Leading the Blind Read online

The inhabitants of the textile manufacturing town of Chemnitz receive good marks for knowing their place, with a certain sense of regret from Murray that such conditions could not exist at home: ‘The stocking-weavers for the most part are not congregated into manufactories, but live in cottages of their own, the fee-simple of which they have purchased by their own earnings. They cultivate in their own gardens the potatoes and other vegetables which form their usual food, and support from the same source the animals which provide them with the small quantity of meat they consume: they live commonly with great frugality on potatoes and coffee. When the demand for manufacture is slack, they employ themselves in the fields and garden; when it is active, they devote themselves to their frames and looms. The state provides them with gratuitous instruction, which has the happiest effect both on their industry and frugality.’

  If our traveller is still snorting fire and smoke from the Berlin tattoo he will call at the Schlachtfeld (battlefield) of Lützen, and learn – if he didn’t already know – that at the first set-to in 1632, Gustavus Adolphus was killed, his body taken to nearby Weissenfels and embalmed ‘in a room of the Town-house, in the presence of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar. It is recorded that his heart weighed 1 lb. 2 oz.; that the body bore the marks of 8 wounds, i.e. 5 gunshots, 2 cuts, 1 stab. A part of the wall, which was stained with his blood, is still preserved from external contact. The heart was instantly conveyed to Stockholm; but the bowels are interred in the Kloster Kirche …’

  Before setting off down the Rhine the traveller will no doubt have read his Byron but, if not, Murray (the poet’s publisher) spread 137 lines in half a dozen parts of the text, such quotations describing certain sections of the river in a more poetic way than Murray can aspire to, though a little advice from Don Juan might have cut the wordage down a bit: ‘Plain truth, dear Murray, needs few flowers of speech.’

  In 1827, when the first company of Rhine steamboats commenced operations, 18,000 passengers travelled between Cologne and Mainz, the number increasing to a million by the mid-1850s. Murray somewhat spoils the enthusiasm of the deck traveller by reminding him that ‘the views in many places, looking down upon the Rhine from its lofty banks, far surpass those from the river itself; and the small valleys, which pour their tributary streams on the right hand and left have beauties to unfold of which the steam-driven tourist has no conception, which are entirely lost to him’.

  At Coblenz Murray can’t resist a dig at his arch rival in the guidebook trade: ‘Baedeker, a very intelligent bookseller in the Rhein Strasse … keeps a good assortment of English, French, and German books, guide-books, prints, maps, etc. He has also published German Handbooks for Travellers, enriched by his own observations, and is personally acquainted with all parts of his own country.’ It is related, though not in Murray, that when the original Karl Baedeker died in 1859, a solitary Englishman followed the cortege to the cemetery carrying one of the little red guidebooks as a token of his esteem.

  Further upriver, at Oberwesel, we come across an infamous blood-libel story against the Jews, though Murray of course is not taken in: ‘In some period of the dark ages a boy named Werner is said to have been most impiously crucified and put to death by the Jews in this place. A similar story is told in many other parts of the world; even in England, at Gloucester and Lincoln (vide Chaucer). It is probable that the whole was a fabrication, to serve as a pretext for persecuting the Jews and extorting money from them’, which is perhaps as balanced an account as you could get in the nineteenth century. The Church of St Werner, erected to commemorate his canonization, gets an asterisk in Baedeker, the story being put down to tradition, as it is also in Thomas Cook’s Traveller’s Handbook The Rhine and the Black Forest (1912). In Ernest Benn’s Blue Guide, 1933, it is said to have been a legend, but the calumny is rightly omitted altogether from the Guide Bleu, 1939.

  Should our traveller get off the boat at Worms his Murray will tell him that the synagogue ‘is said to be more than 800 years old, and certainly displays in its structure the style of the 11th century … The Jews have been established in this spot from a very early period, and enjoyed privileges denied them in most other parts of Germany.’ This is more or less true, though they were forced out by the Guilds in 1615, upon which the synagogue was destroyed and the cemetery laid waste; a year later an Imperial Decree ordered them to be readmitted. They also suffered three massacres during the times of the Crusades in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

  Frankfurt, we are told, is the cradle of the Rothschild family, and Murray goes on to say, ‘The Jews, who form no inconsiderable portion of the community here, have till very lately been treated with great illiberality by the Free Town. The gates of the quarter to which they were exclusively confined were closed upon them at an early hour every night, after which ingress and egress were alike denied. This arbitrary municipal regulation was enforced, until Marshal Jourdan, in bombarding the town (1796), knocked down the gate of the Jews’ quarter, along with many houses near it, and they have not been replaced since. Another law, not repealed until 1834, restricted the number of marriages among the Hebrews in the town to 13 yearly. The Synagogue, an old and curious Gothic building, is situated in the Judengasse. The Jews are no longer compelled to live in this street, but may hire or purchase houses in other quarters.’

  An excursion to Saarlouis would reveal the curious fact that its 7000 inhabitants ‘are partly descended from English prisoners placed here by Louis XIV’. The town was a frontier fortress of Prussia, ‘with a long stone bridge over the Saar, which flows half round the town, and sometimes during the winter lays part of it under water’, a circumstance which may have made the English feel very much at home.

  Between Frankfurt and Cassel lies the village of Butzbach, which prompts the story from Murray that ‘German vagrants, known in London as Bavarian broom-girls, come from this neighbourhood’. Several villages were said to have sent forth, for the last twenty years, ‘crowds of them annually. At first they were taken over by the broom-makers, ready to sell their brooms; but in a short time they discovered other and less moral modes of earning money. The speculators, perceiving this, enticed from their homes many young girls, under pretence of hiring them as servants. Some of these poor creatures have never been heard of by their parents; others have returned ruined and broken in constitution; and innumberable actions have been brought against the planners of this disgraceful traffic. The magistrates of these towns have at length interfered, and any person discovered taking away a child, or any female but a wife, is subject to heavy penalties.’

  Towns along the Rhine led a precarious existence over the centuries due to the proximity of France. Speyer, one of the oldest cities of Germany, on the left bank of the river, had a particularly violent history. In the Middle Ages its citizens were ‘as well versed in the use of arms as in the arts of trade. At one time they were called upon to issue from their walls in order to chastise the lawless rapacity of some feudal baron, who had waylaid their merchants and pillaged their property, by having his castle burnt about his ears and levelled with the ground.’

  Such incidents were as nothing compared to its fate in the seventeenth century, when the greatest injury was inflicted on it by the French. After its capture by them in 1689 a proclamation was issued to its citizens ‘commanding them to quit it, with their wives and children, within the space of 6 days, and to betake themselves into Alsace, Lorraine, or Burgundy, but upon pain of death not to cross the Rhine. To carry into execution this tyrannic edict, a provost-marshal, at the head of 40 assistant executioners, marched into the town; they bore about them the emblems of their profession, in the shape of a gallows and wheel, embroidered on their dress. On the appointed day the miserable inhabitants were driven out by the beat of drums, like a flock of sheep. The French soldiers followed them, after having plundered everything in the deserted town, which was then left to the tender mercies of executioners and incendiaries. In obedience to the commands of the French commander, trains of combustibles w
ere laid in the houses and lighted, and in a few hours the seven-and-forty streets of Speyer were in a blaze. The conflagration lasted 3 days and 3 nights; but the destruction of the town did not cease even with this. Miners were incessantly employed in blowing up the houses, walls, fountains, and convents, so that the whole might be levelled with the dust and rendered uninhabitable. The Cathedral was dismantled, the graves of the Emperors burst open and their remains scattered. For many years Speyer lay a desolate heap of rubbish, until at last the impoverished inhabitants returned gradually to seek out the sites of their ancient dwellings.’

  Such a taste of ‘history’ should have lasted till the end of Time, but a hundred years later the Revolutionary army under Custine captured the town after six assaults, and repeated ‘all the wanton acts of atrocity and cruelty which their predecessors had enacted a century before’.

  If our traveller is rich (and on this journey he needs to be) he will want to experience the various spas and bathing establishments in the Rhineland and the Black Forest, paying particular attention to those described in his handbook, which tells him that for the Germans ‘an excursion to a watering-place in the summer is essential to existence, and the necessity of such a visit is confined to no one class in particular, but pervades all, from emperors and princes down to tradesmen and citizens’ wives.’

  The number of bathing-places and mineral springs in Germany alone now amounts to several hundred: and every year adds to the list names which, though seldom heard in England, are not without their little sets and coteries. The royal and imperial guests repair to them not merely to get rid of the trammels and pomp of sovereignty, though it is universally the case that they move about with no more show than private individuals, but they also seek such occasions for holding private congresses, for forming secret treaties, alliances etc.; family arrangements and matrimonial connections are also not unfrequently there concocted. The minister repairs thither to refresh himself from the toils of office, but usually brings his portfolio in his travelling carriage, nor does he altogether even here bid adieu to intrigue and politics. The invalid comes to recruit his strength – the debauchee to wash himself inside and out, and string his nerves for a fresh campaign of dissipation – the shopkeeper and the merchant come to spend their money and gaze on their betters – and the sharper and black-leg, who swarm at all the baths, to enrich themselves at the gaming-tables at the expense of their fellow guests.

  Every amusement was to be found at such places, as well as ‘all the artists, and artificers that contribute to the enjoyments and the follies of indulgence – actors from Vienna – gaming-table keepers and cooks from Paris – money-lenders from Frankfurt – singers from Berlin – shopkeepers, voituriers, pastry-cooks, mountebanks, dancing-masters, donkey-lenders, blacklegs, mistresses, lacqueys – all bustling and contriving in their several vocations to reap the short harvest of profit which the season affords.’

  In short, if you were financially sound, it seemed a wonderful place to be, and Murray’s disapproval was unlikely to deter the rakish sensibilities of our traveller, though Murray kept on trying:

  The system of the day commences with a bath taken before breakfast. Afterwards follow excursions in the environs, walks in the gardens, visits to the cafés and billiard rooms, and, above all, the pleasures of the Grand Saloon, which occupy the gay world till dinner. This last-mentioned place of rendezvous is the greatest centre of attraction; and, with the exception of much more gaiety, more avowed vice, and the absence of all pretence at rational resources, acts the part of the library at an English watering-place. After depositing your hat and stick with the gendarmes at the door, you enter the grand saloon – invariably a splendid room. On one side of a crowd of motley but well-dressed and gay-looking persons (I regret to say of both sexes) are pressing over each other’s heads, round large banks of Rouge et Noir. An anxious silence reigns, only interrupted by the rattling of the roulette, the jingling of Napoleons and francs, and the titters and jokes of the few whose speculations are a matter of mere frolic. Pretty interesting women were putting down their Napoleons, and seeing them swept away, or drawing them in doubles, with a sang-froid which proved that they were no novices in that employment.

  Having brought our traveller to the salivating state where temptation is impossible to resist, Murray comes down the heaviest of fathers: ‘The Licensed Gaming-Houses at the German watering-places are a disgrace and shame to the minor princes, who not only tolerate them, but derive revenue from granting the permission, to the destruction of morality and honesty among their own subjects, as well as among thousands of strangers. English travellers should be placed especially on their guard against the sharpers who haunt the continental watering-places. The chances of being robbed are much greater than was formerly the case in Paris, as none of the precautionary measures are taken to prevent cheating in Germany. The princes who tolerate such a system must be content to bear the reproach of avarice and cupidity.’

  The primary purpose of the spas was, or ought to have been, the curing of the sick; those who go there solely for that reason should ‘consult their own physicians before leaving home. It is also prudent and customary to ask the advice of the physician resident at the baths as well before commencing a course of waters.’

  Regarding the practical application of the treatment, Murray recommends that the water be drunk on an empty stomach, and a short walk taken between each draught, ‘but violent exercise is to be avoided. The bath also should never be taken after eating, and during bathing a strict attention to diet is advisable. Tea, pastry, acids, vegetables, fruit, and cheese should be avoided, and but little should be eaten at each meal. Wine, if light, may be sparingly used …’

  The first point of either sin or pleasure (or both) at which our traveller might call could be Ems, ‘which seems essentially a ladies’ watering-place: it is much frequented by the fair sex, and its waters are considered particularly efficacious in the complaints of females. It is on the whole a quiet place, and little or no raking goes on here …’

  Schlangenbad, in a delightful though at that time a somewhat remote situation, was so named because of ‘the great number of snakes and vipers, as well as the harmless kind, which not only abound in the neighbourhood, but even haunt the springs themselves, for the sake of the warmth yielded by the water, or for the frogs, the food of the viper. The old man who manages the baths will exhibit some of them.’

  Such reptiles are not mentioned in Thomas Cook’s guidebook of a later date, but Baedeker seeks to reassure those who might fear them, saying that the place ‘takes its name from the harmless snake (coluber longissimus) which is occasionally found here but is really native to S. Europe’.

  Even so, our traveller might linger a day or two because Murray says that the baths are one of the most ‘harmless and delicious luxuries of the sort I have ever enjoyed; and I really quite looked forward to the morning for the pleasure with which I paid my addresses to this delightful element. The effect it produces on the skin is very singular: it is about as warm as milk, but infinitely softer: and after dipping the hand into it, if the thumb be rubbed against the fingers, it is said by many to resemble satin.’

  None of the hotels at Homburg are rated as any good; moreover: ‘The town consists of a long main street, chiefly of new houses, on one side of which are the wells and Kursaal, and on the other at the end the gloomy Schloss. The waters are very valuable in cases of disordered liver and stomach.’

  After the usual fulmination against those who run the gaming-house, Murray concludes: ‘Let those who are disposed to risk their money inquire what is the character of the managers, and be on their guard. The expense of such an enormous and splendid establishment must be paid out of the pockets of travellers. About 50,000 florins are lost here annually by the public in play.’ The only manufacturing activity in Homburg was that of ‘black stockings; articles in very great request, no doubt, by the gentlemen who most numerously resort hither every summer’.

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nbsp; Those who behave sinfully have the opportunity of attending an English church service, which is given every Sunday. ‘The number of English visitors increased so much of late that the place assumes the appearance of a settlement of our countrymen. This influx has the effect of diminishing its advantages of cheapness and retirement, as within a few years the price of everything has been raised nearly one half. After October the soil and climate are extremely damp – the grassy banks are oozing with water, which the granitic substratum will not absorb, and the hotels and lodging-houses suffer greatly from moisture.’

  Water from the hot springs, which is conveyed through the town in pipes to supply the different baths, ‘loses little of its warmth in the passage; but the supply greatly exceeds the demand, so that some of the sources are used by the townspeople to scald their pigs and poultry’.

  At the other Baden, near Vienna, where the scenery is compared by Murray to that of Matlock, the warm springs were said to be even more attractive than those at the German spa. ‘Not a few, who though in perfect health, use the bath together, males and females mixed promiscuously, and sit, or move slowly about, for an hour or two, up to the neck in the steaming water. The ladies enter and depart by one side, and the gentlemen by another; but in the bath itself there is no separation: nay, politeness requires that a gentleman, when he sees a lady moving, or attempting to move, alone, shall offer himself as her supporter during the acquatic promenade.’

  The Black Forest Baden was hyphenated to a second Baden, to remind people that it was the original bath, and to prevent any upstart watering-hole from claiming the honour. The Castle rose high above the town, but to Murray it was ‘only remarkable for its situation and the curious dungeons beneath …’

  … originally the dungeons were only accessible from above, by a perpendicular shaft or chimney running through the centre of the building, and still in existence. The visitor, in passing under it, can barely discern the daylight at the top. According to tradition, prisoners, bound fast in an arm-chair and blindfolded, were let down by a windlass into these dark and mysterious vaults and winding passages, excavated out of the solid rock on which the castle is founded. The dungeons were closed, not with doors of wood or iron, but with solid slabs of stone, turning upon pivots, and ingeniously fitted. Several of them still remain; they are nearly a foot thick, and weight from 1200 to 2000 lbs. In one chamber, loftier than the rest, called the Rack Chamber, the instruments of torture stood; a row of iron rings, forming part of the fearful apparatus, still remains in the wall. In a passage adjoining there is a well or pit in the floor, now boarded over, originally covered with a trap-door. The prisoner upon whom doom had been passed was led into this passage, and desired to kiss an image of the Virgin placed at the opposite end; but no sooner did his feet rest on the trap-door than it gave way beneath his weight, and precipitated him to a great depth below, upon a machine composed of wheels, armed with lancets, by which he was torn to pieces. The secret of this terrible dungeon remained unknown until, as the story goes, an attempt to rescue a little dog, which had fallen through the planking above the pit, led to the discovery, at a depth of many yards, of fragments of ponderous wheels set around with rusty knives, with portions of bones, rags, and torn garments adhering to them.