Read Delphi Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe (Illustrated) Online
Authors: Ann Radcliffe
The expectation of an attack had dismantled other houses, besides the Elector’s, of their furniture; for, in the Cour Palatine, a very spacious, and really a good inn, not a curtain and scarcely a spoon was left.
A cause de la guerre
was, indeed, the general excuse for every deficiency, used by those, who had civility enough to offer one; but, in truth, the war had not often incroached upon the ordinary stock of conveniencies in Germany, which was previously too low to be capable of much reduction. The places, which the French had actually entered, are, of course, to be excepted; but it may otherwise be believed, that Germany can lose little by a war, more than the unfortunate labourers, whom it forces to become soldiers. The loss of wealth must come chiefly from other countries. A rich nation may give present treasure; a commercial nation may give both present treasure and the means of future competence.
The land near Manheim is chiefly planted with tobacco and madder, and the landscape is enlivened with small, but neat countryhouses, scattered along the margin of the Neckar. The neighbourhood abounds in pleasant rides, and, whether you wind the high banks of the majestic Rhine, or the borders of the more tranquil Neckar, the mountains of the Bergstrasse, tumbled upon each other in wild confusion, generally form the magnificent back ground of the scene.
On returning from an excursion of this kind at the close of evening, the soldiers at the gates are frequently heard chanting martial songs in parts and chorus; a fonorous music in severe unison with the solemnity of the hour and the imperfect forms, that meet the eye, of sentinels keeping watch beneath the dusky gateways, while their brethren, reposing on the benches without, mingle their voices in the deep chorus. Rude and simple as are these strains, they are often singularly impressive, and touch the imagination with something approaching to horror, when the circumstances of the place are remembered, and it is considered how soon these men, sent to inflict death on others, may themselves be thrown into the unnumbered heap of the military slain.
AN excellent road, sheltered for nine English miles by rows of high poplars, conducted us through richly cultivated plains from Manheim to Schwezingen, a small village, distinguished by an Electoral chateau and gardens. This was one of the pleasantest rides we had found in Germany, for the road, though it exhibited little of either the wild or picturesque, frequently opened towards the mountains, bright with a variety of colouring, and then again was shrouded among woods and plantations, that bordered the neighbouring fields, and brought faintly to remembrance the style and mingled verdure of our native landscape.
Schwezingen had been very lately the Austrian headquarters, for the army of the Upper Rhine, and some soldiers were still stationed near the road to guard an immense magazine of wood; but there were otherwise no military symptoms about the place.
The chateau is an old and inelegant building, not large enough to have been ever used as a formal residence. The present Elector has added to it two wings, each of six hundred feet long, but so low, that the apartments are all on the ground floor. Somewhat of that air of neglect, which can sadden even the most delightful scenes, is visible here; several of the windows are broken, and the theatre, music-room, and ball-room, which have been laid out in one of the wings, are abandoned to dust and lumber.
The gardens, however, are preserved in better order. Before the palace, a long vista of lawn and wood, with numerous and spacious fountains, guarded by statues, display something of the old French manner; other parts shew charming scenery, and deep sylvan recesses, where nature is again at liberty; in a bay formed by the woods is an amphitheatre of fragrant orange trees, placed in front of a light semicircular green-house, and crowned with lofty groves. Near this delicious spot, extends a bending arcade of lattice-work, interwoven with vines and many beautifully flowering plants; a sort of structure, the filagree lightness of which it is impossible not to admire, against precept, and perhaps, when general effect is considered, against necessary taste. In another part, sheltered by the woods, is an edifice in the style of a Turkish mosque, with its light cloistered courts, slender minarets, and painted entrances, inscribed with Arabic mottos, which by the German translations appear to express the pleasure of friendly conversation and of indolence in summer. The gardens have this result of a judicious arrangement, that they seem to extend much beyond their real limits, which we discovered only by ascending one of the minarets. They are open to the public, during great part of every day, under certain rules for their preservation, of which copies are pasted up in several places.
AT Schwezingen the fine Electoral road concludes, and we began to wind along the skirts of a forest on the left, having on the right an open corn country, beyond which appeared the towers of Spires and Philipsburg, of which the former was then the headquarters of the Austrian army, and the latter is memorable for having given birth to Melancthon in 1491. Waghausel and Bruchsal are small posting places in this route, at a village between which we had another instance of the little attention paid to travellers in Germany. At a small inn, noxious with some fumigation used against bugs, we were detained a quarter of an hour, because the landlord, who had gone out after our arrival, had not left word how much we should pay, and the poor old woman, who, without shoes or stockings, attended us, was terrified when we talked of leaving what was proper, and proceeding before his return.
About a mile beyond Bruchsal our postillion quitted the chaussée, and entered a summer road, through the deep and extensive forest of Carlsruhe, preserved by the Margrave of Baden for the shelter of game. Avenues cut through this forest for nine or ten miles in every direction, converge at his palace and city of Carlsruhe, as at a point. Other cruelties than those of the chase sometimes take place in these delightful scenes, for an amphitheatre has been formed in the woods, where imitations of a Spanish bull feast have been exhibited; to such horrid means of preventing vacuity of mind has a prince had recourse, who is otherwise distinguished for the elegance of his taste, and the suavity of his manners!
The scenery of this forest is very various. Sometimes we found our way through groves of ancient pine and fir, so thickly planted that their lower branches were withered for want of air, and it seemed as if the carriage could not proceed between them; at others we passed under the spreading shade of chesnuts, oak and walnut, and crossed many a cool stream, green with the impending foliage, on whose sequestered bank one almost expected to see the moralizing Jacques; so exactly did the scene accord with Shakespeare’s description. The woods again opening, we found ourselves in a noble avenue, and saw the stag gracefully bounding across it ‘“to more profound repose;”’ while now and then a hut, formed of rude green planks under some old oak, seemed, by its smoked sides, to have often afforded a sheltered repast to hunting parties.
Near Carlsruhe the gardens of the Prince and then the palace become visible, the road winding along them, on the edge of the forest, till it enters the northern gate of the city, the uniformity of which has the same date as its completion, the ground plot having been entirely laid out between January and June 1715, on the 17th of which month the Margrave Charles William laid the foundation stone.
The streets are accordingly spacious, light, and exactly straight; but not so magnificent as those of Manheim, and still less enlivened with passengers. Since the commencement of the war, the gaieties of the Court, which afforded some occupation to the inhabitants, have ceased; the nobility have left their houses; and the Margrave is contented with the amusements of his library, in which English literature is said to fill a considerable space.
Carlsruhe has the advantage of not being fortified; so that the inhabitants are not oppressed by a numerous garrison, and strangers pass through it, though so near the seat of war, without interruption. It is less than Manheim by at least half, and has no considerable public building, except the palace, from the spacious area before which, all the streets proceed as
radii,
till their furthest ends fill up the figure of a semicircle. The houses in the area, which immediately front the palace, are built over a piazza interrupted only by the commencement of the streets. The palace has, of course, an unexampled advantage in the mixture of town and rural scenery in its prospects, looking on one side through all the streets of the city, and on the other through thirty-two forest alleys, cut to various lengths of from ten to fifteen English miles each; few, however, of the latter prospects are now commanded except from the upper windows, the present Elector having entirely changed the style of the intervening gardens, and permitted them to be laid out in the English taste, without respect to the thirty-two intersections, that rendered them conformable with the forest.
We passed part of two days at Carlsruhe, and were chiefly in these gardens, which are of the most enchanting beauty and richness. The warmth of the climate draws up colours for the shrubs and plants, which we thought could not be equalled in more northern latitudes; two thousand and seven hundred orange and lemon trees, loaded with fruit and blossoms, perfumed the air; and choice shrubs, marked with the Linnean distinctions, composed the thickets. The gardens, being limited only by the forests, appear to unite with them; and the deep verdure and luxuriance of the latter are contrasted sweetly with the tender green of the lawns and plants, and with the variety of scarce and majestic trees, mingled with the garden groves.
The palace is a large and sumptuous, though not an elegant edisice, built of stone like all the rest of the city, and at the same period. The Margrave generally resides in it, and has rendered it a valuable home, by adding greatly to the library, filling an observatory with excellent instruments, and preserving the whole structure in a condition not usual in Germany. The spot, compared with the surrounding country, appeared like Milton’s Eden — like Paradise opened in the wild.
Beyond Carlsruhe the road begins to approach the Rhine, which we had lost sight of near Manheim; and, though the river is never within view, the country is considered as a military frontier, being constantly patrolled by troops. Some of these were of the Prince of Condé’s army of emigrants, who have no uniform, and are distinguished only by the white cockade, and by a bandage of white linen, impressed with black
fleurs de lis,
upon the right arm. They were chiefly on foot, and then wore only their swords, without firearms.
Near the road, a small party of Austrians were guarding a magazine, before a tent, marked, like their regimentals, with green upon white. Soon afterwards, our postillion drew up on one side, to permit a train of carriages to pass, and immediately announced the
Prinz von Condé,
who was in an open landau, followed by two covered waggons for his kitchen and laundry, and by a coach with attendants.
He appeared to be between fifty and sixty; tall, not corpulent, and of an air, which might have announced the French courtier, if his rank had been unknown. A star was embroidered upon his military surtout, but he had no guards, though travelling within the jurisdiction allotted to him as a general officer. So little was the road frequented at this period, that his was the second or third carriage we had met, except military waggons, since leaving Mentz; a distance of more than eighty English miles.
The road for the whole stage between Carlsruhe and Rastadt, about fifteen miles, is planted, as seems customary in Germany between the palaces of sovereigns, with lofty trees, of which the shade was extremely refreshing at this season; the clouds of sand, that rose from the road, would otherwise have made the heat intolerable.
The first house in Rastadt is the palace of the Margrave of Baden Baden, brother of the Margrave of Baden Durlach, whose residence is at Carlsruhe, a small and heavy building, that fronts the avenue, and is surrounded with stone walls. The interior is said to be splendidly decorated, and a chamber is preserved in the state, in which Prince Eugene and Marshal Villars left it in 1714, after concluding the peace between the Emperor and Louis the Fourteenth. The Prince of Baden, being then a general in the service of the Emperor, had not been able to escape the vengeance of Louis, whose troops in 1688 first plundered, and then burnt, the palace and city, and in the war of the Succession they had a camp on the adjoining plain. The Prince is therefore supposed to have lent the palace, which he had rebuilt, with the more readiness, that the Marshal might see how perfectly he could overcome his loss. The plunder of the city in 1688 had continued for five days, and it is mentioned in its history that the French carried away fifteen waggon loads of wine of the vintage of 1572.
Rastadt, like Carlsruhe, is built upon one plan, but is as inferior to it in beauty, as in size. The chief street is, however, uncommonly broad, so much so, that the upper end is used as a marketplace, and the statue of the founder, Prince Louis, in the centre, is seen with all the advantages of space and perspective. There is, notwithstanding, little appearance of traffic, and the inhabitants seemed to be much less numerous than the emigrant corps, which was then stationed there, the head quarters of the Prince of Condé being established in the city. We passed an hour at an inn, which was nearly filled by part of this corps, and were compelled to witness the distress and disappointment, excited by intelligence just then received of the state of affairs in the Low Countries.
A small park of artillery was kept on the southern side of Rastadt, where there is a handsome stone bridge over the river Murg, that falls into the Rhine, at the distance of a league from the city. Soon after, the road passes by the groves of the
Favorita,
a summer palace built by a dowager Margravine. We now drew nearer to the mountains of the Bergstrasse, which had disappeared near Schwezingen, and had risen again partially through the morning mists, soon after our quitting Carlsruhe. They are here of more awful height, and abrupt steepness than in the neighbourhood of Manheim, and, on their pointed brows, are frequently the ruins of castles, placed sometimes where it seems as if no human foot could climb. The nearer we approached these mountains the more we had occasion to admire the various tints of their granites. Sometimes the precipices were of a faint pink, then of a deep red, a dull purple, or a blush approaching to lilac, and sometimes gleams of a pale yellow mingled with the low shrubs, that grew upon their sides. The day was cloudless and bright, and we were too near these heights to be deceived by the illusions of aerial colouring; the real hues of their features were as beautiful, as their magnitude was sublime. The plains, that extend along their feet to the Rhine, are richly cultivated with corn, and, beyond the river, others, which appear to be equally fruitful, spread towards the mountains of Alsace, a corresponding chain with the Bergstrasse, vast and now blue with distance.
The manners of the people from Manheim downwards, are more civilized than in the upper parts of Germany; an improvement, which may with great probability be imputed to the superior fruitfulness of the country, that amends their condition, and with it the social qualities. The farms are more numerous, the labourers less dejected, and the women, who still work barefooted in the fields, have somewhat of a ruddy brown in their complexion, instead of the sallowness, that renders the ferocious, or sullen air of the others more striking. They are also better dressed; for, though they retain the slouched woollen hat, they have caps; and towards the borders of Switzerland their appearance becomes picturesque. Here they frequently wear a blue petticoat with a cherry-coloured boddice, full white sleeves fastened above the elbow, and a muslin handkerchief thrown gracefully round the neck in a sort of roll; the hair sometimes platted round the head, and held on the crown with a large bodkin. On holidays, the girls have often a flat straw hat, with bows of ribband hanging behind. Higher up, the women wear their long black hair platted, but falling in a queue down the back.
The cottages are also somewhat better, and the sides entirely covered with vines, on which, in the beginning of July, were grapes bigger than capers, and in immense quantities. Sometimes Turkey corn is put to dry under the projections of the first floor, and the gardens are ornamented with a short alley of hops. Meat is however bad and scarce; the appearance so disgusting before it is dressed, that those, who can accommodate their palates to the cooking, must endeavour to forget what they have seen. Butter is still more scarce, and the little cheese that appears, is only a new white curd, made up in rolls, scarcely bigger than an egg. A sort of beer is here made for servants, the taste of which affords no symptom of either malt or hops; it is often nearly white, and appears to have been brewed but a few hours; what is somewhat browner is bottled, and sold at about three-pence a quart.
Our road, this day, was feldom more than two leagues distant from the Rhine, and we expected to have heard the fire, which the Austrian and French posts, who have their batteries on the two banks of the river, frequently exchange with each other. The tranquillity was, however, as sound as in any other country, and nothing but the continuance of patroles and convoys reminded us of our nearness to the war. The peasants were as leisurely cutting their harvest, and all the other business of rural life was proceeding as uninterruptedly, as if there was no possibility of an attack. Yet we afterwards learned, that the French had, very early on the morning of this day, ineffectually attempted the passage of the Rhine, about fifteen miles higher up; and the firing had been distinctly heard at a little village where we dined.
One road, as short as this, lies immediately upon the margin of the river; and, as we were assured that none but military parties were fired at, we wished to pass it, for the purpose of observing the ingenious methods, by which a country so circumstanced is defended; but our postillion, who dreaded, that he might be pressed by the Austrians, for the intrusion, refused to venture upon it, and, instead of proceeding to Kehl, which is directly opposite to Strasbourg, we took the road for Offenburg, about three leagues from the Rhine.
The country through which our route now lay, better as it is than more northern parts, has suffered some positive injuries by the war. Before this, all the little towns, from Carlsruhe downwards, maintained some commerce with France, on their own account, and supplied carriage for that of others. In return for provisions and coarse commodities for manufacture, carried to Strasbourg, they received the silks and woollens of France, to be dispersed at Franckfort, or Manheim. The intercourse between the two countries was so frequent, that nearly all the tradesmen, and many of the labouring persons in this part of Germany speak a little French. The landlord of the house, where we dined, assured us that, though his village was so small, he had sufficient business before the war; now he was upon the point of removing to Offenburg, being unable to pay his rent, during the interruption of travelling.