A reading-room and a circulating library are also connected with the establishment. The latter contains the standard works, and the latest publications in English, French, and German you are sure to find there the best; and there is no club in England that can furnish a greater variety of newspapers, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish journals, with the New York Herald, and the Courier and Enquirer.
It is long past midnight when you return home, but the hotels, and many private residences, are still lit up, and music, that sweet concomitant of life in Germany, is still greeting you as you wind your way through the crooked streets.
In no part of Europe do you see a British peer dining table d’hôte; but the watering-places of Germany make an exception from the rule. I have seen the most aristocratic leaders of the Tory party (that was)—certainly not without a proper train of English toadies—lieutenant-generals in the army of the historical house of S——t, and India nabobs, content with the public ordinary, though the ladies of the party are seldom seen without a dragon. “What is a dragon?” will some of my readers ask. I will explain. A dragon, applied to a young English gentlewoman is what an “elephant” is applied to a German. It consists of an old maiden aunt, or some other distant relation, whose business it is to superintend the conduct of a young lady that is just “out.” Her functions resemble those of the old nurse in Romeo and Juliet, only that she is much more watchful, and seldom or ever to be bribed. If you attempt to corrupt her, you rouse the British lion, or the Dragon of St. George; hence the name, which has been given them by the French. The acerbity of the temper of English dragons renders them generally lean and gaunt; but in Germany, where good nature abounds, they grow fat, though with a dogged obstinacy which is as insulting as it is provoking, they will squat down on the sofa right between you and the lady you wish to entertain; proving a most palpable objection to a tête-à-tête, for which reason they are properly called “elephants.”
The business of an English dragon at a table d’hôte in a German watering-place, is to occupy a seat on that flank of a lady which is threatened with a masculine invasion. As a further precaution, and a sort of second line of circumvallation, the seat next to the dragon is left unoccupied, because they expect a friend at dinner, who is always invited, but who never comes, and for whom no landlord dares to make a charge, be the table ever so crowded. Thus guarded and fortified, a young Englishwoman of family may defy siege or assault from any quarter; in a watering-place, however, it is best not to feel too secure, and to rely not altogether either on the beasts I have just named, or those which are conspicuously displayed on escutcheons.
While upon this chapter, I may as well allude to the fact, that there is no “match-making” at a German watering-place; and that gentlemen, from the extreme freedom of manners which is tolerated, are not expected to pay the debts of their gallantry. A gentleman, having danced or conversed with a lady, or been introduced to her in every form used in society, does not yet acquire a right to call on her; and having even been invited in the place, has not yet received the privilege of making his bow in town. So, then, society is left to its own good sense, and with no other but individual responsibilities. There is no shrewd distinction between elder sons and Tartars;[[2]] no forced attention to heiresses, and consequently, no arrogant neglect of “poor beauties.” Grace and loveliness enchant by their own charms, and wealth is courted only at the end of the season.
Such is a German watering-place for three months in the year—from the 1st of July to the end of September, though the latter part of that month the place begins to thin; and in the winter these places are nothing but pretty villages, with fine white houses and spacious hotels. A few calculating Englishmen, however, have discovered that living there all the year round would enable them to practice such economy that they might, in the season, cut a very great dash without spending much money in the aggregate. Accordingly, some twenty or thirty families—swallows whose pinions are clipped, and will not admit of yearly migrations—have made their nests there for the winter; and the most forlorn-looking creatures they are, if you get a chance to see them. The men affect to indulge in the chase, and the dowager ladies in a quiet rubber of whist, whilst the young women divide their time between novels and embroidery. No nightingale longs for the return of the seasons as they do; they become true lovers of nature, and prefer the cool evenings of summer to all the gayeties of the carnival.
But I have not yet enumerated all the advantages of German watering-places, and particularly of Baden-Baden. Not only are the drives about the town very handsome, but also those within a circumference of from ten to twenty miles. You may take a drive to the old and the new castle (a new castle in Germany is one which dates from the 16th century) to the Mercury—a sort of watch-tower perched on the summit of the highest mountain in the panorama which surrounds you—to Gernsbach, a delightful village, situated in a romantic valley, through whose apparently quiet bosom a mountain-torrent is rushing, like a wild passion, toward the father of the German streams, old Helvetian Rhine—or to the old chapel—or, if you are fond of wild scenery, to the craggy cliffs of the Black Forest. All these roads are built at an enormous expense, and with great skill through narrow defiles, over precipices, real and artificial, and in a serpentine manner so as to command a variety of views. The roads are as level as the floor of your parlor; a much more direct footpath, resembling the neatest gravel-walk in your garden, conducts pedestrians to the same places.
Wherever you find a beautiful spot, with a commanding sight, there you will find a bench and one or more oak chairs, where you may rest yourself and enjoy the landscape at your ease. Even on the road for carriages a space is left for turning or halting wherever a commanding view presents itself to the eye. In this careful treasuring up of the wealth of nature, the Germans have no equal in Europe. Theirs are the quiet enjoyment of contemplativeness—the dreams, called forth by an ardent love of the great fountains of inspiration. But who is there deriving happiness from bare realities, without reminiscences of the past, or hopes of the future?
The old castle is a ruin of very ancient date, but several rooms in it have been refitted, of course in the style of the middle ages, with huge massive oak tables and chairs, arched windows, with painted glass, and armorial frescos. The old dungeon has been, very properly, transformed into a wine-cellar, the only prisoners being huge casks of hock, and a corresponding number of long-necked bottles. On a writ of habeas corpus, any of these will be brought before you, and you may drink the health of the present Grand Duke—a poor devil of a fellow, whose place ought to have been occupied by Caspar Hauser—or the memory of his worthy ancestors, in the finest room that is left in their old residence. You will also find an excellent restaurant, and a cafetier, who, in the midst of the remnants of past ages, will present you with a carte, the very copy of which you may have seen at Mavart’s, or at the Café Anglais. After dinner you may climb up the old tower, and from the dilapidated loop-holes of the fourteenth century, contemplate the improvements of the nineteenth, as the cars from Carlsruhe rattle over the rails.
There is, indeed, a peculiar pleasure in thus scanning, with a single glance, the vestiges of five successive centuries; to view the past and the present, and to lose oneself in the contemplation of the future. You can almost realize immortality in beholding the works of twenty generations, and the undying spirit that produced them, without having lost one atom of its pristine energy or vigor. The world spirit is ever young, though one generation after another dies in its embrace, each cherishing its own fond hope of everlasting life. The contemplation of the future steels men’s nerves to patient enterprise and heroic valor; but the retrospective is the true element of poetry. The future, from our limited perception, is necessarily shapeless; but the past, aided by distance, stands out in bold relief, and the colossal figures of history animate the scene. They stand on pedestals, animating or warning examples in all times to come. There is a peculiar species of romanticism connected with the remnants of the middle ages. They are nearer to us than the classical ruins of antiquity, and from their immediate connection create stronger sympathies. The spiritualism of the middle ages contrasts advantageously with the materialism of the Greeks and Romans, and has a stronger and more direct hold on our imagination. The ruins of Rome, Athens, and Carthage, lead to a train of reflections which leave you comparatively cold; while the turreted castle and time-defying walls of our own immediate ancestors strike us like reminiscences of our own childhood.