The jewellers in Vienna are not such elderly apprentices as they are in Hamburg, Leipsic, and the majority of small towns in Germany. They dine at gast haüse, and sleep in the independence of a separate lodging. They have, therefore, more liberty; but there are many trades in Vienna among whom the old usages still exist, by which they become a kind of vassals, living and sleeping under the patriarchal roof. All worked twelve hours a-day alike, from six till seven, including one hour for dinner. Various licences were, however, allowed; quarter-of-day or half-hour deductions were scarcely known; and I have myself spent the morning at a public execution, without suffering any loss in wages. This brings me to the Sunday work; and I say, unhesitatingly that, as a system, it does not exist. I never worked on the Sunday myself during my whole twelve months’ stay. I do not know that there was any law against it; but rest was felt to be a necessity after a week of seventy-two hours’ labour. It is not unusual, both in Germany and France, to engage new hands on the Sunday morning, because it is a leisure time, convenient to both master and workman; and I have sought for work at this time, and found the Herr in a silk dressing-gown, and white satin slippers with pink bows. I recollect visiting a working cabinet-maker’s on one Sunday morning, whose men slept on the premises, and found the workshop a perfect model of cleanliness and order: every tool in its place, and the whole swept and polished up; and was once invited, under the impression that, as an Englishman, I ought to know something of newspaper presses, to inspect those of the Imperial Printing Office, with the last number of the Wiener Zeitung in type; and this was on a Sunday morning—a time especially chosen on account of the absence of the workmen. My landlord, a master-man, would sometimes work in the Sunday morning when hard pressed; but, if he did, he took his revenge in the week.
As we did not work, at what did we play? Perhaps there was a
sick comrade to visit in the great hospital; and we paced the long corridors, and stepped lightly through the lofty wards to his bedside. Or, if he were convalescent, we sought him out, among many others, in the open square, with its broad grass-plots and young trees, where, in his grey loose gown, he smoked a morning pipe. Or we went to church, I, with others, to the Evangelical Chapel near the Augustine Platz. There, among a closely-pressed throng, we heard admirable discourses (and not too long, the whole service being concluded in an hour), and heard much beautiful music; but, to my mind, there were too many tawdry ornaments in this place of worship—too many lamps about the altar; and the altar-piece itself—a gigantic figure of the Saviour on the Cross, said to be by Albert Dürer—seemed to be out of place.
It was lawful in Vienna to bathe on Sunday; and this we did, with great delight, in the public baths upon the Danube. Or we strolled about the Glacis; attended the miniature review in the Hof-Burg; wandered out as far as Am-Spitz, by the long wooden bridge over the broad and melancholy river; or, what was better, sauntered in some one of the beautiful gardens of the Austrian nobility,—those of Schwargenberg, Lichtenstein, or in the Belvidere—thrown open to the public, not only on Sunday, but on every day in the week.
As the day waned, music burst forth in many strains at once. There was a knot of artisans in our back room, who were learning the entire “Czar and Zimmerman,” and who were very vigorous about this hour. At seven, the theatres opened their doors, with something of our own rush and press, although there was a guard-house, and a whole company of grenadiers in the ante-room; but, once in the interior, all was order and decorum. There was, of course, a difference in tone and character between the city and the suburban theatres, inasmuch as the ices and coffee of the court playhouses found their parallel in the beer and hot sausages of the Joseph Stadt and An-der-Wieden; but the performances of all rarely occupied more than two, and never exceeded three hours; and there was an amount of quiet and propriety manifested during the entertainment, which said something for the authorities, but more for the people.
As the night deepened, the ball-rooms and dancing-booths of Vienna,—the Sperl’s, Das Tanz Salon beim Schaf, and so downward to the dens of Lerchenfeld—grew furious in music, and hysterical in waltz. It was something fearful. It made your eyes twinkle,
and your head dizzy, to see that eternal whirling of so many human teetotums. They seemed to see nothing, to feel nothing, to know nothing; there was no animation in their looks; no speculation in their eyes; nothing but a dead stare, as if the dancers were under a spell, only to be released when the music was at an end. Generally speaking, I think the ball-rooms of continental cities are the curses and abominations of the Sunday. My landlord, who was no moralist, but played faro, draughts, and billiards on the Sunday evening, would not hear of his daughter attending a public ballroom. There is a curious anomaly in connection with places of public entertainment which strikes a stranger at once, and which is equally true of Berlin as of Vienna; it is this: that, while private houses are closed at nine and ten o’clock, according to the season of the year, coffee-houses, taverns, dancing and concert-rooms, are open till midnight. Up to the former hours you may gain admission to your own house by feeing the porter to the extent of twopence; but, later than this, it is dangerous to try the experiment.
To return to out-of-door amusements. A visit to Schœnbrun was business for a whole afternoon; for we must perforce each time unravel the windings to the pure spring in the maze, with vague and mysterious ideas of some time or other falling upon the grave of the Duc de Reichstadt, there secretly buried, according to popular tradition. On rare occasions we spent the whole of Sunday in some more distant palatial domain, or suburban retreat. In Klosterneuburgh, with its good wine: in the Brühl, with its rugged steeps, its military memorials, and ruined castles; at the village of Bertholdsdorf, with its Turkish traditions; among the viny slopes of the Leopoldiberg, or the more distant and wilder tract of mingled rock and forest which encircle the Vale of Helen. Above all, there was Laxenberg,—an imperial pleasure-palace and garden, and a whole fairy-land in itself, peopled by the spirits of ancient knights and courtly dames. Some one of the Hapsburgs had built, many years ago, a knightly castle on a lake, and in it were stored dim suits of armour of Maximilian; a cabinet of Wallenstein; grim portraits of kings and warriors; swords, halbards, jewelled daggers, and antique curiosities innumerable; only rather prosaically completed by the exhibition of the every-day suit of the last Emperor of Austria, which, however affecting a spectacle for a simple-hearted Viennese—and they are mere babies in matters of royalty—irresistibly reminded
one of Holywell Street, London, and cast-off regimentals. Laxenberg is distant less than a shilling ride, and about two hours’ walk from Vienna; and, like our Hampton Court Palace, is thrown unreservedly open to the public. There were no end to its wonders: fishing-grounds, and boats upon the lake; waterfalls, and rustic bridges were there; and one little elegant pavilion, perched on the water, dedicated to the beauties of Windsor, illustrating its scenery in transparent porcelain. There was a list for knightly riders; a dais for the Queen of Beauty; and places for belted nobles, saintly abbots, and Wambas in motley; an Ashby-de-la-Zouch in miniature, which a little imagination could people. Then, for the plebeians, there were leaping-bars and turning-posts, skittle-alleys, and the quintain; and, for all alike, clusters of noble trees, broad grassy meads, and flowers unnumbered. There was even a farm-house, homely and substantial, with a dairy and poultry-yard, sheep in the paddocks, and cattle in the stalls.
We started from Vienna on a Sunday morning on board the steamboat Karl for Linz; and trudging thence on foot came on the following Saturday night into Salzburg, the queen of the Salzack. We rested here one happy Sunday: not so much in the town, which had its abundant curiosities, as in the pleasure gardens of the old Archbishops of Salzburg, at an easy stroll from it. This garden is pleasant enough in itself, but there are besides a number of water eccentricities in it such as I should think were in their peculiar fashion unequalled. Here blooms a cluster of beautiful flowers, covered as it were by a glass shade, but which turns out to be only water. There a miniature palace is in course of erection, with crowds of workmen in its different storeys, each man at his avocation with hammer and chisel, pulley and wheel, and the grave architect himself directing their labour. All this is set in motion by water, and is not a mere doll’s house, but a symmetrical model. Then we enter a subterranean grotto, with a roof of pendant stalactites, where the pleasant sound of falling waters and the melodious piping of birds fill all the air. There is a sly drollery too in some of the water performances, invented years ago by the grave Archbishops of Salzburg; for suddenly the stalactites are set dripping like a modern shower bath: and the gigantic stags at its entrance spout water from the very tips of their horns. The garden is not a Versailles, for there is nothing grand in any of its hydraulic