Life of Octavia Hill as Told in Her Letters

by Octavia Hill

VIEWS FROM THE DANUBE

The morning after I wrote this, I was up at 3 o’clock, because the steamer was said to start before the dawn, and I wanted to see the Iron Gates. I came up on deck, and all was very still; the stars reflected in the water. The shore of each bank was still quite flat; but, in front, one saw the hills. Just as the sun rose with its round globe out of the water, the boat started. In what seemed but a few minutes after we had been in the flat plain, the gates of the hills appeared just in front of us. The morning sun lighted the great cliffs on one side of the water-paved ravine, and left the other walls of rock in deep blue shadow, while just in the place where the rocks on either side looked as if they met and closed the passage, a wreath of rose-coloured morning mist lay, which, gently rising with the sun’s heat, spread itself in faint, thin, lovely streaks along the wooded hills, rising gradually and losing themselves in the blue sky. Everything was reflected in the sheet of smooth water. The river is almost at its fullest, I believe. This same large steamer can come from Rustchuk to Pesth. I believe the ice is melted, and had not yet reached the sea, as it were; so we saw less of the rapids than if it had been later in the year; but, here and there, the river was all churned into foam; and, in places, a great line of white breakers showed where a great ridge of rock ran right across the channel. Nothing could exceed the beauty of that sunrise scene; but the scenery is even grander further up, in what is called the Defile of Kasan. It was very interesting to see distinctly the remains of Trajan’s road. What a work to make a road thro’ such a defile, without gunpowder! One sees the strong hand of the Roman, as one watches the road cut on the buttresses of the great cliffs above the deep, wild water, and traces still the clear-cut holes in which wooden supports were placed; and there is the Latin inscription still on the rocks. After we had passed thro’ the wonderful defile we came where the Danube spreads out almost like a lake; and, since then, we have come on and on, up and up it, watching sunrise and sunset, and moonlight and thunderstorm; seeing the fortresses that guard it, the very few villages and towns on its banks, that is to say very few in comparison with the miles of uninhabited shore, lovely woods, of island after island covered with thick woods, of great plains over which the cloud shadows float. It has been a most interesting and most delightful life. Miss Y. took a private cabin, where we have all our things as comfortably about us as if we were at home, and can make our tea or lie down within view of the river; but mainly we use the higher deck as our sitting-room; there we have two easy chairs, and our work, our books, our writing by us. Or we pace the deck till the stars come out. We shall be quite sorry when it comes to an end. The tourists go by train now, the great bulk of them at least; a few come on board just to see the Iron Gates, but they leave at Orsova, and don’t even see the Defile of Kasan; nor can they realise anything of the great history of the river, how it lives till it reaches the Gates; of its course thro’ this great Hungarian plain, past the high sandy cliffs which protect its tiny villages on the one shore from the great floods which must break at times violently over its low left bank. They do not see its free towns, still exempt from military service, except in time of war; nor note the mouths of the Drave and the Theiss, and the thousands of streams that feed and swell the Danube. They do not see the floods out, and the people in their flat-bottomed boats sailing about over the meadows, nor the herds of grey cattle, nor the vineyards on the slopes, nor the reedy banks, nor the lonely stacks of wood in the forests, nor mount the paddle-box and see the country people on the fore part of the ship, Servians, and Hungarians and Bulgarians, the strange costumes, the funny German life; nor see the local fête, the fireworks from the boats on the flooded meadows, the corn-grinding mills in the middle of the river; they cannot watch these, with the free cool air blowing all round them, and the sun shining, and every mist and wreath and change of cloud visible all round in the whole space of sky. I wish we did not get to Pesth to-day. But we shall have some more of the Danube between Vienna and Linz. I do not the least know what we shall do beyond Dresden. I must write when we have fixed, with fresh directions about letters. I think of you so often, dear Mama, and wish you were here. I fancy you would enjoy the kind of thing so much.

We shall post this at Pesth. I suppose some day they will prevent the floods here. It is beautiful to see how much of the earth has still to be filled with happy home life; and, near lovely things, this is not the impression one gets in England.

IMPRESSIONS OF NUREMBERG

Nuremberg,

May 24th, 1880.

To her Mother.

We saw the Rathhaus where the Imperial Diet met till 1806.... The town looks very comfortable and flourishing, as if the old things had been taken into use and would stay;—not like Italy and Constantinople, as if every breath of purer or more living thought would sweep away some of the beauty, and substitute hideous Paris or London models. Trees grow among the houses; and children play round them, and clean industrious women knit at their doors; and comfortable little shops are opened in them; and you see “Bürger Schule” put up over their doors; and yet they aren’t all torn down and replaced with rows of houses, like Camden Town, and shops like Oxford St.; and still these gardens for the people everywhere look reproach on me, when I think of England, and every tree and creeper and space of green grass in the town reminds me of our unconsumed smoke, and how it poisons our plants, and dims the colour of all things for us....

We hope to make a few useful outlines here for windows, &c., in possible future houses in London.

Harrogate,