“Let our eyes meet, and you will see
That I love you and you love me.”
But best of all in its simplicity and strength was “Agnes Mary Taylor, widow,” written clearly in ink, and some wag had underscored in pencil the last expressive word.
Does the lady go over the hill and dale signing her name always in this way? On the Yburg mountain-top it had the effect of a great and memorable saying, like “Veni, vidi, vici,” or “Après nous le déluge.” Agnes Mary Taylor, widow. Could anything be more terse, more deliciously suggestive?
[pg!44]
RAMBLES ABOUT STUTTGART
This letter is going to be about nothing in particular. I make this statement with an amiable desire to please, for so much advice in regard to subjects comes to me, and so many subjects previously chosen have failed to produce, among intimate friends, the pleasurable emotions which I had ingenuously designed, there remains to me now merely the modest hope that a rambling letter about things in general may be read with patience by at least one charitable soul. Bless our intimate friends! What would we do without them? But aren't they perplexing creatures, take them all in all! “Don't write any more about peasant-girls and common things,” says one. “Tell us about the grand people,—how they look, what they wear, and more about the king.” Anxious to comply with the request, I try to recollect how the Countess von Poppendoppenheimer's spring suit was made in order to send home a fine Jenkinsy letter about it, when another friend writes, “The simplest things are always best,—the flower-girl at the corner, the ways of the peasants, ordinary, every-day matters.” Have patience, friends. You shall both be heard. The Countess von Poppendoppenheimer's gown has meagre, uncomfortable sleeves, is boned down and tied back like yours and mine, after this present wretched fashion which some deluded writer says “recalls the grace and easy symmetry of ancient Greece”; but if he should try to climb a mountain in the overskirt of the period he would express himself differently.
As to the king, one sees him every day in the streets, where he courteously responds to the greetings of the people. He must be weary enough of incessantly taking off his hat. The younger brother of Queen Olga and of the Emperor of Russia, the Grand Duke Michael, came here the other day. Seeing a long line of empty carriages and the royal coachmen in the scarlet and gold liveries that betoken a particular occasion,—blue being the every-day color,—we followed the illustrious vehicles, curious to know what was going to happen, and saw a gentlemanly-looking blond man, in a travelling suit, welcomed at the station by different members of the court; while all those pleasing objects, the scarlet and gold men, took off their hats. For the sake of the friend who delights in glimpses of “high life,” I regret that I have not the honor to know what was said on this occasion, our party having been at a little distance, and behind a rope with the rest of the masses.
But really the common people are better studies. You can stop peasants in the street and ask them questions, and you can't kings, you know. Peasants just now can be seen to great advantage at the spring fair, which with its numberless booths and tables extends through several squares, and to a stranger is an interesting and curious sight. This portion of the city, where the marketplace, the Schiller Platz, and the Stiftskirche are, has an old, quaint effect, the Stiftskirche and the old palace being among the few important buildings older than the present century, while the rest of Stuttgart is fresh and modern. From the high tower of this old church one has the best possible view of Stuttgart, and can see how snugly the city lies in a sort of amphitheatre, while the picturesque hills covered with woods and vineyards surround it on every side. One sees the avenues of chestnut-trees, the Königsbau, a fine, striking building with an Ionic colonnade, the old palace and the new one, and the Anlagen stretching away green and lovely towards Cannstadt. On this tower a choral is played with wind instruments at morn and sunset, and sometimes a pious old man passing stops to listen and takes off his hat as he waits.
In the little octagonal house up there lives a prosperous family, a man, his wife, and ten children. The woman, a fresh, buxom, brown-eyed goodwife, told us she descended to the lower world hardly once in three or four weeks, but the children didn't mind the distance at all, and often ran up and down twelve or fifteen times a day. How terrific must be the shoe-bill of this family! Ten pairs of feet continuously running up and down nearly two hundred and sixty stone steps! She was kind enough to show us all her penates,—even her husband asleep,—and everything was homelike and cheery up there, boxes of green things growing in the sunshine, clothes hanging out to dry, canary-birds singing.
There is a small silver bell—perhaps a foot and a half in diameter at the mouth—at one side of the tower, and it is rung every night at nine o'clock and twelve, and has been since 1348. It has a history so long and so full of mediæval horrors, like many other old stories in which Würtemberg is rich, that it would be hardly fitting to relate it in toto, but the main incidents are interesting and can be briefly given.