 358 IMPERIAL PARIS f™ the vulgar vices of Bucharest and were given over to gambling, loose lives, and late suppers. Napoleon would gladly have kept more respect- able company, but he was cold-shouldered by the aristocracy of the Faubourg, as he had to court the tradesfolk and dazzle the populace. He paid his State officers well, but he dealt with them as his uncle with his marshals. They were expected to spend as freely as he gave, and the most favoured of the innermost ring had the chance of amassing fortunes. Alphonse Daudet, in his "Nabab," gives a vivid picture of the society of the Empire, and Zola, in his "L , Argent, ,, has analysed the financial intrigues which culminated in his memorable battle of the Bourse. At the Tuileries and Louvre, Napoleon was rivalling, in admirable taste, the works of the Great King at Versailles and Marly. Looking out of the back windows of the palace, the Place of the Carrousel now presented one unbroken square, and on the garden front he had completed the Cour d'Honneur, destined so soon to furnish fuel for the fires of the Commune. The balls at the Tuileries and at the Hotel de Ville were scenes to remember. Some two thousand guests were ushered up the grand staircase, between double **.] A BALL AT THE Tt TILERIES 359 files of the gigantic Cent-Gardes in their gorgeous uniforms. To all intents, they were bah costumes ; with few exceptions the men were in uniform, and the ladies, patronizing Worth and other fashion- able milliners, rivalled each other in rich and rarely fancied toilettes. The Empress set the fashions, as she superintended the arrangement of quadrilles and cotillon. What gave a special charm to those State functions were the simple manners of the Imperial host. He walked about among his guests, conversing with acquaintances, and exerting himself to put shy people at their ease. And, in the same unpretending way, he would drive out to a shooting- party. Strolling along the Champs Elysees of a morning, you would be passed by a brake, drawn swiftly by a pair of admirably matched English thoroughbreds. The quiet gentleman in the grey shooting suit and billycock hat was the Emperor of the French ; had it not been for the horses, he would scarcely have attracted attention. For the decorations and the suppers on these State occasions the purveyors had carte blanche. The Sillery flowed in streams, and the flavour of pdtes de foie gras and truffles en serviette from the Perigord mingled with the fragrance of priceless exotics. In any 360 IMPERIAL PARIS [chap. case the hosts had the satisfaction of knowing that the banquet was appreciated by the guests. Marshalled in detachments, they were ushered through doors, jealously guarded by stately officials. When they forced the passage, the ardour with which they threw themselves on the refreshments was a sight to see. Before the calls for carriages had ceased to echo along the Rue de Rivoli, not a few of the gentlemen were obviously elevated, and perhaps some of the ladies. From the sublime to the vulgar is but a step. There was nothing I enjoyed more in those bril- liant days than driving of a fine summer night on the top of an omnibus from the Madeleine to the Place de la Bastille and back. The boulevards were one blaze of light, and all bourgeois Paris was on the pavements. It was not an expensive plea- sure, for the price was six sous, and the only drawback was that you might not care for your neighbour on the roof. I remember once, but that was afterwards, between the German siege and the Commune, having a new pair of pantaloons ruined by an affable butcher, who carried in his hand the " inwards " of a fresh-killed sheep. From end to end the broad boulevards were crowded to overflowing. From the open windows of the xv] EVENING IN THE BOULEVARDS 301 illuminated restaurants came the clatter of plates ; from the windows of the billiard cafes the click of balls. Between the acts the male audience was scattering from the theatres, lighting cigarettes, and making a rush for liquid refreshment. The street hawkers were vociferously plying their trades, and the old ladies seated in the newspaper kiosks were overdone with custom. And as you travelled east- ward it was curious to note the changes in the clientele seated before the cafes. There were the fashionables and foreigners on the Boulevard de la Madeleine — the Grand Cafe and the Cafe Americain were not yet in being. On the Italiens, formerly known as the Boulevard de Gand, the society was much the same, but it began to shade away towards the Capucins and along the Mont- martre into political and journalistic cliques of pronounced opinions. The cafe of the Opposition press was the Varietes ; Government journalists patronised the Cafe des Princes, over the way. The Helder and the Cardinal were places where arrangements for theatrical affairs of honour were often matters of elaborate arrangement over a ponche or absinthe. For in those days the bock was almost unknown ; since the war, Alsatian beer — and very good and light it is — has superseded M2 IMPERIAL PARTS [chap. more deleterious concoctions, and may better the chances of the French in any future war of revenge. A propos to evenings on the boulevards and billiards, we used often to drop in after dinner at the Cafe du Grand Balcon. As there were twenty of them, more or less, you were always pretty sure of a table. You had to regulate the strokes by the elbows of your next neighbour, and it was a pandemonium of noise and racket. One evening we were playing near the windows, when the row was dominated by two or three loud reports from the street. In the general rush to the bal- cony, we had the advantage of front places. A panic-stricken crowd was scattering and then stop- ping to stand and gaze, in front of the Opera House over the way. Some prostrate figures were being picked up from the pavement; a wounded horse lay kicking, and others were being released from their harness. Orsini had flung the bomb which the Emperor escaped so narrowly ; and per- haps Napoleon never had such a breath of the incense of popularity as when, with imperturbable serenity, he bowed his thanks to the audience, who stood up unanimously to cheer him vociferously. A man must dine wherever he is, but dinner in *v.] VANISHED RESTAURANTS 363 Paris was the grand feature of the day. Another way of seeing the boulevards to the best advantage was dining at the Cafe de Paris. There you saw them at luxurious leisure, and before the lamps were lighted. It was a more expensive method, but almost worth the money, whether you could afford it or not. De Musset used to say you could not pass the doors under fifteen francs. The great salle of the famous restaurant was on the entresol, and if you had secured one of the favourite tables you could sit breast-high above the ebb and flow of the tide of humanity. The trouble was, that if you were sensitive you felt you were flaunting your enjoyment in the faces of the less fortunate, who cast longing looks upward. The cuisine of the Cafe de Paris was unsurpassed, but it has passed with the Trois Freres Provencaux, and Philippe's, and why so sad a fate has befallen them is a mystery. The only explanation is the rise of grand caravanserais and fashionable hotels further to the west, laying themselves out for sumptuous tables d'hote, and little inferior in petits diners soignes. Half a century ago, the three vanished restaurants may be said to have been facile prin- cepes, and their regular clients never objected to their prices. The Cafe Anglais and the Maison 364 IMPERIAL PARIS t CHAP Doree might give you as good a dinner -and certainly the former excelled in changes, as in the portentous capacity of the wine-glasses, which insensibly ran up the bill. But they had a repu- tation, not altogether undeserved, for dissipated suppers and unholy orgies, which scared hyper- respectable customers away. It was at the Cafe Anglais that the Prince of Orange set the example to a party of jovial convives of throwing all the china and crockery into the side street. Durand's Cafe of the Madeleine — where Boulanger hesitated on the eventful night when audacity might have made him Dictator of France — was in a cheerful and central situation, and there was many a pleasant party there, for it was patronised by the British embassy. The Trois Freres, with its stronger touch of the garlic — which accentuated its Provencal ex- traction — had its speciality of which it kept the secret. The potage a la Bagration figured in other cartes, but it was only at the Freres that it was to be had in perfection. " Bisque ' was another favourite potage, but for delicacy the " Bagration " left it far behind. There the chef, though he had no monopoly of that plat, always staked his credit on the faisan a la Sainte Alliance — stuffed with boned snipe and woodcock and the **•] PHILIPPE'S 365 choicest truffles of Perigord. The neighbouring Very and Vefour seemed even then under partial eclipse, and it is a marvel how they should have survived when the " Brothers " were submerged. My own favourite resorts were the Cafe Voisin for breakfast, and Philippe's for dinner— I mean when I was making a sojourn in Paris and sought to combine frugality with luxury. Philippe's — the famous old Rocher de Cancale — being out of the way, in the Rue Montorgueil, depended a good deal upon citizens from the Marais and the Montmartre quarter. They knew what was good, but understood the value of money. Gourmets of European reputation resorted to the place, as Hay ward has told us in his "Art of Dining." But you could dine excellently for eight francs, wine, coffee and chasse included, from the puree aux croutons, or the bonne femme, to the omelette soufiee and the Roquefort. The danger was when you had the honour of a personal acquaintance with deaf M. Pascall, who made the round of the tables, rubbing his hands and disinterestedly suggesting some dish which he felt assured would meet your approval. The dish was all right, but it possibly doubled the addition. When you were putting up at Meurice's, the 366 IMPERIAL PARIS t LHAr Cafe Voisin, so to speak, was round the corner. It was my first love among Parisian restaurants, and I never was false to it, for there I was first initiated in the charms of French cookery, and in the intricacies of the gastronomic volumes bound in red velvet. The Voisin was more Provencal than the " Provencaux," and it caught me at the first breakfast with the plat de jour — poitrine de mouton, sauce Bearnaise. The worst of the Voisin was that you were overcrowded, and the atmosphere was stifling in summer. But they used to let apartments on the upper floor, and a friend of mine took up his quarters there till after a course of practical gastronomy he was driven to give them up by a sharp attack of gout. The cellar of wines, and especially of Burgundies, of all growths and vintages, methodically classified, was altogether exceptional. When I went to dine there after the Commune, the dignified old sommelier, who took a fatherly pride in the cellars, was sadly shrunken and crestfallen. He had suffered more in mind than in body through the sieges, when his wines had been ruthlessly requisi- tioned for the hospitals. His wish seemed to be to get rid, on any terms, of the new stock they had laid in, and which was hanging sadly on hand. xv.] THE PRICE OF WINES 367 He brought bottles of young vintages of Romance and Chambertin, which only wanted keeping, in the hope that old acquaintances might be per- suaded to take them off his hands. But in those days, in Paris as in Vienna, you might dine of the best and yet drink cheaply. No man need have asked anything better than the Beaune Premier, at three francs, of Philippe's or the Voisin. If you went to one of the cheap restaurants in the Passage de Panoramas, where you breakfasted for two francs and dined for three and a half, wine included — very fair they were, though stuffy — the ordinaire was remarkably sound, and for an extra franc they give you a bottle of capital Bordeaux. Champagne may have fallen a little since then, but all other wines have gone up. A few years ago I dropped in for breakfast at the Cafe Riche, and they had nothing from the Gironde in the wine-list below six francs a bottle. I repeat that why any of these renowned restaurants should have closed their doors is a mystery. They charged practically what they pleased, from Vachette on the Boulevard Poissonniere to Ledoyen in the Champs Elysees and the Moulin Rouge in the Rue d'Antin, though they did not go as far as Brebant afterwards, who dispensed altogether with 368 IMPERIAL PARIS l™^- prices in his cartes, and told protesting guests that they were charged for exclusiveness. But what profit could be made by selling good viands at fabulously low prices was shown by the enter- prising butcher, Duval, when he opened his cheap restaurants in many quarters. With soup or salad at twopence, turbot or roast mutton at fivepence, you could dine sumptuously for a couple of francs, with all the cleanliness and service that could be desired. Fifty years ago the hotels frequented by the English were, for the most part, old-fashioned, and the choice was limited. Those in the Place Vendome were airy, select, and extravagant ; they ranked with Claridge's in London, and the grand suites were monopolized by princes, ambas- sadors, and millionaires. Meurice's was the house of the affluent middle class, and in the chansons of the cafes chantants and the caricatures, the typical " Anglais " was always satirized as hailing from it. He wore a white beaver hat, and carried a Murray and a big pair of opera-glasses. Those songs and satirical sketches disappeared with the entente cordiale and the Crimean war. Meurice's was comfortable, especially in winter, when you could have an English breakfast without going xv VARIOUS HOTELS 369 abroad, at the street end of the dark salon, with the Times or Galignani stuck up against the coffee- pot. In those days Galignani was readable as the Figaro or the Gaulois ; it studied piquancy, and devoted itself to London and Parisian gossip. But the bachelor at Meurice's fared indifferently. He climbed by a spiral staircase to a suite of pigeon-holes, the biggest about the size of a bathing-machine. There were noise and bustle enough in the courtyard, but there was no temp- tation to lounge. I found myself better off in that way with Fleury at the Windsor next door, where the quiet little court, closed to carriages, was overshadowed by a spreading plane-tree, under which you might dally with an al fresco breakfast. I tried the Bedford, once favoured by Times correspondents, and I tried the Vouillemont, an excellent family hotel, in what is now the Rue Boissy d' Anglais. In both the dulness brought me nearly to the brink of suicide, and indeed I shifted my quarters from the Vouillemont, after a sojourn of twenty-four hours. In fact, in those old-fashioned establishments, modernized survivals of such hostelries as that of M. La Hurieres in the Rue de L'Arbre Sec, where La Mole made acquaintance with Coconnas, there 2 A 370 IMPERIAL PARIS [chap. was neither light, nor sweetness, nor sociability. The smoking-room at Meurice's was rather an exception ; there was generally a lively group of English assembled of an evening, and for a time Mr Hudson, the dethroned railway king of Eng- land, reigned there supreme. I took greatly to the philosophical old gentleman, who was always good-humoured and who could easily be drawn into reminiscences of the days when he kept open house at Albert Gate and had half the impecunious aristocracy for his courtiers. The opening of the Louvre Hotel inaugurated the new era. Seldom has a bold speculation had more startling success ; from the first, it was filled from basement to attics. The special feature was the Cour d'Honneur, covered in with glass; with the cafe billard, and the rows of lounging- chairs in front, where, sipping your English sherry and bitters before dinner, you could sit and watch arrivals and departures. With the remise opposite and the grand staircase in full view, it was the microcosm of Parisian life. Grave statesmen and diplomatists, descending from sober broughams, came to leave their cards upon distinguished foreigners ; ladies in furs or cashmeres or gossamer summer toilettes, according to the hour or the *