Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home/Place XVIII
ST. GOAR
We landed at St. Gear's, in the midst of the most enchanting scenery of the Rhine, and in showery weather giving us the most favourable possible light. Nature, like "ladles and fine Holland," owes much of its effect to the right disposition of light and shadow. The mountains enclose this little village. The Mouse and the Cat, the beautiful ruins of two castles, are at either extremity of the view. The "Cat" is well stationed to watch its prey, but, contrary to all precedent, the "Mouse" is said always to have been the strongest when they were held by their lords, rivals and enemies. The immense Castle of Rheinfels, half way up the steep behind St. Goar, looks, as L. says, like a great bulldog that might have kept all its subordinates civil. Rheinfels, as early as the fourteenth century, was the strongest hold on the Rhine. It was built by a Count Deither, who, secure in his power, levied tribute (the exclusive privilege of governments at present, and they, as Murray happily says, call it laying duties) with such unsparing cupidity that the free cities of Germany confederated against him, and not only dismantled his castle, but the other "robbers' nests" on the Rhine.
The girls carried my carpet-bag up to the inn, which being rather weighty with my journal, one of them expressed the pious wish it "might not be so heavy in the reading as the carrying." On our way we went into a most grotesque little Catholic church, where an image of the good hermit who gave his name to the village is preserved. He looks like an honest German, and, though his head had been crowned with a fresh garland of roses last Sunday, and plenty of cherubs were hovering round him, I fancied he would have liked better a pipe in his mouth and a table before him, and the cherubs converted into garçons, to serve him with Rhine wine and Seltzer-water.
We took a boy from the steps of "The Lily" to cross the river with us and guide us up the Schweitzer Thai (the Swiss Valley). We followed the pathway of a little brook resembling some of our mountain-haunts. Die Katz hung over our heads half way up a steep, which Johanne (our guide) told us was higher than the Lurlieburg. It may be, but there is nothing on the Rhine so grand as this pile of rocks, which look with scorn on the perishable castles built with man's hands. It is in the whirl- pool in their deep shadow that Undine, the loveliest of water-nymphs, holds her court. No wonder it requires, as says the faith of the peasants of St. Goar, the miraculous power of their canonized hermit to deliver the ensnared from her enchantments.
We walked a mile up the valley, and loitered at little nooks, so walled in by the hills that we looked up to the sky as from the bottom of a well. To us it appeared clear and blue as a sapphire, but we were sprinkled with rain so sparkling that L. said the sun was melting and coming down in drops! I amused myself with finding out as much of my little guide's history as could be unlocked with the talismaniac words "father," "mother," "brother," helped out with dumb show; and I found out that hehad one sister that was shorter than he, and one brother much taller, who was a soldier, and so would Johanne be. Against this resolution I expostulated vehemently (as a friend of William Ladd and a member of the Peace Society should do), but Johanne laughed at me; and I doubt not, as soon as he has inches and years enough, he will buckle on his sword.
When we got back to St. Goar the shower came on in earnest, and we took refuge at a jolly miller's, a fit impersonation of that classic character. In an interval of his work he was sitting over his bottle and cracking his jokes. We invited him to go to America. "No," he said, holding up his Rhenish and chuckling over it, "I should not get this there; and, besides, all the millers that go there die!" He is right to cherish a life so joyous.
The steamer came up at a snail's pace. We had the pleasure of finding on board one of our fellow-passengers in the Saint James. He had been purifying in the bubbles of Schlangenbad, which produce such miraculous effects on the skin that Sir Francis Head avers he heard a Frenchman say, "Monsieur, dans ces bains on devient absolument amoureux de soi-emme!" ("One falls in love with one's self in these baths"). Our friend was a witness to its recreative virtue.
My dear C.,
I WILL not even name to you the beautiful pictures past which we floated. Everything is here ready for the painter's hand. Oberwesel, with its Roman tower, its turreted walls and Gothic edifices; the old Castle of Schonberg, Anglice Beautiful Hill, where there are seven petrified maidens who were converted into these rocks for their stony-heartedness—fit retribution. Villages, vineyards, and ruins appeared and disappeared, as the mist, playing its fantastic tricks, veiled and unveiled them. As we drew near to Bingen the sun shone out, throwing his most beautifying horizontal beams on Rheinstein and other famed points of the landscape, while masses of black clouds, driven on by the gusty wind, threw their deep shadows now here, now there, as if (we flies on the wheel fancied) to enchant the senses of travellers for the picturesque.
After much discussion with a friendly Englishman (an old stager in these parts) as to the comparative advantage of landing at Bingen or Rudesheim, we followed his advice and went on shore at the former place, where we found a cheerful welcome in the face of mine host of the Weisse Rosse, but no room in his house. This man is quite my beau ideal of a German innkeeper, and, but that it would take too much space, I should like to tell you the pains he took to get us rooms in another inn, and how, after he did get them, we reconsidered our decision and determined to pass the night at Rudesheim, and how, when we came to him with our tongues faltering with some mere pretext for being off, he just good-humouredly brushed aside the flimsy veil, saying, "Never mind, you choose to go, and that is enough;" and proceeded to select boatmen for us, and to make them promise to take us down to Rheinstein and back again to Rudesheim at the lowest and a very moderate rate. Would not the world go on swimmingly if all strangers errant were dealt by as mine host of the Weisse Rosse dealt by us?
How would you like, dear C., to see us, your nearest and dearest relations, boating on the Rhine with men whose German even K. found it hard to comprehend? There would be no reason for anxiety; they took us in good faith in half an hour to Rheinstein, or, rather, the current took us. The Castle of Rheinstein has been restored by Prince Frederic of Prussia and refurnished, and is now supposed to represent the castles as they were when there was wassail in the hall and love in the bower. The castle itself is the most beautiful on the Rhine. It is planted on a projecting rock, half way to the summit of a steep, and set off by a dark, rich woodland. It is built of stone taken from the bed of rock that forms its foundation, and you can scarce tell where nature finishes and art begins. In truth, the art is so perfect that you forget it. Nature seems to have put forth her creative power, and to have spoken the word that called from its mother rock this its indescribably beautiful and graceful offspring.
We wound up a path of easy ascent, passed over a drawbridge and under a portcullis, when the warder appeared. He was a sober-suited youth, with a rueful countenance; love-lorn, the girls said, pointing to his hump-back and a braid of hair round his neck. He bowed without relaxing a muscle, and led us through a walled court where there were green grass and potted plants, and, perched over our heads in niches of the rock, eagles who, it would appear, but for the bars of iron before them, had selected these eyries of their own free-will. Our warder proceeded through a passage with a pretty mosaic pavement to the knight's hall, which is hung with weapons of the middle ages, disposed in regular figures. The ceiling is painted with knight's devices, and complete suits of armour, helmets, and richly-embossed shields hang against the wall.
We were repeatedly assured that the furniture was, in truth, of the middle ages, and had been collected by the prince at infinite pains; and looking at it in good faith as we proceeded, everything pleased us. There is a centre-table with an effigy in stone of Charlemagne, a most fantastical old clock, carved Gothic chairs, oak tables; in the dining-room an infinite variety of silver drinking-cups, utensils of silver, and of ivory richly carved, and very small diamond-shaped mirrors, all cracked ; by-the-way, an incidental proof of their antiquity. The princess' rooms, en suite, are very prettily got up; her sleeping-room has an oaken bedstead of the fourteenth century, with a high, carved foot-board like a rampart, and curtains of mixed silk and woollen. In the writing-room are beautiful cabinets of ivory inlaid, and wood in marquetrie—that is, flowers represented by inlaying different coloured woods.
In the working-room was a little wheel, which made me reflect with envy on the handiwork of our grandames, so much more vivacious than our stitching. You will probably, without a more prolonged description, my dear C., come to my conclusion that Rheinstein bears much the same resemblance to a castle of the middle ages that a cottage ornée does to a veritable rustic home. I imagined the rough old knights coming from their halls of savage power and rude luxury to laugh at all this jimcrackery.
The prince and princess make a holy day visit here every summer, and keep up this fanciful retrocession by wearing the costume of past ages. The warder maintained his unrelenting gravity to the last. "Man pleased him not, nor woman either," or I am sure my laughing companions would have won a smile.
We found going up the river quite a different affair from coming down. Our oarsmen raised a ragged sail. The wind was flawy, and we were scared; so they, at our cowardly entreaties, took it down, and then, rowing the boat to the shore, one of the men got out, and fastening one end of a rope to our mast and the other round his body, he began toilsomely towing us up the stream. Our hearts were too soft for this, so we disembarked too, and walked two miles to "The Angel" at Rudesheim; an angel indeed to us after this long day of—pleasure.