The middle classes are, in another way, happy in their disregarded state: they enjoy their competence ‘con amore,’ and, as the salt of life, they indulge themselves now and then with a lawsuit, for which the ministers of justice afford them every possible facility. The merchant, whether Christian or præ-Christian, finds his account in this, and, if he knows how to come at it, useful patronage. Indeed to have a great deal of money is almost as good as to be a wirklicher Geheimerath (actual privy counsellor):[105] and rich bankers, who keep a good house, are reckoned among the privileged classes, and not unfrequently for these high deserts elevated to nobility.
In this manner, all manage to get something; the unfortunate nobles, especially those of ancient date, are the only people with whom it goes hard. Without money, without any land of which he has the free disposal, his titles affording an example of infinite multiplication, and his hereditary estates of infinite division, without any share in the legislation, long stripped of his ancient endowments and benefices,[106] unnecessarily and unfairly annoyed by the authorities, his ill-supported claims often bringing upon him not only ridicule and contempt, but hostility and persecution, the nobleman has, as member of a Corporation, lost all dignity and importance in the eyes of the people, and he retains scarcely any other distinction than that of serving as the only stuff out of which to make chamberlains and lords in waiting, in the respective courts of the capital;—doubtless always a most enviable lot.
This last truth is duly known to many; and a great deal of talent has been displayed thereupon by a celebrated authoress, who was some time ago engaged in a sort of amicable rivalry with her husband on the field of romance,—a contest which used to produce two or three works of that nature, consisting of as many volumes each, every Leipsig fair, to the great joy of the public. The most extraordinary part of the story is, that the works of the husband were characterized by the overflowing tenderness of a female pen; those of the wife, on the contrary, by a somewhat unwieldy quantity of masculine knowledge, a lead which even the alchemical hand of an amiable and accomplished prince could not turn to gold. The works of both, especially the former, have outlived their vogue; and the graceful and child-like simplicity of the Northern heroes, who tilted at each other with tenderness, looked on their slain friend with clear blue eyes, and imprinted upon his lips the kiss of peace; nay, even their wondrous steeds, who galloped over precipitous crags and swam after their lords through seas, have been forced, spite of all their marvellous gifts, to give way to Walter Scott’s unbreeched Highlanders.
The poetical young lords of the chamber, and the learned tea-parties of the noble lady, had long before been deserted as somewhat insipid. In such a tea-party did Ahasuerus, (as we read in the memoirs of the Devil,) after his long and restless wanderings, first find repose, and sink into a refreshing sleep. Since that time, the thick volumes of the distinguished authoress have dwindled to small tales,—pretty ephemera,—which live but a day indeed, but are well requited by the honour of circulating exclusively in courts and antechambers, among princes, ladies in waiting, and maids of honour, lords of the chamber, equerries and grooms of the chambers (for nothing within the precinct of a court is to be treated lightly). Haunted rooms were lately introduced, but the ghosts were so dull and fades, so like white-washed boards, ‘avec un bel air de famille,’ that the utmost they could do was to make one think of a cold shudder, never to excite one. The most piquant of all these stories was unquestionably that which ‘persiffloit’ the society of the capital, in which poor Viola played a very suspicious part, and a fashionable lady was introduced, who sold her for a large sum to an illustrious person. This story was justly called moral: for it excited in every person of good feeling, who read it, detestation of calumny and of hasty condemnations. The ill-natured, however, were delighted with it for other reasons; and so in one way or other it was not without value. It might fairly be called a master-piece when compared with the “Tales of the middle ages,” full of virtue and distress, of Christianity and indecency, of Italianism and Germanism, which the necessities of journal and almanack literature call into existence by myriads, and of which we may say with Schiller, “When people are gorged with vice, set virtue on the table.”[107] These do not reach either the one or the other; but, from the beginning to the end, one suffers the moral ‘pendant’ of a so-called medical cure by nausea. After enduring all sorts of allusions, the whole thing burns in the pan, and so far from being fit to bring to table, the unfortunate reader is for a long time disgusted with all food whatsoever.[108]
But to return to the learned and amiable lady, of whom we were just speaking. At the time I was in those regions, a strange swarm of insects sported in the wintry sun of her courtly and literary celebrity, ycelped in the great world a coterie, which, I believe, establishes it as a principle (who has not principles now-a-days?), that nobles have really and truly a different sort of blood in their veins from that of other men; and that if a common tree can be ennobled at all, it can be only by the process of grafting; for instance, by the insertion of some illegitimate scion of a noble stock. They teach that this nobility should remain, before all things, pure and distinct; it must dishonour itself neither by trade nor by any speculations of public utility, which latter offence has lately been denounced as the cause of the decay of the nobility of the land by a certain Frau von Tonne in a very voluminous work. To dabble a little in authorship and artistship is lawful (even for money, nay for burghers’ money,) seeing that artists[109] occupy a sort of middle region between the noble and the bourgeois. A constitutional high nobility and a representative government are by no means to the taste of this party; from the very natural reason that under any such terrible system, men, the date of whose nobility is known to nobody but themselves, and whose encumbered estates are split up into portions of microscopic invisibility, would be condemned to the horror of being compelled to take their seat in the Chamber of Commons (where else?). Who can blame them, therefore, under circumstances, for preferring the chambers of princes, especially if they can lord it there? Which Heaven forfend! It is to be hoped they will remain merely titular, and not actual privy counsellors and lords of the bedchamber.
Evening.
I could bear no longer to sit still in my room, while the castle opposite to my windows tempted me forth. As soon therefore as A—— had taken his departure, I procured a mountain pony and rode out in high spirits. This remarkable edifice was built by the proprietor of the slate quarries, situated about three miles distant, which bring him a yearly income of 40,000l. He has laid out a part in the most delightful situation on the sea-shore; and has pursued the strange but admirably executed idea of erecting every building within its enclosure in the old Saxon style of architecture. The English falsely ascribe the introduction of this style to the Anglo-Saxons: it arose in the time of the emperors of Saxon line; and it is quite certain that none of the numerous Saxon remains are to be traced to an earlier date. The high wall, which surrounds the park in a circuit of at least a German mile, has a very singular appearance; pointed masses of slate three or four feet high, and of irregular shape, are built upright into the top of the wall. At every entrance a fortress-like gate with a portcullis frowns on the intruder,—no inapt symbol, by-the-bye, of the illiberality of the present race of Englishmen, who shut their parks and gardens more closely than we do our sitting-rooms. The favoured visitor must then cross a drawbridge before he passes the gate-way of the imposing castle. The black marble of the island of Anglesea, rudely hewn, harmonizes admirably with the majestic character of the surrounding scenery. The pure Saxon style is preserved in the minutest details, even in the servants’ rooms and meanest parts of the building. In the eating-hall I found an imitation of the castle of William the Conqueror, at Rochester, which I formerly described to you. What could then be accomplished only by a mighty monarch, is now executed, as a plaything,—only with increased size, magnificence and expense,—by a simple country-gentleman, whose father very likely sold cheeses. So do times change!
The ground-plan of the building, which the architect had the politeness to show me, gave occasion to certain domestic details, which I am glad to be able to communicate to you; because nearly all large English country-houses are constructed on the same plan; and because in this, as in many other things, the nice perception of the useful and commodious, the exquisite adaptation of means to ends, which distinguish the English, are conspicuous. The servants never wait in the ante-room,—here called the hall,—which, like the overture of an opera, is designed to express the character of the whole: it is generally decorated with statues or pictures, and, like the elegant staircase and the various apartments, is appropriated to the use of the family and guests, who have the good taste rather to wait on themselves than to have an attendant spirit always at their heels. The servants live in a large room in a remote part of the house, generally on the ground-floor, where all, male and female, eat together, and where the bells of the whole house are placed. They are suspended in a row on the wall, numbered so that it is immediately seen in what room any one has rung: a sort of pendulum[110] is attached to each, which continues to vibrate for ten minutes after the sound has ceased to remind the sluggish of their duty. The females of the establishment have also a large common room, in which, when they have nothing else to do, they sew, knit, and spin: close to this is a closet for washing the glass and china which comes within their province. Each of them, as well as of the men-servants, has her separate bed-chamber in the highest story. Only the ‘housekeeper’ and the ‘butler’ have distinct apartments below. Immediately adjoining that of the housekeeper, is a room where coffee is made, and the store-room containing every thing requisite for breakfast, which important meal, in England, belongs especially to her department. On the other side of the building is the washing establishment, with a small court-yard attached; it consists of three rooms, the first for washing, the second for ironing, the third, which is considerably loftier, and heated by steam, for drying the linen in bad weather. Near the butler’s room is his pantry, a spacious fire-proof room, with closets on every side for the reception of the plate which he cleans here, and the glass and china used at dinner, which must be delivered back into his custody as soon as it is washed by the women. All these arrangements are executed with the greatest punctuality. A locked staircase leads from the pantry into the beer and wine cellar, which is likewise under the butler’s jurisdiction.
I followed a very romantic road, which led me through the park, and then along the bank of a beautifully wooded mountain stream, and in about an hour arrived at the slate quarry, which lies in the midst of the mountains, six miles from the castle. From what I have already told you, you may imagine what a vast work this is. Five or six high terraces of great extent rise one above another on the side of the mountain; along these swarm men, machines, trains of a hundred wagons attached together and rolling rapidly along the iron railways, cranes drawing up heavy loads, water courses, &c. It took me a considerable time to give even a hasty glance at this busy and complicated scene. In order to reach a remote part of the works, where they were then blasting rocks with gunpowder,—a process which I had a great desire to see,—I was obliged to lie down in one of the little iron wagons which serve for the conveyance of the slate, and are drawn by means of a windlass through a gallery hewn in the solid rock, only four feet in height, four hundred paces in length, and pitch dark. It is a most disagreeable sensation to be dragged through this narrow passage at full speed, and in Egyptian darkness, after having had ample opportunity of seeing at the entrance the thousand abrupt jagged projections by which one is surrounded. Few strangers make the experiment, spite of the tranquillizing assurances of the guide who rides before. It is impossible to get rid of the idea that if one came in contact with any of these salient points, one would, in all probability, make one’s egress without a head. After passing through this gallery, I had to walk along a path at the edge of the precipice, only two feet wide, and without any railing or defence; then to pass through a second low cavern, when I reached the fearfully magnificent scene of operations.
It was like a subterranean world! Above the blasted walls of slate, smooth as a mirror, and several hundred feet high, scarcely enough of the blue heaven was visible to enable me to distinguish mid-day from twilight. The earth on which we stood was likewise blasted rock; just in the middle was a deep cleft six or eight feet wide. Some children of the workmen were amusing themselves in leaping across this chasm, for the sake of earning a few pence. The perpendicular sides were hung with men, who looked like dark birds, striking the rock with their long picks, and throwing down masses of slate which fell with a sharp and clattering sound. But on a sudden the whole mountain seemed to totter, loud cries of warning re-echoed from various points,—the mine was sprung. A large mass of rock loosened itself slowly and majestically from above, fell down with a mighty plunge, and while dust and splinters darkened the air like smoke, the thunder rang around in wild echoes. These operations, which are of almost daily necessity in one part or other of the quarry, are so dangerous, that, according to the statement of the overseer himself, they calculate on an average of one hundred and fifty men wounded, and seven or eight killed in a year. An hospital, exclusively devoted to the workmen on this property, receives the wounded; and on my way I had met, without being aware of it, the body of one who had fallen the day before yesterday; ‘car c’est comme un champ de bataille.’ The people who escorted it were so smartly dressed and so decorated with flowers, that I at first took the procession for a wedding, and was shocked when, in answer to my inquiry for the bridegroom, one of the attendants pointed in silence to the coffin which followed at some distance. The overseer assured me that half these accidents were owing to the indifference of the men, who are too careless to remove in time and to a sufficient distance, though at every explosion they have full warning given them. The slate invariably splits in sharp-edged flakes, so that an inconsiderable piece thrown to a great distance, is often sufficient to cut a man’s hand, leg, or even head, clean off. On one occasion, this last, as I was assured, actually happened.