Briefe eines Verstorbenen, &c., Tour in Germany, Holland, and England, in the years 1826, 1827, and 1828. By a German Prince. Vols. III. & IV. Stuttgart, 1831.
The remaining volumes of this work have been received from Germany, and though it might have saved us cost and labour, had we waited until the London publishers brought out their translation, we, thinking only how to gratify the readers of the Athenaeum, shall perform that labour of love ourselves.
In our notice of the two volumes of this ‘ Tour,’ which have been so widely read, and so diversely criticized, we took the view since taken by the Edinburgh, rather than that adopted by the Quarterly, of the spirit and tendency of Prince Puckler Muskau’s work. To us, there appeared an all-redeeming tone of natural and manly feeling throughout the book; and we were willing to ascribe the occasional inaccuracies and harsh judgments, into which the author was betrayed, to a necessarily imperfect knowledge of our social laws and institutions, as also of those components, which, separately taken, may seem incongruous enough, but which, combined, go to the constitution of what we must take leave to call a noble national character. At present, however, we regret to state, that a further acquaintance with the Prince, as he shows himself in the two untranslated volumes of his Tour, has convinced us that there is at the bottom of his false estimate, a petty, and indeed puerile, jealousy of England, and everything English. In the volumes which we have now the pleasure of presenting to our readers, the proofs of his jealousy are often expressed with much of the dignity wherewith a child demurs at the unequal distribution of an orange. He bitterly complains of the courtesy extended by his countrymen to ours in Germany, and says, that an obscure individual, or mere private gentleman from England, is as well received, and as much filed by Germans, as a man with two names and a princely prefix, is by us. Yet this complaint is surely rather odd, when coming from one who, in the translated volumes, delivers himself with an indignation, which, we remember, pleased us much, against the slavish reverence with which his ” Highness” was everywhere received. He unmercifully comments on the impertinence of an English lady, at whose house he visited during the race-week at Newmarket, and for what ? He was seated next to her at dinner, and, in reply to her question, ” Do you know the Queen of —?” answered in the affirmative ; the fair questioner observed, “She is a great friend of mine.” Not to mention the variety of shades of meaning, which this phrase
conveys, we really cannot see anything so vastly irreverent, let the words have been employed in what sense they will. But the Prince is absolutely furious with the lady in question. ” Is it not;” he exclaims, ” in the highest degree surprising, that our German great ones, who are pretty well provided with pride and morgue towards their countrymen, should treat every English person as their equal, let him be ever so undistinguished in mind, merely because he is English, without making the least inquiry as to whether the said person has, at home, any station which could justify such condescension?” All this may be richly merited by the royal and noble persons of Germany, for aught we know; but, really, there does appear to us, no earthly cause for so much wrath; and, least of all, should the Prince have been so precise in his indication of the when and the where this conversation occurred. His sermon to his too-condescending countrymen, would have lost none of its effect, from a little consideration for the feelings of a family, where he had been hospitably entertained, and to whom this exposure, in print, detailing, as it does, a daughter’s somewhat ostentatious display of a letter from some German Princess, with whom she corresponded, can hardly fail to prove a source of vexatious annoyance. And upon this point we may just remark, that, on the appearance of the two first published volumes of the ‘Tour,’ which were in fact the last written, it was stated, that the editor of the ‘ Posthumous Letters,’ (that was their title,) was unwilling to send them forth in their natural order, as the two first written contained remarks on persons and things, which might be unpleasing to parties still living. No sooner, however, are the published volumes bought up with an avidity, promising wonders for the sale of those having the spice of additional personality, than the editor, or in plain English, Prince Puckler Muskau , magnanimously resolves to offer up the feelings of all parties at the shrine of prurient curiosity, and, it may be, not without some views of individual profit. Well, what has been written cannot be recalled; and it forms part of our duty to point out where we conceive the Prince to be the victim of prejudice, (to use no stronger term,) which we shall accordingly do, leaving him to speak for himself, and, at the same time, feeling no apprehension, that our hasty version will in any degree interfere with the labours of the accomplished lady, to whom the public are indebted for the two volumes already before them, and at whose hands they look for the remainder of the Tour. If the lucubrations of Prince Puckler Muskau had no other merit, and this we by no means wish to convey, than the having furnished an occasion for so triumphant a version from the German, they would still be worthy, on this account alone, of our acknowledgments; though, at the same time, we cannot but join in the regrets of the Edinburgh Review, that talents and acquirements like those of the lady alluded to, should be applied to such an ephemeral work as this, from a conviction that the time is not yet come, when national prejudices and a vitiated literary taste would give way before the vigorous beauty of German, genius, so as to reward the toil of the translator.
We open our extracts with some account of the ” Travellers’ Club,” into which the Prince was received as a visitor, and which he treats just as well as any of the private families who opened their doors to him :, ” In the absence of society, the several clubs, to which foreigners have now the privilege of admission, are a great convenience. The Ambassador has procured me the entree to two of these, ‘The United Service Club,’ where, excepting members of the Embassy, only military men, and, indeed, among these, none but field officers are admitted; and the ‘Travellers’ Club,’ in which every respectable foreigner, provided with a proper introduction, is received; but the mortifying rule, by which the admission must be applied for at the expiration of three months, and this with the most rigid adherence to the day appointed, can hardly be reconciled to one’s notions of courtesy.
“In Germany, we have as little idea of the elegance and comfort, as of the strict administration of the law in these clubs.”
The Prince then goes on to give an account of the wonderful luxury of stairs and chambers “adorned” with carpets and “rugs,” which he parenthetically observes, are ” various-coloured preparations of sheepskin and wool.” The marble chimney-pieces, the splendid mirrors, ” all of one piece, so peculiar to English luxury,” and the profusion of furniture, are enthusiastically eulogized, as together making a room ” hochst comfortable” , by which His Highness means ” particularly snug.” He is no less eloquent on the arrangements of the library, where “a person is always at hand to bring any book required;” while the peculiar ingenuity, whereby maps on rollers have been provided with a string, “which,” says the Prince, “you have only to pull, and down comes the map for your inspection!” absolutely transports him. But now we come to the “unco guid”, the cuisine of the Travellers: And here we shall find our author a most vinous critic :,
” The table, I mean the eating, with most men, the great business of life, and by no means the least with me, is, generally speaking, good, thanks to French cookery, and as cheap as, in London, it can possibly be. As the Club buys its own wines, and sells them again at prime cost, they are drinkable enough, and not dear. That in London, even among the first houses, a connoisseur can rarely meet with the best wines, maybe accounted for, by the singular custom, (and this people cling to customs, as closely as an oyster to its shell,) that the English will only purchase their wines of London wine-merchants, instead of procuring them from the countries where they are grown, as is the custom with us. Now these wine-merchants adulterate the wine to such an astounding degree, that, not long since, when one of them was charged with having so many thousand bottles of claret and port in his cellars, for which he had not paid the duty, he proved, that all the wine in question was of his own brewing, and thus evaded the fine. Of course, under such a system, you may easily conceive what sort of compound a man is often doomed to drink, under the well-sounding names of Champagne, Lafitte, and so forth. Indeed, the merchants seldom think of buying the best wine produced by a country, for the very manifest reason, that they would make little or no profit by it, or, if they do venture on such a purchase, they only use it to pass off any other wretched stuff they may have by them.”
“Pardon this wine-digression!” cries the Prince to his beloved Julia. To us it appears unpardonable. In no degree doubting, that more unjustifiable fluid is swallowed by our worthy countrymen, than by any other nation, still, we must say, that in “the first houses,” even of our own circle , and we pretend not to princely potations, there is as good wine to be met with, as any we expect to drink, should we pay, as we intend to do, a visit to the Puckler Muskau property. But ” back to our clubs,” says His Highness, so say we:,
” Nothing surprises a foreigner more than the pitch of refined ease to which the English have carried the art of sitting, and he who knows not the genial form of English chairs for every stage of weariness, sickness, or constitutional peculiarity, must be pronounced ignorant of an important part of mortal life’s enjoyment. It is, in fact, a real delight to see an Englishman sitting, or rather, lying in one of these bedlike chairs, before a chimney fire. A contrivance, at the arm of the chair, somewhat resembling a writing-desk, and furnished with a light, is drawn before him, so that with the slightest touch, he can bring it nearer to him or remove it at pleasure. In addition to this, a peculiar machine, of which there are several near the fire-place, receives one or both of his feet, and now, a hat on his head, and the delightfully pleasing picture is complete.”
” The custom of half-lying down, instead of sitting, with one leg crossed over the other, so that you hold your foot in your hand, or with the thumbs fixed in the arm-holes of the waistcoat, &c. &c., these are all things which, in the largest companies, and the most exclusive circles, are overlooked. It is, therefore, likely enough, that hat-wearing is one of this dignified list, the rather, as it prevails in Parisian society, which, contrary to its ancient custom of giving models to the apes of Europe, now, ludicrously enough at times, condescends itself to ape the English, and, as usually occurs in such cases, the copy out-Heroes the original.
” In the Travellers’ Club I was much amused in this respect, by a distinguished foreigner from the South, who, probably as a satire on these licences of manner, and fashionable rudeness in externals, like the Chinese, took it all very easily, and frequently at play gave openmouthed vent to certain sounds, which formerly would scarce have been tolerated in a pothouse.”
” Travellers see strange things,” says the adage, and so will the Travellers of Pail-mall exclaim when this number of the Athenaeum falls under their wondering gaze. The distinguished foreigner just mentioned as being such a fragrant or flagrant practical satirist, is, we shrewdly suspect, no other than Prince Puckler Muskau himself, and to prove that this supposition is not wholly groundless, we will give the Prince an opportunity of stating a grievance.
” Of all the outrages against English habits which a man can possibly commit, and which would in all probability pronounce his sentence of banishment, the three following are the principal: to eat with a knife instead of a fork; to take sugar or asparagus with your hand; or, beyond all, to spit upon the floor of a room. This is all right enough, and well-bred people in all countries avoid such actions; though, by the way, in these respects, as in all others, customs are liable to change, for the Marshal Richelieu detected an adventurer who represented himself as a nobleman, by the simple fact of his eating olives with a fork and not with his fingers. But it is the extraordinary importance attached to such matters which is laughable. For instance, the last-mentioned crime (spitting on the floor) is, in England, so pedantically prohibited, that one would vainly search all the shops of London for such a piece of furniture as a spitting-box. A Dutchman, who felt this want very severely while in London, declared, in high dudgeon, that an Englishman’s only spitting-box was his maw.
” These are, l repeat, less than trifles, but the best rules of conduct in a foreign country, have reference almost exclusively to trifles. For example, were I to give some few general rules to a youthful traveller, I should most gravely counsel him as follows: In Naples behave brutally, in Rome be natural, in Austria eschew politics, in France give yourself no airs, in Germany as many as you please, and in England never spit. On this plan, my young friend would go on pretty well through the world.”
Now, we think, that the querulous tone of His Highness’s complaint of our unwillingness to adopt the Teutonic mode of painting the carpet’s lily, and throwing a perfume on its violet, is pretty conclusive as to the possibility of his having been himself the “distinguished foreigner” who brought the cast-off customs of the pot-house into the cardroom of the Travellers’ Club. But before we proceed further, we must do the Prince the justice to place his other recorded grievances before our readers, so that a fair estimate may be formed of what he had to endure at this club, as also of the spirit, manly or otherwise, in which he met what his countrymen would call “the unavoidable.”
“A foreigner will give great offence in the dining-room, which after all is but an elegant restaurateur, where each one pays for his meal when it is finished , if when a servant waits badly or brings one thing in place of another, he should venture to complain or to speak in a loud commanding tone, though the English themselves do this often enough at home, and especially in Germany. And again, it is not merely a mistake, but an unpardonable fault, to read during dinner; for in England it is not the fashion, and I, who am addicted to this bad habit, soon perceived sundry satirical marks of displeasure thereat, from divers of these islanders, who shook their heads as they passed me.”
“Le vrai n’est pas toujours le vraisemblable” is a saying, the full benefit of which we are willing to give the Prince; and shall therefore content ourselves with the remark, that though his last statement may be true, it looks considerably “like a whale.” Nor can we accord any more positive credence to
the charge brought against the members of the ‘Travellers’ Club,’ when His Highness affirms that their rule of play, which requires the loser of 100l. and upwards, to ‘pay up’ on the following morning, is most rigidly enforced against foreigners, while Englishmen are, with the tacit consent of the committee, suffered to defer such payments for weeks and months. He is, however, kind enough to admit, that, in this respect, ‘the Travellers’ (where he was a guest, well treated, he concedes, save and except that he could not scold the servants as he wished,) forms a bad exception among the London clubs, and therefore deserves this public reprehension.” We suspect that this “public reprehension” will go far towards closing the door of the Travellers’ against “distinguished foreigners” of the eaves-dropping and tour-publishing class. As to the ire of Prince Puckler Muskau against the Travellers’ Club, it may; without much difficulty, be accounted for, when we consider that Baron Bulow found all his influence necessary to spare his friend the disgrace of expulsion, for what, we know not, but certainly, as the ancient gentlewomen would say, not for his good behaviour.
Leaving the clubs, let us now accompany the Prince in a very profound and original analogy, which he has drawn between the personal character of Punch, and the national character of Englishmen. Of all the speculations it has been our fortune to fall in or out with, this we think the most peculiar, and we can conceive the face of the Prince presenting much of the appearance so felicitously hit off by him, when he tells us of Goethe: ” O you are too kind,” said he, with his South-German manner, but at the same time with a North-German satirical smile.”
After some well-merited execration of our barrel-organs, His Highness says,
” But there is another species of street-play, more amusing than the above, a genuine national comedy, which deserves some closer attention, and which has today afforded me real diversion beneath my window.
” This is the English Punch (perfectly distinct from the Italian Punchinello), whose true picture I am about to give you, not omitting how he killed his wife, for he is the most reprobate dog I have ever met with, having no more conscience than the wood out of which he is carved, or the mass of the nation whom he represents.
” Punch, like his namesake, has something of the properties of arrack, lemon, and sugar, in his composition , strong, sour, and sweet, and, consequently, of a character not unlike the inebriate mind caused by the beverage. He is, furthermore, the most consummate egotist on earth, et ne doute jamais de rien. And by this unrestrainable recklessness and humour he conquers everything, laughs at laws, men, and at the devil himself, in which representation he shows, in part, what the Englishman, – and, in part, what he might become, namely, one made up of selfishness, endurance, courage, and, where necessary, a reckless decision on the side of his country, with a disregard and ridicule of every other;, but allow me to continue my sketch of Punch, as it were, in his own words, supplying some little additional information from his biography.
“As a descendant of Punchinello, he is beyond doubt an ancient nobleman, nearly related to Harlequin, Clown, &c., but by his undaunted boldness he is best entitled to be ‘the head of the family.’ Virtuous he cannot be called, but, like a good Englishman, he doubtless goes to church on a Sunday, though immediately after he kills a parson who bothers him too much with attempts at conversion. It must be admitted that Punch is a wild fellow, no very moral personage, and not in vain created of wood. For example, no one can box to better purpose, for he feels not the blows of others, while his own are irresistible. Thus, he is a perfect Turk in his disregard of human life, suffers no contradiction, and fears not the devil himself. In many other respects, on the contrary, his great qualities command our admiration. His wonderful insensibility of heart, and his constant good humour, already mentioned with praise, his imperturbable self-satisfaction, his invincible wit, and the consummate cunning with which he extricates himself from every mauvais pas, and contrives at last to triumph victoriously over all antagonists, throw a dazzling lustre round the little freedoms which he occasionally permits himself to take with human life. He has been not inaptly pronounced a blending of Richard III. and Falstaff, and, indeed, his appearance combines the crooked legs and the double hump of Richard, with the pleasing corpulence of Falstaff, to which add the Italian length of his nose and the lire of his flashing black eyes.
” His abode is a sort of box supported on four poles, with appropriate internal decorations,, a theatre, which, in a few seconds, can be thrown up at any spot you please.”
The Prince then enters on details to very minute of the soliloquies and colloquies of the dramatis personae, that we must refuse ourselves the pleasure of quoting an account of mysteries so well understood by our readers, old and young. We shall therefore proceed to the concluding remark of the narrator, to the following effect:,
” I leave it to you, dear Julia, to make all the philosophical reflections, of which not a few are attached to the career of Punch : it would be an especially interesting investigation to inquire how far this favourite and daily-acted popular play may, in the course of so many years, have influenced the morale of the ordinary man.”
Interesting indeed! but we cannot undertake it, and therefore we accompany our author to another national representation, which, being of a graver character, moved him, he says, to a lively sense of the ludicrous,, even as the exploits of Punch had plunged him in philosophical abstractions as to our national character. He attended at the opening of Parliament by His late Majesty :,
” About half-past two appeared the King, the only one present in full dress, and, indeed, from head to foot arrayed in the ancient regal costume, wearing the crown, and holding the sceptre in his hand. He looked pale and bloated, and was obliged to sit for a long while on the throne before he could gain sufficient breath to rend his speech. During this time he gave some kindly looks and condescending greetings to certain of the most favoured among the ladies present. On one side stood Lord Liverpool with the Sword of State, and on the other the Duke of Wellington. All three appeared so miserable, ash-grey, and superannuated, that mortal greatness had never before seemed so truly little in my eyes, ; indeed, the tragic sidy of all the comedies we are playing here below, fell heavily on my heart! Yet a lively feeling of the ludicrous also rose within me to see the mightiest monarch of the earth thus forced to stand forward is the principal actor before a public, in his own opinion so immeasurably below him. In truth, the entire scene of the entrance and exit, with the costume of the King, forcibly reminded one of the style in which historical dramas are here produced; and it only wanted the obligato flourish of trumpets, which invariably accompany the coming and going of the Shakspearian kings, to render the illusion complete.”
For the present we must close our extracts with one giving proof of that graphic skill which the author is known to possess, and which, when he is in a good humour, he employs with admirable effect. After mentioning his presentation at the levee, he says,
” The King, owing to indisposition, was obliged to continue seated. All those who had received any appointment, knelt before His Majesty and kissed his hand, at which the American Envoy, near to whom I accidentally found myself, smiled sarcastically. The Clerical and Judicial personages cut a singular figure in their black gowns and short or flowing wigs ; and one of them became the object of almost general andillrepressed laughter. This person knelt down to be ‘ knighted,’ as the English call it, and in this position, with the flowing fleece about his head, looked very much like a wether led to the butcher’s block. His Majesty motioned to the Grand Functionary for his sword. But, for the first time, perhaps, the sword refused to obey the warrior’s hand, and leave the scabbard, he pulled, pushed, but all in vain. The King waiting with out-stretched arm, the Duke straining all his strength without effect, the luckless martyr bowing with silent resignation, as though his end were approaching; and all around the dazzling court in anxious expectation, formed together a group well worthy of Gillray’s pencil. At length, like a lightning flash, the sword came forth. His Majesty took it impatiently, for to all appearance his arm had gone to sleep with so long waiting, so that the first blow fell, not upon the new knight, but on his old wig, which, for about a moment left King and subject concealed in one cloud of hair powder.”
From: The Athenaeum. February 11, 1832. No. 224