A Tramp's Wallet stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France. William Duthie
his presence by a certain day at the military court of the department of Seine et Oise, to which, being a native of Argenteuil, he belonged, to draw for the conscription. Alcibiade was too good a Frenchman to hesitate about obeying this summons, or even to murmur at the sacrifice it demanded of him. He left Vienna with regret, but with the utmost alacrity; and thus I lost for a time my best companion and sincerest friend. My first essay as a workman in Vienna was discouraging, for I undertook, in my extremity, to execute work to which I was unaccustomed, and made such indifferent progress at the outset, that the Herr, a Russian from St. Petersburg, would only pay me five guldens, or ten shillings a week. We worked twelve hours a day, commencing at six o’clock in the morning in summer time; but there were a number of fête and saint days in the year, which were paid for—I think eight in all—including St. Leopold, the patron saint of Vienna; the birth of the Virgin; Corpus Christi Die, and other church holidays. As I improved in the practice of my new branch of business, I gained additions to my wages, till I received nine gulden, eighteen shillings, a week; a sum certainly much above the average pay.
Alcibiade and I lodged in a narrow slip of a room, the last of a suite of three, on the first floor of a house, or rather conglomerate of houses, in the Neudegger Gasse, Josephstadt. Our landlord was a worthy Bohemian cabinet-maker; his wife, a Viennese, who kept everything in the neatest order. I do not know how many families lived in this house; but it was a huge parallelogram with a paved courtyard, in the centre of which stood a wooden pump. There was a common stair in each corner, all of stone, and a common closet at the bottom of each staircase, equally of stone, seat and all, and very common indeed. Each lodging consisted of three continuous rooms, with only one entrance from the common stair: first was the kitchen, with cooking apparatus, and the oven, which warmed the whole suite; then a larger room with two windows, at once workshop, dining-room, and bed-room; and beyond this the narrow closet with one window, which was our dormitory. Thus we had to pass through our landlord’s bed-room to get to our own. The other portions of the building were arranged much in the same manner, and the house must have had, in all, at least a hundred inhabitants. There are much larger houses in the suburbs of Vienna, but they are all built upon the same principle, with trifling modifications. Here are two cards of address, which are models of exactness in their way, and will illustrate the nature of these barracks in the best possible manner:
“Joseph Uberlachner,
Master Tailor,
Lives in the Wieden, in the Lumpertsgasse, next to the Suspension bridge, No. 831, the left hand staircase on the second floor, door No. 31.”
“Martin Spies,
Men’s Tailor,
Lives in Neubau, Stückgosse, No 149, in the courtyard, the right hand staircase, on the second floor, door on the left hand.”
The entrance to our house from the street was small and unimportant, and, as may naturally be supposed, always open. The law was, however, strict upon this subject, and permitted the house to be open in summer from five in the morning till ten o’clock at night only; in winter from seven till nine. There was a little room opening from the passage, where dwelt the porter of the mansion. It was his duty to close the door at the appointed hours; a duty which he scrupulously fulfilled, seeing that the law empowered him to levy a fine of six kreutzers for his own especial benefit, upon every inhabitant or stranger seeking egress or ingress after the authorised hour of closing. The Viennese insist upon it that this impost is recoverable by law; but, as the porter’s whole existence depends upon the employment of his labour in and about the house, and therefore upon the good-will of its inhabitants, he takes care in general not to be too pressing for his toll.
Our dormitory, diminutive as it appeared, still managed to contain two single bedsteads (French), a wash-hand-stand, wardrobe, used in common by landlord and lodgers, a table, and two chairs. We paid in rent twelve florins a month, or barely ten shillings between us; add to this, for washing, candles, and morning coffee (a tiny cup at six in the morning, before starting to work), another four florins, and our united expenses for these necessaries did not exceed thirteen shillings per month. As in Berlin, we dined at a “restauration,” or at the “Fress Madam’s” (Mrs. Gobble’s), a jocose term for a private eating-house, well known to the jewellers. The mid-day meal of the Viennese workman is remarkable for strength and solidity, but also for its sameness. It always takes the shape of fresh boiled beef and vegetables, the latter arranged in a thick porridge of meal and fat. It commences, of course, with soup; is followed by the “rind-fleisch and gemuse,” as above; and, if you can afford it, is concluded by some such sweet dish as flour puddings stewed with prunes, a common sort of cake called zwieback, omelette, macaroni, or a lighter kind of cake, baked and eaten with jam. All solid, wholesome, and of the best. There is a choice of other more relishing dishes, and of these we usually partook, with an occasional descent into the regions of beef and greens. Vienna prides itself upon its baked chickens and Danube carps, but these were beyond our reach on ordinary occasions; and our usual delectation was upon Augsburger sausages; bacon and sour kraut; breaded veal cutlets; ditto lamb’s head; and roasted liver and onions. When we drank the ordinary white wine, we did so much diluted. To sup at the “restauration” would have entailed too great an expense; we therefore contented ourselves with bread and a taste of butter at home, moistened by a glass of a liquor resembling gin, seeing that it was made of the juniper berry, which our landlord obtained for us at about tenpence a quart. It was supposed to be smuggled from Hungary, and Vater Böhm coloured and sweetened it with molasses, and called it Schlipowitzer.
Our weekly outlay for food during the first month of residence in Vienna, especially while unemployed, did not exceed five florins, i.e. four shillings each. We ate bread and fruit in large quantities; indeed, during one day my “rations” consisted of: breakfast at eight, half of a coarse loaf and thirty plums; at twelve, one dozen pears and the other half of the loaf; at seven a whole loaf, and forty more plums. Cost of the whole, nine kreutzers (schein), or scarcely three halfpence in English money. It was not surprising that I should fall ill upon this diet, and this I accordingly did. When, however, we were in constant work, we lived as I have already described, and at an average expense of seven florins—five shillings and tenpence each weekly—and thus the individual outlay for lodging, food, and other necessaries, was, in round numbers, seven shillings and sixpence a week. A dinner on New Year’s Day, of baked pork and fried potatoes, with bread, wine, and apple puffs, cost ninepence.
To return to the police. When my six weeks’ permission of residence was expired, I attended again at the chief office in the Stadt, with the certificate of my employer, signed and countersigned by police-commissioner and magistrate, and was granted thereon a further term of three months at the same fee, two shillings; to me at that time a day’s wages. Subsequently, however, the “Herr,” by means of a further attestation, with vouchers from the landlord of the house, and the usual official signatures, obtained for me a card of residence for six months, gratis, and I experienced no more trouble on that head. This, and the various other certificates, were upon stamped paper of the value of six kreutzers, or one penny. While upon this subject I may observe, that domestic servants must make known to the police every change of service. They are hired by the month. Change of residence is also a matter of official interference: a printed sheet is handed to the new lodger, with spaces for name, age, country, religion, condition, married or single, where last resided, and probable length of stay in new apartments. All these particulars must be stated and signed, witnessed by your own particular landlord, and attested by the landlord of the house. The document is then deposited in the archives of the district police.
At the termination of my first year’s stay in Germany, I found that my receipts in wages, during the twelve months, amounted to twenty-one pounds six shillings and fourpence, an average of eight shillings and twopence-halfpenny per week; but it must be remembered that, during nine months of that period, board and lodging formed part of my remuneration. I stayed a full year in Vienna, and received in wages, in all, three hundred and sixty-two guldens, thirty kreutzers, or thirty-six pounds five shillings. This would give, in round numbers, fourteen shillings per week throughout the year. Of this sum, as I have said, seven shillings and sixpence were on an average spent weekly in lodging and necessary food; there therefore remained six shillings and sixpence for clothes, amusements, and savings.
When