From a Terrace in Prague

by B. Granville Baker

After the Catholic Reformers had seen to it that the leaders of the movement towards religious liberty had been put away, they set about bringing the Bohemians back to Rome in their own ingenious way. We have seen that among other remedies against heresy they introduced, or perhaps re-introduced, a national saint, John Nepomuk, had him canonized and an effigy of him set up on the Charles Bridge; this effigy was followed by many others, among them that of Loyola. Each pillar of the bridge that Charles built is crowned by the effigy of a saint or groups of saints, with most of whom, I regret to say, I am not acquainted. There are, however, some old friends—Saints Ludmilla, Wenceslaus, Cosmas and Damain, and Adalbert—who are intimately connected with the story of Prague. There is no denying the fact that these groups of statuary give a unique touch to the massive beauty of the Charles Bridge, but they do not appeal to me as works of art; this is probably due to my own shortcomings. To my thinking, the statue of St. George, which stands close by the south entrance to the cathedral on the Hradšany, is worth the whole collection on the Charles Bridge. This statue, the work of the brothers George and Martin of Aussenburk, was ordered expressly by Charles IV; it is an absolutely faithful representation of a knight's armour as worn in the fourteenth century. For the rest, the statuary on the bridge was not run up in the space of a few years; the work extended over about two centuries.

The first step taken towards an outward display of regained power was the destruction by the Jesuits of that old church which stood on the Malá Stranské Naměsti, in which, as I told you, the martyrs of 1621 partook of the Sacraments on their road to execution. The Church of St. Nicholas then reared its stately pile out of the medley of quaint old roofs and dormer windows immediately below my terrace. There were changes going on among those sleepy houses too, for the victory of the White Mountain and the Imperialist successes in the Thirty Years' War had brought to Bohemia a swarm of foreign adventurers, officers in the Emperor's armies, who acquired the property of exiled Bohemian nobility and set about building palaces for themselves. They are interesting too, these palaces in Prague, and some of them have beautiful gardens, as those of Fürstenberg, Lobkovitz, Schoenborn and Waldstein. The latter palace has, indeed, more than ordinary interest on account of the strange man who built it.

Albrecht of Waldstein was a Bohemian noble of no very high degree, and belonged to a Protestant family. He seems to have had no great learning, but turned when he arrived at man's estate to the dark sciences, more especially astronomy, and from the study of this science he hoped to look behind the veil of the future and read his fortunes in the stars. He rose, no doubt on account of his ability, to high command, to a position of more real power than that of his imperial master. He amassed a vast fortune, and built himself a huge palace in Prague—from my terrace I could point to you its long line of roofs. To build his palace a number of smaller houses had to be pulled down, some twenty-three in all. Then Giovanni Marini, with his Italian and Dutch architects and landscape gardeners, set to work and built up this regal abode of gigantic proportions, a place as vast as Waldstein's ambition and dreams of power and conquest. For all he was of Protestant faith originally, Waldstein had as patron saint St. Wenceslaus, to whom he built a beautiful chapel in his palace. There are gardens and fountains, a Sala terrena, said to be the largest in Europe; there are magnolia-trees as old as the palace; there is a bower of black old yew-trees screening the space where this warrior-statesman received the ambassadors of kings who sought alliance with him. There is an uncanny air of desolation over all this vast demesne, an air of unsatisfied ambition, of vain striving and infinite sadness of remorse. I can picture to myself Waldstein pacing along that alley of clipped trees, now overgrown, scheming and planning. I am sure he was one of those whose vision showed to them the endless possibilities of power wielded from Prague as capital of a great Central European State, that he was of one mind with George Podiebrad, Charles IV, Přemysl Ottokar II, Libuša, and I will even include that Frankish adventurer, Samo. But Waldstein had to reckon with a Habsburg Emperor, King of Bohemia. The negotiations that his generalissimo had undoubtedly been carrying on with the French and the Swedes had roused the suspicions of Emperor Ferdinand, so Albrecht of Waldstein, Duke of Friedland, was rendered harmless; he was murdered by his own officers one night at Cheb (Eger,) a place you passed through on your way from Paris to Prague.

There is a quaint old-world atmosphere that clings about the Mala Strana, in its narrow streets and under its red roofs and dormer windows, an atmosphere that suggests all sorts of good deeds done in a quiet sort of way, of simple piety and a general steady level of intellectual effort. In this, I am glad to report, some English people, or rather Britons, took part. I have already mentioned Elizabeth Weston and her epitaph in the church dedicated to St. Thomas. This church has also been restored by the Jesuits; it was probably high time, for it had been dedicated in 1316, and was occasionally the scene of a "certain liveliness" which is likely to make repairs necessary. Apart from Swedes who used to come round pillaging, this church seems to have had its private, as it were parochial, troubles, a serious one in 1510, for instance, when a fracas arose one day during service between some Bohemians and some Hungarians. A fracas was always conducted with rapiers and daggers in those days, and must have been a picturesque, if inconvenient, event. It was all about a lady too, which sounds quite likely: it was said that she was not worth all the pother: this is the sort of thing some people would say. As a consequence of this fracas several Bohemians were executed for robbery with violence, which sheds a different light on the incident, but I do not think it matters much at this distance of time.

There was a monastery attached to St. Thomas's Church, or perhaps the other way about, and the monks had a fine library. When the Swedes, quite uninvited, called at Prague and occupied the Mala Strana in 1648, their commander, Königsmark, sent his chaplain, Master John Klee, to pick up the library of St. Thomas's: the Swedes were great collectors of books. Klee remained unmoved by all the entreaties of the good monks until one of them showed him some silver spoons. Klee began to waver; some one brought out a gilt cup; Klee fell, and left the good monks with their books, just carrying off the trifling tokens they had given him as souvenirs. A little kindness goes a long way.

In St. Thomas's there is also a painting ascribed to Rubens over the altar. It looks doubtful to me, but the light was bad, and I could form no opinion as to the picture's merit. Another painting in this church gave me a thrill, a Virgin and Child, both black! I hoped that at last I had discovered a picture I had heard so much of, "The Black Madonna"—a famous picture with a stirring history. There are said to have been several "Black Madonnas" in Bohemia at one time, and that of Stara Boleslav was the most precious of them. St. Ludmilla herself had given this picture to her pious grandson Wenceslaus, who, as we know, was murdered at Stara Boleslav. Podiwin, the most trusty henchman of Wenceslaus, buried this treasure when his master was murdered. You could not well let it fall into the hands of Brother Boleslav, the hefty heathen; he would have been incapable of appreciating the beautiful legend of how the young mother, filled with anxiety on the flight into Egypt, prayed that she and her Child might be turned black while their exile lasted. The picture was found again in 1160 by a ploughman; the Saxons, on their raid into Bohemia in 1635, stole it, and Ferdinand II redeemed it and brought it back to Prague. It should be somewhere in this city. I will leave the search for it to you, when you pay your visit to Prague, which is surely inevitable now that you have read so far in this book.

A tall, very thin spire, that peers up near the mass of the Nicholas Church, reminds me of others of British race, who had their day in Prague and, I feel sure, contributed to its reputation for religion and piety. These were the Englische Fräulein, as the German chronicler calls them; this means English virgins or maidens—you cannot very well call them English misses—whose Order, founded by Clara Ward in the seventeenth century, was introduced into Prague in the eighteenth by a Princess Auersberg. I am not sure how these ladies passed their time, nor what their object was in life, but no doubt they maintained that state to which they considered themselves called, and this alone should be accounted unto them for righteousness in a gay town like Prague.

There is yet one other Briton of whom I must tell you in connection with the story of old Prague. His name is Brown, and I met him, or rather his effigy, in Vienna many years ago. To give him all his style and title, or as much as I can recollect—Field-Marshal Count Brown, but for all that a good stout Briton. He happened to serve the Empress Maria Theresia, and served her well. When her arch-enemy, Frederick of Prussia, came this way, Brown was one of those who came out to meet him; was wounded and died of his wounds in Prague. Frederick of Prussia was obliged to raise the siege of Prague, according to popular opinion forced thereto by supernatural powers. It is said that one night, just after the battle of Prague, fought some five miles out, at a place called Stěrboholy, and while the siege of Prague was still in progress, the guard at one of the gates was surprised by a visitor. He appeared suddenly coming from the city on a black horse, dressed in ancient costume and wearing, mark you, a prince's cap. He demanded right of egress, the gate was opened, and the night-rider vanished into the darkness. The next day came news of the Austrian victory at Kolin, and everyone knew that one of Bohemia's ancient champions had decided the issue of that day. The pious generally ascribe the victory to St. Wenceslaus; if supernatural agency was at work, I am more inclined to attribute this ingerence to Brother Boleslav, the hearty heathen: it was more in his line.

Those dark days passed, and a century elapsed before the Prussians came pouring in again to disturb the Pax Austriaca which held Bohemia enveloped. They came as before, over the passes and through the Gate of Bohemia at that dear little town among the pine forests, Nachod. But all this is ancient history, is past and over, and the serene atmosphere of Good King Charles's gracious days is glowing over Prague again. Old Prague, the somnolent city of centuries after Bohemia's freedom went, is regaining her place and rising to her high mission as capital of a free and independent State, the most promising of those that arose out of the ruins of the Habsburg dynasty's dominions. Old customs, no doubt, are vanishing: I have looked in vain for the bootmakers' Fidlovačka and the tailors' revels in Stromovka, the butchers' special form of annual rejoicing seems also to have fallen into desuetude. Like pious souls, as they undoubtedly are, the butchers of Prague choose an ancient and respectable church for their peculiar celebration, which, to my thinking, has a somewhat pagan savour; indeed, the profoundly learned trace the practice back to the days when Thor was worshipped in the gloomy forests of Central Europe. The church chosen by the butchers for their special ritualistic function was that dedicated to St. James, son of Zebedee. This church was originally one of the oldest in Prague; it stands in that close-packed quarter of the Old Town, near Our Lady of Tyn. The present edifice shows no traces of its earliest aspect when founded by the Order of Minorities in 1232; it has been damaged and restored until its present appearance was evolved, but it seems to have been loyally patronized by the Old Town butchers, whose bravery, we know, did much towards safeguarding the city both during the Hussite troubles and against the Swedes. Stout fellows, those old butchers of Prague; their holiday diversion, observed each 25th of July, was to dress up a goat, to carry it to the top of St. James's church-tower and throw it over into the street with "music and song," in which the goat probably joined until he arrived on the pavement below. Strenuous enjoyment on a hot summer's day, I should say, having been in personal contact with a goat myself on occasion, but I really cannot see where the fun comes in. By the aid of a map you may discern the church-tower of St. James's, but you will no longer see the goat hurtling through space. One by one these dear old customs are dying out. Nevertheless, our Pragers still enjoy life, more than ever I should say, contrasting the city of to-day with that of some ten years ago. I have touched on some of the forms of amusement and recreation you may indulge in; you will also find a pleasant social life developing among the cheery and hospitable Pragers. And there is always the river, which among its many reflections, by the way, also includes those of a very modern and rather German-looking building which stands somewhat by itself among disconnected groups of old and new buildings, near that quaint old house by the Jewish Cemetery. The building I refer to is called the Rudolfinum, after one of the unhappiest of all the Habsburgs, and served originally as an academy of music. It still fills up with sound from time to time, though not necessarily with harmony; it is the Parliament of the Republic of Czecho-Slovakia.

The present tendency in Prague is to erect handsome modern buildings all along the right bank of the river: Government offices, Ministries chiefly, will occupy them. At present the different Ministries are housed in ancient palaces dotted about the city. Foreign Affairs are controlled (and very ably too) from the Hradšany, as is only right, and here are also the offices of the Presidency and the President's official residence. The Ministry of Commerce inhabits Waldstein's Palace, that of Finance the Palace of Clam-Galas, which is well worth seeing on account of its portico. But I fancy it will be some time before all the grand plans for reconstruction and bringing Prague up to the requirements of a capital city have been carried out, and the silver river will be quite content to reflect the glorious monuments of the past for some little time longer. The river, no doubt, could tell us a deal about the chances and changes of the mortals that lived on its banks; we have seen it reflect so many events, joyous, tragic, even comic. On the whole it wears a thoroughly contented look on its shining countenance—the look of one who knows he is thoroughly appreciated. And knowing this, the river has put up with all manner of trammels which men call "regulation"; there are weirs and locks and all manner of improvements which not even Charles IV had thought of constructing for the good of his people. But then there are the islands left, and the Vltava's friends, the Pragers, come down to those islands of an evening and make music, which must reconcile the river to changed conditions. One island, that of Kampa, has already been pointed out to you; there are others. Of these, two count for our purpose, namely, of getting the best we can out of glorious old Prague. Of these two islands, one is named Žofin, which is derived from Sophie, possibly the wife of Good King Wenceslaus. Mind you, I am not at all certain about this; there is a large bathing establishment on this island, which not only recalls the cheery memory of Wenceslaus, but also that of Susanna; therefore to bring in the name of long-suffering Queen Sophie does not seem to me quite nice: what do you think? The next island is a larger one, almost in midstream, whereas Žofin keeps the right bank and has just enough space for a very pretty flower-garden, and a well-kept restaurant where you may enjoy good food and good music under the shade of the spreading chestnut-trees. The larger island is called Střelesky Ostrov, which means that it has something to do with shooting. Indeed, in years of long ago, in the days of bows and arrows, and crossbow and bolt, when archery was compulsory, this island was the rendezvous of marksmen. Being a serious concern, archery, and subsequently all manner of shooting, was put under the spiritual charge of St. Sebastian. It is very sporting of this saint to have accepted this honorary office. Here again, on this island, you may dine and drink and listen to good music. You may also shoot at glass balls with an air-gun. Ichabod!