Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home/Place XXI
kronthäl
Kronthäl.—Our decision is made, and, instead of being on our way to Italy, here we are, close under the Taunus Hills, trying the virtue of a gas-bath recently discovered. E. says you cannot turn up a stone with your foot in Germany without finding mineral water under it The bathing-places are innumerable. The water here is very like, in its taste, to the Hamilton spring at Saratoga. The gas is conveyed in India-rubber pipes into a bathing-tub, in which you sit down dressed, and are shut in except your head. The perceptible effect is a genial warmth and a alight moisture. We hear marvellous stories of its cures. It makes the deaf bear and the dumb speak; and, in short, does what all other baths do if you believe their believing champions. One rare advantage that we have here is a physician of excellent sense, and of a most kind and winning disposition; another is, that we see the manners of the people of the country without the slightest approach to foreign fashions or intermixture of foreign society. It is a two hours' drive to Frankfort over, a pertly level plain. The Frankfort gentry come out every day with their children and servants, and seem to find quite pleasure enough in sitting down at a table before the door and working worsted, knitting, smoking, drinking wine and Seltser-waler, sipping coffee and eating Mademoiselle Zimmermann's cakes, which are none of the most delicious. Her very frugal table must be rather a contrast to those of then: luxurious homes, but I never see a wry face or hear a discontented word from them. Of a fine day the area before the door is covered with coteries of people who have no amusement in common, none but such as I have mentioned; these suffice. They interchange smiles and bows as often as they cross one another's path, and thus flow down the stream of life without ever ruffling a feather.
The Germans never stray beyond the gravelled walks around the house. Such quietude would kill us, so we appease our love and habit of movement with a daily donkey ride among the Taunus Hills or a walk through the lovely woodland paths. The famous castles of Kronberg (Crown-hill), Konistein (King's-stone), and Falkenstein are within a reasonable walk. Konistein has been an immense fortress, and its story is interwoven with the annals of the country. We visited the ruins yesterday. The girls wandered away and left me with an English woman, who, while I was admiring these irregular, romantic hills, and the sea-like plain that extends eastward from their base without any visible bound, was telling me a marvellous tale, and an "o'er-true one," as she believed. Some other time I will give you the particulars; I have now only space for the catastrophe. Two American lovers, whether married or not no one knew, came to Konistein, mounted the loftiest part of the ruin, and, clasped in one another's arms, as the peasant-boy who saw them averred, threw themselvies down. "It was from that old tower," said my companion; "you see how tottering it looks; they say the view is better there, but it is considered so unsafe that it is forbidden to mount it" I started up, not doubting that my girls, with the instinct that young people seem to have to get into places of peril, had gone there. I fancied them tumbling down after their sensible compatriots. I screamed to them, and was answered distinctly — by a well-mannered echo! However, I soon found, by a little ragged boy, that they were loitering unharmed about the old tower, and I got them down before they had time to add to the American illustrations of Konistein.
To-day we have been to Falkenstein. It is one of the highest summits of the Taunus, near those loftiest pinnacles, the Fellberg and Auld Konig. There is a pretty story of a knight having won a daughter of Falkenstein by making a carriage road in a single night up to the castle-wall. The most sensible miracle I ever heard being required of a lover. The elf who lent him spades and pickaxes and worked with him, demanded in payment the fee simple of some wild woodland hereabout. I like this story better than that in Schiller's ballad of the "Lord of Falkenstein." One does not like to mar such a scene as this with the spectre of a treacherous and cruel lover, or to remember, amid this rural peace and beauty, that there are sweet deceived young mothers, whose spirits brood over the graves of the children they in madness murdered. And who that has seen Retzsch's exquisite sketch of the peasant-girl of Falkenstein can forget it? We were there just before sunset. The little stone-built village lay in the deep shadow of the woodland steep which is crowned by the castle. It was a fête-day, and the villagers in their pretty costumes looked so happy and yet so poor, that they almost made me believe in the old adage, "no coin, no care." While the girls sat down to sketch, I escaped from a volunteer companion whose voice was as tiresome as a March wind, and, getting into an imbowered path, passed the prettiest little Gothic church I have seen since we were in the Isle of Wight. Here, in the green earth, as the legend rudely scrawled above them tells you, "ruhen in Gott" ("rest in God") the generations that have passed from the village. Faith, hope, and memory linger about these graves. There are roses and heart's-ease rooted in the ground, and wooden crosses, images of saints, and freshly-platted garlands of flowers over the graves. What more could the richest mausoleum express? I mounted through a fragrant copse-wood to the castle — part rock and part masonry. The tower is standing, and waving from its top is some rich shrubbery, like a plume in a warrior's cap. Falkenstein village, close under the castle, looked like a brood of chickens huddled under its mother's wing. Kronberg and its towers were in shadow; but the vast plain beyond was bathed in light, and the Main and the Rhine were sparkling in the distance. All around me was a scene of savage Nature in her stern strength, all beyond of her motherly plentiful production. I counted eighteen villages; a familiar eye would probably have seen twice as many more. They are not easily distinguished from the earth, with which their colour blends harmoniously.
"Life is too short," we said, as we forced ourselves away just as the last ray of the sun was kissing the aforesaid green plume of the castle. We did not get home till it was quite dark, but we were as safe and unmolested as if we had been on our own hill-sides.
You will, I know, dear C, think there is "something too much" of these old castles and Taunus scenery; but consider how they fill up our present existence. But I will be forbearing, and abridge a long, pleasant day's work we have had in going to Eppestein, a village in a crack of the Taunus, one of the narrowest, most secluded, wildest abodes that ever man sought refuge in; for surely it must have been as a hiding-place it was first inhabited.
Some knight must have fled with a few faithful followers, and wedged them in here among the rocks and mountains. The lords have passed away, and the vassals are now peasants. We were invited into the habitation of one of them by a cheerful dame, whose "jungste" (a blooming lassie) she introduced to my youngest. I am not willing to lose an opportunity of seeing the inside of a cottage; hers was all that is habitable of the old castle, and is the neatest and most comfortable peasant's dwelling I have seen. The lord's kitchen was converted into the peasant's salon, where there was a good stove, antique chairs, a bureau, pictures, and a crucifix. In the kitchen I saw a very well filled dresser. The good woman was eager to hear of America; some of her neighbours had gone there. "They had but money enough to carry them to the ship, and had since sent help to their friends." Strange, it seemed, that there should be a relation between this sequestered valley and our New World, and that our abundance should be setting back upon these poor people. "Ours is a fine country for the young," said I. "Yes," said an old woman from the corner, "but an old tree don't bear transplanting!"
I should like you to have seen us taking our repast at the mill gasthaus, seated on the pebbly plat in settles made of birchen sticks, served by a cheerful hostess, who sat knitting in the intervals of supplying our wants, and supplying them with ne-plus-ultra bread and butter, tender boiled beef, honey, Seltzer-water, and wine: four hungry women for sixty cents. The mill-wheel kept its pleasant din the while, and another din there was that amused us from a handsome youth, who occupied a table near us, and who was telling the hostess, with frequent glances at us, of a visit he had paid to London. As he spoke in French, I presume it was more for our edification than that of our hostess. After a very picturesque account of the shocking disparity between the amount of food and the amount of the bill at an English inn, he concluded, "Ah le triste sejour Londres! On prie le bono Dieu tout le Dimanche—ça n'amuse pas!"[1]
I can believe that England would be to a German traveller with stinted means one continued fast and penance.
We saw to-day fifty peasants gathered under a chestnut-tree, and an auction going on; but, as we saw no wares, we were at a loss what to make of it, till we were told the duke's chestnuts were selling. Chestnuts are an article of food here. This neighbourhood abounds in thriving nurseries, which are a main source of revenue to the peasants. There is one on the hill-side opposite my window. It covers thirty acres, and is divided into small proprieties and owned by the peasants of Kronberg, to whom it brings an annual revenue of 10,000 florins ($4000): a shower of gold on these children of toil and hardship.
A labourer in haying and harvesting, the busiest season of the year, is paid one florin 12 kreutzers a day (fifty cents), and finds himself, and works earlier and later than our people. If he works for several days consecutively for one employer, he is allowed a trifle more as drink-geld. A female domestic in a family where only one servant is kept is fed and paid twenty florins a year (eight dollars!!); and for this pitiful sum she gives effective, patient, Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/224 Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/225 Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/226 Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/227 Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/228 Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/229
- ↑ "Oh what a dismal place London is! They pray all day long on Sunday—not very amusing that!"