In the Alsatian Mountains: a narrative of a tour in the Vosges

Front matter

IN THE ALSATIAN MOUNTAINS NIEDER-HASLACH CHURCH. IN THE ALSATIAN MOUNTAINS a i[iarratii)e of a "Œour in tljc Fosps BY KATHARINE LEE AUTHOR OF 'A WESTERN WILDFLOWER,' ETC WINDOW AT RAPPOLTSWEILER LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY & SON in ©romatg to p.er iEKajratg tilt HHuitn Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh. TO MY LITTLE DAUGHTER YSOLT I DEDICATE THIS BOOK. By the Stour valley, where the low lands lie, And great gray towers break through the distant haze, We left thee, darling, in those summer days While we went wandering under foreign sky. To a wide valley, where, while Rhine flows by, A great red church its stately spire doth raise, We journeyed, and by dales and forest ways Sought out old castles and blue mountains high. Over us both the same arched heaven was bent ; Both rivers run into the selfsame sea ; Those steeples point each to the selfsame Throne, Where He, who ever watcheth o'er His own, Was keeping guard alike o'er us and thee In German Elsass or in English Kent.

Preface

. Judging from the result of certain inquiries made of booksellers, and of a search among the shelves devoted to topographical literature in the British Museum, it would seem that no book has as yet appeared on the subject of the Vosges Mountains. It is curious that so beautiful, so accessible, and so cheap a district should have remained so longs unknown to the British tourist ; and this fact in itself attracted us to the place, and will serve as an apology for writing a book about it, in the hope of inducing others to enjoy themselves as we did. That we did enjoy the tour there is no doubt, and I think I may have shown that with some clearness in the course of the book ; that the tour was inexpensive is very evident, for it only cost us from London to London,

PREFACE.

. X and we took some three weeks over it, and our description will show that we had little, if any, "roughing it" to undergo. The Globe newspaper of June 14, 1883, in an article on "Travelling and Bookmaking," says: — "Of late a new form of impressions de voyage has come into existence, securing a maximum of book for a minimum of travelling expenses ;" and no doubt the present work may be so classified, but I have not attempted to fill it up with extracts from encyclopædias, "history and politics from blue-books, sundry statistics," etc., because I do not think that such details would be of more interest to my readers than they are to myself. There are several allusions to politics in the course of the book, but they are the results of conversations with persons whom we met, and may be taken for exactly what they are worth.

We were somewhat interested in trying to discover the feeling of the Alsatians towards their German masters ; and having-, as we may perhaps have shown, a dislike for the conceited, domineering, hard - working, serious -minded Teutons above all foreio-ners o * we were perhaps mischievously pleased that

PREFACE.

. XI our Alsatian friends agreed with us. Never theless the statements given to us may not represent the feelings of the country at large, so that we may say of them, as of the " other books" of which Hierome spoke, that we do not "apply them to establish any doctrine." All that we could say from our own observa tion was that, whether the government was good or bad, it seemed to be "all there." The omnipresence of the government of Alsace forms a striking contrast to that of Switzerland. I believe they have some sort of government in Switzerland, but I do not think they use it for anything, while in Alsace it is present at every turn, and is used a good deal too. This book does not pretend to be an ex haustive account of the Vosges. It is merely my diary during our tour put into a continuous form, — a narrative of what we did and what we saw exactly as it happened and very much as we recorded it at the time.

As it was, we were able in the course of a very short time to visit most of the places of interest in the district, and to obtain a very good general idea of the chief objects of interest in the country,

PREFACE.

. xu which idea I hope I shall have been able to con vey to my readers. I notice that I have very often remarked that we were sorry to leave such and such a place ; this looks as though we found several of the places agreeable, which was indeed the case. I can therefore strongly recommend any one who wishes for a pleasant and easy tour to follow our example and try the Vosges. I have not attempted to go upon any prin ciple with reference to the spelling or form of Alsatian names. I have used for the most part the names that I found in most common use, or in the English translation of Baedeker's Rhine. These seem chiefly to be the German forms, and as most of the places are almost unknown to English readers, it really does not much matter which form one uses. KATHARINE LEE. Hampstead, June 1883. CONTENTS.

. Expenses of the Tour 277 Itinerary

Chapter I. England To Brussels And Jemelle

We were tired of London, tired of England — if our finances had allowed it we should have considered ourselves tired of Europe, — and pined for fresh fields and pastures new in the rest of the world ; but from England to Asia or America is a far cry and a loud one as far as money is concerned ; so we were fain to turn our longing eyes towards the Continent (par excellence ?) or rather the continental map. The principal objects on the map — the large towns — we utterly scouted ; we had had enough of the largest town in Europe to last us for a very long time, and we wanted country scenery and solitude, — by solitude meaning the absence of our fellow-countrymen and women — "foreigners not counting. Where can we go, we asked, where we can not meet the British tourist ? Cook's excursion tickets were advertised for everywhere ; and wheresoever the Cook is, there shall the British tourists be gathered together.

The plains of Central Russia seemed about the only un- Cooked region ; and as we hate plains and detest Russians, we decided not to go there. We were going to give up any hope of quiet, and to follow meekly in the British train to Switzerland, when my husband began to whistle a tune. " The very place for us," I said. " What do you mean ?" he asked " The Blue Alsatian Mountains," I replied ; "let us go there. I have longed to go among them ever since I first saw them from Stras burg, and nobody has ever been able to tell us anything about them, except that Erckmann and Chatrian wrote about them, and that there are wolves there." We agreed to go. We told various friends of our project. Some had never heard of the Vosges, some thought they were in the south of France, some in Switzerland, and one in Austria.

We were warned by some against robbers ; by others against wolves, wild boars, THE CALAIS- DO UVRES. 3 and other fierce and noisome beasts ; and one kind friend offered the loan of a revolver, which my husband refused, on the ground that if it were loaded it might go off and hurt some one, and if it were not loaded it would be of no use. Our preparations were soon made. We would go away for three weeks, and take no more than we could carry, — a knapsack crammed with changes of raiment, a bag of sketching materials, a mackintosh, an ulster, an alpenstock, and an umbrella. We divided these very equally. I took the umbrella. Armed with return tickets to Strasburg and back we sought the Calais -Douvres steamer. That estimable boats, or these estimable boat (for the dual unity of it is puzzling), " came as a boon and a blessing" to us as usual, or, rather, we came to it (or them), and received the negative boon and blessing of no sea sickness.

The journey across need not be described : other people have been by the same route, and there are no stations or objects of interest on the way. There was the usual scramble at Calais, caused by a large body of persons all trying to squeeze through a passage two feet in width at the same time, and a frantic rush to get something to eat, with a very small and expensive result. Calais is not beautiful, and does not smell nice ; yet the train seems so loath to leave it, and hangs about it so lovingly, that one can only account for it by remembering that trains cannot smell — I mean in a grammatically active sense : passengers can. For a wonder our carriage was not overcrowded, and an Englishman therein began to talk to us as soon as we got in. "You won't find room for your knapsack in that net.

It is ridiculous how narrow them Belgian carriages are ; nothing like these anywhere else, and crowded like a sheep -pen. They manage these things much better on the Paris line." At this moment the Paris train passed us packed to the very utmost limits of its capa bilities. We all saw it, of course ; but the stranger, nothing baffled, continued — "Ah yes, but most of those people get out at the next station. There is no line in all Europe so confoundedly badly managed as this one is." Not having been over this particular line more than once before, we did -not feel capable of offering remarks upon its manners and CALAIS TO BRUSSELS. 5 customs, but said instead that the day had turned out remarkably fine. " Hum — well — " he replied, glancing at the soft flecked sky, and the golden sunshine upon the cornfields, " rather cloudy.

Now I have no doubt they have a perfectly clear day in England." "Scarcely," my companion remarked, "for it was raining in Dover three hours ago." " It is quite clear there now," he answered, authoritatively; " and do you see how ridiculously early these fellows are beginning their harvest?" I mildly suggested that if their corn was ripe it would be a pity not to cut it, but was quenched by the remark — " These foreigners have no business to begin their harvest before we do." Nobody ventured to reply to this sentiment, and our journey was continued in silence for some time. The low-lying Flemish country, with its green marshes and golden cornfields, its grey willows, and long rows of poplars, was unusually lovely under the July sun and a faintly clouded sky. Presently we came to the Belgian frontier station, and our friend in the corner became brisk again.

" It's the most monstrous iniquity in the world !" he exclaimed, " this system of persecut ing passengers at the frontiers in this way. I call it a deliberate insult to compel me, a British subject, to get out and be subjected to a personal scrutiny by these undersized little Frenchmen " — our friend was about five feet four himself. " I don't understand why we put up with it !" " Because we can't help it, I suppose," my husband remarked as he got out and received the polite assurances of a tall official that there was no necessity for our taking our small portion of this world's goods out of the carriage. " Do you mean to say you are not going to be searched ?" inquired our new friend, much aghast, as my husband stepped into the carriage again. "The President of the Republic, or the Prime Minister of Belgium, or whoever he is in the cocked hat, says that if this is all our luggage it is unnecessary."

"Then, by Jingo!" exclaimed the little man, getting out of the carriage in a great hurry, " I'll go and see what this means ; it's an insult to the English nation that they don't consider it worth while even to search our luggage. I'll THE BELGIAN FRONTIER. 7 go and insist on their unstrapping my bag this moment. Not search me indeed!" and, bag in hand, he dived among the crowd on the platform. " What an awful example of the Englishman abroad," said my husband, looking after him and laughing. "He doesn't understand a word of French, and it is just as well that cocked hatted gentleman doesn't know any English, or he would do the French equivalent for knocking our little friend down. Now they have both gone into the Custom House. I hope he will be satisfied !" Presently he came back, scarlet in the face, and indignant beyond description.

" I'll report the whole affair to the Minister of Police," he said ; " that scoundrel insisted that I wanted to declare. Declare indeed ! I didn't want to declare anything — I only wanted my rights as an English passenger of having my luggage searched ; and the fool kept on wanting me to declare — make a speech, I'll be bound — foreigners are always talking. I'll declare them to the police if they don't search my luggage properly." "Well, did they ?" we asked. " Did they ? No, they didn't ; kept on IN THE ALS A TIAN MOUNTAINS. jabbering a lot of French, and then made a chalk mark on the outside. That's no good. Why didn't they search the bag properly ?" At Brussels our discontented little friend was going to remain for the night. He tried hard to persuade us to do so too. He seemed to have taken rather a fancy to our society, possibly because my companion's wonderfully good temper soothed his own fiery little spirit by contrast.

He inquired into all our plans, and listened with much interest to our enthu siastic hopes of the Vosges; then said — I am afraid rather to our disgust — that he thought he would follow our example, and go there too, adding that he would be sure to meet us at some of the places we had mentioned. We felt as if the spoils of victory were wrested from our grasp before the war began, and could only smile meekly at the sacrifice. I have wondered since whether he did not discern our pride in our enterprise, and do us the usual friendly turn of taking us down a little. Anyhow he appeared to think he had conferred a wonderful benefit on us by the way in which he shook hands when we got out of the train. We had friends to meet us in Brussels, who, with a tender forethought, brought us a bag of BRUSSELS. 9 the most enticing pastry nothings that the mind of man can conceive, or a Belgian cook's fingers execute.

We drove across the bright, pretty city, where all the servant-maids were washing the pavements with long mops, for the morrow was the Sabbath, to the Luxemburg station. Here we were plunged into the struggling side of Belgian life. Such a fight for places in a train I never witnessed except after fireworks at the Crystal Palace. One of our friends, a wary inhabitant of Brussels, kept us out of the crowd. We saw the last carriage filled to the last seat, and hope fled from us. But our friend very soon re assured us, and hope came back again. "There are only a few second-class passen gers left," she said. "They will bring another carriage, and you may get a compartment all to yourselves." Such is the philosophy of waiting. We had a comfortable compartment, as she said, all to ourselves, with the satisfaction of knowing that we had contributed to making the train ten minutes late in starting, and so keeping those huddled-up Belgians baking, while we were cool and comfortable.

The comfort of being able to lie down, and the pastry nothings, kept us employed until we came to Namur. There the Belgian officials were no longer able to bear the situation. Here were two people in a carriage all to themselves. Ruin would prostrate the kingdom if such reckless extravagance was allowed to continue. Two people got out of a first-class carriage at Namur. The guards went round beating up all the second-class carriages. No one got out to oblige them. They were packed as tight as they could hold. Then ensued a mighty consultation, in which a station-master, several guards, and a dozen men in blouses, took active parts. The guard could scarcely contain himself for excitement. The station-master was on the brink of tears. At last an admission was wrung from him. He walked away that he might not behold the sacrifice.

We were to occupy the two empty seats in a first-class carriage. We had some difficulty in comprehending the guard's French. We rarely understand French when we are asked to do anything we don't want to do. But he made us understand at last, and we quitted our carriage, and directly BRUSSELS TO JEMELLE. 11 afterwards it was detached from the train, and thus ruin was averted from the Luxemburg railway. We grumbled a little at first. We had ridden first-class before ; it was not a new experience to us, and we did not appreciate the change as we ought to have done. The second class carriages were quite as comfortable, and we had been able to lie down. Being meek people we had not insisted on our rights, as our little friend would have done, and for once in a thousand years the average compensation came to the long suffering.

Two Belgian gentlemen were in the train, who conversed while the rest listened in silence. "Behold!" said one of them in French, a thin man dressed in a light alpaca suit, and very closely shaven. " Behold the wonderful march of progress ! Look at the stupendous pace at which we travel. We are here — we are there ! Truly it is marvellous!" His companion, a large, rather greasy man, with a white waistcoat and drooping cheeks, shook his head slowly. He had evidently not made up his mind where he was. The other gentleman became excited. "What dolts, what unimaginative ones, were not our ancestors!" he cried. "Behold the steam ; contemplate its gigantic power as ex emplified on this railway on which we find ourselves. My faith ! is it not marvellous, stupendous ? Do we not fly through the air at the astounding pace of five-and-twenty miles an hour ?

Consider this !" " I have heard," said the fat gentleman very solemnly, "that the pace made on the Nord Railway has even reached the enormous speed of thirty miles an hour." He paused, looked at his astonished and delighted friend, and then ejaculated slowly : " But I do not believe it. It is not possible." After this he sank into repose, while his friend endeavoured to rumple his hair with his fingers, which was a manifest impossi bility, for it would have been easier to have rumpled his fingers with his hair, so short and stiff it was.

Chapter II. Jemelle

to metz. We had settled to stop the night at Jemelle. This was because we had never heard of any one else having done so, and we had a morbid longing after being "the first that ever burst into silent seas." Jemelle is not important. There is nothing to see there. It is just inside the forest of Ardennes, but the forest is not much of a forest there. Still we expected quiet at any rate. It was dark when we arrived. The road from the station led down a steep hill, and, avoiding several omnibuses, we set out to seek a lodging. At the foot of the hill a girl accosted us, and asked if we wanted an hotel. We did, so we followed her to a little roadside inn bear ing on its front the title Hotel de Luxembourg. It seemed clean, so we entered. A middle-aged woman came to answer our inquiries, and we were shown into a little room with bare floor and short bedsteads.

We asked the price of the room. The land lady seemed puzzled. She seemed new to the trade, and it was matter for consideration. Were we not strangers, and evidently English, and therefore to be made to pay ? After a con sultation somewhere in the kitchen premises she returned and asked if we would breakfast there. "Certainly," we replied. " Then," said she, " I cannot think of letting you have bed and breakfast for less than a franc each. I should be ruined if I did. I assure you it is quite the usual charge." She defended what she evidently really re garded as extortion so ably that we had not the heart to beat down her gigantic charges. For once we forgot that we had come determined to do the tour on the cheap, and agreed to pay this enormous price. With the recklessness of compulsory extra vagance we ordered supper in a lordly manner.

" What would we have ?" " Whatever we could get. We were hungry, and had had nothing but cakes since early morning. Let them give us a good supper." We got a good supper — exquisitely -cooked JEMELLE. 15 fillets of beef, salad, potatoes, saute, cheese, fruit, and excellent beer. But a°_ain the extor tionate charges appeared, and they wanted a franc and a half each for this feast. " Do you think we shall hear the trains ?" said I, as we went up to bed, and a screech as of a peacock gone mad was wafted in at the open door. " Oh no," said my husband ; " that must be the last train. Jemelle is quite a little place, and I don't think the night expresses stop here." "In that case I will leave the window open," said I, " for it is very close and warm." Just as I was dropping off to sleep a fearful yell burst from an engine at the station.

It lasted some seconds, and then I remarked : " The last train seems a long time getting off." " I am sure there isn't a later one than this," said my husband. " I should not mind the whistle if there was no footboard to this bed. They don't build beds for persons of my length here. There goes the whistle again ! Truly I agree with Touchstone — ' Here am I in Ar dennes, and the more fool I. When I was at home I was in a better place.' We will go away from here to-morrow." Then began a noise and a pandemonium of which Dante had no notion, for steam whistles were not known in his day. Engine answered engine in jerks and shrieks and yells. Some times they vied with each other in loudness of sound, sometimes in length of yell, sometimes in the number of jerks per minute. My husband got up hastily and shut the window.

He did not seem pleased at some thing. "What a number of last trains they seem to have," I remarked quietly. I need not record his answer. He spoke of trains and engines and drivers, and Belgians, and even the forest of Ardennes itself, in terms which the most uneducated foreigner could understand. I do not think he was quoting Touchstone this time. There was not much sleep for us that night. Jemelle is a large shunting station for goods trains, and this whistling seems to be a favourite pastime of engine-drivers. The inhabitants say that they get so used to it as not to mind it. I wonder how long it takes. We left Jemelle at about half-past ten next morning. The station was crowded with peasants in holiday costume, for it was Sunday, and the third-class carriages seemed crammed. THROUGH THE ARDENNES. 17 The Ardennes country did not look specially inviting from the train.

It is but moderately picturesque. It reminded one somewhat of the less striking parts of inland Cornwall, in its low woods, gray rocks, streams, and rough heathery hills. There were scarcely any inhabitants in this quiet region. Large woods occupied a great portion of the scene, but often we came to cleared districts, where only the heather and low plants remained. But we had not come to see the Ardennes, so we did not feel particu larly interested, and after our sleepless night we were not inclined to look favourably upon anything. What they do with their frontiers in this part of the world is a puzzle to me. There was a station with a Belgian custom-house, and about five minutes afterwards another custom house told us that we were in Luxemburg, and in fact in the German Empire, for the Duchy, though the property of the King of the Nether lands, is part of the Bismarckian Empire.

But between these two stations, though we looked out very carefully, we could distinguish nothing to mark the frontier. I don't know what we expected to see. Perhaps we should not know a frontier if we saw one. They do not have those things in England. If they had only run up a wire fence — and wire-fencing is cheap enough — it would have satisfied us. We stayed at Luxemburg till the next train in order to dine, and then went on toward Metz. We had been very lucky in empty carriages hitherto, but at some place about half-way to Metz a mob of unsavoury third class passengers were crammed into our carriage. It was a hot day and we did not like our com pany. Presently my husband addressed me across the carriage in an extemporised Latin couplet — " Omnibus hominibus hoc sit nimis notum Lotharingiæ populum nunquam esse lotum."

It was a pity that he used the German pronunci ation of Latin, and that he had not noticed that there was a clergyman present ; for a priest who was sitting in one corner of the carriage im mediately entered into an elaborate Latin speech, defending the cleanliness of his countrymen. Latin conversation is not a strong point with Englishmen, so my husband answered in French, and gave him to understand that he would accept his word for it that the "populus Loth aringiæ " did wash sometimes, but that it must have been a long time ago. This seemed to METZ. 19 please him, for he went into the most astonishing fits of laughter, and wrote down the couplet on the fly-leaf of his breviary, after which he talked hard all the way to Metz. The population of Metz consists of soldiers and nursemaids. Whether the soldiers are there because of the nursemaids, or the nursemaids because of the soldiers, we do not know ; but the attraction of the one class for the other is notorious even in England.

There are said to be 18,000 soldiers in Metz, and as the population is about 50,000 there must therefore be 32,000 nursemaids, which is rather embarras de richesse for the military. Perhaps, however, the 50,000 includes children, clergymen, and hotel - keepers, so the disproportion may be smaller. There must be quite a hundred persons belonging to those classes. If the soldiers wore uniforms that fitted better they would look more imposing. But they make up in numbers for their other defects. I cannot believe that we got at the right statistics, for I am sure we saw 180,000 soldiers, though of course we may have sometimes seen the same ones over again — a point which it is impossible to settle, as all German soldiers in the same uniform are as exactly alike as sheep or negroes ; and unless a man does not wear spectacles there is no way of distinguishing him from his fellows.

We saw a detachment of an Uhlan regiment riding down one side of a square, and I believe we were the only people who looked at it. Soldiers in Metz are like smuts in London : nobody takes any account of them. These soldiers, of course, were all Germans. They talked and thought, and ate and smoked, and stared and swaggered Prussian Empire, and the citizens crept about in an apologetic manner between their elbows. We went to look at the cathedral after we had found our hotel : it (the cathedral, not the hotel) is a beautiful building, especially on the outside, though the new colour of the stone, where it has been mended since the war, gives it rather a spotty appearance. We went in : the great nave was empty, save at the western end, where several chairs were turned towards a chapel on the northern side.

The altar of the chapel was profusely decorated, and before the railed-off part that answered to a chancel was an immense crown suspended in the air with long festoons going from it to the pillars. It was composed of white muslin and imitation METZ CATHEDRAL. 21 blush roses. Some real fir-trees had been cut and placed along the walls below. Some women were still kneeling before the chapel, and a service had apparently just been concluded. Before the high altar some men were prepar ing an enormous catafalque, for there was to be a grand funeral here on the morrow. Their noise and movements were a little annoying as we walked about and looked at the rich windows and admired the spring of the lofty roof, but it was astonishing how slight the sound was in so big a place. My husband wanted to go up into the tower; and as I have no fancy for climbing narrow steep stairs, I stayed below and wandered down to the lower end of the nave and sat down.