Glimpses of Three Coasts

by Helen Hunt Jackson

There are some carved brass tablets which are superb, and a curious old altar-piece, with doors opening after doors, like a succession of wardrobes, one inside the other, the first doors painted on the inside, the second also painted, and disclosing, on being opened, a series of wonderful wood carvings of Scriptural scenes, these opening out again and showing still others; a fine canopy of wrought wood above them, as delicate as filigree. These are disfigured, as so many of the exquisite wood carvings of this time are, by being painted in grotesque colors; but the carving is marvellous. The thing that interested me most in this church was a tiny little stone mouse carved at the base of one of the pillars. You might go all your life to that church and never see it. I searched for it long before I found it. It is a tiny black mouse gnawing at the root of an oak; and some old stone-worker put it in there six hundred years ago, because it was the ancient emblem of the city. There was also a line of old saints and apostles carved on the ends of the pews, that were fine; a Saint Christopher with the child on his shoulder that I would have liked to filch and carry away.

In the Jacobi Kirche—a church not quite so old—is a remarkable old altar, which a rich burgomaster hit on the device of bestowing on the church and immortalizing his own family in it at the same time. To make it all right for the church, he had the scene of the crucifixion carved in stone for the centre; then on the doors, which must be thrown back to show this stone carving, he had himself and his family painted. And I venture to say that the event justifies his expectations; for one looks ten minutes at the burgomaster's sons and daughters and wife for one at the stone carving inside. It is a family group not to be forgotten,—the burgomaster and his five sons behind him on one door, and his wife with her five daughters in front of her on the other door. They are all kneeling, so as to seem to be adoring the central figures,—all but the burgomaster's wife, who stands tall and stately, stiff in gold brocade, with a missal in one hand and a long feather in the other; a high cap of the same brocade, flying sleeves at the shoulder, and a long bodice in front complete the dame's array. Three of the daughters wear high foolscaps of white; white robes trimmed with ermine, falling from the back of the neck, thrown open to show fine scarlet gowns, with bodices laced over white, and coming down nearly to their knees in front. Two little things in long-sleeved dark-green gowns—"not out" yet, I suppose—kneel modestly in front; and a nun and a saint or a Virgin Mary are thrown into the group to make it holy. The burgomaster is in a black fur-trimmed robe, kneeling with a book open before him,—the very model of a Pharisee at family prayers,—his five sons kneeling behind him in scarlet robes trimmed with dark fur.

The sacristan said something in German to Brita, which she instantly translated to me as "Oh, ma'am, to think of it! They're all buried here under our very feet, ma'am,—the whole family! And they'd to leave all that finery behind them, didn't they, ma'am?" The thought of their actual dust being under our feet at that moment seemed to make the family portraits much more real. I dare say that burgomaster never did anything worthy of being remembered in all his life; but he has hit on a device which will secure him and his race a place in the knowledge of men for centuries to come.

In the Rathhaus—which is one of the quaintest buildings in Lubeck—there is an odd old chimney-piece. It is downstairs, in what one would call vaults, except that they are used for the rooms of a restaurant. It has been for centuries a Lubeck custom that when a couple have been married in the Church of Saint Mary (which adjoins the Rathhaus), they should come into this room to drink their first winecup together; and, by way of giving a pleasant turn to things for the bridegroom, the satirical old wood-carvers wrought a chimney-piece for this room with a cock on one side, a hen on the other, the Israelitish spies bearing the huge bunch of the over-rated grapes of Eshcol between them, and in the centre below it this motto: "Many a man sings loudly when they bring him his bride. If he knew what they brought him, he might well weep." It is an odd thing how universally, when this sort of slur upon marriage is aimed at, it is the man's disappointment which is set forth or predicted, and not the woman's. It is a very poor rule, no doubt; but it may at least be said to "work both ways." There used to be an underground passage-way by which they came from the church into this room, but it is shut up now. While we sat waiting in the outer hall upstairs for the janitor to come and show us this room, a bridal couple came down and passed out to their carriage,—plain people of the working class. She wore a black alpaca gown, and had no bridal sign or symptom about her, except the green myrtle wreath on her head. But few brides look happier than she did.

The Rathhaus makes one side of the Market-place, which was, like all market-places, picturesque at eleven in the morning, dirty and dismal at four in the afternoon. I drove through it several times in the course of the forenoon; and at last the women came to know me, and nodded and smiled as we passed. Their hats were wonderful to see,—cocked up on top of a neat white cap, with its frill all at the back and none in front; the hats shaped—well, nobody could say how they were shaped—like half a washbowl bent up, with the little round centre rim left in behind! I wonder if that gives an idea to anybody who has not seen the hat. The real wonder, however, was not in the shape, but in the material. They are made of wood,—actually of wood,—split up into the finest threads, and sewed like straw; and the women make them themselves. All the vegetable women had theirs bound with bright green, with long green loops hanging down behind; but the fishwomen had theirs bound with narrow black binding round the edge, lined with purple calico, and with black ribbon at the back. Finally, after staring a dozen of the good souls out of countenance looking at their heads, I bought one of the bonnets outright! It was the cleanest creature ever seen that sold it to me. She pulled it off her head, and sold it as readily as she would have sold me a dozen eels out of her basket; and I carried it on my arm all the way from Lubeck to Cassel, and from Cassel to Munich, to the great bewilderment of many railway officials and travellers. Before I had concluded my bargain there was a crowd ten deep all around the carriage. Everybody—men, women, children—left their baskets and stalls, and came to look on. I believe I could have bought the entire wardrobe of the whole crowd, if I had so wished,—so eager and pleased did they look, talking volubly with each other, and looking at me. It was a great occasion for Brita, who harangued them all by instalments from the front seat, and explained to them that the bonnet was going all the way to America, and that her "lady" had a great liking for all "national" things, which touched one old lady's patriotism so deeply that she pulled off her white cap and offered it to me, making signs that my wooden bonnet was incomplete without the cap, as it certainly was. On Brita's delicately calling her attention to the fact that her cap was far from clean, she said she would go home and wash it and flute it afresh, if the lady would only buy it; and three hours later she actually appeared with it most exquisitely done up, and not at all dear for the half-dollar she asked for it. After buying this bonnet I drove back to the hotel with it, ate my lunch in the oleander-shaded porch, and then set off again to see the cathedral. This proved to me a far more interesting church than Saint Mary's, though the guide-books say that Saint Mary's is far the finer church of the two. There is enough ugliness in both of them, for that matter, to sink them. But in the cathedral there are some superb bronzes and brasses, and a twisted iron railing around the pulpit, which is so marvellous in its knottings and twistings that a legend has arisen that the devil made it.

"How very much they seem to have made of the devil in the olden time, ma'am, do they not?" remarked Brita, entirely unconscious of the fact that she was philosophizing; "wherever we have been, there have been so many things named in his honor!"

The clock in this church has not been deemed worthy of mention in the guide-books; but it seemed to me far more wonderful than the one at Saint Mary's. I shall never forget it as long as I live; in fact, I fear I shall live to wish I could. The centre of the dial plate is a huge face of gilt, with gilt rays streaming out from it; two enormous eyes in this turn from side to side as the clock ticks, right, left, right, left, so far each time that it is a squint,—a horrible, malignant, diabolical squint. It seems almost irreverent even to tell you that this is to symbolize the never-closing eye of God. The uncanny fascination of these rolling eyes cannot be described. It is too hideous to look at, yet you cannot look away. I sat spellbound in a pew under it for a long time. On the right hand of the clock stands a figure representing the "Genius of Time." This figure holds a gold hammer in its hand, and strikes the quarter-hours. On the other side stands Death,—a naked skeleton,—with an hour-glass. At each hour he turns his hour-glass, shakes his head, and with a hammer in his right hand strikes the hour. I heard him strike "three," and I confess a superstitious horror affected me. The thought of a congregation of people sitting Sunday after Sunday looking at those rolling eyes, and seeing that skeleton strike the hour and turn his hour-glass, is monstrous. Surely there was an epidemic in those middle ages of hideous and fantastic inventions. I am not at all sure that it has not stamped its impress on the physiognomy of the German nation. I never see a crowd of Germans at a railway station without seeing in dozens of faces resemblance to ugly gargoyles. And why should it not have told on them? The women of old Greece brought forth beautiful sons and daughters, it is said, because they looked always on beautiful statues and pictures. The German women have been for a thousand years looking at grotesque and leering or coarse and malignant gargoyles carved everywhere,—on the gateways of their cities, in their churches, on the very lintels of their houses. Why should not the German face have been slowly moulded by these prenatal influences?

Above this malevolent clock was a huge scaffold beam, crossing the entire width of the church, and supporting four huge figures, carved with some skill; the most immodest Adam and Eve I ever beheld; a bishop and a Saint John and a Mary,—these latter kneeling in adoration of a crucifixion above. The whole combination—the guilty Adam and Eve, the pompous bishop, the repulsive crucifixion, the puppet clock with its restless eyes and skeleton, and the loud tick-tock, tick-tock, of the pendulum,—all made up a scene of grotesqueness and irreverence mingled with superstition and devotion, such as could not be found anywhere except in a German church of the twelfth century. It was a relief to turn from it and go into the little chapel, where stands the altar-piece made sacred as well as famous by the hands of that tender spiritual painter, Memling. These altar-pieces look at first sight so much like decorated wardrobes that it is jarring. I wish they had fashioned them otherwise. In this one, for instance, it is almost a pain to see on the outside doors of what apparently is a cupboard one of Memling's angels (the Gabriel) and the Mary listening to his message. Throwing these doors back, you see life-size figures of four saints,—John, Jerome, Blasius, and Ægidius. The latter is a grand dark figure, with a head and face to haunt one. Opening these doors again, you come to the last,—a landscape with the crucifixion in the foreground, and other scenes from the Passion of the Saviour. This is less distinctively Memling-like; in fact, the only ones of them all which one would be willing to say positively no man's hand but Memling's had touched, are the two tender angels in white on the outside shutters.

We left Lubeck very early in the morning. As we drove to the station, the milkmen and milkwomen were coming in, in their pretty carts, full of white wooden firkins, brass bound, with queer long spouts out on one side; brass measures of different sizes, and brass dippers, all shining as if they had been fresh scoured that very morning, made the carts a pretty spectacle. And the last thing of all which I stopped to look at in Lubeck was the best of all,—an old house with a turreted bay-window on the corner, and this inscription on the front between the first and second stories of the house:—

"North and south, the world is wide: