Monday.
Notwithstanding the assurances of the whole pension, that all cascades are alike,—that wood, water, and mountain may grow familiar to weariness; notwithstanding melancholy prognostics of misfortunes, which may happen to the horses,—and fine weather, which may not last for our journey to Italy, I have insisted on seeing the Staubbach; and to Interlaken, or rather towards Interlaken, we rode last Wednesday, for we were hardly a mile away when the mist closed around us, obscuring the view from the higher ground over the lake and towards Thun, which is so lovely in sunshine. D—— proposed turning back, but we were averse to seeing the whole contents of Baumgarten shake their heads at our discomfiture, as they had done when foretelling it ere we started. We took refuge instead under a pear tree in an old woman’s garden, an agreeable situation, in which we remained an hour, watching the torrents which concealed everything else a dozen paces from us: and as the bad weather did not set in as violently as it sometimes does in the mountains, took advantage of each clearer half hour to proceed, and of the shelter the road afforded when the rain returned.
In this manner we arrived, not very promptly, opposite Spietz, whose old castle is romantically placed on a promontory, near the road and on the lake shore. It belonged to the lords of Bubenberg, and went by the name of the Golden Manor. One of its most noted possessors was Adrian of Bubenberg. In the year 1470 he had been deputed to the court of Duke Charles of Burgundy, and received by him with esteem and affection. On his return he remained attached to the Burgundian party, inasmuch as he believed a continued peace with Burgundy beneficial to Berne. Hagenbach, however, had been seized and executed; and Charles’s fury venting itself not merely in menaces against Switzerland, he named his officer’s brother to fill his vacant place, with orders to cover the county of Ferrette (the part of Alsace which joins Switzerland) with flames and blood. This fresh violence restored to Nicholas Diesbach, the zealous partizan of France, the credit he had lost with his countrymen. He sought to renew the treaty of alliance with Louis the Eleventh; but aware that Adrian of Bubenberg’s influence would be exercised on the opposing side, found means to exclude him from the council, and taught the people rather to take umbrage at his pride of birth and dignity of bearing, than to remember the part he had acted.
Under various pretexts he was exiled to his Golden Manor of Spietz; but when, in 1476, Charles of Burgundy advanced, determined to commence the campaign by the conquest of Morat, at the head of sixty thousand men, the Bernese recollected their banished avoyer, and, recalling him to their councils, implored that he would take the command of the force destined to garrison Morat. The senator, who had ever sought to avoid a perilous war, did not hesitate to draw his sword in one become inevitable. He demanded only implicit obedience, and seeing that the greater portion of the inhabitants were ill disposed, he proclaimed that the first who showed fear or irresolution would be punished with death! He also adopted measures which had been already, on other occasions, successful, separating friends and relations; placing some within the town, and of others forming part of the force destined to repulse the besiegers. Wise, active, and courageous, calm amidst danger, Bubenberg’s conduct and skill saved Morat, to whose fate seemed bound that of all Switzerland, and to him chiefly did Louis the Eleventh of France attribute the victory. Twelve Swiss deputies, Adrian of Bubenberg at their head, were despatched to the French court, and received with royal magnificence. The following year the conqueror of Morat returned on a mission connected with the succession to the throne of Burgundy. The object of his embassy had altered gratitude to coldness—esteem to hatred; faithful to his own high character, firm and incorruptible, when Adrian of Bubenberg saw his colleagues won and wavering, he disguised himself as a minstrel, and returned alone to Berne; this was in 1478. He died there the following year.
The barony of Spietz afterwards belonged to the family of Erlach, which counts among its members Rodolph, conqueror of Laupen, murdered by his son-in-law, and Charles Louis, massacred by his misled soldiers when he came to defend Berne.
From Spietz the road lately made skirts the lake almost the whole way, and rather nervously, as there are neither barriers towards the water nor retreat towards the rock, which has been blasted to leave a passage, and round whose base it winds. As Fanny’s habit of starting rendered the meeting of cart or carriage perilous, we cantered along while the way was free, and to distract her attention from the rivulets and small cascades dashing down to her feet. Arrived at the extremity of the lake, the rain fell in earnest; despite our cloaks it threatened drowning: the mists were sufficiently opaque for Ossian to rest his heroes on; and the dim grey water which stretched below, melting into and confounded with them, looked mysterious and beautiful, as a single gleam of pale sunshine struggling through the vapour just touched the Neisen and descended to rest on the surface. Unterseen was ten minutes nearer than Interlaken, and, though we had heard the hôtel called a bad one, the dripping manes and drooping tails of our horses prayed movingly for the nearest shelter. We took the road along the bottom of the lake, and arrived among the dark wooden houses, some of which bear date of two hundred years ago. The accommodation at the inn was better than I had expected; but, considering we had come thither for pleasure, our object was not altogether accomplished, as we sat alone at supper, faintly lighted by two candles at the end of the large gloomy room, the storm beating against the windows and the wind whistling under the doors. Our bed-room looked on the church, backed as it is by the steep sides of the Harder, to which the clouds clung,—threatening an inauspicious close to our explorings; and the most musical of German watchmen woke us every hour during the night chanting them and an appropriate rhyme in his fine deep voice. Called as we desired, and the car ready, the state of the weather, as we breakfasted shivering in the same large room, looked by no means promising, and the barometer had continued sinking pertinaciously. Not choosing, however, to ride back to Thun, as we had ridden from it, in rain and fog, and our object unaccomplished, we preferred driving in their company to Lauterbrunnen; and leaving our horses with strict charges to the stable servants, we started rather silent and rather sad in that chill morning at seven, over the four picturesque bridges, which, crossing the Aar, divide Unterseen from Interlaken. From one of these there is visible between the nearer mountains a view of the Jungfrau, splendid in fine weather. She looked mournfully through the wreaths of heavy vapour like a captive through her prison bars: by degrees the mist rolled away, and we could admire Interlaken, where you know D—— was prevented passing part of his summer by the unfavourable description given by ——. I should prefer it even to Thun, for its green plain nestles more closely under the hills. The pensions are built on the same line, but apart; with a mountain back and mountain view, their gardens surrounding them, and a noble avenue of old walnut-trees extending the whole length they occupy. The road to Lauterbrunnen winds through shady lanes and crosses meadows of Swiss verdure, and then lies beneath wooded hills, on the summit of one of which rises Unspunnen, the castle of Byron’s Manfred; a square and a round tower, from the top of one of which spring two slight trees, being all remaining. The marriage of the baroness Ida of Unspunnen with Eschenbach of Wadischwyl bare to the latter’s house her father’s lands of Unspunnen, she being his only child, and Oberhofen her maternal inheritance.
An illustrious ancestor of this Eschenbach, but more as poet than warrior, though for his military exploits he was armed knight by Count Poppo of Henneberg, was Wolfram; the year of whose birth is not known with certainty, but who lived when the emperors of the house of Swabia had roused in Germany a love for poetry, which had grown to passion: and the verse of its votaries had a depth and brilliancy which in no way foretold the coming barbarism of the fourteenth century. His life passed in the wanderings of a troubadour from court to court, admired and honoured, as he retired to the home of his forefathers but a brief time ere he died. A zealous patron of letters and his friend was the Landgrave Hermann of Thuringe, at whose court of Wartbourg (the most romantic of mountain castles) congregated the wisest and wittiest of their time. In the year 1207 six noble minnesingers entered the poetical lists there; Hermann and his fair wife distributing the prizes, while Nicholas Klingsor, famed for his love ditties, as well as his knowledge of necromancy and astrology, presided as judge, summoned for that purpose from Hungary. The general voice hailed Wolfram conqueror; but Klingsor, whom he had unwittingly offended, in vengeance adjudged the palm to his friend Henry of Ofterdingen. His superiority was, however, fully acknowledged by the poets of Swabia, with all of whom he was on terms of intimacy, and who styled him sage and master. His genius was varied,—for he was called the Homer and the Ariosto of his day. Among the works his astonishing fertility left to found his fame on, is a species of drama, entitled the Combat of Wartbourg, containing the six pieces recited by himself and his five troubadour companions in 1207 at the court of Thuringe.
A hundred years later lived Walter of Eschenbach, comrade and confidant of the parricide Duke John of Swabia.
When the latter’s father, Duke Rodolph, died, leaving him a boy, the Emperor Albert sent for him to court, and held his patrimony in his own hands as the orphan’s guardian. The minor, become of age, demanded his birthright, which Albert, under various pretexts, refused; and the young man, exasperated by each succeeding subterfuge, urged on by the mockery of his partisans, who nicknamed him Duke sans duchy, and the fear that his uncle might intend his utter spoliation, employed as mediator the bishop of Strasburg.
He begged that the emperor would at least yield to his nephew some castles with their domains, belonging to his paternal inheritance; but Albert once more evaded a direct reply, speaking of giving Duke John a command in his meditated expedition against Bohemia, and of satisfaction when the wars were done.