Visit to Germany and the Low Countries in 1829, 30, and 31

Front matter

VISIT TO GERMANY AND THE LOW COUNTRIES, IN THE YEARS 1829, 30, AND 31. by SIR ARTHUR BROOKE FAULKNER. " So on I ramble, now and then narrating, Now pondering " Byron. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : KICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. (LATE COLBURN AND BENTLEY.) 1833. LONDON : J. MOYES, CASTLE STAERT, LEICESTER SQUARE. TO H.R.H. THE DUKE OF SUSSEX, £<_. i-c. $c. $c. SIR, I fear I can offer no apology for presenting the miscellaneous and desultory matter of these pages to your Royal Highness's notice, unless what nut// rat/ter aggravate than excuse my temerity — your Royal Highness's gracious permission to inscribe them with your name. Beside what I oioe to your Royal High ness's unvarying condescension for a period extending to more than half my life, I am anxious for an opportunity of making my humble acknowledgments for the honour of those introductions to which I owe so large a share of my enjoyment on the tour which has fur nished the rambling matter of these Volumes.

As to those topics of a graver cast, where I would assert the privilege of our common nature as men, and of our common right as citizens, in opposition to the system of obscurantisme by ivhich the world has been so long kept in leading-strings, your Royal Highness's well-known sentiments are a guarantee that the aim of the writer will not be overlooked among the circumstances which plead for their defects of execution. What a glorious prospect it holds out, to hear Princes in these days openly advocate opinions more liberal and enlightened than a few years back were those of the most zealous and patriotic of the people ! — to find Kings and the Brothers of Kings the strenuous abettors of that liberty which was once the dread of the throne and the despair ofthe subject;, of the progress of which, indeed, when measured by the accessibility of royal station in former times, the present address is itself no feeble indication.

History, to be sure, is not wanting in examples of Princes distinguished for a very signal patriotism and love of liberty. Few besides your Royal Highness have sought her and defended her " through evil report and good report," with a devotion so ardent, and a disinterestedness so untainted; who, whether the storm has threatened her existence, or the sun has shone brightest upon our hopes, has ever found your Royal Highness the same inflexible, uncompromising champion. I shall, of course, be accused of vanity in addressing myself to your Royal Highness. However the fact may be, who would not be proud to place his free thoughts and independent opinions on record under the auspices of a Name so illustriously associated with every thing that can make its memory dear to a free people? I have the honour to be, With the most profound respect, Sir, Your Royal Highness-s Most devoted and most humble Servant, ARTHUR BROOKE FAULKNER.

Preface

. My respected reader and most dread reviewer, when first I set out on the journey which has begotten these excursive pages, my destination, si qua fata sinant, was Italy, a country to whose language and manners I am not wholly a stranger, and where I had hoped to turn much that was to be seen and heard to account of your entertainment. Alas ! these hopes were to be disap pointed, and commuted for some months to little better than solitary confinement in a few of the states of Germany, where, but for my knowledge of French, a language moderately understood and less spoken by the bulk of the people, we must have been to each other little better than barbarians. Indeed, it is, under no circumstances, an easy matter to get at the sentiments of this satura2

PREFACE.

. VI nine race, the solita Germanorum inertia applying not less to their intellectual than corporeal ener gies. At least, so says De Stael. Your interlocutor is never a volunteer : leading hints are thrown away upon him ; and there is a Spartan economy in his replies, even to the most direct and earnest interrogation. The politics of these volumes, I am aware, fill a very disproportioned space, but there was no subject so inviting while locomotion was denied, and the ferment of political opinion universal throughout all grades of life, in the countries I visited. Whatever may be thought of my specula tions on our affairs at home, which have been added since my return, — more especially of my view of the existing state of our House of Peers, wrong or right — it is proper my readers should know that they are the thoughts of one who despises alike Whig, Tory, and Moderate, to whom the interests of his country are not of more value than his party, it being of my political creed to believe that, as surely as a lobster turns red by boiling, a Whig grows Tory when long in power.

PREFACE.

. Some apology is due for my prolixity on the church. But though all farther talk about it must be quite a bore, can there be any subject so important to a rational being with an immortal soul as his posthumous destiny? and if so, why shall we not receive a little absolution for unmasking the cor ruptions and hollowness ofa system, which, beside trifling with our hopes of immortality, is calculated to do so much present mischief, by loosening the very bonds of society ? That many of our clergy may indulge a sneer sous cape at my making so serious an affair of religion, I will not doubt. 1 have no prejudices bishop-wards ; but I abhor hypocrisy, especially when, the monster must be fed out of the pockets of the people ; and as the cynic said ofthe philosophers, (I must quote the passage, although it is in Greek) rous aurous wrong .u^iexov ewjijwv imvTiwrara. ro/s avrw Xoyoig titirv&sMi'as.

The latitude with which I have treated the inconsist encies of our clergy, may lead some to think me no friend to our religion, any more than to its teachers. But though I cannot believe that any man will be damned for his honest opinion, right or wrong, this belief in no way affects my own con victions of the value of our religion. There are

PREFACE.

. VIII proofs of its truth, which no reasonable man is justified in treating but with the most sacred re spect; and, after all, if we even believed an error, it does not follow that it is an error to believe. " Quod si in hoc erro, libenter erro ; nee mihi hunc errorem quo detector, dum vivo, extorqueri volo : sin mortuus (ut quidam minuti philosophi censent) nihil sentiam ; non vereor, ne hunc errorem meum mortui philosophi irrideant." On the subject of popular education I deem it less necessary to sue for grace, convinced that we have been long led, under high imposing au thority, into most fundamental mistakes, in this, of all matters affecting the individual or the nation, the most deeply important. I can never consider that in any system of public instruction, whether for rich or for poor, the primary and para mount object should not be the forming of the moral character and habitudes of the recipient, " for lack of which, in fact," as Milton says, re marking on the same subject, " this country perishes." If I appear to attach undue importance to political education for the people, it is because I conceive that no government fulfils the end for

PREFACE.

. IX which the Almighty Author of all good willed the existence of states, unless every feasible effort is made to raise the human nature to its highest attainable degree of elevation ; and this can never be hoped while government is framed upon the principle of obstructing intelligence in any rank. In my apprehension ofthe matter, — and I believe my opinion is not an isolated one, — the man who would offer such obstruction deliberately is a des pot in his measure, quite as unequivocally as the perjured tyrant of Portugal, or the cleaver-down ofthe liberties ofthe Poles. Such are the principal details of a sustained character, with which I have whiled away a few heavy hours, and which with unassured hand I venture to place before you. Nor do I require my mortification excited by being told that such stuff must be dry, in comparison of those sketches of nature and incidental anecdote, clothed in language little short of poetical fascination, for which the travel-reader yearns at the present day, and which has placed some modern diaries, in point of attraction, not far below the fashionable ro mance : and yet have I not altogether overlooked nature ; only, in place of saying a great deal

PREFACE.

. X which I might have said of the glories of Pan and Sylvan, I have chosen to present the less familiar picture of the peasantry, which I am not aware will be found, in any thing written on Ger many, the subject of much special remark. It is among the many sins of the writer, that he has fallen into frequent repetitions of the same topics, which he can only hope to be pardoned as multiplied illustrations on subjects of importance in the moral and political economy of our own land. On various occasions, where I was for tunate enough to find a foreigner intelligent and communicative, I preferred giving his sentiments, as a better mode of shewing us to ourselves than if it came directly from the pen of the narrator. I am to hope that, in giving my own opinions of certain denominations of men in my own country, I shall not be mistaken as wilfully confounding the individual with the class.

To uphold the conduct of certain persons of influence and rank by alleging that they are, after all, no more than other men, though it may have ori ginality to recommend the remark, is literally not true. They are more than other men as regards society. The influence of their example it is that

PREFACE.

. XI raises these individuals to the power of that mischief we complain of, without which power they would be simply contemptible. Most of my speculations on the House of Lords were written seven months before the Reform-bill passed ; and I have the satisfaction to add, that they so fully met the view of an American diplomatic friend, that a copy of them was transmitted by him to the Secretary for Home Affairs in the United States. The terms in which various journals and re views have, on a former occasion, condescended to notice my wanderings, is to me full refutation of the ill-nature supposed to be inherent in that dreaded constrictor, the reviewer, who, whatever is to happen to me now, has ever been to me and mine gentle as a lamb. He may at least take my word for one thing, that if he can pardon what I publish, he ought not to be wholly ungrateful for what I have burnt ; and as to any further attempt to touch his sympathies, I had as soon be guilty of subornation of perjury, or of coming- Duke of Newcastle over him at the next election. From the length of time the publication of these pages have been withheld, the difficulty is

PREFACE.

. not so much to discover some excuse for the matter published, as a pretext for publishing it at all. And if, after all, any reader, more atra bilious than the rest, should refuse to be recon ciled, there is still one last appeal left me in the following extract, which I give from the very criticism that shakes its Gorgon terrors in my face : .'. With the exception of the celebrated work of Madame de Stael, and the admirable Tour of Russell, so little has been written on the subject of Germany, that the most meagre con tribution of a chance traveller in that country scarcely needs an apology." — Critique on Mad. de Stael. CONTENTS or THE FIRST VOLUME. Dedication iii Preface v

Chapter I

Sea Sickness. A Sea-sick Dandy Mrs. M'Karney. German Smell-fungus. Rotterdam. Erasmus. Rotterdam Organ. Dutch Steamer. Hugo Grotius. Smell-fungus again. Emmerick and Dusseldorf. Mayence. Table d'Hote. French Countess. Museum. Paganini. Public Schools. Cathedral of Mayence. Charlemagne's Horse. Lord Harrington's Death. Anlage. German Stoves 1

Chapter II

Electress of Hesse. LTnpopularity of the English. Austrian Character. John of Gutenberg. A Bath on the Rhine. Drusus' Tower. Wiesbaden; Library. Frankfort Fair. The Roemer. The British Ministers. Cathedral. Museum. Trio. Women. Ariadne. Genlis' Manuel. Wabern. Peasantry. Mrs. Thielepape. Wabern Dors. Farm stock. Peasantry: Agriculture. Chateau of the Elector: Paintings CONTENTS.

Chapter IX

Museum. The Professor of Hats, &c. University Duelling. University Balls. Unpopularity of the King. Christmas-day. Musical Proficiency not indigenous to any Country. Ruling a refractory Accompaniment. Haydn. Beethoven. Kieseweter. Weber. Rarity of great Musical Genius. Regius Professor's Concert. The Students' Concert. German National Airs. The Amateurs' Concert, Church Music 180

Chapter I

Sea Sickness. A Sea-sick Dandy. Mrs. M'Karney. German Smell-fungus. Rotterdam. Erasmus. Rotterdam Organ. DutchSteamer. Hugo Grotius. Smell-fungus again. Emmerick and Dusseldorf. Mayence. Table d'Hote. French Countess. Museum. Paganini. Public Schools. Cathedral of Mayence. Charlemagne's Horse. Lord Harrington's Death. Anlage. German Stoves. September 9th, 1829. — Embarked for Rotter dam at 10 o'clock a.m. We have a three-parson power against us, and one Methodist ; but steam, wind, and tide, are in our favour. One of the first things commonly recorded by the least curious of the tribe of travellers is that horror of horrors, sea-sickness ; from which, as no one ever, perhaps, suffered more than the writer, he thinks he has the fairest of all titles to be heard on the nauseous detail — that is, isa nauseous de tail ought ever to be heard.

At first getting on board, I thought manfully to brave it by walking stoutly, and putting the best face on the matter to myself; and so long as the water was smoothish, the fumes and odours were most courageously VOL. i. b A SEA-SICK DANDY. despised, though they could not be quite forgotten ; but, whatever my face may have affected, if the truth must be all spoken, my stomach was in no temper to act the hypocrite. The only possible consolation that my state, I believe, admitted of, I had, and that was a dandy at my elbow most visi bly approaching the same misery ; and as our bark commenced breasting the waves, he became evidently quite as wretched as myself. There are few more edifying objects than a dandy sea-sick. Such a pulling down of high looks ! Every curl of his locks, every extra piece of finery of the man of stays and perfumes — what a comment on the morale of his whole system !

But to one so ac quainted as the writer with the miseries of a sea life, what I have just suffered are tolerable evils ; and to prove it, at the cost of a most unseasonable digression, I will mention some particulars of a night spent on board a transport, in which I was once fated to sail from Gibraltar to Malta in the depth of winter. This vessel, called by the high sounding name of the Caldicott Castle, "built in the eclipse, And rigg'd with curses dark," concentrated in her unhappy person every imaginable misery that the antipathies of a fresh-water sailor could have to deprecate. Whenever I wish to be happy, in the most untoward conjuncture of .his world's accidents, I think of the Caldicott and her dead lights, without a chair to sit down MRS. M'KAENEY. 3 upon, and the parboiled hen served up heels in the air, half plucked, for dinner, by the dirty cabin boy ; and these the only comforts to keep off famine, and beguile the scene of boiling sea and storm that raged about her.

On this awful hurri cane night the topmast was carried away, and, for consolation, the sea-washed master, heaping shame and curses on the head of the owners for sending out such a vessel, exhibited fragments of the mast to shew it was as rotten as snuff ; the inference from which was that the ship was snuff too. The ani mating fact was disclosed in the middle of the night, as the sailors say, "blowing cannons," the thing in our very teeth, and our berths swimming in brine. The Caldicott was one of the oldest transports on duty, loaded to the water's edge with salt provisions, so that every plunge seemed as it would be her last ; and why it was not her last, puzzled the master as much as ourselves. Yet is there no situation, however wretched, that may not yield its alleviations : so oddly are we con structed, that a laugh may be brewed from the very dregs of despair, or even the tortures of sea sickness.

During the whole of the gale, an Irish woman, a soldier's wife, who made her way down to the cabin — one of the most unadulterated speci mens of her country's aborigines — kept up an unre mitting invocation of the saints ; and so imper turbable was her earnestness, that, though every half-second interrupted by a heave to the other side ofthe cabin, and in a state of locomotion little MRS. M'KARNEY. short ofa loose water-cask, she still persevered in her ejaculations, adjusting this instant the position which she knew would be good for nothing the next and require fresh righting. " Jesu ! Maria ! and what will become of us all ? " she at last bel lowed with a voice of anguish, the exiled Mrs. M'Karney all the time wringing her hands, and seesawing from side to side on her knees with her back to the company.

" D — n you, you old fool," said a good-natured man, who could stand it no longer, " what brought you on board to make this hullabaloo for ?" which had the effect of magic, for poor Mrs. M'Karney from that moment was silent until we got into smooth water. The state of the sick dandy, though certainly yielding consolation in its way, was far from so amusing as poor Mrs. M'Karney, certainly not half so deserving of sympathy. There is one piece of advice I would give every sea-sick traveller : let him never take an under berth if he can help it. He may, to be sure, enjoy all the advantages of a gentlemanly puker above ; but, however orderly and well-behaved, believe me he is seriously to be deprecated. At a quarter past one o'clock p. m., be it known to all whom it may concern that my party landed safe and sound on the morning of the 10th of Sep tember, 1829, being just twenty-seven hours' pas sage.

If both vessel and captain were not far above my praise, it would be my duty to put both on special record. But Captain Slater, I should GERMAN SMELL-FUNGUS. 5 think, would feel very little obliged to me for the stale trick of puffing either himself or the King of the Netherlands. Before I take my leave of the vessel, I shall offer a few observations on one of our fellow-passengers — a German — and without. all exception the most monstrous smell-fungus I ever met. He is from Vienna, and had just re turned from London on a first visit. Intending to remain there a year, his purse admonished him to make it three weeks. He was much more malig nant against every thing English than can be accounted for from any mere peculiarity of temperament, though there might be something in this too. His delight seemed to be in relating instances of English imposition ; and, among the rest, he tried to be facetious about one practised on Rossini, which I own has very much the air of a travelling story.

The great composer, it seems, lived in Gerard Street, and wanted to visit some friend in Princes Street, contiguous. Desiring to do the thing comme il faut, he sent for a coach. Coachee, it is probable, with his usual instinct at nosing out a flat and a foreigner, and deeming all foreigners fair game, set out with his fare ; but, whether he considered it not quite so respectful towards the author of Tancredi to put him down at once at his friend's house without a little ride and charge him a shilling, or that he had an exclusive eye to his own benefit, so it was that he drove him at a prestissimo pace round Soho Square some half dozen times before arriving at his destination, ROTTERDAM ERASMUS. when he laid his demand accordingly. The finale concludes with the Italian being thrown into an agitato movement of great fury.

Rotterdam. — Nothing can be conceived more civil than the custom-house officers here. They take our word for every thing, never so much as opening one of our numerous trunks or packages. The greatest inconvenience is the importunity of a gang of idle men and boys scrambling to be allowed to carry your luggage to your hotel. For the trouble of pointing out where the steamer lay, in answer to a very civil question of mere curiosity, one of these vagabonds commenced a regular siege of dunning ; but as I was conscious of no debt, 1 left him. Next morning, as I was proceeding to the boat, at five o'clock, I found the same fellow posted at the outer gate, when he recommenced his attack, and in so outrageous a tone, and with an insolence so unparalleled, that it became the least troublesome of the alternatives to satisfy his demand.

I give this little trait to guard the New comes against asking any more questions in the streets of Rotterdam than they can avoid. After a capital dinner at the Hotel de Pays Bas, our party concluded the evening by strolling about lion hunting. The first we fell in with was Erasmus standing at full length in bronze in the open street, habited in canonicals, and rather larger than life, holding up a folio on which he is intent. Next we were shewn his house, which is a mean structure of two stories near the cathedral ROTTERDAM ORGAN. and at the present day takes rank among the infe rior sort of tippling houses, or slyteries, as the Dutchman calls them. Yet, humble as is its destination, it is decidedly kept in better order than the abode of the bard of Avon, which, when I saw it a few years since, had descended to a butchery ofthe lowest grade.

The cathedral is for nothing so remarkable as its organ. These tuneless frogs, for whose opinion of tbe matter I would not give one stiver, hold it to be superior to the Haerlem instrument. Had I not still retained a fresh impression of the " re^ membered tones" ofthe organ at Minorca, which I heard twenty years ago, I might have thought so too. It is called "the new organ," to distinguish it from its Haerlem rival, which is styled, par excellence, "the organ." My party were treated by the organist to the overture in Idomeneo, .and a most glorious strain of rich harmony it assuredly was, making every corner and recess of the cathe dral reverberate. Nothing in my mind produces that swelling in which Longinus says consists the evidence of true sublimity, in a higher degree than the solemn pealing of a fine organ in good hands.

This instrument is of colossal proportions, supported in front on eight fine marble pillars. By a douceur to the organist I understand you may at any time enjoy a private treat ; and they tell you at the same time that his Dutch inspiration rises the higher the handsomer you pay. The church was full when we entered it ; and, judging from DUTCH STEAMER. appearances, all were very devout ; the preacher energetic beyond the common display of true devo tion, to sustain which I observed he kept a little bottle or glass, with reverence be it spoken, at his back, out of which, from time to time, he recruited his flagging energies. It might, to be sure, only be a little orthodox wine, taken, according to the apostolic precept, for his stomach's sake and his often infirmities. To my eye it had an oddish appearance, certainly ; and I could perceive was far from relished by the orthodoxy of an English clergyman of our party.

The inside of the cathe dral conveyed to my mind the impression of a very heterodox amalgam of Popery and Calvinism, in the contrast presented between the magnificent organ and the tallow candles sixteen to the pound, with which the naked walls of the temple were lit up. ll.A. — Started by steam for Cologne. It really needs a temper naturally easy to get patiendy through this eternal flat, unvaried scene of wil lows, windmills, swamps, poplars, and bulrushes. But as a preparation for the glories that are to come, we bear all with resignation. The table d'hote on board is our chief solace ; and every thing in the way of accommodation comfortable, excepting the bore of being obliged to sleep d, la Cossaque on boards and benches, or sprawling on the floor. But you must take care not to quit your seat.

If you are so fortunate as to get into a snug corner, you must recollect you are merely a DUTCH STEAMER. tenant at will. If you leave it for an instant, it is irrecoverable. One gentleman, who, spite of all his necessities and inconveniences, had persever ingly kept his position for the whole evening, thought at last that he .might venture on deck for a couple of minutes. His back was hardly turned, when a Dutchman most deliberately removed his cloak, and putting on his night-cap, took full possession of the vacant place. An appeal to the con ductor, which naturally suggested itself, proved fruitless : all you get is a shrug, which leaves you execrating the conductor more than the offender. The conductor, however, did in this case venture upon remonstrance ; and the intrudec's answer was, that " if the whole cabin stood on their heads to supplicate him, budge he would not one single inch."

Had a finger been raised, which, by the by, was in contemplation, to displace this ill mannered rascal, the whole party must infallibly have gone to loggerheads. He had many friends who evidently favoured his cause ; but on all such occasions injustice is usually passed over, and no body thinks but of number .me. Smellfungus himself, though affecting to disapprove of the pro ceeding, determined to remain neutral. Nothing but indisposition, as happened in my own case, ought to tempt a traveller to prefer the Rotterdam steamer to his carriage ; yet people of the first rank do often, without any such reason, but merely for the pleasure of the thing, exchange their vehi cles for the gliding motion of these barges. b2 SMELL-FUNGUS AGAIN. Excepting the castle at Gorkum, from which Hugo Grotius effected his perilous and memorable escape, there is little worthy of notice from Rot terdam to Cologne.

Hugo's Castle, walled round and flanked by two small turrets, stands close to the river, but has nothing remarkable in its appearance except the meanness of the structure. At Nimeguen we took in perhaps from 150 to 200 peasants proceeding on a pilgrimage to some place in the neighbourhood. As we passed this old town, an impenetrable Dutch haze began to escape before the shafts of his cloud-compelling majesty ; and the white walls, late candentibus mœniis, were viewed to much advantage in the splendour of a gorgeous sunset. The German, who still accompanies us, is, I find, an ultra of the first water ; hates the liberty of the press, and admires a censorship to extravagance, but more especially expressed abhorrence at our habit of caricaturing. He tells me, that at Vienna, the other day, a professor was expelled for making the attributes of the Deity the subject of a philosophical disquisition ; all such inquiries and the rankest scepticism being held there as modes of daring of equal turpitude.

He hurried over a hundred such disjointed topics at a heat, all in disparagement of England ; and, as it at last clearly turned out, from a wish to be re venged for his mortification at the demands which our metropolis had made on his purse. He in veighed against the drunkenness of our drabs EMMERICK AND DUSSELDORF. and the insolence of our rabble, with a vehemence that admitted of no probable explanation, snve that of insatiable revenge for having been roughly handled by both. One fellow had dodged him close, he said, for a whole hour; and when frequently remonstrated with to take his leave, dodged closer, and swore at him. As a specimen of our progress in music, he mentioned having seen an opera of Rossini's published for two flutes. Our taste for this art he could discover by a glance at the counter of a music-shop.

" A few of our national airs," he admitted, (but it was the admission of condescension,) " are pretty, but not music." It was impossible not to be amused with his tirade, to which I offered no contradiction, lest I should seal his lips from letting me farther into his sentiments of my countrymen and of his own character. The whole was wound up by a most self-complacent account of the compelled subordination of the lower orders at Vienna, where, it seems, such is the paternal care ofthis best of all governments, that, after a certain hour of the evening, the slightest noise is punished, lest the aristocratic slumbers of the inhabitants should be disturbed. The only other towns we passed until our ar rival at Cologne, as all the world knows, were Emmerick and Dusseldorf; the former a nest of rapacious smugglers, and the frontier town of Prussia, where our baggage underwent a tedious overhauling by the officers ofthe douane.