However, it is not our servants who deserve to be blamed; they are quite right to receive high wages, wear veils, kid gloves, superfine cloth, give themselves airs, mock the manners of their lords and ladies, and to farcify below stairs the “Comedy of Errors,” which they catch an occasional glimpse of above; in short, to do as little, consume as much, and be as expensive and troublesome as possible. No liberal person can blame them, but it is, I fear, on our heads that all their follies must rest; we have no one but ourselves to blame, and until a few of the principal families in England, for the credit and welfare of the country, agree together to lower the style and habits of their servants, and by a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together, to break the horrid system which at present prevails,—the distinction between the honest ploughman, who whistles along the fallow, and his white-faced, powder-headed, silver-laced, scarlet-breached, golden-gartered brother in London, must be as strikingly ridiculous as ever: the one must remain an honour, the other a discredit, to the wealth of a country which (we all say unjustly) has been called by its enemy a “nation of shopkeepers.”
If once the system were to be blown up, thousands of honest, well-meaning servants would, I believe, rejoice; and while the aristocracy and wealthier classes would in fact be served at least as well as ever, the middle ranks, and especially all people of small incomes, would be relieved beyond description from an unnatural and unnecessary burden which but too often embitters all their little domestic arrangements. There can be no points of contrast between Germany and England more remarkable than that, in the one country, people of all incomes are supported and relieved in proportion to the number of their servants, while in the other they are tormented and oppressed. Again, that in the one country, servants humbly dressed, and humbly fed, live in a sort of exalted and honourable intercourse with their masters; while, in the other, servants highly powdered, and grossly fed, are treated de haut en bas, in a manner which is not to be seen on the Continent.
The enormous wealth of England is the commercial wonder of the world, yet every reflecting man who looks at our debt, at the immense fortunes of individuals, and at the levelling, unprincipled, radical spirit of the age, must see that there exist among us elements which may possibly some day or other furiously appear in collision. The great country may yet live to see distress; and in the storm, our commercial integrity, like an over weighted vessel, may, for aught we know, founder and go down, stern foremost. I therefore most earnestly say, should this calamity ever befall us, let not foreigners be entitled, in preaching over our graves, to pronounce, “that we were a people who did not know how to enjoy prosperity—that our money, like our blood, flew to our heads—that our riches corrupted our minds—and that it was absolutely our enormous wealth which sunk us.”
Without saying one other word, I will only again ask, is it or is it not the interest of our upper classes to countenance this island system?
Should it be argued, that they ought not to be blamed because vulgar, narrow-minded people are foolish enough to ruin themselves in a vain attempt to copy them, I reply, that they must take human nature, good and bad, not as it ought to be, but as it is; and that, after all, it is no compliment to the high station they hold, that the middle and lower classes will absolutely ruin themselves in overfeeding and overdressing their servants—in short, in following any bad example which such high authority may irrationally decree to be fashionable. But to return to the Promenade.
From everlastingly vibrating backwards and forwards on this walk, one gets so well acquainted with the faces of one’s comrades, that it is easy to note the arrival of any stranger, who, however, after having made two or three turns, is considered as received into, and belonging to, the ambulatory community.
In constantly passing the people on the promenade, one occasionally heard a party talking French. During the military dominion of Napoleon, that language, of course, flooded the whole of the high duchy of Nassau as completely as almost the rest of Europe: a strong ebb or re-action, however, has of late years taken place, and in Prussia, for instance, the common people do not like even to hear the language pronounced. On the other hand, thanks to Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, and other worn-out literary labourers, now resting in their graves, our language is beginning to make an honest progress; and even in France it is becoming fashionable to display in literary society a flower or two culled from that North border, the Jardin Anglais.
As a passing stranger, the word I heard pronounced on the promenade the oftenest was “Ja! Ja!” and it really seemed to me that German women to all questions invariably answer in the affirmative, for “Ja! Ja!” was repeated by them, I know, from morning till night, and, for aught I know, from night till morning.
As almost every stranger at Langen-Schwalbach, as well as several of its inhabitants, were at this hour on the promenade, the three brunnens were often surrounded by more open mouths than the women in attendance could supply. The old mother at the Pauline was therefore always assisted in the evening by her daughter, who, without being at all handsome, was, like her parent, a picture of robust, ruddy health; and to poor withered people, who came to them to drink, it was very satisfactory indeed to see the practical effect which swallowing and baling out this water from morning till night had had on these two females; and as they stood in the burning sun bending downwards into the brunnen, to fill the glasses which in all directions converged towards them, it was curious to observe the different descriptions of people who from every point of Europe (except England) had surrounded one little well. As I earnestly looked at their various figures and faces, I could not help feeling that it was quite impossible for the goddess Pauline to cure them all: for I saw a tall, gaunt, brown, hard-featured, lantern-jawed officer, à demi-solde, the sort of fellow that the French call “un gros maigre,” drinking by the side of a red-faced, stuffy, stumpy, stunted little man, who seemed made on purpose to demonstrate that the human figure, like the telescope, could be made portable.—What in the whole world (I mumbled to myself) can be the matter with that very nice, fresh, comfortable, healthy-looking widow? Or what does that huge, unwieldy man in the broad-brimmed hat require from the Pauline?—Surely he is already about as full as he can hold? And that poor sick girl, who has just borrowed the glass from her withered, wrinkled, skinny, little aunt? Can the same prescription be good for them both? A couple of nicely-dressed children are extending their little glasses to drink the water with milk; and see! that gang of countrymen, who have stopped their carts on the upper road, are racing and chasing each other down the bank to crowd round the brunnen! Is it not curious to observe that in such a state of perspiration they can drink such deadly cold water with impunity? But this really is the case; and whether it is burning hot, or raining a deluge, this simple medicine is always agreeable, and no sooner is it swallowed, than, like the fire in the grate, it begins to warm its new mansion.
Such was the scene, and such was the effect, daily witnessed round one of nature’s simplest and most beneficent remedies. All the drinkers seemed to be satisfied with the water, which, I believe, has only one virtue, that of strengthening the stomach; yet it is this solitary quality which has made it cure almost every possible disorder of body and mind: for though people with an ankle resting on a knee sometimes mysteriously point to their toes, and sometimes as solemnly lay their hands upon their foreheads, yet I rather believe that almost every malady to which the human frame is subject is either by highways or byways connected with the stomach; and I must own I never see a fashionable physician mysteriously counting the pulse of a plethoric patient, or, with a silver spoon on his tongue, importantly looking down his red, inflamed gullet (so properly termed by Johnson “the meat-pipe”), but I feel a desire to exclaim, “Why not tell the poor gentleman at once—Sir! you've eaten too much, you've drunk too much, and you've not taken exercise enough!” That these are the main causes of almost every one’s illness, there can be no greater proof, than that those savage nations which live actively and temperately have only one great disorder—death. The human frame was not created imperfect—it is we ourselves who have made it so; there exists no donkey in creation so overladen as our stomachs, and it is because they groan under the weight so cruelly imposed upon them, that we see people driving them before them in herds to drink at one little brunnen.