Since I wrote you from Andernach I have been travelling steadily. The whole party except Mrs. V. N. and myself made a pedestrian tour along the Rhine from Rolandseck to Bingen, a distance of sixty miles. I started to walk, but when I had gone fifteen miles I gave out, and was glad to take the boat. Mrs. V. N. was an invalid and couldn't walk, so I took charge of her, and we would travel on together. When we got to the station where we had agreed to wait for the others, I would seat her somewhere with the bags of the party piled up around her, and then I would make a sortie, look at the hotels, and engage our rooms.
We saw the Rhine from Cologne to Worms very thoroughly—for we kept stopping all along. It is truly magnificent, and nothing can be more interesting and picturesque than those old ruined castles which look as if they had grown there. Bingen is the sweetest place, and just the spot to spend a summer. We travelled from there to Worms, which is a delightful old city. We were there only an hour or two, but the walk from the boat to the cars was through the prettiest part of it, I should judge, and was very romantic, through winding walks overshadowed with trees. We saw that great Luther monument there, which is most imposing. The exterior of the Cathedral is splendid, and in quite another style of architecture from the Cologne Cathedral. From Worms we went to Spire, in order to see the Cathedral there, which is superb, and very celebrated. It was founded in 1030 by Conrad the Second, as a burial place for himself and his successors. It has no stained windows at all, even in the chancel, which surprised me, but the frescoes and the whole interior colouring are gorgeous in the extreme. It is in the Romanesque style of architecture, and is so entirely different from the Cologne Cathedral that it was very interesting, but there's nothing equal to the Gothic, after all.
From Spire we went to Heidelberg. I was enchanted with Heidelberg. It is the most romantic and beautiful place I was ever in. The Castle is the prince of ruins. I had made up my mind all along that I was going to enjoy myself at Heidelberg, for my friend Dr. S. was studying there, and I knew I should have him to go about with. So I had been urging the party to go there from the first. As soon as we arrived, off I went to find him, which I soon accomplished. He was very glad to see me, and put himself at once at my disposal. You know the S.'s used to live at Heidelberg, among other places, so he knows it all by heart. After dinner we all went up to the Castle, of course. I was very sorry that I had never read Hyperion. We had to ascend a long hill before we got to it, but the weather was perfect, so we didn't mind. It is so high up that the view of the town and of the Neckar winding through it, with the wooded hills on the opposite shore, is panoramic.
The Castle itself is an enormous ruin, and very richly ornamented. Ivy two hundred years old climbs over it in great luxuriance. We passed through a gateway over which stand two stone knights which are said to change places with each other at midnight, and there are all sorts of charming stories like that connected with the place. We saw a beautifully carved stone archway which was put up in a single night, in honour of somebody's birthday, and a monument with an inscription over it stood in one corner of the grounds, stating that here had stood some distinguished personage (I always forget all the names, unluckily, but "the principle remains the same"), when the Castle was being besieged by the French. Two balls came from opposite directions, passed close by him, and struck against each other, miraculously leaving him unharmed!
After we had walked around the outside of the Castle sufficiently we went inside. It took us a long time to go over it, it was so large. We saw the stone dungeon, which was called the "Never Empty," because somebody was always confined there—a dreadful hole, and it must have been in perfect darkness—and we saw the great Heidelberg cask which had a scaffolding on the top of it big enough to dance a quadrille on. But the finest of everything was the ascending of the tower. Just as we got to the top of it, and had begun to take in the magnificent scenery, an orchestra at a little distance below struck up Wagner's "Kaiser March." It was the one touch which was needed to make the ensemble perfect. On one side the landscape lay far below us, with the silver river winding through it; on the other the hills rose behind the Castle to an immense height, and with the greatest boldness of outline. The tops were thickly wooded, and lower down the trees were beautifully grouped, and the velvety turf rolled and swelled to the foot of the Castle. The sun was just setting in a clear sky, and cast long shadows athwart the scene, and I thought I had never seen anything more striking. Then to hear Wagner's Kaiser March by a well-trained orchestra come soaring up, made a combination such as one gets perhaps not more than once in a life-time.
The march is superb, so pompous and majestic, and with delicious melodies occasionally interwoven through it. Wagner's melodies are so heavily and intoxicatingly sweet, that they are almost narcotic. His music excites a set of emotions that no other music does, and he is a great original. It has the power of expressing longing and aspiration to a wonderful degree, and it always seems to me as if two impulses were continually trying to get the mastery. The one is the embodiment of all those vague yearnings of the soul to burst its prison house, and the other is the cradling of the body in the lap of pleasure. I always feel as if I should like to swoon away when I hear his compositions. Then his harmonies are so strangely seductive, so complicated, so "grossartig," as the Germans say, and so peculiar! Oh, I have an immense admiration for him! He thinks that music is not the impersonation of an idea, but that it is the idea.
But to return to the Castle.—We stayed up in the tower for some time, and then we made the tour of the interior. Afterwards we walked and sat about until all the party thought it was time to go back to the hotel Dr. S. and I thought we would stay up there to supper. So we went where the orchestra was playing, which was in an enclosed space near the Castle. We took our seats at a little table in the open air, and ordered a delicious little supper, also
| "A bottle of wine |
| To make us shine" |
in conversation!—and so glided by the most ideal evening, as far as surroundings go, that I ever spent.
In our hotel at Heidelberg I kept hearing a man play splendidly in the room below us, and every time we passed his door it was open, and we could partly see the interior of a charming room with a grand piano in it, at which he was seated. A pretty woman was always lying back in the corner of the sofa listening to him, apparently. The presence of a large wax doll indicated that there must be a child about, and the perfume of flowers stole through the open doorway. My interest was at once excited in these people, and I said to myself as I heard this gentleman practice every day, "This must be some artist passing the summer here and getting up his winter programme." Accordingly, on Sunday afternoon when he was playing beautifully, I roused myself up and enquired of a servant who he was. "Nicolai Rubinstein, from St. Petersburg," replied she. He is the brother of the great Anton Rubinstein, and is nearly as fine a pianist. I know a scholar of Tausig's who had studied with him, and Tausig had a high opinion of him.