"TAKIN' NOTES"
He who knows his Rhine and loves it must take of its charms in small doses, or satiety is the outcome. There are those, of course, who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, "'Tis all barren"; but the ordinarily intelligent traveller may find much to delight and interest on the banks of the Rhine, always provided that he suits his mood to his environment, and takes but little of Rhine scenery at a time. For surely between Coblentz and Bingen there is an iteration as regards castles and ruins which is downright wearisome. Do we not between these points find Lahneck, Marksburg, Sterrenberg, Liebenstein, The Mouse, Rheinfels, The Cat, Schönburg, Gutenfels, The Pfalz, Stahleck, Furstenberg, Hohneck, Sooneck, Falkenburg, Rheinstein, and Ehrenfels?
Moreover, there is an affinity of form and colour and, indeed, of situation between all these which produces the effect of perpetual repetition. And we owe Byron a grudge for having written such trite words as "the castled crag" in relation to the Rhine, since no commonplace mind of the present day acquainted with his works but has fallen back on "the castled crag" to describe Drachenfels or Marksburg or Rheinfels, because, forsooth, its own English is too limited to supply a better adjective. So it is that conventional and inadequate English is perpetuated and individual force and expression are lost because people accept the ideas of others and will not seek language to convey their own.
All of which above prosing is the result of a day on the Rhine when the thermometer registered 74° to 84° in the shade, and a white vapour hid the banks of the river from Köln till close on Bonn. At Bonn a huge party of "personally-conducted" American tourists came on board. Their sharp, keen, eager, shrewd faces and shrill voices proclaimed their nationality at the outset. They were all obviously outside the pale of Society, and their thirst for information and keen interest in their surroundings were amazing. One learned before long that they had "done" the Paris Exhibition and meant to have a "look in" at most European countries before sailing from Naples. They took the whole ship into their confidence before a quarter of an hour had passed; and we shared alike in thrilling intelligences conveyed through the medium of Baedeker's pages. "The castled crag" resounded from one end of the boat to the other; and as for Roland and Hildegunde, the tragedy of their lives was discussed, and exclaimed over, and lamented, until, happily, a bend of the river hid Nonnenwerth from sight.
In emphatic contrast to the nervous alertness of the Yankee was the spectacle of the middle-class German and his ways. He sat by his plain, stout, ill-dressed Frau, with his back to the scenery, and ate. Occasionally he spoke in monosyllables: more often he drank; but the end and object of his Rhine trip seemed to be that of consuming as much food as lay within the limits of possibility. What Nemesis has in store for him and those of his manner of life I can only imagine!
At a table near us sat three women and two men. Directly we left Köln a waiter set forth trays in front of them laden with coffee, zwiebacks, hörnchens, and eggs. This meal over, they sat sleepily blinking their eyes, whisking away flies, and mopping the moisture from their faces until the sound of "Eis! meine Herrschaften!" "Bier! meine Herrschaften!" roused them from their lethargy. Ices and beer and cherries and peaches successively filled up the weary hours until "the tocsin of the soul, the dinner bell," carried joy to their hearts. I can never forget the rapturous look of anticipation and satisfaction which those stolid middle-class Teutonic countenances wore when "Mittagsessen" was announced. They shook off their normal and habitual torpidity, and cheerfully elbowed their neighbours, nearly tumbling down the companion-ladder in their eagerness to be first in the field. They lost no time over the unlovely detail of tucking a corner of their napkins down their necks, and smoothing its folds over their protuberant persons; and they studied the Speise-Karte with a conscientiousness that was worthy of a better cause.
Dinner began with a tolerably good soup, followed by tough roast beef, cut in thick slices and garnished with carrots, peas and beans. Next came veal, equally uneatable, and then a surprise in the shape of Rhine salmon; after which followed chicken, salad, and compôte. Finally, a stodgy pudding, sufficiently satisfying, and dessert. Not one item of the menu was neglected by the five. They calmly and conscientiously and readily ate through the Speise-Karte from start to finish. Then they returned to deck, only to order coffee and ices, and called for a bottle of champagne, three of light Rhine wine, and a plateful of peaches; out of which they brewed a cup, ladling it from a Taunus ware bowl into their long Munich glasses, and sipping it lazily all the afternoon between such trifles as Kuchen and fresh relays of cherries. They ate and drank from Köln to Bingen with rare intervals of dozing, and I never once saw any of the party take the faintest interest in the Rhine, so far as its banks were concerned.
It was a relief to turn from such grossness to its antithesis in the shape of two American ladies who sat near us. They were well-preserved, well-bred spinsters under forty. Everything about them was dainty and exquisitely neat. I likened them in my mind to bowls of dried rose-leaves—the freshness gone, the perfume left. Such was their intense and intelligent interest in travel that, rather than lose a timber-framed village or historic castle, a vineyard or watch-tower, they abstained from lunch and picnicked lightly on deck off tea and eggs and hörnchen. They knew the legends of the Rhine as you and I know (or ought to know) our Prayer-Books. They had studied the history of Germany, and mastered the intricacies alike of the Thirty Years' War and of the Hohenzollern pedigree; and they talked well, expressing their ideas in good Saxon words; at times, perhaps a trifle pedantic, but never offensively so.
As the day wore on the temperature became almost overpowering. The water reflected a blinding glare, and a heat like that of a burning fiery furnace was radiated from the engines. I was wondering whether a hammock in a cool English garden would not have been more desirable, when I heard a plaintive, uneducated American voice behind me ask a question of its mate which exactly embodied my own unuttered sentiments: