CHAPTER II—SCENES IN VIENNA—DOWN THE DANUBE.
On English Ground—The Road to the East—Life in the Austrian Capital—Fun and Festivity—Visit to the Big Beer-Garden—Effects of Champagne—Animated Conversation—How Twenty Thousand Dollars were Spent—The Man with the Torn Vest—Headaches at a Discount—Yankees in a Row—A Pugnacious Russian—“Quits” but not Satisfied—Challenging an American—The Fashionable World—Down the Danube—Scenes on the River—How Austrian Cigars are made—An Imperial Tobacco Dealer—The Battle of Wagram—Castle of Presburg—We Enter Hungary—An Evening in a Wine Cellar—Want of a Little Soap—Night Scene on the Danube.
AS this book is intended to describe a journey in the Orient, we will leave our steamer at Liverpool, and with one bound plant our feet in Vienna.
This is the last great city on the road to the East; she has twice enjoyed the honors of a Turkish siege, and is the capital of a country which fronts upon the land of the Moslem. So much has been written about Vienna that I shall refrain from giving a description of the city and its people, and shall content myself with remarking that I found it, next to Paris, the most attractive place on the Continent.
I have been several times in Vienna, and at different seasons of the year, but have never found it otherwise than gay and attractive. My longest visit there was in the memorable year of the Exposition, when Vienna was crowded with people from all parts of the globe, and the mingling of nationalities made many curious scenes. The city government of Vienna endeavored to make the place as attractive as possible, and did a great many things to make the time pass pleasantly. There were balls and parties innumerable; music and beer halls were open by the hundred; and every few days there was a special entertainment to the strangers connected with the Exposition. The first of these affairs that I attended was given one evening in the Stadt Park. The Stadt Park would be in English the City Park, Public Gardens, or any thing else you might choose to call a large park or garden belonging to the city, and used for festivals on a grand scale, and for a general place of recreation for the public. Near the entrance is a large building somewhat resembling a palace on a small scale; when I first saw it I asked a friend what it was, and was greatly disappointed at his answer. I supposed it was an art gallery, imperial pavilion, or department bureau, and was naturally somewhat surprised to learn that it was a beer saloon and restaurant. You can understand that a festival which illuminated these grounds, and wound up the illumination with a display of fireworks, was a thing not to be sneezed at. It cost the city of Vienna about twenty thousand dollars to give this “blowout,” and they had the worth of the money. I do not think any of it went to the Aldermen and Burgomaster, as is sometimes the case in America, when cities get up grand displays in honor of distinguished guests.
Not only did the city furnish lights, fireworks, and music, but it furnished an excellent supper washed down with champagne, white and red wines, beer, tea, coffee, and—in a few instances—with water. The effect of these things was interesting to behold. The international juries contained representatives from nearly all the civilized nations of the globe, and when the champagne had warmed their tongues there was a chattering that would have done honor to the cage of monkeys that used to ornament the Jardin Des Plantes in Paris before the war sent the friends of Dr. Darwin to the cooking pot. In the beginning of the festival all were trying to talk in German or in French, but as the champagne did its work and heads began to whirl, the language of the country was forgotten, and everybody was rattling away in his own tongue. Here would be a group in which were half a dozen men, of as many nationalities, and each would be talking in his own language as though his salvation depended on his getting through as many words as possible in a given time. All would be jabbering away for dear life, and all at once; and close by them, and all around them, would be groups of the same sort, fraternizing in the same way.
At every step you might find an Englishman, a Frenchman, or a German endeavoring to explain to an Italian, a Spaniard, or a Chinese, the relations between the solar plexus, and the atomic theory as applied to the construction of cart wheels. The amount of science evolved on that evening was frightful to contemplate, as nearly every man was science-sharp in some way or other, and your genuine man of genius is pretty certain to become more and more talkative the more he gets drunk. There was an immense amount of international fraternizing; and if all the good words and wishes uttered on that occasion and moistened with champagne could have effect, there would never be any more wars among nations, and the various governments of the earth might disband their armies and convert their artillery into locomotives and dirt-carts. Not only were the international jurors there, but a good many other loafers, such as city officials, attaches of the government bureaus, newspaper men, and diplomates. The Emperor was not there, but some of the Archdukes were, and there were lots of Austrians, with any number of decorations hanging on the front of their coats.
You couldn’t move without hitting a dignitary in official costume, or a fellow so full of dignity in plain clothes that you would recognize him at once as a heavy swell; and the mingling of the nationalities as the evening wore on was funny to behold.
Germans and Russians, and others of the continental people were hugging each other, and you had the spectacle—curious and novel to an American—of bearded men kissing and re-kissing like couples of school-girls.
They swore eternal friendship, and pledged each other till their hearts and heads were too full and their tongues too thick for utterance. The waiters got drunk, owing to the numbers of “heel-taps” and the general abundance and freedom of the champagne. They got into rows among themselves and with some of the guests, and altogether there were half a dozen scrimmages of greater or less magnitude. Most of them were fortunately confined to words, and were soon quelled, but there were two rows in which there was some pushing, but no actual blows.
One American had his vest torn in a scuffle with a waiter. He went next morning to the consulate, bearing the torn garment as proof of the affray; but as he could not tell how the affair occurred, and could not remember the name and face of the waiter who assaulted him, the Consul declined to make the quarrel a national one.
It was long after midnight when the last of the convives went home; and when the sun rose next morning, Vienna contained an unwonted number of heads swollen to unusual size and bursting with the pain of too much drink the night before.
The words “West Portal” in very large letters. Man proposes and the police dispose. The police turned us off at one of the bridges, and would not allow us to go anywhere near the western entrance, but sent us away in the direction of the south portal. Then another lot of police stopped us a quarter of a mile from the gate, so that my ride to the Exposition was more in theory than in practice.
Vehicles of every description were depositing people at the gates, and thousands were going thither on foot. Many had come expecting to spend an hour in the building before the beginning of the fête, but in this they were disappointed, as the doors were closed at six o’clock, instead of seven, the usual hour. The crowd kept coming, and coming; you couldn’t find a vacant chair at any of the restaurants and beer halls, and you found it no easy matter to walk about. I think that by eight o’clock there were not less than a hundred thousand people in the grounds, and they kept coming as late as nine o’clock. As a fête, strictly speaking, the affair did not amount to much. Half a dozen bands of music were playing in various parts of the grounds, and at the spot known as the Mozart Platz, there was an Austrian singing-society.
That Sommerfest will be remembered by all who were there, and sadly by more than one respectable head of a family.
Another night there was a festival in the grounds around the Exposition building. I started for that place leisurely about five o’clock, under agreement to meet a friend near the west portal, and mounted to the deck of an omnibus which bore numbering about five hundred voices. Then there were electric lights, nearly a dozen of them, that made the spot brilliant, and when all their rays were thrown on the great dome they brought it out into bold relief.
“How magnificent that dome appears,” said an American near me to his friend; “you can see every part of it distinctly.”
“That may be,” said the other; “but you could see it a great deal better in the daytime without paying a cent.”
Bless his practical mind! I never thought of that!
The light had a strange appearance when thrown on the trees and buildings and fountains, and the scene reminded me of representations of fairyland, such as we sec in the Black Crook, or in the panorama of the Pilgrim’s Progress. If some of my theatrical friends could have been there, I think they would have found some new hints for stage effects. The jewels in the great crown that surmounts the dome were sparkling very brilliantly, and I imagine that more than one individual in the crowd thought that the crown would be a nice thing to plunder. The effect of the lights when turned from you was very pleasing, but when you had to look one of them in the face it became a nuisance. They had a way of changing the colors of the lights that reflected upon the fountains so that they became by turns red, blue, green, yellow, and white, eliciting a great many murmurs of applause.
By half past nine the people began to move away, and there was a jam on all the streets that led through the Prater up to the Praterstern. Vehicles could only proceed at a walk, and even that pace could not always be maintained. I was on the top of an omnibus, and rarely have I seen so large a crowd as the one I looked upon from my post of observation. The streets from the Praterstern spread out like the arms of a fan, or more like the spokes of a wheel, and on all these streets people were about as much crowded as they could be, and there was a much larger sprinkling of women than you see in a crowd in America. Vehicles were moving as best they could, and despite the rush and the jam everybody was good natured.
Nearly up to midnight the crowd surged along from the Prater, and evidently people were in no hurry to go to bed. All Vienna seemed to be out of doors, and the beer-halls were doing an enormous business. I would not ask for a better fortune than to have a dollar for each glass of beer drank in Vienna in the twenty-four hours ending the next morning at sunrise. There were probably half a million people drinking beer on that festive day, at an average of ten glasses each.
As an illustration of European customs, I will relate an incident of my stay in Vienna:
One day, three American ladies were in the Exposition building, and attracted the attention of a couple of strangers, one an Austrian officer, and the other a Russian of considerable distinction in his own home. The freedom of their manners, so natural to American women, was misinterpreted, and the gentlemen made themselves obnoxious by following them wherever they went, and, finally, by speaking to them, and offering to be their escort.
Though repulsed, they followed; and, finally, near the Rotunda, the ladies met a gentleman who was husband to one of them and brother to the other. They told him the story, and pointed out their troublesome followers, who were standing a little distance away. The American walked to where the pair stood, and after a few words he coolly knocked the Russian down.
The latter made no resistance, but pulled out his cardcase and demanded the address of his assailant, which was given.
Next day there came a challenge to fight; the Russian wanted satisfaction for the insult he had suffered, and was determined upon a duel. The American was inclined to accommodate him, but his friends interfered, and one of them went to the Russian, with the assurance that the American would have nothing to do with him.
“But I must have satisfaction,” demanded the Russian. “I have been grossly insulted, and must have satisfaction.”
“I don’t see it,” was the American’s reply. “You are even with him and can cry quits. You insulted his wife and he knocked you down. Can anything be more equal than that?”
“But a blow! a blow, is a terrible insult to me, the Count —————, and I must have a duel.
Speaking to a man’s wife is nothing. He had no business to strike me; he could challenge me to fight, but strike me, never!”
“Well, anyhow, it seems he did, and if you were to insult my wife as you did his, I would knock you down too. We do that way in America, and when you insult an American woman you must be treated in American style. My friend shall not fight a duel, and if you go near him you will get knocked down again, or possibly get a revolver-shot through you. Good-day.”
The Russian would not let the matter rest there. He tried to bring it before the Russian Ambassador, and through him, before the United States Minister; and there was a prospect that the affair would cause some trouble. But the American’s friends refused to let him receive a challenge or take any part in the discussion, so that the Russian was forced to the alternative of having his adversary arrested for striking him, or of letting him alone. As arresting him would not heal his wounded honor, he did not do it, and the affair has now, I think, blown over. It is a dangerous business to strike a man in Vienna, and, had the authorities chosen, they could have made things lively for our pugilistic friend. Only physical assaults are held to be an excuse for a blow.
There is a good deal of nonsense afloat about the beauty of the Viennese women. I looked for it, but could not find it. I do not mean to say that there are no handsome women here, as I saw a goodly number of pretty faces, but they are not more numerous than in other cities. I have read about the great beauty of the women, and know several men who have raved about Vienna as the centre of the earth in this respect, but I cannot understand it. Among the women that are seen in public places, such as the music gardens, restaurants, and cafés, there are no more pretty faces than you would see in Berlin or Paris, and the chances are more than even that those you do see are not Viennese.
One evening I was sitting with a newly-arrived friend in the Volks-Garten listening to the music of Strauss’s band. Hundreds of people were walking up and down the gravel promenade, enjoying the cool and delicious air, the bright lights, and above all, the sparkling music of Vienna’s most celebrated composer. Two women passed near us; they were beautiful beyond question, and my friend, who had not yet learned that it is unsafe to say anything in a mixed assemblage, on the supposition that those around will not understand you, remarked audibly: “Those are the prettiest girls I have yet seen in Vienna.”
“Thank you, sir,” said one of them, as the twain passed on and sat down in another part of the garden.
Half an hour later, we were strolling about, and went unnoticed near their table. They were talking English in an accent that showed they were from London, or, at all events, from some part of the Queen’s dominions. Not far from them were two other handsome women, who were talking French with a pure Parisian accent; and near these, again, there were others talking Hungarian.
There is one part of the Volks-Garden where—on Tuesday and Friday evenings—you will find an assemblage of the fashionable men and women of Vienna, the members of the old and wealthy families, who are received at court, and sometimes belong to it, and without whose sanction nobody can be admitted into that charmed circle known as “Society.” I took particular pains to look at this assemblage in a search for beauty, and am obliged to say that I found very little of it. There were some pretty women, but not a conspicuous number; nearly all of them were richly dressed, but in a “louder” style than you expect to find among really fashionable people. New York or Washington society would present a better appearance than would that portion of Viennese society that I saw. And people who lived there told me that I had seen a very good sample of it.
One pleasant afternoon in October, when the sun shed its mellow rays on the grey walls of Vienna, tinging the lofty spire of St. Stephen’s Cathedral with golden light, and burnishing the faded foliage of the venerable trees in the delightful park of Austria’s capital, I hurried to the banks of the beautiful blue Danube, which Strauss has made famous through the music loving world by the dedication of one of his most charming waltzes. My prosaic object, amid so many poetical surroundings, was to take the evening boat to Presburg. After the customary wrangle with the hackman, I passed the gang-plank and stood among plump “fraus” and “frauleins” with keen black eyes, set above rosy cheeks, beneath an abundance of luxuriant hair of raven hue. Austrian peasants were there with coats of coarse cloth like our once famous “butternut” and Hungarian peasants were there with coats of sheep-skin. Languages mingled, as did the speakers, but the Austrian voices were in the majority, quite as much as were the owners thereof. The Austrian is more loquacious than the Hungarian; the latter has a calm dignity about him, reminding one of the Orient, and he is more economic in his use of words—possibly for the reason that it is no easy matter to speak his language even when one is born to it. Immediately below Vienna the Danube runs through a broad plain that offers nothing of special interest, unless it be the spot where in 1809 Napoleon built a bridge by which his army crossed the river on the night of the fourth of July, to fight on the fifth the battle of Wagram, which cost the Austrians twenty-six thousand men and led to the treaty of Vienna in October of the same year. As we look towards the east the horizon is everywhere limited by mountains; and as we approach them we discover a change in the character of the country. The plain disappears and is succeeded by hills. On the first of these, on the right bank, is the picturesque town of Hainburg, with its ruined chateau dating from the middle ages, and also a well built one of more modern days.
If we are smokers we should take a second look at Hainburg, for here is the imperial factory employing two thousand persons in the manufacture of cigars. Tobacco in Austria is a government monopoly; cigars are made by the government and sold to the retail dealers at a discount of five per cent., and this is the only profit allowed. Whether you, as a smoker, buy one cigar, five cigars, five hundred or five thousand, you pay the same price per stuck, and there is no choice as to shops, so far as quality is concerned. Whether you buy in the Graben or the Taberstrasse of Vienna, or in an obscure shop in an obscure village a hundred miles from the capitol, you get the same quality of cigar for five, seven, nine, ten, or twelve kreutzers, in the one place as in the other. All come from one factory, and their goodness or badness never varies.
A little below Hainburg we pass the mouth of the river March, which separates Austria from Hungary. It is not a large stream, barely wide enough at this season of the year to be called a brook, but it is not always thus. The March is sometimes very deep and strong, and it has puzzled many a military commander how to cross it. During the various wars between Austria and Hungary several battles were fought on the banks of this river, some of them of a very sanguinary character. But all is quiet now, and the only demonstration witnessed during our voyage was that some of the Hungarian passengers raised their hats as the boat passed the March, and one of them took the trouble to inform me of the political importance of the locality, saying that he had served in the last war between the kingdom and the empire.
We wind among hills, some of them steep and rugged, and one crowned by a ruined fortress which once guarded the frontier and kept watch over the river. We see the old castle of Presburg, standing out against the evening sky; and it is dusk when we pass the bridge of boats which has been opened for our descent, and the boat swings round to the landing place at the ancient capital of Hungary. No wonder Austria and Hungary were always at each other’s ears when their capitals were only forty miles apart.‘Tis distance lends enchantment and preserves peace and harmony.
Our indefatigable consul at Vienna, General Post, had given me a letter of introduction to the prince of wine-growers at Presburg, Herr Palaguay; and as the Herr kept a hotel in addition to his wine business, the pair of us—an American naval captain and myself—sought that establishment without delay. We ordered dinner as it was late and we were hungry; the excellence of the pheasant, venison, beef, and other good things that were set before us, caused us to eat abundantly and to entertain a good opinion of the edible resources of Hungary. If we lived thus at the gateway what should we not find in traversing the kingdom? If it were only to secure a supply of Hungarian pheasants, Austria would be justified, in the mind of a gourmet, in the subjugation and appropriation of the entire land of Kossuth. What are national rights against a well-supplied dinner table?
We devoted the evening to a visit to the spacious wine cellars of our host. Very spacious they were; and we wandered about for two hours among huge casks, some of them containing three thousand five hundred gallons each, and worthy of being converted into tenement houses. We tasted of Tokay Imperial and Tokay Royal, of Chateau Presburg, Blood of Hungary, and I don’t know what else; and finally we grew weary of tasting and went home. It was from these cellars that the imperial cellar of Maximilian I., the ill-fated Emperor of Mexico, was stocked, and we were shown through the place by the younger Palaguay, who went to Mexico with Maximilian and arranged his wine vaults in the city of the Aztecs. Father and son were warm admirers of the adventurous scion of the House of Hapsburg, and the old gentleman never wearied of telling us about Kaiser Max and his good qualities.
Next day we climbed to the old chateau that overlooks Pres-burg, and from the esplanade in front had a beautiful view of the city and its surroundings. Beneath us lay Presburg, venerable and grey, with its cathedral, six centuries old, and its Hotel de Ville, dating from the fourteenth century. Directly at our feet was the Jews-quarter. There are seven thousand Jews here in a population of less than fifty thousand; and there is more dirt and general uncleanliness in their quarter than in all the rest of Presburg. West of us the hills shut out the view of Vienna. North were the vine-clad ridges whence come the wines of Presburg. And to the south and east were plain, field and forest; and showing a broad, winding belt of silver, the course of the Danube.
Immediately opposite, and connected with the city by the bridge of boats, was an island where is the Prater of Presburg with shaded seats, with restaurants and open-air theatres and other places of amusements, to which the wearied citizen goes to recreate in the fresh air. We went there in the afternoon and found the Presburg adult of both sexes; we went there in the morning and found the Presburg nursery-maid and infant in goodly numbers. In the evening we went to the theatre; the best box in the house costs two dollars; and a seat in the parquette forty cents. We had an Italian opera, William Tell. The singing was fair, considering the price of tickets, and the size of the house, and the son of William Tell was represented by a young woman so pretty that my friend, the captain, was near falling in love with her, despite his venerable years and his three months in Vienna. The grand chorus consisted of twelve persons, the orchestra of nine, and the scenery was of a miscellaneous nature that enabled it to do duty in all the operas of any ordinary répertoire.
From Presburg to Pesth by the river is a run of about ten hours. Bidding good-bye to the Captain, who was to return to Vienna, I went to the landing one morning to take the boat down the river. She was due at half-past nine o’clock, and I was there ten minutes before the time. The hour came, but no boat. Then ten, ten and a half, eleven, eleven and a half; and still no boat. I tried to be patient, but that was not easy; I interrogated everybody, but to no purpose. Everybody was polite, but couldn’t give any reason for the delay.
Finally, the boat appeared, and it turned out that she had been aground in a fog near Vienna. Perfectly simple explanation when you know it! But there had been no fog at Presburg, and hence the inability to comprehend the cause of the delay.
Below Presburg, the river runs through a level country that offers few objects of interest. It divides into several branches, and becomes wide, and in some places so shallow that navigation is rather difficult. We wound about considerably in some places, in search of the channel, and not infrequently the bottom of the boat and the bottom of the river came in contact. The erratic course of the Danube can be best understood by a knowledge of the fact, that two of the islands formed by its diversion into different channels, are, the one sixty, and the other forty miles long. One is twenty, and the other ten miles wide; and both are so fertile that they are called the Golden Gardens. Their surfaces are diversified with forest, field, and pasture; herds of cattle and horses are numerous upon them, and now and then villages peep out from the rich foliage. Back from the river there are extensive wheat fields, and along the line of railway, just before the harvest, one can ride for many miles through almost unbroken fields of waving grain.
We pass the fortress of Komoru, and peer into the casemates, whence the black-mouthed cannon look frowningly upon us. Komoru has a bloody and eventful history; she has played an important part in all the wars between Austria and Hungary, and in the insurrection of 1848-9 was twice captured and re-captured. The deeds of valor of which Komoru was the scene, would fill a volume; some of them have found a place in the histories of that war, and some live only in the memories of the men who bore a part in the insurrection, or in the effort to suppress it.
Below Komoru, the Danube became more interesting, and we entered a mountain region that would have been picturesque could we have seen it by daylight. It was dark when we passed this portion, and it was darker when we reached the upper extremity of Isle Marguerite, with its gardens and summer resorts, where the people of Pesth seek recreation and pure air in the hot days of summer.
Along the channel that leads by the pretty island, we steamed at full speed; and as we swept beyond its groves, the twinkling lamps of Pesth suddenly came into view, fringing the bank of the river with a lace-work of artificial light. The boat swung round in mid-stream, and brought us to the bank, where a stone quay, with warehouses and piles of merchandise, gave evidence of a prosperous city. The quay has a modern and substantial appearance, and is overlooked by a street, on one side of which is an iron railing, and the other side of which can boast many fine structures, equalling in beauty and solidity most of the marble or iron fronts of New York. Pesth has accomplished much in the last few years, in the way of building, and one is rather taken aback to find such a prosperous and rapidly-growing city so far in the East.
