Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home/Place XVII
braubach.
Braubach.—We arrived here at half past three, having passed about fifty miles of the most enchanting scenery on the Rhine. Imagine, my dear C., a little strip of level land, not very many yards wide, between the river and precipitous rocks; a village with its weather-stained houses in this pent-up space; an old chateau with its walls and towers, and at the summit of the rocks, and hanging over them, for the rocks actually project from the perpendicular, the stern old Castle of Marksburg, and you have our present position. Murray says this castle is the only one of the strongholds of the middle ages that has been preserved unaltered, the beau ideal of an old castle; and this is why we have come to see it. I am sitting at the window of the chateau, now the Gast-haus zur Phillipsburg. Under my window is a garden with grapes, interspersed with fruit-trees and flowers, and enclosed by a white paling, and finishing at each end with the old towers of the castle-wall. Along the narrow road between the garden and the river there are peasant-girls going homeward with baskets of fresh-mown grass on their heads, followed by peasants in their dark blouses, with their sickles swung over their shoulders. Little boats are gliding to and fro, guided, and, as their ringing voices tell you, enjoyed by children. But here is mine host to tell us the esels are ready—the four asses we have ordered to take us to Marksburg.
Of all "riding privileges," that on a donkey is the least. You are set on to something half cushion, half saddle, that neither has itself nor imparts rest. Though there is a semicircular rampart erected, to guard you from the accident of "high vaulting ambition," it seems inevitable that you must fall on one side or the other. There is a shingle strapped to the saddle for the right foot, and a stirrup for the left; fortunate are you if you can extricate your feet from both. A merry procession we had of it, however, up the winding road to Marksburg. The Braubach donkeys have not had much custom of late, I fancy, for we ran a race, fairly distancing our donkey-drivers, who seemed much amused with our way of proceeding. The fellow who was spokesman demanded, as I thought, an exorbitant price, and I appealed to one of his comrades, who decided that half he asked was quite enough. I mention this with pleasure, because it is the only thing of the sort we have had to complain of since we came into Germany. The fellow was a stranger and an alien from this worthy household, I am sure; he had a most un-German expression.
The castle has been, till recently, a state-prison, and is now occupied by invalid soldiers. We were led through dark passages and up a winding stone staircase to the apartment where prisoners were put to the rack; and we were shown another gloomy den, where there were two uprights and a transverse beam, and beneath them a trap-door; if not satisfied with so much of the story as these objects intimate, you may descend and search for the bones which you will certainly find there! In another apartment are some mediocre paintings on the wall, done with only a gleam of light by a poor fellow who had thus happily beguiled weary years of imprisonment. On the whole, the castle was not so interesting, not nearly so striking as I expected. Nothing is left to indicate the rude luxury of its lordly masters; its aspect is merely that of an ill-contrived prison.
When we got back to the inn an old man, who seemed an habitué, asked us, in very good French (which Germans of the inferior orders never speak), to walk into the garden. Such a pretty garden, with its towers, its fragment of the old castle-wall, its bowers and wreaths of grapes, and such grapes; oh, you would go mad if you could see them, remembering your seasons of hope and despair over your few frostbitten vines. The old man picked some plumbs, and served them to us with sylvan grace on a grape-leaf. We fell into conversation. He told me the story of his life; it was common enough, but there was a gentleness and sensibility in his voice and expression very uncommon. He came from Alsace, and was travelling in this vicinity with his wife and only surviving child, a girl, "trying to forget home;" for he had lost at short intervals his three sons, when his daughter was asked in marriage by a young man of Braubach. The parents gave their consent, and, wisely resolving to have but one home among them, he bought this old chateau, and converted it into the Hotel zur Phillipsburg; and here he and his wife have reposed under the spreading shadow of their posterity. "I am not rich," he said, "but I have enough. I thought myself happy; my life was gliding in the midst of my family and my vines; but man, with whom nothing lasts, should not call himself happy. Seven months ago my wife died"—the old man's eyes filled—"it was a sudden and a hard blow; we must bow before the stroke of the good God! My daughter has four children. I am their instructer. In my youth I was at college, and, afterward being engaged in commerce, I travelled: so I can teach them French, Dutch, and Italian. Certainly I am not a severe master; but they love me, and love can do more than fear. The youngest is sometimes too much for me. He is a superb boy, madame! When I say, 'Julius, come to your lessons!' he answers, 'Oh, it is too fine weather to study; see how the sun shines, grandfather, and the boys are all at play,' and away he goes." You may think me as garrulous as the old man to repeat all this to you, since I cannot send with it this lovely scene in twilight, harmonizing so well with the twilight of his closing life.
I inquired into the condition of the poor in this neighbourhood. He says their poverty is extreme. They live on potatoes and some black bread; on Sunday they have, for a family, half a pound of meat. A woman with three or four children to support has a florin a month allowed her. Begging is prohibited, but they must subsist on charity. Every hotel has a poors' box, of which the magistrate keeps the key, and comes each month to take out and distribute the travellers' alms.[1] He says that, whenever a poor woman of the village lies in, she is supplied for fifteen days from their plentiful table. God bless their basket and their store!
We left Braubach this morning. The old grandfather and that youngest grandchild, "a superb boy," truly, came to the shore with us, and we exchanged cordial good wishes at parting.
As we pushed off in our little boat and looked up to the precipitous shore, it seemed, even while we gazed on them, incredible that the vines should be reached for cultivation there, where they hung like a rich drapery. The peasants, women as well as men, scale the precipices to dress their vines, and every particle of manure is carried up on their shoulders.
In the steepest places the vines are put in baskets as the only way of retaining the soil about them. For the most part the vineyards are a series of terraces or steps (we have counted from twenty to thirty) covering the face of the hill. Each terrace is supported by a wall from five to ten feet high. Murray tells us the Rhineland vinedresser is not rich, but generally the possessor of the vineyard he cultivates. What a beautiful gift of Providence is the vine to the patient, contented tiller of ground that would produce nothing but this! and this "makes glad the heart of man."
The steamer carried us past village after village most beautiful as seen in passing; but again, my dear C., I warn you not to let this, the greenest word in memory, call before you wide streets, shaded courtyards, ample space, and all rural luxuries. A village here is a mass of wretched dwellings stuck against mouldering walls, where human existence, in point of comfort, is nearly on a level with the brutes; in fact, the same roof often shelters all the live-stock, from the master to his ass. The streets are scarcely wide enough for a carriage to pass, and the lanes are but a flea's leap across—a measurement that naturally occurs here. But mark the compensating blessing! the denizens of these dreary places, steeped to the very lips in poverty, are a smiling, kindly people.
- ↑ I have repeatedly observed these boxes affixed to the wall, and have been told that a German rarely paases them without a donation.