There are travellers from the Western World who, after months of sight-seeing, return home weary and disappointed because they have never once been able to “realize that they were in Europe.” Not realize! Not know! Not feel with every fibre that one has come from the New to the Old! Why, the very lights of Hamburg gleaming through the rain and darkness, as we cold and wet voyagers at last drew near our haven, even while they gave us friendly greeting, told us unmistakably that their welcome was shining out from a strange land, from homes unlike the homes we had left behind.
Dear people who never “realize” that it is “Europe,” who never feel what you expected to feel, may one less experienced in travel than yourselves venture to tell you that it is that fatal thing, the guide-book, that weighs you down? Not total abstinence in this respect, but moderation, would I preach. Too much guide-book makes you know far too well what to do, where to go, how long to stay. It leaves nothing to imagination, to enthusiasm, to the whim of the moment. Dear guide-book people, don't know so much, don't calculate so much, don't measure and weigh and test everything! Don't speak so much to what you see, and then what you see will speak more to you. Even here in old Hamburg, the haughty free city of commerce, the rich city boasting of her noble port filled with ships from every land,—proud of her wealth, her strength, her merchants, and her warehouses,—looking well after her ducats, caring much for her dinner, plainly telling you she is of a prosaic nature, leaving tales of love and chivalry to the more romantic South,—even here the air is full of subtle intangible influences, that will move you deeply if you will but receive them. A city a thousand years old must have something to say of far-off times and of the living present, if one has ears to hear.
Stand on the heights by the river and look down on all the noble ships at anchor there. The old windmill turns lazily before you. The flag on a building near by moves softly in the breeze. The tender, hazy, late-autumn day, kind to all things, beautifies even bare trees and withered grass. A large-eyed boy, his school-books under his arm, stares curiously at you, then longingly looks at the water and the great ships. The picture has its meaning, which you may breathe in, drink in if you will, but you will never find it if you are comparing your “Appleton” with your “Baedecker,” or estimating the number of square feet in the grass-plot where you stand, or looking hard at the ugly “Sailors' Asylum” because you may be so directed, and refusing to see my pretty boy with the wistful eyes because he's not mentioned in the guide-book.
Everywhere are little stories, pictures, glimpses of other people's lives, waiting for you. The flower-girl at the street-corner holds out a bunch of violets as you pass. Pale, thinly clad, she stands there shivering in the cold November wind. On you go. The shops are large and brilliant, the people seem for a time like those in any large city. You think you might as well be in New York, when suddenly you see, walking tranquilly along, a peasant-woman in the costume of her district,—short, bright gown, bodice square and high, with full white sleeves and a red kerchief round her shoulders, and on her head the most curious object, a thing that looks like a skullcap, with a flaring black bow, as large as your two hands, at the back, from which hangs her hair in two long braids. Sometimes there is also a hat which resembles a shallow, inverted flat basket. Why it stays in place instead of wabbling about as it might reasonably be expected to do, and whether there is any hidden connection between it and that extraordinary black bow, are mysteries to me, though I peered under the edge of the basket hat of one Vierländerin with great pertinacity.
The Hamburg maid-servants also wear a prescribed costume. A casement high above you swings open and discloses a little figure standing in the narrow window. A blond head, with a white bit of a cap on it, leans out. You catch a glimpse of a great white apron, and of a neat, sensible, dark cotton gown, made with a short puffed sleeve which leaves the arm bare and free for work. You wonder why the girl looks so long up and down the busy street, and what she hopes to see. To be sure, it may be only Bridget looking for Patrick, or, worse, Bridget thinking of nothing in particular; simply idling away her time, instead of sweeping the garret. But if her name is perhaps Hannchen, and she looks from a window, narrow and high, and the morning sunshine touches her yellow braids, and she stands so still, far above the hurrying feet on the pavement, how can one help finding her more interesting, as a bit of human nature to study and enjoy, than a beflounced and beribboned Bridget at home? And when, in her simple dress, well suited to her degree, she runs about the streets on her mistress's errands, carrying many a parcel in her strong round arms, she is a pleasant thing to see, and, because she does not ape the fine lady, loses nothing when by chance she walks by the side of one in silk attire.
Ah! if one has ever groaned in spirit to see the tawny daughters of the Penobscot Indians, those dusky maidens who might, in reason, be expected to bring into a prosaic town some wildwood grace, some suggestion of the “curling smoke of wigwams,” of “the dew and damp of meadows,” selling their baskets from door to door in gowns actually cut after a recent Godey fashion-plate, much looped as to overskirt, much ruffled and puffed and shirred,—then indeed must one rejoice in the dress of the Hamburg maids, and in these sturdy country-women trudging along in their picturesque but substantial costume, to sell their fruit and vegetables in the city markets.
In the olden time the good wives of Hamburg no doubt wore such gowns. One sees now in the street called Grosse Bleichen great buildings, banks and shops, and all the evidences of busy modern life; but one shuts the eyes and sees instead groups of women in blue and red, coming out from the city walls to lay on the green grass the linen they have spun, that it may whiten in the sunshine. They spun, and wove, and bleached. They lived and died. The growing city built new walls, and took within its limits those green banks once beyond its gates. The women knew not what was to be, when their spinning was all done. Nor did the maids, whose busy feet trod the path by the river-side, dream that the Jungfernstieg, or Maiden's Path, would be the name, hundreds of years after, of the most-frequented promenade of the gay world of a great city.
Those women with the spinning-wheels, silent now so long, the young maids with their waterjars, chatting together in the early morning by the river, still speak to us, if we but listen. Though the voices of the city are so loud, we can hear quite well what they tell us; but indeed, indeed, dear friends, it is not written in the guide-book.
————
Stories everywhere, did I not say? Why, I even found one imbedded in—candy!