HEIDELBERG IN WINTER.
“If you come to Heidelberg you will never want to go away,” says Mr. Warner in his “Saunterings.” It was in summer that he said it. He had wandered everywhere over the lovely hills. He knew this quaintest of quaint towns by heart. He had studied the beautiful ruin in the sunshine and by moonlight, and had listened amid the fragrance and warmth of a midsummer night to the music of the band in the castle grounds, and to the nightingales. I, who have only seen Heidelberg in the depth of winter, with gray skies above and snow below, echo his words again and again.
“Don't go to Heidelberg in winter. Don't think of it. It's so stupid. There is nothing there now, positively nothing. O, don't!” declared the friends in council at Hamburg. When one's friends shriek in a vehement chorus, and “O, don't!” at one, it is usually wise to listen with scrupulous attention to everything which they say, and then to do precisely what seems good in one's own eyes. I listened, I came immediately to Heidelberg in winter, and now I “never want to go away.”
And why? Indeed, it is not easy to say where the fascination of the place lies. Everybody knows how Heidelberg looks. We all have it in our photograph albums,—long, narrow, irregular, outstretched between the hills and the Neckar. And all our lives we have seen the castle imprinted upon paper-knives and upon china cups that say Friendship's Offering, in gilt letters, on the other side. But in some way the queer houses,—some of solid stone, yellow and gray, some so high, with pointed roofs, some so small, with the oddest little casements and heavy iron-barred shutters, and the inevitable bird-cage and pot of flowers in the window, quite like the pictures,—in some way these old houses seem different from the photographs. And when one passes up through steep, narrow, paved alleys lined with them, and sees bareheaded fat babies rolling about on the rough pavement, and the mothers quite unconcerned standing in the doorways, and small boys running and sliding on their feet, as our boys do, laughing hilariously and jeering, as our boys also do,—why will they?—when the smallest falls heavily and goes limping and screaming to his home,—one is filled with amazement at the half-strange, half-familiar aspect of things, and wonders if it be really one's own self walking about among the picture houses. And as to the castle, I never want to see it again on a paper-weight or a card-receiver.
There's nothing here in winter, they say. I suppose there is not much that every one would care for. It is the quietest, sleepiest place in the world. It pretends to have twenty thousand inhabitants, but, privately, I don't believe it, for it is impossible to imagine where all the people keep themselves, one meets so few.
No, there's not much here, perhaps; but certainly whatever there is has an irresistible charm for one who is neither too elegant nor too wise to saunter about the streets, gazing at everything with delicious curiosity. Blessed are they who can enjoy small things.
A solemn-looking professor passes; then a Russian lady wrapped in fur from her head to her feet. Some dark-eyed laborers stand near by talking in their soft, sweet Italian. The shops on the Haupstrasse are brilliantly tempting with their Christmas display. Poor little girls with shawls over their heads press their cold noses against the broad window-panes, and eagerly “choose” what they would like. One stands with them listening in sympathy, and in the same harmless fashion chooses carved ivory and frosted silver of rare and exquisite design for a score of friends.
Dear little boy at home,—yes, it is you whom I mean!—what would you say to an imposing phalanx of toy soldiers, headed by the emperor, the crown prince, Bismarck, and Von Moltke all riding abreast in gorgeous uniforms? That is what I “choose” for you, my dear. And did you know, by the way, that here in Germany Santa Claus doesn't come down the chimneys and fill the children's stockings, and bring the Christmas-tree, but that it is the Christ-child who comes instead, riding upon a tiny donkey, and the children put wisps of hay at their doors, that the donkey may not get hungry while the Christ-child makes his visits.
Many women walk through the streets carrying great baskets on their heads. This custom seems to some travellers an evil. The women look too much, they say, like beasts of burden. But if a washerwoman has a great basket of clothes to carry home, and prefers to balance it upon her head instead of taking it in her hands, why may she not, provided she knows how? And it is by no means an easy thing to do, as you would be willing to admit if you had walked, or tried to walk, about your room with your unabridged dictionary borne aloft in a similar manner. These women wear little flat cushions, upon which the baskets rest. Those women I have seen looked well and strong and cheerful, and walked with a firm, free step, swinging their arms with great abandon. Three such women on a street-corner engaged in a morning chat were an interesting spectacle. One carried cabbages of various hues, heaped up artistically in the form of a pyramid. The huge circumference of their baskets kept them at a somewhat ceremonious distance from one another, but they exchanged the compliments of the season in the most kindly and intimate way, and their freedom of gesticulation and beautiful unconcern as to the mountains on their heads were really edifying.
I have not as yet been grieved and exasperated by the sight of a woman harnessed to a cart. One, apparently very heavily laden, I did see drawn by a man and two stalwart sons, while the wife and mother walked behind, pushing. As she was necessarily out of sight of her liege lord, the amount of work she might do depended entirely upon her own volition, and she could push or only pretend to push, as she pleased; or even, if the wicked idea should occur to her, going up a steep hill she might quietly pull instead of push, and so ascend with ease. The whole arrangement struck me as in every respect a truly admirable and most uncommon division of family labor.