George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals. Vol. 2 (of 3). George Eliot
feelings dying out as one gets older; but at present my experience is just the contrary. All the serious relations of life become so much more real to me – pleasure seems so slight a thing, and sorrow and duty and endurance so great. I find the least bit of real human life touch me in a way it never did when I was younger.
Journal, 1858.
June 17.– This evening G. left me to set out on his journey to Hofwyl to see his boys.
June 18.– Went with the Siebolds to Nymphenburg; called at Professor Knapp's, and saw Liebig's sister, Frau Knapp – a charming, gentle-mannered woman, with splendid dark eyes.
June 22.– Tired of loneliness, I went to the Frau von Siebold, chatted with her over tea, and then heard some music.
June 23.– My kind little friend (Frau von Siebold) brought me a lovely bouquet of roses this morning, and invited me to go with them in the evening to the theatre to see the new comedy, the "Drei Candidaten," which I did: a miserably poor affair.
June 24.– G. came in the evening, at 10 o'clock – after I had suffered a great deal in thinking of the possibilities that might prevent him from coming.
June 25.– This morning I have read to G. all I have written during his absence, and he approves it more than I expected.
July 7.– This morning we left Munich, setting out in the rain to Rosenheim by railway. The previous day we dined, and sat a few hours with the dear, charming Siebolds, and parted from them with regret – glad to leave Munich, but not to leave the friends who had been so kind to us. For a week before I had been ill – almost a luxury, because of the love that tended me. But the general languor and sense of depression produced by Munich air and way of life was no luxury, and I was glad to say a last good-bye to the quaint pepper-boxes of the Frauen-Kirche.
Munich to Dresden, 1858.
At the Rosenheim station we got into the longest of omnibuses, which took us to the Gasthof, where we were to dine and lunch, and then mount into the Stell-wagen, which would carry us to Prien, on the borders of the Chiem See. Rosenheim is a considerable and rather quaint-looking town, interrupted by orchards and characterized in a passing glance by the piazzas that are seen everywhere fronting the shops. It has a grand view of the mountains, still a long way off. The afternoon was cloudy, with intermittent rain, and did not set off the landscape. Nevertheless, I had much enjoyment in this four or five hours' journey to Prien. The little villages, with picturesque, wide gables, projecting roofs, and wooden galleries – with abundant orchards – with felled trunks of trees and stacks of fir-wood, telling of the near neighborhood of the forest – were what I liked best in this ride.
We had no sooner entered the steamboat to cross the Chiem See than it began to rain heavily, and I kept below, only peeping now and then at the mountains and the green islands, with their monasteries. From the opposite bank of the See we had a grand view of the mountains, all dark purple under the clouded sky. Before us was a point where the nearer mountains opened and allowed us a view of their more distant brethren receding in a fainter and fainter blue – a marsh in the foreground, where the wild-ducks were flying. Our drive from this end of the lake to Traunstein was lovely – through fertile, cultivated land, everywhere married to bits of forest. The green meadow or the golden corn sloped upward towards pine woods, or the bushy greenness seemed to run with wild freedom far out into long promontories among the ripening crops. Here and there the country had the aspect of a grand park from the beautiful intermingling of wood and field, without any line of fence.
Then came the red sunset, and it was dark when we entered Traunstein, where we had to pass the night. Among our companions in the day's journey had been a long-faced, cloaked, slow and solemn man, whom George called the author of "Eugene Aram," and I Don Quixote, he was so given to serious remonstrance with the vices he met on the road. We had been constantly deceived in the length of our stages – on the principle, possibly, of keeping up our spirits. The next morning there was the same tenderness shown about the starting of the Stell-wagen: at first it was to start at seven, then at half-past, then when another Wagen came with its cargo of passengers. This was too much for Don Quixote; and when the stout, red-faced Wirth had given him still another answer about the time of starting, he began, in slow and monotonous indignation, "Warum lügen sie so? Sie werden machen dass kein Mensch diesen Weg kommen wird,"4 etc. Whereupon the Wirth looked red-faced, stout, and unwashed as before, without any perceptible expression of face supervening.
The next morning the weather looked doubtful, and so we gave up going to the König See for that day, determining to ramble on the Mönchsberg and enjoy the beauties of Salzburg instead. The morning brightened as the sun ascended, and we had a delicious ramble on the Mönchsberg – looking down on the lovely, peaceful plain, below the grand old Untersberg, where the sleeping Kaiser awaits his resurrection in that "good time coming;" watching the white mist floating along the sides of the dark mountains, and wandering under the shadow of the plantation, where the ground was green with luxuriant hawkweed, as at Nymphenburg, near Munich. The outline of the castle and its rock is remarkably fine, and reminded us of Gorey in Jersey. But we had a still finer view of it when we drove out to Aigen. On our way thither we had sight of the Watzmann, the highest mountain in Bavarian Tyrol – emerging from behind the great shoulder of the Untersberg. It was the only mountain within sight that had snow on its summit. Once at Aigen, and descended from our carriage, we had a delicious walk, up and up, along a road of continual steps, by the course of the mountain-stream, which fell in a series of cascades over great heaps of bowlders; then back again, by a round-about way, to our vehicle and home, enjoying the sight of old Watzmann again, and the grand mass of Salzburg Castle on its sloping rock.
We encountered a table-d'hôte acquaintance who had been to Berchtesgaden and the König See, driven through the salt-mine, and had had altogether a perfect expedition on this day, when we had not had the courage to set off. Never mind! we had enjoyed our day.
We thought it wisest the next morning to renounce the König See, and pursue our way to Ischl by the Stell-wagen. We were fortunate enough to secure two places in the coupé, and I enjoyed greatly the quiet outlook, from my comfortable corner, on the changing landscape – green valley and hill and mountain; here and there a picturesque Tyrolese village, and once or twice a fine lake.
The greatest charm of charming Ischl is the crystal Traun, surely the purest of streams. Away again early the next morning in the coupé of the Stell-wagen, through a country more and more beautiful – high, woody mountains sloping steeply down to narrow, fertile, green valleys, the road winding amongst them so as to show a perpetual variety of graceful outlines where the sloping mountains met in the distance before us. As we approached the Gmunden See the masses became grander and more rocky, and the valley opened wider. It was Sunday, and when we left the Stell-wagen we found quite a crowd in Sunday clothes standing round the place of embarkation for the steamboat that was to take us along the lake. Gmunden is another pretty place at the head of the lake, but apart from this one advantage inferior to Ischl. We got on to the slowest of railways here, getting down at the station near the falls of the Traun, where we dined at the pleasant inn, and fed our eyes on the clear river again hurrying over the rocks. Behind the great fall there is a sort of inner chamber, where the water rushes perpetually over a stone altar. At the station, as we waited for the train, it began to rain, and the good-natured looking woman asked us to take shelter in her little station-house – a single room not more than eight feet square, where she lived with her husband and two little girls all the year round. The good couple looked more contented than half the well-lodged people in the world. He used to be a drozchky driver; and after that life of uncertain gains, which had many days quite penniless and therefore dinnerless, he found his present position quite a pleasant lot.
On to Linz, when the train came, gradually losing sight of the Tyrolean mountains and entering the great plain of the Danube. Our voyage the next day in the steamboat was unfortunate: we had incessant rain till we had passed all the finest parts of the banks. But when we had landed, the sun shone out brilliantly, and so our entrance into Vienna, through the long suburb, with perpetual shops and odd names (Prschka, for example, which a German in
"Why do you tell such lies? The result of it will be that no one will travel this way."