The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2). Lady Isabel Burton
of the name of Pope, and whose son, Lieutenant Pope of the 24th Queen's, died gallantly at Isandula; though surrounded by numbers, he kept firing his revolver and wounding his enemies, till he received a mortal wound by an assegai in the breast. This was on January 22nd, 1879. In the end of 1875 he came to Folkestone, to take leave of my wife and me, who were going out to India. We both liked him very much.
In those days travellers took the steamer from London Bridge, dropped quietly down the Thames, and, gaining varied information about the places on both sides of it, dined as usual on a boiled leg of mutton and caper sauce, and roast ribs of beef with horse-radish, and slept as best they could in the close boxes called berths or on deck; if the steamer was in decent order, and there was not too much head wind, they could be in the Scheldt next morning.
Our little party passed a day at Antwerp, which looked beautiful from the river. The Cathedral tower and the tall roofs and tapering spires of the churches around it made a matchless group. We visited the fortifications, which have lately done such good work, and we had an indigestion of Rubens, who appeared so gross and so fleshy after the Italian school. Mrs. D'Aguilar was dreadfully scandalized, when, coming suddenly into a room, she found her two nephews at romps with a pretty little soubrette, whose short petticoats enabled her to deliver the sharpest possible kicks, while she employed her hands in vigorously defending her jolly red cheeks. The poor lady threw up her hands and her eyes to heaven when she came suddenly upon this little scene, and she was even more shocked when she found that her escort had passed the Sunday evening in the theatre.
From Antwerp we travelled to Bruges, examined the belfry, heard the chimes, and then went on to Cologne. A marvellous old picturesque place it was, with its combination of old churches, crumbling walls, gabled houses, and the narrowest and worst-paved streets we had ever seen. The old Cathedral in those days was not finished, and threatened never to be finished. Still there was the grand solitary tower, with the mystical-looking old crane on the top, and a regular garden growing out of the chinks and crannies of the stonework. Coleridge's saying about Cologne, was still emphatically true in those days, and all travellers had recourse to "Jean Marie Farina Gegenüber." What a change there is now, with that hideous Gothic railway bridge, and its sham battlements, and loopholes to defend nothing, with its hideous cast-iron turret over the centre of the church, where the old architect had intended a light stone lantern-tower, with the ridiculous terrace surrounding the building, and with the hideous finials with which the modern German architects have disfigured the grand old building!
The Rhine to Wiesbaden.
At Cologne we took the steamer and ran up the river. A far more sensible proceeding than that of these days, when tourists take the railway, and consequently can see only one side of the view. The river craft was comfortable, the meals were plentiful, the Piesporter was a sound and unadulterated wine, and married remarkably well with Knaster tobacco, smoked in long pipes with painted china bowls. The crowd, too, was good-tempered, and seemed to enjoy its holiday. Bonn, somehow or other, always managed to show at least one very pretty girl, with blue porcelain eyes and gingerbread-coloured hair. Then came the Castle Crag of Drachenfels and the charming Siebengebirge, which in those days were not spoiled by factory chimneys. We landed at Mainz, and from there drove over to the old Fontes Mattiace, called in modern day Wiesbaden.
It has been said that to enjoy the Rhine one must go to it from England, not the other way from Switzerland; and travellers' opinions are very much divided about it, some considering it extremely grand, and others simply pretty. I was curious to see what its effect upon me would be after visiting the four quarters of the globe; so, in May, 1872, I dropped down the river from Basle to the mouth. The southern and the northern two-thirds were uninteresting, but I found the middle as pretty as ever, and, in fact, I enjoyed the beautiful and interesting river more than when I had seen it as a boy.
I found the middle, beginning at Bingen, charming. Bishop Hatto's Tower had become a cockneyfied affair, and the castles, banks, and islands were disagreeably suggestive of Richmond Hill. But Drachenfels, Nonnenswerth, and Rolandseck, were charming, and I quite felt the truth of the saying, that this is one of the paradises of Germany. At Düsseldorf the river became old and ugly, and so continued till Rotterdam.
Wiesbaden in those days was intensely "German and ordinary," as Horace Walpole says. It was a kind of Teutonic Margate, with a chic of its own. In the days before railways, this was the case with all these "Baths," where people either went to play, or to get rid of what the Germans call eine sehr schöne corpulenz, a corporation acquired by stuffing food of three kinds, salt, sour, or greasy, during nine or ten months of the year. It was impossible to mistake princely Baden-Baden and its glorious Black Forest, for invalid Kissingen or for Homberg, which combined mineral waters and gambling tables. Wiesbaden was so far interesting that it showed the pure and unadulterated summer life of middle-class Germans. There you see in perfection the grave blue-green German eye.
You are surprised at the frequency of the name of Johann. Johann was a servant; Johannes, a professor; Schani, a swell; Jean, a kind of fréluqué; Hans, a peasant; and Hansl, a village idiot. Albrecht, with flat occiput, and bat-like ears, long straight hair and cap, with unclean hands, and a huge signet ring on his forefinger, with a pipe rivalling the size of a Turkish chibouque, took his regular seat on one of the wooden benches of the promenade, with Frau Mutter mending his stockings on one side, and Fraülein Gretchen knitting mittens on the other. This kind of thing would continue perhaps for ten seasons, but on the eleventh you met Albrecht, au petit soins, with Mütze as his bride, and Gretchen being waited upon by her bridegroom Fritz, and then everything went on as before. Amongst the women the kaffee-gesellschaft flourished, when coffee and scandal took the place of scandal and tea, the beverage which I irreverently call "chatter-water." The lady of the house invites two or three friends to come and bring their work and drink a cup of coffee. Before the hour arrives the invitations most likely number twenty. They dress in afternoon promenade toilette, which was very unadorned at Wiesbaden, and they drop in one by one—much kissing and shaking of hands and uncloaking; then each one pulls out knitting, or various pieces of work, which are mutually admired, and patterns borrowed, and then they fall to upon children, servants, toilettes, domestic economy, and the reputations of such of their friends as are not there. This goes on for hours, only interrupted by the servant wheeling in a table covered with coffee, cakes, sweetmeats, jam, and kugelhupf.
In the evening there was often a dance at the Kursaal—admirable waltzing, and sometimes quadrilles with steps. Here the bald old Englishman, who in France would collect around him all the old ladies in the room to see him dance, was little noticed. The hearty and homely Germans danced themselves, even when they had grey hair.
Our family found a comfortable house at Wiesbaden, and the German servants received the "boys," as we were still called, with exclamations of "Ach! die schöne schwarze kinder." We paid occasionally furtive visits to the Kursaal, and lost a few sovereigns like men. But our chief amusement was the fencing-room. Here we had found new style of play, with the schläger, a pointless rapier with razor-like edges. It was a favourite student's weapon, used to settle all their affairs of honour, and they used it with the silly hanging guard. Some of them gave half an hour every day to working at the post, a wooden pillar stuck up in the middle of the room and bound with vertical ribbons of iron.
When we were tired of Wiesbaden, we amused ourselves with wandering about the country. We visited the nearer watering-places. The first was Schwalbach, "the Swallows' Brook," where the rusty waters turned all our hair red. We then went off to Schlangenbad, "the Snakes' Bath," whose Kalydor made the Frenchman fall in love with himself. These waters had such a reputation, that one lady (of course she was called a Russian Princess) used to have them sent half across Europe for daily use.
In those days there were not many English in these out-of-the-way places, and the greater number were Oxford and Cambridge men. They were learning German and making the most extraordinary mistakes. One gentleman said that the German particles were difficult, but he made a great confusion of the matter. Amongst others, there were the daughters of Archbishop Whately, at that time very nice girls. We then returned to Wiesbaden, and went over to Heidelberg, which is so charmingly picturesque. Here we found a little colony of English, and all fraternized at once.