In respect to food, the following is the Austrian dietary. “The prisoner has one pound and a half of bread per diem—a farinaceous dish with milk thrice a week—and on Sundays a soup, with a quarter of a pound of meat, and the farinaceous dish again.” Hawkins. This, it must be confessed, is meagre fare; but half of what the prisoner can earn, beyond his daily task, is given to him for the purchase of additional comforts.
Instruction, both religious and lay, is provided by the state—consisting of reading and sometimes of arithmetic—but not writing, as that might lead to correspondence not entirely composed of love-letters or letters of love! It is clear, indeed, that the Emperor of Austria (though himself a Papist) has no great faith in the dogma of a Pope—
“Heaven first taught letters for some wretch’s aid.
Some banished lover, or some captive maid.”
At all events, Prince Metternich has not recommended his master to follow the example of Heaven in teaching his subjects to write letters; nor is it likely that the veteran and wily minister will introduce a penny postage, to enable the subjects of the whip and bastinado to—
“Waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.”
Nevertheless there are many good points about German prison-discipline. The classification of the prisoners—the separation of the juvenile from the hardened offenders—the law of rendering labour the only means of procuring anything like comfortable diet—the regularity of religious instruction and duties—the laudable exertion of Government to reinstate the liberated and punished prisoner in the social position previously occupied—not forgetting the humane injunction never to hurt the feelings of the flogged—are all worthy of praise and imitation.
25. Beds and Bed-rooms.—A German sleeping-room presents a real paradox—beds that are at once plural and singular—plural in number, but singular in office. One would suppose that all the men in that country were monks, and all the women nuns. You look in vain for the large and comfortable bed, on which John Bull and his spouse are accustomed to repose when at home. Nothing of the kind will you see here! From the moment that a married couple set foot on the Continent, the wife is divorced, if not “a mensa” at least “a thoro.” I have said that the German beds are singular. They are so in every sense of the word! In other countries, they are designed to promote rest and sleep. In this they act like strong coffee or green tea taken at ten o’clock. In a German bed, the two extremities of the victim are “perched up aloft,” while the body is “under hatches.” The only personage who can attain anything like horizontality in these cribs, is the corporation gourmand after a good eight o’clock table-d’hôte. If he turn in, or rather turn over on his face, with his feet on the taffrail, and his stomach stowed in midships, he will be able to bring his head, his spine, and his heels into something approaching a right line. In this position he will have the great advantage of sleeping on his supper, and thus evading the pressure of the night-mare. When the woolsack is laid over the traveller’s body, the whole resembles the old moon in the lap of the new.
It is very fortunate for John and Jane Bull that before they sojourn long in Germany their travelling constitutions will have begun, like new clothes, to suit them—and, which is of greater consequence, they will have got rid of the most inconvenient article, by far, of their luggage—(and that is saying a good deal, when a lady’s baggage is in transit)—namely the—idea of comfort—an article which even the douanier never searches for, as being not only out of his beat, but out of his mother tongue!
Many circumstances had, long ago, impressed me with a high sense of the value of a travelling constitution, as a kind of Mackintosh against “skiey influences;” but none more so than an occasional glimpse at the mysteries of the laundry. If a traveller happens to forget some valuable article at his hotel, and hastens back to his chamber about mid-day, he will be rather surprized to find the bed-linen on the floor, nicely sprinkled with water, preparatory to a squeeze under a high-pressure engine, which renders it of a glossy smoothness, and diffuses the watery element so equally, that it feels delightfully cool to the next—and even to the tenth tenant of the caravansera! I fear that this is often the case nearer home, and where there is no “travelling constitution” to resist the vapour-bath of exhalent sheets in our foggy and cold atmosphere! The contracts between masters and chamber-maids for the supply of damp linen to hotels, are too often contracts for the supply of coughs, consumptions, and rheumatisms to travellers—greatly to the advantage of doctors, druggists, and undertakers afterwards!