My dear Bob,—I promised to give you the earliest intelligence of the governor's return; and this is to inform you that the agreeable incident in question occurred on Wednesday last, accompanied, however, by circumstances which I must call "atténuantes," that is to say, considerably impairing the felicitous character of the event We—that is, the Dodd M'Carthy portion of the family, for so we had already constituted ourselves—had organized a most stunning picnic; one of those entertainments which are the great facts of the season, just as certain battles are the grand incidents of a campaign: we had secured everything that Baden contained of company and cuisine, and we did not leave a turkey, a truffle, nor a titled individual in the whole village.
La Mère Dodd had, in fact, resolved on one of those great coups de tête, which, in the social as in the political world, are needed to terminate a difficult position, and, as the journalists say in France, "legitimize the situation." How I love a phrase that permits one to escape the pettiness of a personal detail by some grand and sweeping generality!
The picnic is to the fashionable world what a general election is in that of politics. It is a brief orgie, in which each condescends to acquaintanceship, or even intimacy, without in the slightest degree pledging himself to future consequences. You, as it were, pass out of the conventional limit of ordinary life, and take a "day rule" for indiscretions. The natural consequence is that people will come to you in this way that no efforts could seduce into your house; and the great lady, who would scorn your attentions on a Turkey carpet, will suffer you to carve her chicken, and fill her champagne glass, when seated on the grass. "Oh! I don't know him. I saw him somewhere,—on a steamer, or at a picnic, perhaps." This spoken, with a stare of ineffable unconcern, is the extent of the recognition accorded to you after. At first, when you call to mind the way you struggled to get her sherry, how you fought for the lobster, and descended to actual meanness for the mustard, you are disposed to fancy yourself the most injured, and her the most ingrate of mankind; but you soon learn to perceive that this is the law of these cases, and that you are not worse treated than your fellows.
I leave you to conjecture why we deemed a picnic an essential stroke of policy. I assure you it was a question well and maturely discussed in our cabinet We knew it to be a measure from which there was no retreating when once entered upon; we also knew that the governor's return would utterly render such a course impossible. It was now or never with us. Would that it had been never! But to proceed. Everything, even from the start, promised badly; the day broke in torrents of rain; it was like one of those days of Irish picnic at the "Dargle," where a drowned family squat under a hedge to eat soaked sandwiches. We set out, in bad humor, determined to "take our pleasure excursion" under difficulties; a proceeding about as sensible as that of a man who, having sprained his ankle on his way to a ball, still insists upon waltzing. At Eberstein, where we had purposed to dine, they would not admit us. It is a royal residence, and although usually there was no permission necessary for parties wishing to pass the day there, an order from the court had closed the castle against all picnicaries,—a fact not made more palatable to us by the information that it was the misconduct of some interesting individuals of the family of the Simkins, the Popkins, or the Perkins, which had provoked the edict in question. And here I must say, Bob,—and I say it in deep sorrow,—that we are either grossly calumniated abroad, or else very grievous faults attach to us, since every scratched picture, every noseless statue, every chipped relic, and every flawed marble is sure of being assigned to the work of English fingers. I repeat, I have no means of knowing if the accusation be wrongful or not; at all events, I conclude it to be greatly exaggerated beyond truth. If scratching and mutilating, "the chalking and maiming acts" against works of art, be popular practices of travellers generally, it follows that, as we English supply a very large majority of the earth's vagabonds, a vast number of these offences must fall to our share; but I sincerely hope we do not deserve our wholesale reputation, nor possess any exclusive patent for barbarism. I argue the point as the priest used to do at home about Catholics and Protestants, when he triumphantly asked, "Why white-faced sheep eat more than black-faced:" and having puzzled us all, answered, "Because there are more of them!" And that's the reason the English commit more breaches of decorum than their neighbors. Rely upon it, Bob, the simple illustration is very widely applicable; and whenever you hear of our derelictions abroad, please to remember it.
As we could not gain admittance to Eberstein, it became a grand subject of debate what to do. The prudent said, "Go back." Is it not strange, Bob? but there is an almost stereotyped uniformity in wise counsellors, and that whenever a difficulty arises in life, they all cry out, "Go back!" I conclude that this is the whole secret of the Tory party, and that all the reputation they have acquired of "safe," "prudent," and so forth, has no other basis than this simple maxim. Upon the present occasion, "the Progresistas" carried the day,—we went on!
A little wayside inn—the resort of a few summer visitors—was to be our destination; but when we arrived there, it was to find the house crammed with a most motley rabble,—a set of those wandering artisans which, from some singular notion of her own upon the virtues of vagabondism, Germany sends forth broadcast over her whole land; the law requiring that each tradesman should travel for a year, or, in some states, two years, before he can obtain permission from the municipality of his own town to reside at home. Now, as these individuals are rarely or never persons of independent fortune, but rather of scanty and precarious means, the "Wander-Jahre," as the year of travel is called, is usually a series of events vibrating between roguery and begging, and at all events little conducive to those habits of orderly, patient industry which, in England at least, are deemed the highest qualities of a laboring man.
Wherever you travel in Germany you are certain to find droves of these people on the road, their heavy knapsacks covered with an undressed calf-skin, and usually decorated at either extremity by a Wellington boot, "pendant," but not "proper," their long pipes and longer beards, their well-tuned voices,—for they always sing,—and, lastly, their unblushing appeals to your charity, proclaim them to be "Lehre-Junge," or apprentices. But you must not fall into the absurd mistake of one of our well-known English writers on Germany, who has called them travelling students, and thereupon moralized long and learnedly on the poverty of life and the cheapness of education in that country. Occasionally, it is true, a student of the very humblest class will associate himself with the "youths;" but even he will be the exception, and the university to which he belongs one of the very lowest in rank. I should ask your forgiveness for this long and wide digression, my dear Bob, were it not that I know that whenever I speak of matters which are new and unfamiliar to you, I am at least as interesting as by any purely personal history. You would like to hear a thousand traits of foreign life and manners, far better than I am capable of communicating them.
Our inn, as I have said, was full of these "gents," and no persuasion of ours, no threats, nor any flatteries, could induce them to vacate the territory in our favor. In fact, they presumed to reason upon the case, on the absurd presumption that rain would wet and wind chill them, and positively resisted all our assurances to the contrary.
We ended by a compromise; they gave us the parlor, and retired to the kitchen, we purchasing the concession by sundry articles of consumption, such as fowls, ham, preserves, and a pasty, to be by them devoured as their own proper and peculiar prog. The selection, which was made by a special commission named by both sides, was rather an amusing process, though probably prolonged a little beyond the limits of ordinary patience. At length the treaty was concluded, the price paid, the territory evacuated, and we sat down ourselves to table, I will not say in the very happiest of humors, for throughout the whole of the negotiation our pride and self-esteem were at each moment receiving the very rudest buffets, princes, dukes, counts, and barons as we were! It was a sore lesson we were acquiring; and as a great man of our party remarked, "The canaille had apparently been taught little or nothing by the last two years,"—a fact not so difficult to entertain when one remembers that those whose education is conducted by grape and musketry are seldom left to evidence the advantages of the system, and the survivors are the "naughty boys who have learned nothing."
Our first disappointment was rather a laughable one, though certes in itself a bore. In the hurry of leaving Baden, a selection of the town band of musicians was made, as we had not carriage-room for the whole; but by ill-luck it was the rejected we had taken, and there we were with drums, cymbals, trombones, and an ophocleide, but not a flute, flageolet, or a French horn! You may fancy the attempt to perform the overture to "William Tell" with such appliances. Crash after crash it went, drowned in our own uproarious laughter, or louder cries of horror and disgust. We had scarcely rallied, some from the amusement, others from the annoyance produced by this event, when a tremendous uproar outside the door attracted our attention. It sounded like an attempt being made to establish a forcible entry into our apartment, and vigorous resistance offered. So it proved, by the account of certain wounded and disabled who fell back to tell us of the affray. "The Trades" were in reality in open insurrection, and marching upon us, "headed," as the trombone said, "by a stout, elderly man of savage appearance." To organize a resistance would have been impossible, with countesses fainting on every side, duchesses in hysterics. The men of our party, too, avowed that without an armory of guns, pistols, and cutlasses they were powerless. As to smashing up a chair, or seizing a table-leg, they had no idea of it; so that I saw myself the only combatant in a room full of people, who, by way of fitting me for my task, threw themselves around my neck and on my back in a fashion far more flattering than favorable.