So on to Munich, where, during a whole week, I saw but one Riegelhaube, a curious head-dress or chignon-cover of silver thread, once very common. Even the old Bavarian dialect seemed to have almost vanished, and I was glad to hear it from our porter. Many old landmarks still existed, but King Louis no longer ran about the streets—I nearly ran against him once; people no longer were obliged by law to remove cigars or pipes from their mouths when passing a sentry-box. Lola Montez had vanished. Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?
So we went over the Brenner Pass, stopped at Innspruck, and saw the church described by Heine in his Reisebilder, and came to Verona, the Bern of the Heldenbuch. “Ich will gen Bern ausreiten, sprach Meister Hildebrand.”
It was a happy thought of the Italians to put picturesque Verona down as the first stopping-place for Northern travellers, and I rather like Ruskin’s idea of buying the town and keeping it intact as a piece of bric-à-brac. He might have proposed Rome while he was about it; “anything there can be had for money,” says Juvenal.
When we arrived at the station I alone was left to encounter the fierce douaniers. One of them, inquisitive as to tobacco, when I told him I had none, laid his finger impressively on the mouthpiece of my pipe, remarking that where the tail of the fox was seen the fox could not be far off. To which I replied that I indeed had no tobacco, but wanted some very badly, and that I would be much obliged to him if he would give me a little to fill my pipe. So all laughed. My wife entering at this instant, cried in amazement, “Why, Charles! where did you ever learn to talk Italian?” Which shows that there can be secrets even between married people; though indeed my Italian has always been of such inferior quality that it is no wonder that I never boasted of it even in confidence. It is, in fact, the Hand-organo dialect flavoured with Florentine.
There was an old lady who stood at the door of a curiosity-shop in Verona, and she had five pieces of bone-carvings
from some old scatola or marriage-casket. She asked a fabulous price for them, and I offered five francs. She scorned the paltry sum with all the vehemence of a susceptible soul whose tenderest feelings have been outraged. So I went my way, but as I passed the place returning, the old lady came forth, and, graciously courtesying and smiling, held forth to me the earrings neatly wrapped in paper, and thanked me for the five francs! Which indicated to me that the good small folk of Italy had not materially changed since I had left the country.
We came to Venice, and went to a hotel, where we had a room given to us which, had we wished to give a ball, would have left nothing to be desired. I counted in it twenty-seven chairs and seven tables, all at such a distance from one another that they seemed not to be on speaking terms. I do not think I ever got quite so far as the upper end of that room while I inhabited it—it was probably somewhere in Austria. I have spoken of having met Mr. Wright at Heidelberg. He was from Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania. The next day after my arrival I found among the names of the departed, “Signore Wright-Kilkes, from Barre, Pennsylvania, America.” This reminded me of the Anglo-American who was astonished at Rome at receiving invitations and circulars addressed to him as “Illustrissimo Varanti Solezer.” It turned out that an assistant, reading aloud to the clerk the names from the trunks, had mistaken a very large “Warranted Sole Leather” for the name of the owner.
And this on soles reminds me that there was a femme sole or lone acrimonious British female at our hotel, who declared to me one evening that she had never in all her life been so insulted as she was that day at a banker’s; and the insult consisted in this, that she, although quite unknown to him, had asked him to cash a cheque on London, which he had declined to do. I remarked that no banker who did business properly ever ought to cash a cheque from a total stranger.
“Sir,” said the lady, “do I look like an impostor?”
“Madame,” I replied, “I have seen thieves and wretches of the vilest type who could not have been distinguished from either of us as regards respectability of appearance. You do not appear to know much about such people.”