Thence to Liége, Amsterdam, the Hague, Haarlem, and Leyden, visiting all the great galleries and many private collections. At Amsterdam we saw the last grand kermess or annual fair ever held there. It was a Dutch carnival, so wild and extravagant that few can comprehend now to what extremes “spreeing” can be carried. The Dutch, like the Swedes, have or had the strange habit of bottling up their hilarity and letting it out on stated occasions in uproarious frolics. I saw carmagnoles in which men and women, seized by a wild impulse, whirled along the street in a frantic dance to any chance music, compelling every bystander to join. I heard of a Prince from Capua, who, having been thus carmagnoled, returned home in rags.
In Leyden I visited the Archæological Museum, where I by chance became acquainted with the chief or director, who was then engaged in rearranging his collections, and who, without knowing my name, kindly expressed the wish that I would remain a week to aid him in preparing the catalogue. As there are few works on prehistoric relics which I do not know, and as I had for many years studied with zeal innumerable collections of the kind, I venture to believe that his faith in my knowledge was not quite misplaced. Even as I write I have just received the Catalogue of Prehistoric Works in Eastern America, by Cyrus Thomas—a work of very great importance.
Thence we went to Cologne, where it was marvellous to find the Cathedral completed, in spite of the ancient legend which asserts that though the devil had furnished its design he had laid a curse upon it, declaring that it should never be finished. Thence up the Rhine by castles grey and smiling towns, recalling my old foot-journey along its banks; and so on to Heidelberg, where I stayed a month at the Black Eagle. Herr Lehr was still there. He had grown older. His son was taking dancing lessons of Herr Zimmer, who had taught me to waltz twenty years before. One day I took my watch to a shop to be repaired, when the proprietor
declared that he had mended it once before in 1847, and showed me the private mark which he put on it at the time.
There were several American students, who received me very kindly. I remember among them Wright, Manly, and Overton. When I sat among them smoking and drinking beer, and mingling German student words with English, it seemed as if the past twenty years were all a dream, and that I was a Bursch again. Overton had the reputation of being par éminence the man of men in all Heidelberg, who could take off a full quart at one pull without stopping to take breath—a feat which I had far outdone at Munich, in my youth, with the horn, and which I again accomplished at Heidelberg “without the foam,” Overton himself, who was a very noble young fellow, applauding the feat most loudly. But I have since then often done it with Bass or Alsopp, which is much harder. I need not say that the “Breitmann Ballads,” which had recently got among the Anglo-American students, and were by them greatly admired, did much to render me popular.
I found or made many friends in Heidelberg. One night we were invited to a supper, and learned afterwards that the two children of our host, having heard that we were Americans, had peeped at us through the keyhole and expressed great disappointment at not finding us black.
In November we went to Dresden. We were so fortunate as to obtain excellent rooms and board with a Herr and Madame Röhn, a well-to-do couple, who, I am sure, took boarders far more for the sake of company than for gain. Herr Röhn had graduated at Leipzig, but having spent most of his life in Vienna, was a man of exuberant jollity—a man of gold and a gentleman, even as his wife was a truly gentle lady. As I am very tall, and detest German small beds, I complained of mine, and Herr Röhn said he had another, of which I could not complain. And I certainly could not, for when it came I found it was at least eight feet in length. It seems that they had once had for a boarder a German baron
who was more than seven feet high, and had had this curiosity constructed; and Herr Röhn roared with laughter as I gazed on it, and asked if I would have it lengthened.
We remained in Dresden till February, and found many friends, among whom there was much pleasant homelike hospitality. Among others were Julian Hawthorne and sisters, and George Parsons Lathrop. They were young fellows then, and not so well known as they have since become, but it was evident enough that they had good work in them. They often came to see me, and were very kind in many ways. I took lessons in porcelain-painting, which art I kept up for many years, and was, of course, assiduous in visiting the galleries, Green Vault, and all works of art. I became well acquainted with Passavant, the director. I was getting better, but was still far from being as mentally vigorous as I had been. I now attribute this to the enormous daily dose of bromide which I continued to take, probably mistaking its influence for the original nervous exhaustion itself. It was not indeed till I got to England, and substituted lupulin in the form of hops—that is to say, pale ale or “bitter”—in generous doses, that I quite recovered.
So we passed on to Prague, which city, like everything Czech, always had a strange fascination for me. There I met a certain Mr. Vojtech Napristek (or Adalbert Thimble), who had once edited in the United States a Bohemian newspaper with which I had exchanged, and with whom I had corresponded, but whom I had never before seen. He had established in Prague, on American lines, a Ladies’ Club of two hundred, which we visited, and was, I believe, owing to an inheritance, now a prosperous man. Though I am not a Thimble, it also befell me, in later years, to found and preside over a Ladies’ Art Club of two hundred souls. At that time the famous legendary bridge, with the ancient statue of St. John Nepomuk, still existed as of yore. No one imagined that a time would come when they would be washed away through sheer neglect.