Arthur O'Leary Part 41

These delightful pictures of Brunnens, secluded in the recesses of wild mountain districts inaccessible save to some adventurous traveller; the peaceful simplicity of the rural life; the primitive habits of a happy peasantry; the humble but contented existence of a little community estranged from all the shocks and strife of the world; the lovely scenery; the charming intercourse with gifted and cultivated minds; the delightful reunions, where Metternich, Chateaubriand, and Humboldt are nightly to be met, mixing among the rest of the company, and chatting familiarly with every stranger; the peaceful tranquillity of the spot--an oasis in the great desert of the world's troubles, where the exhausted mind and tired spirit may lie down in peace and take its rest, lulled by the sound of falling water or the strains of German song --these, I say, cleverly put forward, with 'eight ill.u.s.trations taken on the spot,' make pretty books--pleasant to read, but not less dangerous to follow; while exaggerated catalogues of cures and recoveries, the restoration from sufferings of a life long, the miraculous list of sick men made sound ones through the agency of sulphurates and sub-carbonates, are still more to be guarded against as guides to the spas of Germany.

Now, I would not for a moment be supposed to throw discredit on the efficiency of Aix or Ems, Wiesbaden or Toplitz, or any of them. In some cases they have done, and will do, it may be hoped, considerable benefit to many sufferers. I would merely desire to slide in, amidst the universal paen of praise, a few words of caution respecting the _morale_ of these watering-places; and in doing so I shall be guided entirely by the same principle I have followed in all the notes of my 'Loiterings,'

rather to touch follies and absurdities than to go deeper down into the strata of crimes and vices; at the same time, wherever it may be necessary for my purpose, I shall not scruple to cut into the quick if the malady need it.

And to begin--imagine in the first place a Grand-Duchy of such moderate proportions that its sovereign dare not take in the 'Times' newspaper; for if he opened it, he must intrude upon the territory of his neighbours. His little kingdom, however, having all the attributes of a real state, possesses a minister for the home and a minister for the foreign department; it has a chancellor of the exchequer and a secretary-at-war; and if there were half a mile of seaboard, would inevitably have a board of admiralty and a _ministre de la marine_.

It is also provided with a little army, something in the fas.h.i.+on of Bombastes Furioso's, where each arm of the service has its one representative, or that admirable Irish corps, which, when inquired after by the General of the District, 'Where is the Donegal Light Horse?' was met by the answer of, 'Here I am, yer honour!' And though certainly nothing could possibly be more modestly devised than the whole retinue of state, though the _fanta.s.sins_ be fifty, and the cavalry five, still they must be fed, clothed, and kept in tobacco--a question of some embarra.s.sment, when it is considered that the Grand-Duchy produces little grain and less gra.s.s, has neither manufacture nor trade, nor the means of providing for other wants than those of a simple and hard-working peasantry. There is, however, a palace, with its accompaniments of grand marechal, equerries, cooks, and scullions--a vast variety of officials of every grade and cla.s.s, who must be provided for. How is this done? Simply enough, when the secret is once known--four yards of green baize, with two gentlemen armed with wooden rakes, and a box full of five-franc pieces. Nothing more is wanting.

For the mere luxury of the thing, as a matter of pin-money to the grand-d.u.c.h.ess, if there be one, you may add a roulette-table; but _rouge et noir_ will supply all the trumpery expedients of taxation, direct and indirect. You neither want collectors, custom-houses, nor colonies; you may snap your fingers at trade and import duties, and laugh at the clumsy contrivances by which other chancellors provide for the expenditure of other countries.

The machinery of revenue reduces itself to this: first catch a Jew. For your petty villainies any man will suffice; but for your grand schemes of wholesale plunder, there is nothing like an Israelite; besides, he has a kind of pride in his vocation. For the privilege of the gambling-table he will pay munificently, he will keep the whole grand-ducal realm in beer and beetroot the year through, and give a very respectable privy purse to the sovereign besides. To him you deliver up all the nations of the earth outside your own little frontier, none of those within it being under any pretext admitted inside the walls of the gambling-house; for, like the sick apothecary, you know better than to take anything in the shop. You give him a carte-blanche, sparing the little realm of Hesse-Homburg, to cheat the English, pigeon the Russians, ruin French, Swedes, Swiss, and Yankees to his heart's content; you set no limits to his grand career of roguery; you deliver, bound, into his hands all travellers within your realm, to be fleeced as it may seem fit. What care you for the din of factories or the clanking hammers of the foundries? The rattle of the dice-box and the sc.r.a.ping of the croupier's mace are pleasanter sounds, and fully as suggestive of wealth. You need not descend into the bowels of the earth for riches; the gold, ready stamped from the mint, comes bright and s.h.i.+ning to your hand. Fleets may founder and argosies may sink, but your dollars come safely in the pockets of their owners, and are paid, without any cost of collection, into the treasury of the State. Manchester may glut the earth with her printed calicoes, Sheffield may produce more carving-knives than there are carvers. _Your_ resources can suffer no such casualties as these; you trade upon the vices of mankind, and need never dread a year of scarcity. The pa.s.sion for play is more contagious than the smallpox, and unhappily the malady returns after the first access. Every gambler who leaves fifty napoleons in your territory is bound in a kind of recognisance to return next year and lose double the sum. Each loss is but an instalment of the grand total of his ruin, and you have contracted for that.

But even the winner does not escape you. A hundred temptations are provided to seduce him into extravagance and plunge him into expense--tastes are suggested, and habits of luxury inculcated, that turn out sad comforters when a reverse of fortune compels him to a more limited expenditure; so that when you extinguish the unlucky man by a summary process, you reserve a lingering death for the more fortunate one. In the language of the dock, it is only 'a long day' he obtains, after all.

How pleasant, besides, to reflect that the storms of political strife, which agitate other heads, never reach yours. The violence of party spirit, the rancour of the press, are hushed before the decorous silence of the gaming-table and the death-like stillness of _rouge et noir_.

There is no need of a censors.h.i.+p when there is a croupier. The literature of your realm is reduced to a card, to be p.r.i.c.ked by the pin of a gamester; and men have no heads for the pleasures of reading, when stared in the face by ruin. Other states may occupy themselves with projects of philanthropy and benevolence, they may project schemes of public usefulness and advantage, they may advance the arts of civilisation, and promote plans of national greatness; your course is an easier path, and is never unsuccessful.

But some one may say here, How are these people to live? I agree at once with the sentiment--no one is more ready to a.s.sent to that excellent adage--'Il faut que tout le monde vive, even grand-dukes.' But there are a hundred ways of eking out subsistence in cheap countries, without trenching on morality. The military service of Austria, Prussia, and Russia is open to them, should their own small territories not suffice for moderate wants and wishes. In any case I am not going to trouble my head with providing for German princes, while I have a large stock of nephews and nieces little better off. All I care for at present is to point out the facts of a case, and not to speculate how they might be altered.

Now, to proceed. In proportion as vice is more prevalent, the decorum of the world would appear to increase, and internal rottenness and external decency bear a due relation to each other. People could not thus violate the outward semblance of morality, by flocking in hundreds and tens of hundreds to those gambling states, those _rouge et noir_ dependencies, those duchies of the dice-box. A man's asking a pa.s.sport for Baden would be a tacit averment, 'I am going to gamble.' Ordering post-horses for Ems would be like calling for 'fresh cards'; and you would as soon confess to having pa.s.sed a few years in Van Diemen's Land as acknowledge a summer on the Rhine.

What, then, was to be done? It was certainly a difficulty, and might have puzzled less ingenious heads than grand-ducal advisers. They, however, soon hit upon the expedient. They are shrewd observers, and clever men of the world. They perceived that while other eras have been marked by the characteristic designation of bra.s.s, gold, or iron, _this_, with more propriety, might be called the age of bile. Never was there a period when men felt so much interested in their stomachs; at no epoch were mankind so deeply concerned for their livers; this pa.s.sion--for it is such--not being limited to the old or feeble, to the broken and shattered const.i.tution, but extending to all age and s.e.x, including the veteran of a dozen campaigns and the belle of a London season, the hard-lined and seasoned features of a polar traveller, and the pale, soft cheek of beauty, the lean proportions of shrunken age, and the plump development of youthful loveliness. In the words of the song--

'No age, no profession, no station is free.'

It is the universal mania of our century, and we may expect that one day, our vigorous pursuit of knowledge on the subject will allow us to be honourably cla.s.sed with the equally intelligent seekers for the philosopher's stone. With this great feature of the time, then, nothing was easier than to comply. The little realm of Hesse-Homburg might not have attractions of scenery or society; its climate might, like most of those north of the Alps, be nothing to boast of; its social advantages being a zero, what could it possess as a reason--a good, plausible reason, for drawing travellers to its frontier? Of course, a Spa!--something very nauseous and very foul smelling, as nearly as possible like a warm infusion of rotten eggs, thickened with red clay.

Germany happily abounds in these; Nature has been kind to her, at least underground, and you have only to dig two feet in any limestone district to meet with the most sovereign thing on earth for stomachic derangements.

The Spa discovered, a doctor was found to a.n.a.lyse it, and another to write a book upon it. Nothing more were necessary. The work, translated into three or four languages, set forth all the congenial advantages of pumps and promenades, sub-carbonates, tables d'hote, waltzing, and mineral waters. The pursuit of health no longer presented a grim G.o.ddess masquerading in rusty black and a bald forehead, but a lovely nymph, in a Parisian toilette, conversing like a Frenchwoman, and dancing like an Austrian.

Who would not be ill, I wonder? Who would not discover that Hamps.h.i.+re was too high and Ess.e.x too low, Devon too close and c.u.mberland too bracing? Who would not give up his village M.D., and all his array of bottles, with their long white cravats, for a ramble to the Rhine, where luxurious living, belles, and b.a.l.l.s abounded, and where _soit dit en pa.s.sant_, the _rouge et noir_ table afforded the easy resource of supplying all such pleasures, so that you might grow robust and rich at once, and while imbibing iron into your blood, lay up a stock of gold with your banker? Hence the connection between Spas and gambling; hence the fas.h.i.+onable flocking to those healthful spots by thousands who never felt illness; hence the unblus.h.i.+ng avowal of having been a month at Baden by those who would flinch at acknowledging an hour in a 'h.e.l.l'; and hence, more important than all, at least to one individual concerned, the source of that real alchemy by which a grand-duke, like Macheath, can

'Turn all his lead to gold.'

Well may he exclaim, with the gallant captain--

'Fill every gla.s.s!'

Were the liquor champagne or tokay, it could not be a hundredth part as profitable; and the whole thing presents a picture of 'hocussing' on the grandest scale ever adopted.

The fifteen gla.s.ses of abomination demand a walk of half an hour, or a sojourn in the Cursaal. The Cursaal is a h.e.l.l! there is no need to mince it. The taste for play is easily imbibed--what bad taste is not?--and thus, while you are drawing the pump, the grand-duke is diving into your pocket. Here, then--I shall not add a word--is the true state of the Spas of Germany. As I believe it is customary to distinguish all writers on these 'fountains of health' by some mark of princely favour proportionate to their services of praise, I beg to add, if the Gross Herzog von Hesse-Homburg deems the present a suitable instance for notice, that Arthur O'Leary will receive such evidence of grand-ducal approbation with a most grateful spirit, and acknowledge the same in some future volume of his 'Loiterings,' only requesting to mention that when Theodore Hook--poor fellow!--was dining once with a London alderman remarkable for the display and the tedium of his dinners, he felt himself at the end of an hour and a half's vigorous performance only in the middle of the entertainment; upon which he laid down his knife, and in a whisper uttered: '_Eating_ more is out of the question; so I 'll take the rest out in money.'

CHAPTER XXIII. THE TRAVELLING PARTY

I have already taken occasion to indoctrinate my reader on the subject of what I deem the most perfect species of table d'hote. May I now beg of him, or her, if she will be kind enough, to accompany me to the _table-monstre_ of Wiesbaden, Ems, or Baden-Baden? We are at the Cursaal, or Shuberts, or the 'Hof von Na.s.sau' at Wiesbaden. Four hundred guests are a.s.sembled, their names indicative of every land of Europe, and no small portion of America; the mixture of language giving the impression of its being a grand banquet to the 'operatives at Babel,'

but who, not satisfied with the chances of misunderstanding afforded by speaking their own tongues to foreigners, have adventured on the more certain project of endeavouring to being totally unintelligible, by speaking languages with which they are unacquainted; while in their dress, manner, and appearance, the great object seems to be an accurate imitation of some other country than their own. Hence Frenchmen affect to seem English, English to look like Prussians, Prussians to appear Poles, Poles to be Calmucks. Your 'elegant' of the Boulevard de Ghent sports a 'cut away' like a Yorks.h.i.+re squire, and rides in cords; your Londoner wears his hair on his shoulders, and his moustaches, like a Pomeranian count; Turks find their way into tight trousers and 'Wellingtons'; and even the Yankees cannot resist the general tendency to trans.m.u.tation, but take three inches off their hair behind.

Nothing is more amusing than these general congresses of European vagrancy. Characters the most original meet you at every step, and display most happily traits you never have the opportunity to inspect at home. For so it is, the very fact of leaving home with most people seems like an absolution from all the necessities of sustaining a part. They feel as though they had taken off the stage finery in which they had fretted away their hours before, and stand forth themselves _in propria_. Thus your grave Chancery lawyer becomes a chatty pleasant man of the world, witty and conversable; your abstruse mathematician, leaving conic sections behind him, talks away with the harmless innocence of a child about men and politics; and even your cold 'exclusive' bids a temporary farewell to his 'morgue,' and answers his next neighbour at table without feeling shocked at his obtrusion.

There must be some secret sympathy--of whose operations we know nothing--between our trunks and our temperaments, our characters and our carpet-bags; and that by the same law which opens one to the inspection of an official at the frontier, the other must be laid bare when we pa.s.s across it. How well would it have been for us, if the a.n.a.logy had been pushed a little further, that the fiscal regulations adopted in the former were but extended to the latter, and that we had applied the tariff to the morals, as well as to the manufactures, of the Continent.

It was in some such musing as this I sat in a window of the 'Na.s.sau,'

at Wiesbaden, during the height of the season of----. Strangers were constantly arriving, and hourly was the reply 'no room' given to the disconsolate travellers, who peered from their carriages with the road-sick look of a long journey. As for myself, I had been daily and nightly transferred from one quarter of the hotel to another--now sleeping in an apartment forty feet square, in a bed generally reserved for royalty, now bivouacking under the very slates; one night exposed to the incessant din of the street beside my windows, the next, in a remote wing of the building, where there were no bells in the chambers, nor any waiter was ever known to wander. In fact, I began to believe that they made use of me to air the beds of the establishment, and was seriously disposed to make a demand for some compensation in my bill; and if I might judge from the pains in my bones I contracted in 'Lit de Parade,'

I must have saved her Majesty of Greece, who was my successor in it, a notable attack of rheumatism. To this shuttlec.o.c.k state of existence the easiness of my nature made me submit tamely enough, and I never dreamed of rebellion.

I was sitting conning over to myself the recollections of some faces I had seen before, when the head waiter appeared before me, with a request that I would be kind enough to give up my place at the table, which was No. 14, to a gentleman lately arrived, and who desired to sit near his friends in that vicinity. 'To be sure,' said I at once; 'I have no acquaintance here, and 114 will do me as well as 14--place me where you like.' At the same time, it rather puzzled me to learn what the individual could be like who conceived such a violent desire to be in the neighbourhood of some Hamburg Jews--for such were the party around me--when the waiter began to make room for a group that entered the room, and walked up to the end of that table. A glance told they were English. There was an elderly man, tall and well-looking, with the air 'gentleman' very legibly written on his quiet, composed features; the carriage of his head, and a something in his walk, induced me to believe him military. A lady leaned on his arm, some thirty years his junior--he was about sixty-six or seven--whose dress and style were fas.h.i.+onable, and at the same time they had not that perfect type of unpretending legitimacy that belongs essentially to but one cla.s.s. She was, in fact, _trop bien mise_ for a table d'hote; for although only a morning costume, there was a display about it which was faulty in its taste; her features, without being handsome, were striking, as much for the carriage of her head as anything in themselves. There was an air of good looks, as though to say, 'If you don't think me handsome, the fault is yours.' Her eyes were of a bluish grey, large and full, with lightly arched brows; but the mouth was the most characteristic feature--it was firm and resolute-looking, closely compressed, and with a slight protrusion of the lower lip, that said as plainly as words could say it, 'I will, and that's enough.' In walking, she took some pains to display her foot, which, with all the advantages of a Parisian shoe, was scarcely as pretty as she conceived it, but on the whole was well formed, and rather erring on the score of size than symmetry.

They were followed by three or four young men, of whom I could only remark that they wore the uniform appearance of young Englishmen of good cla.s.s, very clean-looking faces, well-brushed hair, and well-fitting frock-coats. One sported a moustache of a dirty-yellow colour, and whiskers to match, and by his manner, and a certain half-shut-eye kind of glance, proclaimed himself the knowing man of the party.

While they were taking their places, which they did at once on entering, I heard a general burst of salutations break from them in very welcome accent: 'Oh, here he is, here he comes. Ah, I knew we should see him.'

At the same instant, a tall, well-dressed fellow leaned over the table and shook hands with them all in succession.

'When did you arrive?' said he, turning to the lady.

'Only an hour ago; Sir Marmaduke would stay at Frankfort yesterday, to see Duvernet dance, and so we were detained beyond our time.'

The old gentleman half blushed at this charge, and while a look of pleasure showed that he did not dislike the accusation, he said--

'No, no; I stayed to please Calthorpe.'

'Indeed!' said the lady, turning a look of very peculiar, but unmistakable, anger at him of the yellow moustache. 'Indeed, my lord!'

'Oh yes, that is a weakness of mine,' said he, in an easy tone of careless banter, which degenerated to a mutter, heard only by the lady herself.

'I ought to have a place somewhere here about,' said the tall man.

'Number 14 or 15, the waiter said. Hallo, _garcon_-----'

At this he turned round, and I saw the well-remembered face of my fellow-traveller, the Honourable Jack Smallbranes. He looked very hard at me, as if he were puzzled to remember where or when we had met, and then, with a cool nod, said, 'How d'ye do?--over in England lately?'

'Not since I had the pleasure of meeting you at Rotterdam. Did you go far with the alderman's daughters?'

A very decided wink and a draw down of the brows cautioned me to silence on that subject; but not before the lady had heard my question, and looked up in his face with an expression that said--'I'll hear more of that affair before long.'

'Monsieur has given you his place, sir,' said the waiter, arranging a chair at No. 14. 'I have put _you_ at 83.'

'All right,' replied Jack, as if no recognition were called for on his part, and that he was not sorry to be separated from one with an unpleasant memory.

'I am shocked, sir,' said the lady, addressing me in her blandest accents, 'at our depriving you of your place, but Mr. Carrisbrook will, I 'm sure, give you his.'

While I protested against such a surrender, and Mr. Carrisbrook looked very much annoyed at the proposal, the lady only insisted the more, and it ended in Mr. Carrisbrook--one of the youths already mentioned--being sent down to 83, while I took up my position in front of the party in his place.

I knew to what circ.u.mstance I was indebted for this favourable notice; she looked up to me as a kind of king's evidence, whenever the Honourable Jack should be called up for trial, and already I had seen a great deal into the history and relative position of all parties. Such was the state of matters when the soup appeared.

And now, to impart to my readers, as is my wont, such information as I possessed afterwards, and not to keep them waiting for the order in which I obtained it: the party before me consisted of Sir Marmaduke Lonsdall and his lady--he, an old general officer of good family and connections, who, with most unexceptionable manners and courtly address, had contrived to spend a very easy, good-for-nothing existence, without ever seeing an hour's service, his clubs and his dinner-parties filling up life tolerably well, with the occasional excitement arising from who was in and who was out, to season the whole. Sometimes a Lord of the Treasury, with a seat for a Government borough, and sometimes patriotically sitting among the opposition when his friends were out, he was looked upon as a very honourable, straightforward person, who could not be 'overlooked' when his party were distributing favours.

My Lady Lonsdall was a _soi-disant_ heiress, the daughter of some person unknown in the city, the greater part of whose fortune was unhappily embarked in Poyais Scrip--a fact only ascertained when too late, and, consequently, though discoursing most eloquently in a prospectus about mines of gold and silver, strata of pearl necklaces, and diamond ear-rings, all ready to put on, turned out an unfortunate investment, and only realised an article in the _Times_, headed 'another bubble speculation.' Still, however, she was reputed very rich, and Sir Marmaduke received the congratulations of his club on the event with the air of a conqueror. She married him simply because, having waited long and impatiently for a t.i.tle, she was fain to put up at last with a baronet. Her ambition was to be in the fas.h.i.+onable world; to be among that sect of London elect who rule at Almack's and dictate at the West End; to occupy her portion of the _Morning Post_, and to have her name circulated among the ill.u.s.trious few who entertain royalty, and receive archdukes at luncheon. If the Poyais investment, in its result, denied the means of these extravagances, it did not, unhappily, obliterate the taste for them; and my lady's ambition to be fas.h.i.+onable was never at a higher spring-tide than when her fortunes were at the ebb. Now, certes, there are two ways to London distinction--rank and wealth. A fair union of both will do much, but, without either, the pursuit is utterly hopeless. There is but one course, then, for these unfortunate aspirants of celebrity--it is to change the venue and come abroad. They may not, it is true, have the rank and riches which give position at home. Still, they are better off than most foreigners: they have not the wealth of the aristocracy, yet they can imitate their wickedness; their habits may be costly, but their vices are cheap; and thus they can a.s.sert their high position and their fas.h.i.+onable standing by displaying the abandonment which is unhappily the distinctive feature of a certain set in the high world of London.

Followed, then, by a train of admirers, she paraded about the Continent, her effrontery exalted into beauty, her cold insolence a.s.sumed to be high breeding; her impertinence to women was merely exclusiveness, and her condescending manner to men the simple acknowledgment of that homage to which she was so unquestionably ent.i.tled.