<?page no="0"?> Picturesque in the highest degree ... Karl Ortseifen / Winfried Herget Holger Lamm (eds.) Americans on the Rhine A Selection of Travel Accounts Second Edition <?page no="1"?> Picturesque in the highest degree ... <?page no="3"?> Karl Ortseifen / Winfried Herget Holger Lamm (eds.) Picturesque in the highest degree ... Americans on the Rhine A Selection of Travel Accounts Second Edition <?page no="4"?> Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http: / / dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Gedruckt auf säurefreiem und alterungsbeständigem Werkdruckpapier. © 2015 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 · D-72070 Tübingen Internet: www.narr.de E-Mail: info@narr.de Printed in Germany ISBN 978-3-8233-6893-9 Second revised edition 2015 First edition 1993 The publication of this edition has been made possible by a grant from the Institute for Transnational American Studies of Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz. Cover photograph: Pfalzgrafenstein at Kaub with Gutenfels Castle; © Karl Ortseifen <?page no="5"?> Sanford Robinson Gifford, Rheinstein, 1872-74. Oil on canvas, 31 3/ 8 x 27 1/ 4“. Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. Bequest of Charles Parsons, 1905. <?page no="7"?> 7 Contents List of Illustrations 9 Introduction 11 John Trumbull 18 Thomas Jefferson 29 Washington Irving 37 George Henry Calvert 45 Henry Edwin Dwight 53 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 65 James Fenimore Cooper 89 John Lothrop Motley 107 William Henry Seward 110 Thomas Gold Appleton 112 William Cullen Bryant 117 George Palmer Putnam 120 Charles Sumner 124 Catharine Maria Sedgwick 125 Bayard Taylor 132 Charles Godfrey Leland 140 George William Curtis 147 Caroline M. Kirkland 154 Worthington Whittredge/ Eastman Johnson 163 Herman Melville 173 George Copway 176 Horace Greeley 179 Benjamin Silliman 182 Harriet Beecher Stowe 186 Edward Everett Hale 189 Henry James 197 William Dean Howells 202 Louisa May Alcott 210 Charles Dudley Warner 215 Helen Hunt Jackson 218 Kate Chopin 220 Richard Malcolm Johnston 224 Mark Twain 230 <?page no="8"?> 8 Bret Harte 236 W.E.B. Du Bois 238 Theodore Dreiser 242 Ernest Hemingway 253 Louis Untermeyer 255 Thomas Wolfe 262 Appendix: Americans in Europe - Beyond the Rhine Winfried Herget 265 Selected Bibliography 275 Acknowledgments 278 Index 280 <?page no="9"?> 9 List of Illustrations Sanford Robinson Gifford, Rheinstein (1872-74) 5 Sketches from John Trumbull’s Autobiography (1786, 1841): Old Electoral Palace at Mayence 27 Elvent [Eltville] 28 Bingen 63 Near Bingen - entering the Highlands of the Rhine 64 Entrance of the Highlands of the Rhine 106 Bacharach 116 Turckheim [Dürkheim] 241 Signatures of Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper in the visitors’ book of the Brömserburg at Rüdesheim 104 Worthington Whittredge, Sunrise. View of Drachenfels from Rolandseck (1850) 162 Emanuel Leutze, Bacharach [ruins of Wernerkapelle] (1841) 172 William Trost Richards, Stolzenfels (1856) 188 Caricature of Rhine scenery from The Foreign Tour of Brown, Jones and Robinson by Richard Doyle (1854) 198 Letter of William Dean Howells to his sister Aurelia (Sept. 12, 1897) 208 Map of Rhineland-Palatinate 282 <?page no="11"?> 11 Introduction The British contribution to the inception and development of travels on and along the Rhine is a well-remembered chapter in the history of Rhine romanticism. 1 Much less documented is the American reception of the famed Rhine scenery, although American tourists also flocked to the river in large numbers and wrote down their impressions, just as their more numerous British fellow travelers were doing. The present volume seeks to recover American encounters with the Rhine and bring back the voices of prominent transatlantic travelers. Few Americans visited the Rhine in the 18th century. Whereas more and more British travelers made the Rhineland a component of the grand tour on the Continent after the middle of the century, their American cousins, involved in the political struggle for independence, felt disinclined to travel to Europe or were confronted with too many obstacles. A noteworthy exception is Benjamin Franklin, who in 1766, returning from Göttingen to London, went via Frankfurt and Mainz down the Rhine. 2 As soon as peace had been restored, transatlantic crossings increased, and in the 1780s and 90s, American colonies began to establish themselves in London and Paris. Well-documented early travels along the Rhine are provided by the painter John Trumbull and the statesman Thomas Jefferson. Both had originally planned their journeys, in 1786 and 1788 respectively, not as pleasure trips, but rather for business purposes. For Trumbull, though, the journey down the Rhine became a typical late-eighteenth-century picturesque tour. The contemporaneous travels of two young students, John Rutledge of Charleston and Thomas Lee Shippen of Philadelphia, represent a new type of Rhine tourism. They traveled for pleasure, and, following the advice of Jefferson, included the Rhine in their European itinerary. They experienced the river from the viewpoint of the romantic traveler and opened up the tradition of American Rhine tourism, which even with the ups and downs of historical events has lasted to the present day. 3 A new chapter of this tradition was begun in 2002 when the Rhine Valley was included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. <?page no="12"?> 12 The Napoleonic Wars naturally interfered with the early phase of travels on the Rhine, but after the turmoil on the Continent transatlantic passages quickly resumed, promoted by several factors. Interest in Germany and German learning had been aroused by Madame de Staël’s book on Germany (English translation 1813), and in 1815, the first pioneer students from Harvard, encouraged by Jefferson and President Kirkland of Harvard College, took up studies at the University of Göttingen and inaugurated a period of intensive German-American cultural interrelations. Stimulated by the Rhine poetry of Lord Byron and by popular descriptions and illustrations of Rhine scenery, British Rhine tourism developed to tremendous dimensions in the 1820s and 30s. American tourists followed on the heels of the British, as soon as scheduled transatlantic services had become available after 1818. What Henry Edwin Dwight had deplored in the preface of his Travels in the North of Germany (1829) - “Germany has been, until within a few years, a terra incognita to most Americans” 4 -, was no longer valid in the next decade. The trip to Europe, including a passage on or along the Rhine, became a commonplace experience for the cultured élite of the American east coast. At the same time it became a custom to write travel letters or travel books during or after the journey. As Harold F. Smith’s bibliography American Travellers Abroad illustrates, such books inundated the American market by the middle of the nineteenth century. Travel guides like Tombleson’s Views of the Rhine (1832), Murray’s Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent (1836), and Putnam’s The Tourist in Europe (1838) became widely known and lay on the knees of the devoted tourist from either side of the Atlantic during the passage on the celebrated river. Planché’s Lays and Legends of the Rhine (1827), Bulwer-Lytton’s The Pilgrims of the Rhine (1834), Thomas Hood’s Up the Rhine (1839), Byron’s famous Drachenfels lines from Childe Harold, and, later in the century, Caroline Norton’s immortal poem “Bingen on the Rhine” (ca. 1847) were read or recited with great enthusiasm. The present book gives special consideration to those travel accounts that exhibit originality of observation, singularity of <?page no="13"?> 13 personal experience, and vividness of presentation. Washington Irving, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Fenimore Cooper understandably take a focal position. Cooper’s Gleanings in Europe: The Rhine (1836) and Longfellow’s Hyperion (1839) stand out as the most prominent literary travel accounts inspiring many later Rhine tourists. Though of minor importance as a writer, Bayard Taylor ranks highly as an intercultural mediator through his translations and especially through his famous travel book Views A-Foot (1846). It was read by generations of travelers, and it encouraged them to follow Taylor’s example, though other means of conveyance - the diligence or the coach, the sailboat, towboat, and, after 1827, the steamboat - offered more comfortable travel conditions to most tourists. Such fictionalized travel experiences as those offered by Richard Malcolm Johnston and Edward Everett Hale are of particular interest because of their lively and humorous dialogues ridiculing reactions of naive compatriots confronted with the intricacies of European history. Quite unique literary achievements are the macaronic verses of Charles Godfrey Leland, known as The Breitmann Ballads. He himself is remembered as the paragon of the student prince at Heidelberg. The half century between 1820 and 1870 is a highly fruitful period of German-American encounters, and in spite of the great tragedies of the 20th century, which seriously marred German-American relations, some traits and features of the American image of Germany deriving from the earlier period have lasted to the very present day. The students at Göttingen, Berlin, and Heidelberg, the writers, the painters at the Düsseldorf Academy, the ministers, journalists, political leaders, as well as other travelers in Germany, all these served as mediators of German literature, art, and scholarship in America. The travel reports, however, transmit not only positive images. From Trumbull and Jefferson down to the writers of the 20th century a pervasive unease can be felt when political institutions and social conditions are discussed. The authoritarian governments in Germany before and after 1848 (cf. Bryant) and the nationalism following the Franco-Prussian War (cf. Howells and Dreiser) often generate critical comments about German political backwardness <?page no="14"?> 14 and militarism. In this respect, Americans felt superior to Germans, thus counterbalancing their feelings of inferiority in the face of German cultural and historical plenty (cf. Putnam). Whatever criticism of Germany Americans may have voiced, the Rhineland was almost always seen in a positive light. Its history, scenery, legends, traditions, and not least its wines (cf. Jefferson, Cooper, Longfellow, Melville) set it apart from the industrial and political centers of Germany, especially after 1871. Not even the fanciful references to medieval feudalism, ancient barbarism, and dark robber stories (cf. Dwight, Silliman, Kirkland) detract from its pervasive charms. No matter whether the Rhine is described before the broad background of European history (cf. Cooper and Motley), whether it is perceived with the romantic sensitivity of George William Curtis, or whether - especially its most famous sight, the Loreley cliff - it is seen with the humorous mockery of Charles Godfrey Leland, Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner and Louis Untermeyer, all tourists are aware of the eminent position of the river in German history and culture. What Grant Allen asserted in his book The European Tour (1899), that “the Rhineland alone is the real and original civilised Germany,” 5 is echoed in President George H. W. Bush’s speech in Mainz on May 31, 1989, that the Rhineland “embodies the very soul of Germany.” 6 The popularity of the Rhine in the nineteenth century made it not only the destination for the active tourist; it also occupied a place in the imagination of writers who never visited the river themselves, but used the setting for imaginary Rhine journeys (e.g., Thoreau, Poe, Fuller, Whittier). Personal experience and private observations are of particular interest when reviewing the travel accounts offered in this book. Comments about fellow travelers of different European nations, particularly about the ubiquitous English, can be very amusing and enlightening (cf. Alcott). The frequently uttered dislike of the English or other European nationals (cf. Longfellow, Sedgwick, Kirkland) should not lead to the wrong conclusions, however. Britain, France, and Italy generally found more numerous admirers in America than Germany did, and no German city - Dresden, perhaps, excepted - ever reached the popularity of London, Paris, or Florence. For most <?page no="15"?> 15 American tourists the Rhine journey was only a brief episode during their continental sojourn and very often concluded it after France, Italy, and Switzerland had been visited. But more and more Americans enjoyed availing themselves of the water cure in places like Boppard, Ems, Wiesbaden, and Schwalbach, though the presence of gambling casinos shocked many of the more puritanminded visitors. Observations about life in these spas render vivid pictures of a type of social life quite novel to Americans (cf. Irving, Longfellow, Calvert, Sedgwick). George Henry Calvert even became a propagator of the water cure in America. The Germans, in general, appear as friendly people, but somewhat less refined than the educated traveler from the American east coast. Seeing women working in the fields and witnessing what appeared to be morally questionable customs - not only gambling, but also widespread drinking and laxity of Sunday laws - aroused continual concern among American observers. Almost every American visiting the Rhine comes to the inevitable comparison between the Rhine and its American counterpart, the Hudson. Very often the Rhine fares poorly in these comparisons, it being either too small in dimension or overly civilized. This sentiment is aptly expressed in William Cullen Bryant’s famous sonnet “To Cole, the Painter, Departing for Europe” (written in 1829) 7 , in which the differences between American and European scenery are brought to mind: Fair scenes shall greet thee where thou goest - fair, But different - everywhere the trace of men, Paths, homes, graves, ruins, from the lowest glen To where life shrinks from the fierce Alpine air. Gaze on them, till the tears shall dim thy sight, But keep that earlier, wilder image bright. Writers such as Irving, Longfellow, and Curtis, on the other hand, who view the scenery with the sensitive eyes of the romantic nineteenth-century observer, point out instead the singular features of the Rhine as molded by the past, by stories and legends. <?page no="16"?> 16 For some travelers the passage on the Rhine attained qualities of very meaningful personal dimensions. For Longfellow, as voiced by his alter ego Paul Flemming in Hyperion, the Rhine journey helps to overcome personal affliction and is the educational journey par excellence. The latter experience reverberates in the travel reports of Bayard Taylor, George Copway, Kate Chopin, and Louis Untermeyer. For Catharine Sedgwick the steamboat on the Rhine becomes the place where social distinctions appear meaningless. Similarly, W.E.B. Du Bois experiences his Rhine journey as symbolic emancipation from color prejudice. Charles Sumner feels personally encouraged in his political endeavors by visiting Worms, the place of Luther’s decisive confession in 1521. Even Henry James, who generally felt a stranger in Germany, discovered a regenerating power in the scenery of the Rhine after an absence of fourteen years (1874). For others, of course, the sights of the Rhine held less importance, as they did not meet their high expectations, and by 1850 so much had been written about the Rhine that some travelers felt nothing new could be seen or said (cf. Kirkland and Greeley). * The forty authors selected for this volume do not complete the ranks of famous Americans visiting the Rhine. The roll call could be at least twice as long. The book offers a cross section of the most important travelers over a period of 150 years and of the most interesting travel accounts, brief as some may be. Long reports had to be excerpted by the editors, of course, with the aim of giving preference to the individual and original over the redundant. Texts from official guides and by professional travel writers were not considered for inclusion. Priority was given to the scenic stretch of the Rhine between Bingen and the Seven Mountains south of Bonn and to the adjacent territories lying within the present federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate. This explains why neither Bonn and Heidelberg, nor Wiesbaden and the Taunus spas receive as much attention here as they do in the travel accounts themselves. All texts have appeared in print before, and no unpublished material has been reproduced. The spelling is that of the originals, and <?page no="17"?> 17 NOTES 1 Examples are such exhibitions as “William Turner an Rhein, Maas und Mosel” (Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn, Spring/ Summer 1992), “Vom Zauber des Rheins ergriffen ...: Zur Entdeckung der Rheinlandschaft vom 17. bis 19. Jahrhundert” (Bonn, Fall 1992) and “Rheinromantik: Kunst und Natur” (Museum Wiesbaden, Spring/ Summer 2013). 2 The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 13, ed. Leonard W. Labaree (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969) 315, 384. 3 How the perspectives have changed is nicely illustrated by two American Loreley poems standing one hundred years apart: Thomas Bailey Aldrich: “The Lorelei” (1876) Yonder we see it from the steamer’s deck, The haunted Mountain of the Lorelei - The hanging crags sharp-cut against a sky Clear as a sapphire without flaw or fleck. ‘T was here the Siren lay in wait to wreck The fisher-lad. At dusk, as he rowed by, Perchance he heard her tender amorous cry, And, seeing the wondrous whiteness of her neck, Perchance would halt, and lean towards the shore; Then she by that soft magic which she had Would lure him, and in gossamers of her hair, Gold upon gold, would wrap him o’er and o’er, Wrap him, and sing to him, and drive him mad, Then drag him down to no man knoweth where. (Quoted from Die Loreley, ed. Wolfgang Minaty [Frankfurt: Insel, 1988] 130-131) Allen Ginsberg (1979) Too much industry No fish in the Rhine Lorelei poisoned Too much embarrassment (Quoted from Die Loreley 229) 4 Henry Edwin Dwight, Travels in the North of Germany, in the Years 1825 and 1826 (New York: Carvill, 1829) iii. 5 Grant Allen, The European Tour (New York: Dodd, 1899) 141. 6 George Bush, Remarks by the President at Rheingoldhalle (May 31, 1989) (The White House: Office of the Press Secretary, 1989) 1. 7 The Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant, ed. Parke Godwin (1883, New York: Russell, 1967) 1: 219. only obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Whenever place names reveal only minor inaccuracies in spelling and a clear identification is possible, no editorial corrections were made. For the convenience of the reader a bibliography of useful sources relating to Americans traveling to Germany and German-American cultural interrelations has been appended. <?page no="18"?> 18 John Trumbull 1756 - 1843 The painter John Trumbull, who had distinguished himself in the Revolutionary War, had come to London in 1780 and again early in 1784 to study under Benjamin West. It was here that he met Thomas Jefferson, who was making a visit to England in March and April 1786, and the latter invited him to come to Paris (Kimball 159). In the summer of the same year, when Trumbull wanted to have two of his historical pictures engraved, his agent, Antonio di Poggi, offered his services to look for a suitable engraver on the Continent, and Trumbull was to meet di Poggi at Frankfurt during the fair. Trumbull arrived in Paris in August 1786, met Jefferson, and set out for Germany on September 9. Trumbull kept a travel diary, which he used for an account of the trip he sent to Thomas Jefferson from Antwerp on October 9 (Papers 10: 438), and which he integrated into his Autobiography, written when he was eighty-two and published when he was eighty-five (1841). In it he also included his pencil sketches of major sights of his trip through Germany. 1 Trumbull and his travel companion, a German musician returning from Paris to Erfurt, enter Germany at Saarbrücken on September 16 and travel through the Palatinate in the direction of Bad Dürkheim, Worms, and Oppenheim. In the travel report sent to Jefferson he remarks: “My little tour has been infinitely more pleasant than I expected” (Papers 10: 438). Indeed, his autobiography contains descriptions showing how much he enjoyed the Palatinate Forest and the plain of the Rhine. However, as his remarks on medieval architecture and his use of the word “Gothic” reveal, he travels with the eyes of the painter trained in neoclassicism. We also detect Trumbull’s old revolutionary spirit in his comments on the political and social conditions of this section of Germany: Sept. 17th. - Rose at five o’clock: dined at -. The country more mountainous, wooded and sandy. Afternoon, passed over a very rough country resembling the highlands of New York; the road bad, running between two mountains rising high upon the sides of a small stream. Stopped and slept at a solitary post-house, in the wildest and most picturesque situation. Rose at four o’clock, <?page no="19"?> 19 the 18th, and set off for Turckheim: a few miserable houses are scattered along the roadside, which runs through an almost desert, among the wildest mountains, as far as Frankenstein: here we left the mountains and entered upon the valley of the Rhine. The country is now rich with vines and various cultivation; - several villages in sight. Manheim visible in the distance, backed by a range of very high mountains, (Heidelberg and part of the Black Forest, the eastern boundary of the valley [i.e. the Odenwald and Königstuhl].) The prospect is rich and luxuriant; but the crops which we pass are lean and bad, the weather having been unfavorable, produce and vegetation is backward. The vintage of Champagne and all this country, is made towards the end of September. Sept. 18th. - Four leagues from Worms. The country here is rich, and abundantly cultivated in vines, corn, potatoes, turnips, radishes, &c. The manner of planting vines is different from what is usual in Champagne, and generally throughout France; they are here planted like Indian corn, in rows, but not quite so distant. Each vine is trained to about three feet high, beyond which height the plant is seldom permitted to rise; the field has thus the appearance of a cornfield. In some places, the field in ploughing is divided into lands; on the edge of each land is one row of vines, the space between is devoted to corn, potatoes, turnips, &c., and here the row of vines is permitted to rise higher, and to spread themselves upon slips of board extended from prop to prop, a kind of espalier. At four o’clock passed through the city of Worms, the first impression of which was favorable. At almost every window we passed, was a beautiful and well dressed young lady; - whether our eyes were prejudiced by the long tract of desolate frontier country, through which we had passed, we could not decide; but we thought the women here were in general remarkably pretty. The town is old, the houses neglected, ill built, and apparently in decay. The cathedral is a very clumsy, heavy, Gothic building; we stopped a few minutes to see the interior, but found we could not have admittance unless we waited longer than was convenient, and we concluded <?page no="20"?> 20 from the style of the exterior, that we did not lose much. The fortifications, which were Gothic, were miserable and in ruins. It would give great pleasure to see rising upon the ruins of war, the habitations of peace and industry; but such pleasure is not to be expected in a country like this, where the inhabitants hold even their lives at the will of an arbitrary and despotic prince. “Sic nos non nobis,” 2 is a reflection which is painfully forced upon the mind at every step. The soil is abundantly luxuriant in various productions; but in the midst of plenty, the inhabitants, although numerous, appear to be wretched: to support the pride and pomp of one family, the happiness of the people is sacrificed. (Autobiography 123-125) At Oppenheim, “a wretched old Gothic town, once walled, now in decay” (Autobiography 125), the company crosses the Rhine and proceeds to Frankfurt. His business there completed, Trumbull embarks on a boat for Mainz on September 22, and a certain Mr. Haberle of Erfurt, “a gentleman of the university here, and a fellow passenger in the boat” (Autobiography 129) guides him through the city. The tour of the city includes amongst other sights: the cathedral, of rich but heavy Gothic architecture; no paintings of value; the choir of new Gothic Grecian. There are, in some of the chapels, pictures in fresco of some merit; and a - not yet finished, by the principal canon of the cathedral, is a beautiful little work, of real Greek taste. The citadel stands upon the height of ground above the town, and is a fine specimen of modern fortification. Within the citadel is preserved what remains of an ancient tower, said to be the monument of Drusus; in the neighboring country are many remains of ancient Roman works and buildings. Mayence is the Maguntium of Cæsar, and when the water of the river is low, the remains of a Roman bridge may still be seen, at the lower part of the town, supposed to be of his time, and indeed to have been constructed by him across the Rhine. The view from the citadel is fine, overlooking the city, the river, and opposite country. The principal street of the town is handsome; <?page no="21"?> 21 upon it are placed the electoral stables, and in the lower part, on the bank of the Rhine, stands the electoral palace, externally an old, irregular Gothic building; the interior said to be decent, not magnificent; I did not enter it, but made a slight drawing of the river front [see p. 27]. The city contains thirty thousand inhabitants, a nunnery with its dependencies, an university, &c.- mechanics, shopkeepers, &c., and has considerable commerce. (Autobiography 129-130) On a beautiful morning, the day after, Trumbull embarks for Cologne. The trip, in pleasant international company, documents the early years of tourism on the Rhine and the leisurely style of an eighteenth-century passage down the river: Sept. 23d. - Embarked for Cologne, in a boat, i.e. a batteau with oars and an awning. Again very fortunate in my companions; the person whom I first met was M. Herry of Antwerp, at whose house my friend, Major Brice of Maryland, formerly lived when studying painting in that city - I found M. Herry a very agreeable young man, speaking both French and English tolerably, and possessing great love for the arts, and considerable skill in painting. Our other companions, Mons. and Madame Payen of Maestricht, a very pleasant couple, who spoke French well, returning from a visit to his parents in Switzerland; and with them, under their protection, was a beautiful and amiable young lady, very like Mrs. Langdon of Portsmouth; she had been for two years at Lausanne with an aunt, and was the daughter of General Gresnier, in the service of Holland, residing at Breda, and commandant of Gertruydenbergh. Several others were on board the boat, to our great vexation, for we had understood it to have been engaged for our party exclusively; however, as they were all decent people, we reconciled ourselves to our fate, soon became acquainted, and at ten o’clock left Mayence. The morning was fine, the sky and the river clear and undisturbed, the country surrounding us rich, various, and bright, in the distance lofty mountains terminating the scene; the banks of the river covered <?page no="22"?> 22 with villages, and boats and barges crossing and recrossing, some coming up the river, others following us down. At twelve o’clock we spread our little repast, consisting of a pair of roasted chickens and some veal, with good bread and some bottles of fine wine; the want of plates and dishes was supplied by bits of clean paper, the knives out of our pockets, and two tumblers we had to divide between the ladies and gentlemen. The singularity of our meeting, the oddity of our table, the whimsical mixture and confusion of languages, with the delightful beauty of the weather and the scene, all conspired to make our dinner the most charming party possible, and no travellers ever were happier than we. At two o’clock we went on shore a few minutes at Bingen, a small town on the west bank of the river, seven leagues from Mayence, at the entrance of the highlands, which are picturesque in the highest degree, far superior in grandeur to the highlands of the North River. 3 The stream is contracted to a very narrow space, restrained between high mountains, rocky, wild, precipitous, and every summit ornamented with the ruins of some ancient Gothic castle, overhanging the river and subject country, like the eyrie of an eagle. The river just below Bingen runs rapidly; the channel is interrupted by rocks, but not dangerous; on one of these (not larger than Pollipell’s island) is a formidable structure in stone, intended probably for a prison in ancient days. (Autobiography 130-131) The passage, however, is not quite as smooth as anticipated, due to a sudden storm, but in the evening the company safely reaches Bacharach, where they spend the night. The following morning the journey is continued, and Trumbull is overwhelmed with the beauty of the river and the mountains: Soon after entering the channel between the mountains, the weather became obscure, then squally, and at four o’clock the wind blew violently in gusts, and we were very happy, when with some difficulty we reached a little landing-place on the west side, where we got safely on shore; the ladies were <?page no="23"?> 23 excessivley frightened, and in truth with good reason. There was no house near to shelter or defend us from the storm; a few osiers, which had been cut and made into bundles by basketmakers, were all we could find to protect us from the rain. We reassured the ladies, drank a tumbler of wine, and walked on in a little foot-path until the wind abated, the lovely little girl leaning on my arm for support; we resembled a scene of ancient story, knights and damsels, and difficulties and dangers. We soon recovered spirits to amuse ourselves with our adventure, and recollecting passages of poetry and romance, we returned cheerfully to our boat. The weather cleared, and we went on pleasantly to Bacherach, a village on the west shore, four leagues below Bingen, where we landed at seven o’clock. The ladies, after their fatigue and alarms, went immediately to rest; we supped pleasantly, and slept soundly. At six o’clock next morning breakfasted together, and pursued our voyage. The morning was squally, but the mountainous scene through which we were passing was picturesque in the highest degree; every moment presented some new change of form or effect, some ruined castle in a new point of view - scenes sometimes pleasant, sometimes terrible, always grand. The gleams of sunshine and alternate squalls, which at times concealed, and then again unveiled the mountains, enriched the beauty of the day, but destroyed its pleasures and even comforts, for the frequent rain rendered our boat damp and cold, and the sudden violence of the wind was at times dangerous. (Autobiography 131-132) After passing Coblenz (“the town large and well fortified, the citadel strong, and the castle of Ehrenbrietzen on the opposite shore, placed on the lofty summit of an almost inaccesible rock, frowning on all below, river, town and country, with a stern and solemn grandeur” [Autobiography 132-133]), the party stays at Neuwied for the night, and from Andernach, across the river, they continue their journey via Remagen to Bonn and Düsseldorf by coach, due to extremely bad weather: <?page no="24"?> 24 Sept. 24th.- At seven o’clock, M. Herry and myself embarked at Neuwidt; the weather still rainy and cold, with heavy wind. We found it advisable to land at nine o’clock at Andernach, a small town one league below Neuwidt, on the opposite shore. Service was performing in the church; we attended for an hour, and at ten returned to our boat; found that the wind had rather increased, and the water was very rough, but once more we attempted to descend the river. Soon, however, we found our situation very disagreeable and hazardous; the wind increased to a very heavy gale, the water was violently agitated, and we were glad to reach the shore again, at a little village opposite, at the distance of a mile. The gale increased to such a degree, (blowing directly up the river,) that we gave up all hope of being able to proceed by water, and inquired if it were possible to obtain post-horses; and to our great mortification learned that Andernach, which we had just quitted with no small risk, was a post-town, and that there was no practible road down the east side of the river where we were, nor any horses. It remained, therefore, only to recross the river, and this was not only unpleasant, but dangerous. The desire to get on our way, and our reluctance to spend one, perhaps two or three days, in a miserable dirty little village, at length determined us to hazard the attempt. M. Herry having on board the boat a chaise, (cabriolet,) in which he had travelled from Dresden to Mayence, was so kind as to offer me a seat in it, and the river was all that obstructed our going forward. We therefore hired a larger boat, with fresh and skilful hands, shifted our baggage on board her, embarked, and in a few minutes found ourselves safe on shore, a short distance below Andernach, where we landed the chaise and our baggage. Meantime the tempest increased, with violent rain; I had not even a great-coat, and was thoroughly wet before we could finish our labor and secure our effects above the bank of the river, and out of its reach. There were no houses near, but at length we observed at some distance a little chapel, by the roadside, which might afford some shelter from the rain; we ran thither, carrying with us our little basket of eatables, and a couple of bottles of wine, and there made our <?page no="25"?> 25 dinner, waiting for horses, which we had sent for to the town. The little chapel proved to us the most delightful refuge; some poor Italian travellers on foot, were driven to the same shelter by the storm; we shared our provisions and wine with them, and enjoyed more satisfaction in this wretched little hovel, than is perhaps commonly seen in palaces. After waiting two hours, until one o’clock, we at last got horses, mounted the chaise, and proceeded on our journey, leaving our bottles, basket, glass, the fragments of our dinner, a small box, &c., in the entrance of the chapel, as a memorial of gratitude for the shelter which we had received, and for the benefit of any poor creature who might be our successor. The wind, still furious, blew directly in our faces, and the front of the cabriolet was open, but we were safe on land, and that reflection, when we looked towards the river, which the continuance of the gale had by this time rendered terrible, comforted us for the cold and rain to which we were still exposed. We went on in this weather six hours, to Remagh, eighteen miles, or six leagues. Here for want of horses, we were again detained nearly two hours; having resolved to travel all night, we at length obtained horses, and went to Bonne, the residence of the Elector of Cologne. (Autobiography 133-135) Passing through Belgium and Holland, Trumbull returns to London in November 1786. In 1797, when he went to Stuttgart on a business trip, Trumbull saw Coblenz and the Rhineland again, the whole region now affected by the political upheavals of the time: There was an armistice at the moment, and in my journey, my road led me alternately through the military positions of the French and Austrian troops. For instance, at Coblentz, I met the funeral procession of General Hoche, which passed under the walls of Ehrenbretstein, and received the funeral salute of respect and condolence from the Austrian garrison. (Autobiography 221) <?page no="26"?> 26 WORKS CITED Kimball, Marie. Jefferson: The Scene of Europe 1784 to 1789. New York: Coward-McCann, 1950. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Vol. 10. Ed. Julian P. Boyd. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954. Pochmann, Henry A. German Culture in America: Philosophical and Literary Influences 1600-1900. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1957. Sizer, Theodore. The Works of Colonel John Trumbull: Artist of the American Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950. Trumbull, John. Autobiography, Reminiscences and Letters of John Trumbull, from 1756 to 1841. New York: Wiley, 1841. NOTES 1 Cf. Sizer 86; Pochmann characterizes these sketches as “being probably the first of the Rhine made by an American” and “excellent in their kind” (50). 2 “Thus we toil, but not for ourselves”; variation on Virgil’s ironic verse “sic vos non vobis.” 3 In the letter to Jefferson the scenery appears in a less romantic light: “The Country through which the River takes its course, is for 8 Lea. level, fertile, and rich. It then meets a Chain of Mountains similar to those on the North River, becomes contracted, the current broken by Rocks and small rapids which render the Navigation somewhat dangerous. The Shores are picturesque in the highest degree; precipices of Rock, Mountains, sometimes barren, again covered with Vines, and the Summits of those which are least accessible cover’d with the Ruins of ancient Gothic Chateaux, Ruins of Barbarism which one contemplates with pleasure, as they are so many monuments of the advances of Civilization and Happiness” (Papers 10: 439-440). <?page no="27"?> 27 <?page no="28"?> 28 <?page no="29"?> 29 Thomas Jefferson 1743 - 1826 In the spring of 1788, Thomas Jefferson, then serving in France as U.S. minister, set out for Amsterdam to meet John Adams and to participate in negotiations with Dutch bankers regarding a public credit for the United States. These affairs settled, Jefferson decided to return to Paris via the Rhineland and Strasbourg, a trip that lasted from March 31 to April 23. The grand tour at that time did not yet regularly include the Rhine valley, and Jefferson, traveling in a great hurry, actually missed the most picturesque part of it, the stretch from Coblenz to Bingen. It was much more for agricultural and vinicultural reasons that he went to this part of Germany; he also wanted to meet his old friend Baron de Geismar of Hanau, who had been a prisoner of war in Virginia during the Revolution. It is also quite likely that the advice and recommendation of John Trumbull had induced him to undertake the trip (Kimball 233; Dumbauld 116). Jefferson’s “Notes of a Tour through Holland and the Rhine Valley” reflects his predominant interest in economic and commercial matters. There is very little on the scenery and art (e.g., “At Spire is nothing remarkeable.” [Papers 13: 25]), but much more on winegrowing, architectural and mechanical curiosities, and also, as in Trumbull’s report, on the political and social circumstances of the regions from which many immigrants to America had come. Having passed through Cologne, Bonn, and Andernach, Jefferson arrived at Coblenz on April 5. His comments on the wines of the Moselle, just as those written later on the wines of the Rheingau and Rhenish Hesse, show how well he acquainted himself with the practical and commercial aspects of wine-growing: The best Moselle wines are made about 15. leagues from hence, in an excessively mountainous country. The 1st. quality (without any comparison) is that made on the mountain of Brownberg, adjoining to the village of Dusmond, and the best crop is that of the Baron Breidbach Burrhesheim grand chambellan et grand Baillif de Coblentz. His Receveur, of the name of Mayer, lives at Dusmond. The last fine year was 1783. which sells now at 50. Louis the foudre, which contains 6 aumes <?page no="30"?> 30 of 170 bottles each = about 1100. bottles. This is about 22. sous Tournois the bottle. In general the Baron Burresheim’s crop will sell as soon as made, say at the vintage, for 130. 140. 150. ecus the foudre (the ecu is 1 1 / 2 florin of Holland) say 200ƒ. 2. Vialen is the 2d. quality, and sells new at 120. ecus the futre. 3. Crach, Bisport are the 3d. and sell for about 105. ecus. I compared Crach of 1783. with Baron Burrhesheim’s of the same year. The latter is quite clear of acid, stronger, and very sensibly the best. 4. Selting, which sells at 100. ecus. 5. Kous, Berncastle the 5th. quality sells at 80. or 90. After this there is a gradation of qualities down to 30. ecus. These wines must be 5. or 6. years old before they are quite ripe for drinking. 1000. plants yield a foudre of wine a year in the most plentiful vineyards. In other vineyards it will take 2000. or 2500. plants to yield a foudre. The culture of 1000. plants costs about 1. Louis a year. A day’s labour of a man is paid in Winter 20 kreitzers (i.e. 1 / 3 of a florin) in Summer 26. A woman’s is half that. The red wines of this country are very indifferent and will not keep. The Moselle is here from 100. to 200. yds. wide, the Rhine 300. to 400. A jessamine in the Ct. de Moustier’s garden in leaf. (Papers 13: 15-16) After visiting the palace of the Elector of Trier, Jefferson continues his journey through the picturesque lower Lahn valley: At Coblentz we pass the river on a pendulum boat, and the road to Nassau is over tremendous hills, on which is here and there a little corn, more vines, but mostly barren. In some of these barrens are forests of beach and oak, tolerably large, but crooked and knotty, the undergrowth beach brush, broom and moss. The soil of the plains, and of the hills where they are cultivable, is reddish. Nassau is a village the whole rents of which should not amount to more than a hundred or two guineas, yet it gives the title of Prince to the house of Orange to which it belongs. (Papers 13: 16) <?page no="31"?> 31 From Nassau he moves to Frankfurt via Bad Schwalbach, Wiesbaden, and Hochheim. Comparing the republican system of the city of Frankfurt with the surrounding landgraviate of Hesse, he comments on the effects of political oppression: In Francfort all is life, bustle and motion. In Hanau the silence and quiet of the mansions of the dead. Nobody is seen moving in the streets; every door is shut; no sound of the saw, the hammer, or other utensil of industry. The drum and fife is all that is heard. […] The little tyrants round about having disarmed their people, and made it very criminal to kill game, one knows when they quit the territory of Frankfort by the quantity of game which is seen. In the Republic, every body being allowed to be armed, and to hunt on their own lands, there is very little game left in it’s territory. The hog hereabouts resembles extremely the little hog of Virginia, round like that, a small head, and short upright ears. This makes the ham of Mayence, so much esteemed at Paris. (Papers 13: 17-18) On April 10, Jefferson travels to Hochheim and Mainz: We cross the Rhine at Mayence on a bridge 1840. feet long, supported by 47. boats. It is not in a direct line, but curved up against the stream, which may strengthen it, if the difference between the upper and lower curve be sensible, if the planks of the floor be thick, well jointed together, and forming sectors of circles, so as to act on the whole as the stones of an arch. But it has by no means this appearance. Near one end, one of the boats has an Axis in peritrochio, and a chain, by which it may be let drop down stream some distance, with the portion of the floor belonging to it, so as to let a vessel through. Then it is wound up again into place, and to consolidate it the more with the adjoining parts, the loose section is a little higher, and has at each end a folding stage, which folds back on it when it moves down, and when brought up again into place, these stages are folded over on the bridge. This whole operation takes but 4. or 5. minutes. In the winter the bridge is taken away entirely, on <?page no="32"?> 32 account of the ice, and then every thing passes on the ice, thro’ the whole winter. (Papers 13: 18) The following day he takes a boat down the river to Rüdesheim: The women do everything here. They dig the earth, plough, saw, cut, and split wood, row, tow the batteaux &c. In a small but dull kind of batteau, with two hands rowing with a kind of large paddle, and a square sail but scarcely a breath of wind we went down the river at the rate of 5. miles an hour, making it 3 1 / 2 hours to Rudesheim. The floats of wood which go with the current only, go 1 1 / 2 mile an hour. They go night and day. There are 5. boatmills abreast here. Their floats seem to be about 8.f. broad. The Rhine yields salmon, carp, pike, and perch, and the little rivers running into it yield speckled trout. The plains from Maintz to Rudesheim are good and in corn: the hills mostly in vines. The banks of the river are so low that, standing up in the batteau, I could generally see what was in the plains, yet they are seldom overflowed. Though they begin to make wine, as has been said, at Cologne, and continue it up the river indefinitely, yet it is only from Rudesheim to Hocheim, that wines of the very first quality are made. The river happens there to run due East and West, so as to give to it’s hills on that side a Southern aspect, and even in this canton, it is only Hocheim, Johansberg, and Rudesheim that are considered as of the very first quality. ( Papers 13: 18-19) After detailed comments on the quality, quantity, and the prices of Rheingau wines, Jefferson adds similar observations on the wines of Laubenheim, Bodenheim, and Nierstein: On the road between Mayence and Oppenheim are three cantons which are also esteemed as yielding wines of the 2d. quality. These are Laubenheim, Bodenheim, and Nierstein. Laudenheim is a village about 4. or 5. miles from Mayence. It’s wines are made on a steep hill side, the soil of which is grey, poor and mixed with <?page no="33"?> 33 some stone. The river happens there to make a short turn to S.W. so as to present it’s hills to the S.E. Bodenheim is a village 9. miles, and Nierstein another about 10. or 11. miles from Mayence. Here too the river is N.E. and S.W. so as to give to the hills between these villages a S.E. aspect; and at Nierstein a valley making off, brings the face of the hill round to the South. The hills between these villages are almost perpendicular, of a vermillion red, very poor, and having as much rotten stone as earth. It is to be observed that these are the only cantons on the South side of the river which yield good wine, the hills on this side being generally exposed to the cold winds, and turned from the sun. (Papers 13: 21) After passing through Oppenheim and Worms, Jefferson visits Mannheim, Heidelberg, Schwetzingen, Speyer, and Strasbourg, and then returns to Paris. In a letter to his secretary William Short, written in Frankfurt on April 9, Jefferson also takes note of the origin of many German immigrants to America: The neighborhood of this place is that which has been to us a second mother country. It is from the palatinate on this part of the Rhine that those swarms of Germans have gone, who, next to the descendants of the English, form the greatest body of our people. I have been continually amused by seeing here the origin of whatever is not English among us. I have fancied myself often in the upper parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania. (Papers 13: 48) On June 19, 1788, Jefferson sent to John Rutledge, Jr., and Thomas Lee Shippen, two American students on the grand tour 1 , his “Hints to Americans Travelling in Europe,” which he felt he had scribbled “very hastily and undigested” (Papers 13: 262), but offered useful advice from which the two Rhine tourists profited. For Coblenz he gave the following hint: Here call for Moselle wine, and particularly that of Brownberg and of the Grand Chambellan’s crop of 1783. that you may be <?page no="34"?> 34 acquainted with the best quality of Moselle wine. The Elector’s palace here is worth visiting, and note the manner in which the rooms are warmed by tubes coming from an oven below. The Chateau over the river to be visited. Remarkeably fine bread here, particularly the roll for breakfast, from which the Philadelphians derive what they call the French roll, which does not exist in France, but has been carried over by the Germans. (Papers 13: 265) He regrets not having gone farther up the Rhine and advises Rutledge and Shippen to do so: Were I to pass again, I would hire horses to carry me along the Rhine as far as a practicable road is to be found. Then I would embark my carriage on a boat to be drawn by a horse or horses till you pass the cliffs which intercept the land communication. This would be only for a few miles, say half a dozen or a dozen. You will see what I am told are the most picturesque scenes in the world, and which travellers go express to see, and you may be landed at the first village on the North East side of the river after passing the cliffs, and from thence hire horses to Mayence. Stop on the road at the village of Rudesheim, and the Abbaye of Johansberg to examine their vineyards and wines. The latter is the best made on the Rhine without comparison, and is about double the price of the oldest Hoch. That of the year 1775 is the best. I think they charge two florins and a half a bottle for it in the taverns. (Papers 13: 265-266) As far as political matters are concerned, Jefferson advises Rutledge and Shippen to be critical and not to be deluded by the splendor of the courts: 7. Politics of each country. Well worth studying so far as respects internal affairs. Examine their influence on the happiness of the people: take every possible occasion of entering into the hovels of the labourers, and especially at the moments of their <?page no="35"?> 35 repast, see what they eat, how they are cloathed, whether they are obliged to labour too hard; whether the government or their landlord takes from them an unjust proportion of their labour; on what footing stands the property they call their own, their personal liberty &c. 8. Courts. To be seen as you would see the tower of London or Menagerie of Versailles with their Lions, tygers, hyaenas and other beasts of prey, standing in the same relation to their fellows. A slight acquaintance with them will suffice to shew you that, under the most imposing exterior, they are the weakest and worst part of mankind. Their manners, could you ape them, would not make you beloved in your own country, nor would they improve it could you introduce them there to the exclusion of that honest simplicity now prevailing in America, and worthy of being cherished. (Papers 13: 269-270) In a letter to Jefferson, dated Strasbourg, July 31, 1788, Shippen testifies to the usefulness of Jefferson’s hints: Your advice in all things had proved hitherto so excellent that we determined to pursue it in mounting the Rhine tho’ every body we spoke to on the subject threw impediments in our way. There was no road for more than 5 or 6 miles up that a carriage could go pass, when you got there you could not find a boat, and when you were put down on the other side the cliffs, you could not have horses to go on with and if we concluded to go entirely by water, the expense would be trebled, and the inconveniences innumerable; and our delay very great. These were the representations they made us. I was not to be dissuaded by their endeavors and Rutledge consented to hire a boat at 2 guineas and a half to take us to Mentz. Every yard we went we had a new object of delight; the scenes are romantic beyond every thing; the mode of travelling easy and convenient. We sat in our carriage, made notes as we went along and were extremely happy that we had pursued your plan. It delayed us a little, but we were amply repaid. On our way we lodged at <?page no="36"?> 36 WORKS CITED Dumbauld, Edward. Thomas Jefferson: American Tourist. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1946. Gabler, James M. Passions. The Wines and Travels of Thomas Jefferson. Baltimore: Bacchus Press, 1995. Kimball, Marie. Jefferson: The Scene of Europe 1784 to 1789. New York: Coward-McCann, 1950. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Vol. 13. Ed. Julian P. Boyd. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956. Reidesheim and breakfasted the next morning on samples of Johannesberg wine. What a delicious liquor Sir it is! But I found it too expensive for us to think of importing it. (Papers 13: 448) John Rutledge fully concurred in this view: I found it slow ascending the Rhine, but was compensated by the romantic and picturesque Scenes. On my passage I visited the Vineyards at [Johanne]sberg. The wines were the most [deliciou]s I ever tasted: but I fear we can never [import] them in America […]. (Papers 13: 454) NOTE 1 John Rutledge, Jr. (1766-1819), was the son of John Rutledge (1739-1800), one of the most prominent political figures from South Carolina in the Revolutionary Period and Early Republic, who served in many positions on the state and federal levels. John Rutledge, Jr. was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1797-1803. Thomas Lee Shippen (1765-1798) was the son of the renowned physician William Shippen, Jr. (1736-1808), who had served as Director General of Hospitals and Chief Physician of the Continental Army. <?page no="37"?> 37 Washington Irving 1783 - 1859 Washington Irving had come to England in 1815 to help in the management of the shaky family firm at Liverpool, but when disaster could not be averted, he returned to the pen to continue his career as a writer. Encouraged by Walter Scott, he studied the German language and romantic German literature, and wrote a series of stories and essays, published in 1819/ 20 as The Sketch Book, which increased his literary fame on both sides of the Atlantic. When on July 6, 1822, he left London for a tour of Germany, he was traveling for a double purpose (Reichart 42). He wanted to collect new material in the country whose legends and myths had attracted him while he was composing The Sketch Book, and at the same time hoped to find a cure for his rheumatic complaints at some of the famous German spas. He spent two weeks at Aachen, but found no improvement there. Feeling lonely and miserable, he wrote to his sister on August 2, 1822: […] I think I shall make another push, and ascend the Rhine to Wisbaden, which is a more pleasant and fashionable wateringplace; and where, from all I can learn, I think the waters will be more efficacious than here. At any rate, I shall then have seen the most beautiful part of the Rhine, and if I do not amend pretty readily in my health, I shall make for Paris at once, get in the neighborhood of a dry vapor bath, and then lay by until I make a perfect cure. It is extremely tantalizing to be here just on the frontiers of Germany, in the vicinity of some of the most beautiful and romantic scenery in Europe, and to be thus fettered and disabled. (Letters 1: 695) Irving and Thomas Brandram, an old acquaintance from England he happened to meet in Aachen, leave the city for Wiesbaden on August 5. They arrive in Coblenz the day after, and Irving jots down in his journal: Fine approach to Coblentz - castle of Erehnbreihtstein on the opposite side of the river on high rock - towers and spires <?page no="38"?> 38 of the town - fortifications on hill to our right, with batteries bearing upon the road & solitary soldier walking by the works in relief agst sky - fine bridge over the Moselle yellowish stone - groups of Soldiers peasants &c upon it - Old rambling houses of the town commanding the view - groups of prussian <put u> officers & soldiers about the streets - put up at Three Crowns. (Journals and Notebooks 3: 7-8) As they continue the journey up the river, Irving is highly pleased with what he sees. His journal entries reveal the keen observer who leaves out nothing that attracts the writer’s eye: Leave Coblentz at 2 Oclock - and arrive in the evening at Bingen - on our way we pass St Goar where is the ruin of the Rheinfels, one of the noblest castle ruins I have ever seen - Part of the road between Coblentz & Bingen <passes convent> is <to convent of the foot> wrought along the foot of the mountains and passes for miles thro mountainous defile, <with vines> covered with woods & vineyards. August 8 Bingen: Rambling house for an Hotel - In the morning I ascended the castle of Klopp, from whence is a lovely prospect up the Rhinegau, and up the Moselle [must be the Nahe] with the bridge of Drusus over it - Just below Bingen is the <castle of> Mouse Tower - and on a height opposite the ruins of the castle of Ehrenfels. From Klopp I had a fine view of Johannesberg - Rudesheim - &c &c &c where the finest wines are produced. (Journals and Notebooks 3: 9) And in a letter to his brother Peter he writes in the same enthusiastic tone: Though too lame to explore the curious old towns and the romantic ruins which we passed, yet I lolled in the carriage, and banquetted on fine scenery in Brevoort’s favorite style [reference to the travels of his friend Henry Brevoort]. After <?page no="39"?> 39 all that I had heard and read, the Rhine far surpassed my expectations. Indeed, I am perfectly delighted with Germany. (Letters 1: 702) From Wiesbaden he writes to his sister on August 19, 1822: I wish you were here with me to enjoy some of the fine scenery of this neighborhood, and to take a day’s tour among the woody glens and charming little valleys that lie among the Taunus mountains, or to coast along the lovely borders of the Rhine where the hills are covered with woods and vineyards, and crowned with mouldering old castles. I am very much pleased with the Germans; they are a frank, kind, well-meaning people, and I make no doubt were I in a place where I could become intimate, I should enjoy myself very much among them. […] I think I shall quit Wisbaden in a day or two, and go to the old city of Mayence, or Mentz, about six miles from hence, on the banks of the Rhine. There is a bath there of the kind I require, and I shall have the resource of a large town to interest me, besides being able to make excursions on water among the beautiful scenery of the Rheingau, and up the Mayne to Frankfort, for the river Mayne empties into the Rhine just at Mayence. [After an excursion to the Platte lookout near Wiesbaden, he continues the letter.] I cannot express to you how charming these drives are among beautiful woody mountains, with every now and then prospects over an immense tract of country, with the Mayne and Rhine winding through it. The weather is temperate and serene, especially in the evenings. The landscape is dotted with villages. Mayence is a striking object in every view, and far off to the south the prospect is bounded by the blue heights of the Odenwald. It is in this latter region you may recollect that I laid the scene of my little story of the Spectre Bridegroom. (Letters 1: 696-697) At Mainz he takes residence at the “Hôtel de Darmstadt.” He experiences the city in its particular post-Napoleonic situation, a <?page no="40"?> 40 garrison town of the German Confederation with its interesting variety of troops and military representatives of many countries: This place is remarkably well situated for enjoying the scenery of the Rhine. From the bridge of boats which crosses the river in front of the town, there is a beautiful view down the Rheingau with several little islands covered with trees, while along the opposite side of the river lie the warm sunny hills which produce the finest Rhine wines. They lie exposed to the south, and sheltered by the range of Taunus mountains from the north winds, so that their grapes have the choicest influence of sun and weather. Nothing can be more charming than this look down the river, with the fine range of mountains closing the view; and then, on looking up, there is the little chateau and village of Hockheimer, famous for its wine; the confluence of the Mayne, and the purple heights of the Odenwald away in the distance. Mayence is one of those old battered warrior towns that enjoy the advantage of being knocked about, and battered, and taken, and retaken in every war. The old cathedral bears marks of the last siege, some of the towers being in ruins, and the traces of a bombshell in the interior. The town has two or three fine streets, and several huge rambling old German palaces; some turned into hospitals, some into barracks for soldiers, and some shut up and inhabited, I presume, by ghosts and hobgoblins. Many parts of the town are very old, with time-worn and war-worn towers. The place is now garrisoned by German confederates, so that there are troops of different powers here. At the inn where I put up, and which is kept by a fat, jolly, waggish old Frenchman, a great Bonapartist in his heart, there is a table d’hôte frequented by several officers, Russian, Austrian, Prussian, &c. I have dined here on a visit I made some days since to Mayence, and was very much pleased with the motley group, who were all acquainted with each other, and full of conversation. One of the pleasantest things in travelling on the continent is to meet with table-d’hôtes of this kind in garrisoned towns. You find at them <?page no="41"?> 41 always a variety of strongly marked characters; men who have led a rambling campaigning life, and seen a great deal of the world. (Letters 1: 697-698) The impressions of a stroll along the river, entered into his journal on August 24, are summed up in the following sketch: Beautiful morning on the banks of the Rhine - Strolled along the quay of Mayence. Large clumsy packetboats for various parts of the river - Smaller barges with awngs & flags - groups of peasants <with> girls with quilted caps - others embarking in boat which pushes off & floats down with the tide - old towers of Mayence - trestle along the river silvery look of the water, with tender tints of the distant Taunus mountains - Palace of Bibrich in the distance - Island of the Rhinegau - old red palaces of Mayence - (Journals and Notebooks 3: 12) From Mainz, Irving, though physically quite miserable, makes several trips to enjoy the beauties of the Rhine valley. Thus, he takes a boat down the river to Coblenz on September 6, and returns to Mainz along the Lahn and through the Taunus Mountains on September 8: Sept. 9th.- I returned last night from a delightful tour of three days. The weather was so fine and I felt so comfortable that I was tempted to visit some of the beautiful scenery of the Rhine. Accordingly I set off early one morning in company with a young English officer in one of the passage boats of the river, and made a voyage to Coblentz, about sixty miles down the river, where we arrived late in the evening. This took me through some of the finest scenery through which I had passed in my journey up the Rhine; I then saw it from the land; I now had an opportunity of seeing it from the water. I cannot express to you how much I am delighted with these beautiful and romantic scenes. Fancy some of the finest parts of the Hudson embellished with old towns, castles and convents, and seen under the advantage <?page no="42"?> 42 of the loveliest weather, and you may have some idea of the magnificence and beauty of the Rhine. (Letters 1: 703-704) During periods of indisposition, Irving takes German lessons at the “Hôtel de Darmstadt” from “la belle Katrina,” the youngest daughter of the innkeeper: Notwithstanding the continuance of my complaint, I think the change of country and climate has been of service to me. The beautiful scenery among which I have lived of late, the fine weather and the pure and healthful air of these parts have had a most genial effect upon mind and body. I do not know when I have been more alive to the influence of lovely landscapes. […] I am most kindly attended by every one belonging to the hotel; am quite one of the family of mine host, and have daily lessons in French and German from one of his daughters, la belle Katrina, a pretty little girl of sixteen who has been educated in a convent. (Letters 1: 703) Moreover, he dates the introduction to the Tales of a Traveller, though it was really written later in London, from this place (Tales 268, n 3.8): WORTHY AND DEAR READER! Hast thou ever been waylaid in the midst of a pleasant tour by some treacherous malady; thy heels tripped up, and thou left to count the tedious minutes as they passed, in the solitude of an inn chamber? If thou hast, thou wilt be able to pity me. Behold me, interrupted in the course of my journeying up the fair banks of the Rhine, and laid up by indisposition in this old frontier town of Mentz. I have worn out every source of amusement. I know the sound of every clock that strikes, and bell that rings, in the place. I know to a second when to listen for the first tap of the Prussian drum, as it summons the garrison to parade; or at what hour to expect the distant sound of the Austrian military band. All these have grown wearisome to me, and even the well known step of my doctor, as he slowly paces the corridor, with <?page no="43"?> 43 healing in the creak of his shoes, no longer affords an agreeable interruption to the monotony of my apartment. For a time I attempted to beguile the weary hours by studying German under the tuition of mine host’s pretty little daughter, Katrine; but I soon found even German had not power to charm a languid ear, and that the conjugating of ich liebe might be powerless, however rosy the lips which uttered it. (Tales 3) His health improved, Irving leaves Mainz on September 13 for Frankfurt, Heidelberg, an extensive tour of southern Germany 1 and Austria, and finally for a six-month stay at Dresden: […] I turned my back upon Strasbourg and France, and ordering post-horses at Kehl, bade a long and reluctant adieu to my summer friend and companion, the Rhine. It was really like parting with an old friend when I took the last look at this majestic stream about which I had passed so many weeks; our road now lay up the narrow valley of Kenseg [Kinzig] that runs into the bosom of the Black Forest. I had bidden adieu to the gay borders of Germany that divide it from France, and was now about to penetrate into its interior. (Letters 1: 709) Irving’s view of the Rhine is quite different from that of the previous American visitors. Though Trumbull and Jefferson had enjoyed the scenery, they had come here for rather practical reasons - business and the study of agriculture and viniculture; and the first American students at Göttingen 2 , though they also visited the Rhine, had primarily academic interests. Irving’s enjoyment of the landscape and his delight in the history, the castles, the legends and the fairy tales of the country reflect much more the Romantic discovery of the Rhineland by Americans, in the same way, one may say, as Ann Radcliffe’s, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s, Mary Shelley’s, and Lord Byron’s visits had done for the English a few years before. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Rhine continued to be a steady point of attraction for American tourists on the grand tour in Europe. <?page no="44"?> 44 NOTES 1 When passing through Switzerland in May 1805, Irving had already enjoyed the scenery of the Upper Rhine near Basle. 2 George Ticknor and Edward Everett studied at Göttingen from 1815-17, Augustus Thorndike from 1816-17, Joseph Green Cogswell from 1816-19 (interrupted by periods of travel), George Bancroft from 1818-20, and Robert B. Patton from 1819-21. Cogswell and Bancroft founded the famous Round Hill School at Northampton, Mass., in 1823, an institution modeled on the German Gymnasium. Thomas Gold Appleton and John Lothrop Motley received their pre-college training at this school. Early fellow students at Göttingen were also George Henry Calvert (1824-25) and William Emerson (1824- 25), a brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson. To this early group of Americans studying in Germany also belongs Frederic Henry Hedge, who was educated at Schulpforta (1818- 22). For further details see: Orie William Long, Literary Pioneers: Early American Explorers of European Culture (1935; New York: Russell, 1963); Daniel B. Shumway, “The American Students of the University of Göttingen,” German American Annals 8.5-6 (1910): 171- 254; Paul G. Buchloh and Walter T. Rix, eds., American Colony of Göttingen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1976). WORKS CITED Irving, Washington. Journals and Notebooks. Vol. 3. 1819-1827. Ed. Walter A. Reichart. Vol. 3. of The Complete Works of Washington Irving. Ed. Henry A. Pochmann. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970. Irving, Washington. Letters. Vol. 1. 1802-1823. Ed. Ralph M. Aderman, Herbert L. Kleinfield, and Jenifer S. Banks. Vol. 23 of The Complete Works of Washington Irving. Ed. Richard Dilworth Rust. Boston: Twayne, 1978. Irving, Washington. Tales of a Traveller. By Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Ed. Judith Giblin Haig. Vol. 10 of The Complete Works of Washington Irving. Ed. Richard Dilworth Rust. Boston: Twayne, 1987. Reichart, Walter A. Washington Irving and Germany. Westport: Greenwood, 1957. <?page no="45"?> 45 George Henry Calvert 1803 - 1889 The poet, essayist, and translator George Henry Calvert, a descendant of the founder of the colony of Maryland, was one of the earliest American students to attend the University of Göttingen (1824-25). He had been encouraged to go there by his teachers at Harvard, who had been the American pioneers at Göttingen a few years before. An admirer of Goethe, Calvert played a commanding role in introducing German literature to the United States after his return. Amongst other achievements, he translated Schiller as well as the Goethe-Schiller correspondence and promoted the understanding of Goethe through interpretative essays and works of biography. When Calvert was on his way to Göttingen early in 1824, he first visited his relatives in Antwerp and then proceeded along the Rhine to Frankfurt and from there up north. More than forty years later, he published an account of this trip as First Years in Europe (1866). This book, which is based on his early diaries and essays, recaptures his vivid impressions as a student in his early twenties: At eight in the morning of the tenth of January 1824, I found myself booked for Coblenz in the public coach, which had now changed its fitting French name of diligence for the unfitting German one of eilwagen (haste carriage), a name the giving of which to a vehicle that achieved barely five miles an hour, can only be honestly accounted for by supposing it to have supplanted some old-time predecessor that compassed but three. We were now so far inland that none of my fellowpassengers had probably ever stood on the wharf of a larger sea-port, for I was the first American they had seen; and the surprise was ejaculative that I was white, and increased to wonder when they learnt that I had made the passage from America to Europe in only twenty days. At six we reached the Hotel de Trèves in Coblenz, and the theatre being next door to the hotel, I went into it. It may seem an extravagant comparison, but, sitting in front of the stage, my sensation was like what might have been that of a Roman gladiator who should have looked into the dens and <?page no="46"?> 46 cages whence glared upon him the fiery eyes of the tigers and panthers he was about to encounter in the arena. As the words - so alive to my ears and so dead to my understanding - were hurled from the actors, the task I was about to buckle to came before me as a terror. Could I ever extract thought out of this senseless stridor! My ears were closed to every thing save a cacophany. The open-eared enjoyment of my neighbors was almost insulting. Despair grew darker as I listened, and my loneliness became so oppressive, sitting there the sole unparticipant auditor, that after a short endurance of aggravated humiliation, I went back to the hotel to seek some one who would not agonize my ears, but delight them with French or English syllables, and thus give me assurance that I was not utterly alone. The coach for Mayence travelling all night, and there being no public conveyance by day, I engaged a post-chaise, and the next morning set out at eight. The day was cloudy and cold, yet I enjoyed the lonely drive up the smooth Rhine road through Boppart and St. Goar and Bingen. The Sunday stillness deepened the gray solemnity of winter, whose sunless atmosphere was congenial to the sombre, silent, hill-crowning ruins - grave mysterious companions to the traveller, one or more being always in sight, thus seeming to pass him on hospitably from stage to stage through their magnificent domain, lording it over the historical landscape like reserved, princely patricians. As I sat in a corner of the open post-chaise, I had, in the postilion and his horses, other and closer company, and the livelier, that the biting air made them trot to their quickest time, which was seven or eight miles an hour. In my diary there is here an entry for which I cannot but take some shame to myself. At Ingelheim, between Bingen and Mayence, the last station for changing horses, “the innkeeper requested that a passenger might go with me to Mayence. I refused.” - No reason is given for the refusal. I recollect the fact of the request, but nothing more. Whether, getting sight of the proposed companion, I liked not his look, or that the request of the innkeeper was not made with any vouching earnestness, <?page no="47"?> 47 or that there was a something in his manner which awakened suspicion, I cannot fully recall. There should have been some cause out of myself; for otherwise the refusal of what had probably been a most opportune service to the asker, and not even an inconvenience to the grantor, shows a disobliging humor not creditable to my humanity. At all events, the refusal standing naked and unaccounted for, I hereby reprove the young traveller, and thereby premonish all others of the same age. Will the reader bear two or three days of the diary verbatim? “January 12th, 1824; Monday. Crossed the Rhine in a boat; current strong and much ice - bridge of boats removed during winter - mills in the middle of the river, turned by the force of the current. Started from Cassel [Kastel], opposite Mayence, for Frankfort, in the cabriolet of diligence - weather gloomy and cold. (First Years 75-78) In September 1825, Calvert left Göttingen together with his English friend Seth Watson for a walking tour along the Rhine from Mainz to Cologne: Having come in a packet-boat from Frankfort to Mayence, we loitered down the Rhine on foot, betaking us, when tired, to a skiff to float with the current of the old river, then innocent of steam. The vines were at their flood of spicy juice, ready to overrun into the wine-tubs. Already the autumn sun threw, even with his noon-day fire, rock and slope and ruin into the tender relief of long shadows; the landscape lying still and silent that the celestial artist might the more effectively lay on his manytinted strokes; or, soft breezes at times making a tremulous interlacing of leaf and light. (First Years 211-212) Before leaving for Philadelphia in spring 1827, Calvert had seen the Rhine a third time in the fall of 1826, when he accompanied his relatives from Antwerp, as well as his father and sister, on their journey to Switzerland and France. * <?page no="48"?> 48 In 1840, Calvert and his wife went to Europe for a stay of three years, and in midsummer 1841, the couple proceeded to Marienberg near Boppard for a water cure: At Bonn we stopped but to change horses. Now it is that the Rhine discloses its treasures. Two or three miles above Bonn, we passed under the ancient Castle of Godesberg; a little further that of Rolandseck; opposite, on the other side of the water, the Drachenfels gives life to the “Seven Mountains; ” and midway between them, lying softly in the low river, is the Island with the old Convent of Nounenwerth. Around are green valleys, and plentiful fields, and grape-mantled steeps, and frequent villages and compact towns. And thus, the whole way from Bonn to Mayence, you drive through a double population. Above, the sides of the castle-crowned hills are alive with mailed cavalcades, bugles are winding from the turrets, fair ladies are leaning over parapets waving their sweet welcomes and farewells; while below, through the tranquil movements of a secure industry, the noiseless labors of tillage, the hum of busy towns, you roll smoothly forward on a macadamized road, and try to stir up your phlegmatic postillion to a race with a steamboat abreast of you on the river. To eyes at all open to natural beauty, this region, unpeopled, rude and naked, were a feast; but twice-touched as it is by the productive hand of man, the broken shadows of ancient strongholds checkering the turfed flanks of the cannon-guarded fortress; the images of spires, of cottages, of wooded heights, of ruins, of rocky precipices, of palaces, all playing together in the ripple of the sinuous stream; the old river, fresh and lively as in the days of Arminius, with its legends, its history, and its warm present life; senses, thought, imagination, all addressed at once amid scenes steeped in beauty; - ‘tis a region unmatched, and worth a long journey to behold. As we approached Coblentz, Ehrenbreitstein, the Gibraltar of Germany, lifted high its armed head, frowning towards France. The next morning we were again on the enchanted road, and in two hours reached Boppart. Turning up hill to the right, just on entering the town, we ascended to a large substantial old pile <?page no="49"?> 49 directly behind and above it. This was formerly the convent of Marienberg, for noble ladies, most solidly and commodiously built for a household of two hundred; seated in a valley between hills, with shady walks, and springs, and fountains, and broad terraces, whence you look over the old town, founded by Drusus, into the river, now enlivened almost hourly with sociable steamboats. The convent has been converted into a water-cure establishment. While at Antwerp several small works on the water-cure had fallen into my hands, and impressed my mind at once almost to conviction with the truth of its principles. (Scenes 39-41) In July 1842, the Calverts returned to Marienberg for another cure - Calvert had grown very fond of it and later advocated it in America. He meets Longfellow and is introduced to the German poet Ferdinand Freiligrath, with whom he enters a lasting friendship. During that summer the Calverts, Freiligrath, and Longfellow exchange visits and make excursions together. * From 1849 to 1851 Calvert was in Europe for a third sojourn. In the summer of 1850, he meets both Ferdinand Freiligrath and Emanuel Leutze in Düsseldorf and revisits the most scenic places along the Rhine: As you stand on the heights in its rear, Bingen smiles up to you, enwreathed with vineyards,- Bacchanal Bingen. The precious, petted vines,- just now in their pride of leaf and fresh luxuriance of new juicy shoots,- press up to the walls, and over them into the town itself. Opposite, Rudesheim piles its fruitful terraces, and a little further is Geisenheim, and beyond Johannisberg,- inspiring names, that stand high and highest on the scroll that the traveller pores over with daily renewed zest. All around is one green wine-promising abundance. The happiest eyes that from the deck of the boat gazed upon the warm, expanded landscape between Bingen and Biberich, were those of a German, naturalized in the United States, and <?page no="50"?> 50 revisiting, after ten years’ absence, his native Germany. The man seemed to feel for the first time, in all its fulness, the sweet strength of his new ties. The joy of rebeholding the land of his birth disclosed to him the intensity of his love for the land of his adoption. Of what “we” had and did in America he spoke with the glow of one who had been raised to a new dignity. As watching the mellow shifting landscape, we talked of America, his countenance beamed with a compound delight. Through the present enjoyment shone the deeper satisfaction of thoughts that were busied with his new home. There, in democratic America, he had been reborn and rebaptized. He was conscious that he had become a larger, abler man than he could have been in Germany. He could not conceal his happiness, that he had exchanged a home that was so dear to him for one that was still dearer. (Scenes Second Series 9-10) Of particular interest are his ironic observations on the gambling casino of Wiesbaden, where “Idleness holds an annual festival” (Scenes 55). -Wiesbaden owes its summer life to two poisons,- its boiling mineral spring, and its ravenous roulette-tables. Early in the morning, round the “Koch-Brunnen” (boiling spring) a motley crowd of pallid dupes cool their smoking glasses to below the scalding point, credulously abiding the sulphurous self-infliction of repeated seething draughts. In the evening, a denser throng encircle in eager morbid silence the gaming-tables, where rich and poor, men and women, sick and well, fascinated by the gloating eye of Mammon, throw their tens and thousands into the monster’s maw. On one of the few days that we stopped at Wiesbaden, a rich banker lost in a single evening four thousand pounds sterling. I was told of another player whose eyebrows turned white in a few days after continued heavy losses. These crowded summer resorts represent the pursuit of pleasure under difficulties. (Scenes Second Series 10) <?page no="51"?> 51 Calvert was one of the great lovers of the Rhine and its beautiful scenery, and in his travel book Scenes and Thoughts in Europe, he has left many fine descriptions of his sensations in viewing the river: No matter how often you may have seen the Rhine, to come upon it is always an event. The renowned river is a line of beauty traced on the globe by Nature, and embellished by man. On its shores I have dwelt so much, so pleasantly, and so profitably, that whenever I return to them they give me the glad greeting of a home. To go back to old haunts is a reduplication of life.With the skipping actualities of the fretful present mingle the silent memories of the past, like marble statues looking upon a market-place. As we came down the Rhine, we bade the docile boat turn in again to the pier of venerable Boppart, that during the latter days of September we might tarry within the walls of the solid, familiar, roomy, old convent of Marienberg. A return to its gardens, its corridors, its terraces, we enjoyed the more, because we were not now, as in years past, to work hard for bodily salvation with aid of its healing waters. […] -The choice spots of the globe for lounging, the one in winter and spring, the other in summer and early autumn, are the Boulevards of Paris and the Rhine; the one the work of man assisted by nature, the other the work of nature enriched by man; for a fog or a rain disenchants the Boulevards, and without its towns and villages and castles and man-movement on flood and shore, the Rhine were not the Rhine. In midsummer the valleys that run back draw you into their shades; later, you quit the stream for the heights; but always the zest of the walk is when you issue out again upon the river, and to saunter along its margin is what one does oftenest. If you are alone, you have company in the peasantry tilling or gathering in the precious narrow slopes between the water and the precipice, in the wayfarers on the smooth road, in white-shining villages on either shore, in the old castles that solemnly address you from <?page no="52"?> 52 rock-founded eminences like spectres half-protruded from their tombs, in the freight-craft and the persevering horses that drag them against the swift current, in the steam-driven boats that queen it over the river they have conquered, and in the old river himself, a companion of infinite resources, of unfading freshness. Should you wish to rest, and from prudence prefer to indoor seat to one on a pile of macadamized stones, you enter the quiet inn of a village and call, not for a half-bottle of wine, but for a “spezialen.” A “spezialen” is a small tumblerfull, and costs a groschen, about two and a half cents. This, for the privilege of resting, an hour if you choose, even should the chair-bottom be of walnut, is cheap,- provided you don’t drink the wine. If you are thirsty, drink grapes, and I know not a more epicurean contrivance than to walk yourself into a summer thirst of a September afternoon on the Rhine, and then at sunset to be turned into a vineyard to slake it with purple bunches fast plucked with your own hand from the stalk. The Rhine! The Rhine! so sweet he smells When buds the perfumed grape in June. Still dearer is his shade when swells The rippling breeze at summer’s noon. But dearest when young Autumn’s Sun Wipes the late dew from purpled vine, And pours his ripening heats upon The spicy juice of pendant wine. (Scenes Second Series 96-98) WORKS CITED [Calvert, George H.] Scenes and Thoughts in Europe. By an American. New York: Wiley, 1846. Calvert, George H. Scenes and Thoughts in Europe. Second Series. New York: Putnam, 1852. Calvert, George H. First Years in Europe. Boston: Lee; New York: Dillingham, 1866. <?page no="53"?> 53 Henry Edwin Dwight 1797 - 1832 Henry Edwin Dwight, the youngest son of Timothy Dwight, the most prominent representative of the Connecticut Wits and longtime president of Yale University, “rambled” in Europe from 1823 to 1827 and stayed in Germany from the summer of 1825 to the fall of 1826. Coming from Paris and Strasbourg, he traveled down the Rhine as far as Cologne, and from there returned to see the river again, and only then proceeded to Göttingen. Having stayed there for three months, he settled in Berlin for the winter of 1825/ 26 to study at the university, thus following the earlier example of George Bancroft. Before leaving Germany in September 1826, he paid a second visit to the Rhineland. Like Cogswell and Bancroft, he became an admirer of German educational institutions, especially of the Saxon school system, and in 1828 he established together with his brother Sereno a Gymnasium at New Haven on the model of the Round Hill School. Though highly successful, the school was discontinued in 1831 because of the poor health of each of the brothers Dwight. In 1829 Dwight published his letters from Germany under the title Travels in the North of Germany. This book, one of the first comprehensive descriptions of German political and social institutions written by an American, had a wide circulation and offered a great deal of information to the prospective American on his way to the continent. Dwight entered Germany in June 1825 at Lauterburg in the Palatinate: There was little in the view to awaken thought, or rivet our attention, until we arrived at Speyers. This city, with Worms through which we passed the next day, excited no little interest when I recollected, that in the former, the Protestants assembled in the year 1529, and presented that memorable protest, from which they derived their name. Mayence, one of the principal cities of Hesse Darmstadt, derives not a little of its importance from its proximity to the Mayne, which unites with the Rhine here. It was formerly much distinguished for its commerce, and during the reign of <?page no="54"?> 54 Napoleon was very flourishing. Since the peace of Paris it has lost much of its commercial importance, in consequence of the great restrictions placed upon the navigation of the Rhine by Prussia. The course pursued by the different monarchs whose territories border this stream, seems almost incomprehensible to one living in a country where few commercial restrictions exist. This is without any, exception the noblest river of Europe, not excepting the Danube, if you refer to its soil, and to the intelligence and enterprize of its inhabitants. On no other stream is the population equally dense, and on the borders of no other does the eye behold greater fertility. Within fifty miles of its current, more than seven millions of inhabitants are residing, who in wealth and enterprize are not surpassed by any others on the continent. With such a population enjoying a free commerce, it would soon be covered with steamboats, and the masts of its shipping would remind one of the Black Forest near which it meanders. Were the river and the country adjoining it united in one kingdom, and still more, were it a part of France, it would in a few years rival every other stream on the earth, in the number of its vessels, and in its commercial activity. If the monarchs, through whose territory it flows, would adopt a liberal policy and remove all those obstacles which now exist to a free navigation, most of the enterprize which marks the English character would here be seen; and the complaint of poverty, which is now so universally heard on its borders would be unknown. (Travels 8-9) The Rhine, which is here rather more than two thousand feet in breadth, is the favourite stream of the Germans. It has become endeared to them from its historical recollections, which are more interesting than those of any other river, except the Tiber, as well as from the fertility of its soil, and the delightful wines which it annually yields. Their poets adorn their pages with imagery derived from its borders, and in not a small number of the songs, of the students, whether patriotic or Bacchanalian, “Father Rhine” appears in some one of his costumes, as one of <?page no="55"?> 55 the great objects of their terrestrial adoration. Its varied scenery, from the Tyrol to Cologne, attracts thousands of Germans yearly to its borders, which they traverse with a pleasure rarely enjoyed on any other stream; while among many of the students, a pilgrimage to the Rhine is almost as indispensable, as is that to Mecca to the sincere believer in the Koran. It is here a noble stream, and the only one I have seen in Europe which reminded me of the rivers in the United States. A bridge of boats is thrown across it, on which you pass with as much comfort as over those of stone, which arch the Seine. This species of bridge, which I have never seen, when travelling in my own country, is so simple, so cheap, and at the same time so convenient, that it is surprising that we have never introduced it. It is composed of fifty-six boats, well ballasted, that they may not yield too easily to the current, and which are anchored in a straight line, with chain cables. The force of the stream carries them down, until they have let out all their length of cable. They are then parallel to each other, their bows being turned to the current. Large beams extend from boat to boat, and across them at right angles planks are placed. A bridge is thus formed in a few days. As winter approaches, it is taken to pieces to avoid the floating ice, and on the approaching spring it resumes its place again. This city has lost most of its importance to the eye of the mere merchant, in consequence of the diminution of its commerce. It will, however, always hold a prominent place in history, not merely for the besieging armies it has repelled, but for being associated with one of the most important events in the history of man, the invention of printing. I looked in vain for a monument worthy of its celebrated inhabitant. Mayence, like most of the cities on the Rhine, presents a number of objects of curiosity. The towns of Europe have so often changed masters, from the time of the Roman to the Gallic Cæsar; so many monuments of their subjugation and of their prosperity still remain; they have risen so often from poverty to grandeur, or sunk into insignificance; that they present numerous vestiges of their former prosperity, and excite a powerful interest in the <?page no="56"?> 56 mind of a stranger. In passing through the United States we rarely look at our cities as they are, but sketch pictures of them as they will appear one or two ages after we have left the stage. In Europe, however, the future never comes into view. Every ancient edifice, every feudal or Roman monument, even the conversation of those with whom you associate, transport your mind to an age which has long since passed away. You cannot look around you without seeing the ravages of time, without feeling that every thing bears the stamp of ages. A Neapolitan peasant will talk to you about the villa of Cicero or of Lucullus, or offer to conduct you to the grotto of the Sybil, while his son offers you coins, which he will attempt to prove to be a true Trajan, an Augustus, or Nero, from the expression, the beard, or the costume. Having crossed the Alps, you have not left the Romans behind you. Wherever you travel on the Rhine, you find some vestige of them,and your Cicerone ofMayence willtalk verylearnedly about the antique, will shew you where the camp of Martius Agrippa was situated, point to the fortifications constructed by Drusus, and tell how one of the legions which conquered Jerusalem was garrisoned in his native city. These remains of Roman art excite no little interest, as connected with the history of this region, but are very inferior to those which I have described in my previous letters. There is here a miserable gallery of pictures, and a noble library of ninety thousand volumes, containing some of the earliest specimens of typography. (Travels 10-12) I am now in the midst of the crowd of travellers just returning from Italy. Like the birds of our western forest, they are all going one way, to the north; but in a few months their faces will be turned towards the Alps; and diligences,vetturas,and post horses, in great numbers, will be put in requisition, to transport the throngs of English, Germans, Russians, and others, to a warmer climate. When you once get into this current of emigration, it is about as difficult to find comfortable accommodations, as it is for a rear battallion of one of our armies of pigeons to procure a good <?page no="57"?> 57 supper in the New-England states. It is much less disagreeable here than in Italy, where there is sometimes but one road, over which these caravans of travellers pass. There are so many outlets from Italy between Trieste and Nice, that on the return of these armies to the north of Europe, they divide and spread from the bay of Biscay to the Vistula. Among the legions of princes, dukes, soldiers, students, dandies, tailors, half pay officers, mothers, spinsters, and maidens, which issue through the passes of the Alps, and spread like a fan over the north of Europe, John Bull is every where to be seen. Enter a gallery, or a café, or a palace, or ascend a mountain, there is John. Ramble along some stream, or on a public promenade, you will certainly see him again. Walk to a neighbouring hill to indulge your feelings, while examining a feudal castle, and before you have reached it, you will see half a dozen of John’s daughters, with their port folios on their knees, sketching a distant view of the edifice. Enter it, and some two or three more, with their tall brothers, and bowing cousins, will remind you that Monsieur Tonson has come again. Embark on board a coche d’eau, or steamboat, or any thing but a raft, you will certainly hear John swearing because the boat does not get under weigh [sic]. At the table d’hôte you will often hear more English spoken than the language of the country through which you are travelling; and rarely will you enter a diligence, or a hotel, without learning from the words humbug and nonsense, that John has arrived before you. Before reaching the Rhine, I had anticipated the pleasure of seeing a steam-boat floating on its bosom, but I found with surprise that not one has been introduced here, although there are passengers enough for several passing up and down this stream, during the summer. As a substitute, they have a boat, called a coche d’eau, one of which starts every day for Coblentz. On board of one of these I embarked with about forty passengers. This water coach is fifty feet in length, by nine in breadth, with two cabins of fifteen feet each. As it is too small to admit of a refectory, you are under the necessity of stopping to procure your meals at the villages on shore. It is drawn a part of the way <?page no="58"?> 58 by two and three horses, which on a brisk trot carry you down with the aid of the current, at the rate of five and six miles an hour. These boats, which bear some resemblance in their form to those on the Erie canal, are small and inconvenient, and have nothing to recommend them but their cheapness. The journey to Cologne, about one hundred miles is made in two days, the passengers stopping to sleep at Coblentz. Were it not for the beauty of the scenery of this part of the Rhine, nothing could reconcile one to the ennui of a coche d’eau; but disagreeable as this is, you forget it as soon as you enter this feudal region. The river for a few miles after leaving Mayence presented very little to relieve the eye, or to reconcile us to our slow motion, retarded as we were by a strong head wind. Though our boatmen were tugging at the oar, we did not advance for some time, more than two and a half miles per hour. After several hours we came opposite the Rheingau, a tract of land of about fifteen miles in length by five or six in breadth, lying on the right bank of the river. This region produces the finest wine, and the land bears a heigher price than any other on this stream, some of it selling for ten thousand francs per acre. Within this small tract between forty and fifty kinds of wine are made. Near Geisenheim, is Johannesberg, a hill more celebrated than any other in Germany among the students and the epicures of this country. It furnishes a favourite image to their poets, conveying the idea of the ne plus ultra of enjoyment in relation to one of the senses. (Travels 13-14) At Bingen, twenty-five miles from Mayence, we stopped to dine. Just below this village, the feudal scenery of this river commences. The Rhine here contracts to one-third of its usual width, and the low banks rise to mountains, their sides being sometimes covered with vineyards, almost to the summit. The current here is much more rapid, and the views which open upon you, as you wind between these eminences, present a rich compensation for the previous monotony. On entering this passage, directly before you, in the middle of the stream is a small island, on which is still standing the ruins of an old tower. <?page no="59"?> 59 Tradition declares it to have been built by the Archbishop Hatto of Mayence, from the following circumstance. During a famine his palace was surrounded by the poor and indigent who were begging bread. Although his garners were filled, he drove them away, refusing to do any thing to alleviate their sufferings. They rebelled in consequence, when the Archbishop sent his satellites against them, and the prisoners they made were by his order placed in one of his granaries and burned to death. While the spectators were deeply affected, Hatto beheld the conflagration with pleasure, exclaiming, hear how these rats whistle. Heaven speedily punished him, by sending armies of rats to his palace, which became so numerous that he was compelled to fly to Bingen. These animals soon got on the scent of the Archbishop and pursued him to that town, where he was for a long time besieged. Eventually to rid himself of his enemies, he caused a tower to be constructed on the island, to which he made his escape. They unwilling to lose the prelate, swam over to it, and storming his citadel devoured him alive. This story is supposed to have been invented by the monks, who disliked the severity of the Archbishop’s discipline, and like most of those in this legendary country, was the result of a fertile imagination, amusing itself with the credulity of the age. The Rhine from Mayence to Bonn, will average from one-third to one half of a mile in breadth. Its current is from two and a half to three miles per hour, though for some miles south of Hatto’s tower, where it is not over eight hundred feet broad, it is much more rapid. The hills or mountains which bound it between Coblentz and Bingen, are from six to eight hundred feet in height. They are usually terraced, sometimes half way to the summit, and covered with vineyards. They form fine swells, separated from each other by ravines, and are generally destitute of foliage, not one of them being crowned with a forest, and but few with shrubbery. They rarely if ever present that bold precipice and lofty crag, so necessary to genuine Alpine scenery. Their bases are spotted with villages, some of which are large and all of them of a brilliant white. The great charm however of <?page no="60"?> 60 this soil, is the feudal scenery on the banks of the Rhine. Between Bingen and Bonn, there are more than fifty of these monuments of an heroic age. They stand on the sides and on the projecting points of these hills, and are of every variety of form and in every state of preservation. At one time, nothing but a solitary tower lifts its walls high above its base; the next will have lost a few of its battlements, while all besides still stand, as if striving against its ultimate desolation. On the opposite side of the river, a third rises with its towers and battlements in the air, while its noble gates thrown open, apparently invite you to enter within its walls, and accept of the hospitality of its chief. You almost believe that you can see the sentinel pacing its ramparts and here the roar of festive mirth or the shout of triumph issuing from its gates, as the victorious warrior receives his crown from the hand of beauty. I never realized, until after my arrival here, the superior enjoyment of an American to that of an European, when visiting these monuments of a distant age. The latter is familiar with castled scenery from his infancy, their images having been impressed upon his eye, long before he knew by whom they were erected. He first views them as walls of stone, but why they were elevated thus he knows and cares not. He never walks or rides, without seeing them crowning the neighbouring hills; and from long familiarity, he in time regards them with as much indifference, as the rocks that lie beneath them. Even when more advanced in age, and after he has become acquainted with the history of the Barons who attacked and defended them with so much valour, he finds it difficult to behold them with any romantic feeling. Although his mind may be excited when he reads of their prowess, it is still difficult for him to identify his feelings with objects, which have been familiar to him from his earliest recollections. The emotions of an American, however, are of a more vivid kind; in the brightest days of his boyhood, he became familiar with the stories of gallant knights, drawing their swords in defence of helpless beauty; he then dwelt with delight and admiration on the valour of the conqueror, and <?page no="61"?> 61 drew, with the colours of imagination, towers and battlements, until every idea associated with these scenes became dear to his mind. With recollections abounding in legend and chivalry, he visits Europe, and beholds those objects which he had so long desired to see, and around which his imagination had so long delighted to rove. He views them not as ruins of what they have been, but he is transported back to the period when they were in their glory. His imagination soon restores the towers and walls which time had levelled, peoples the castle with its chieftain and his band, and stores its saloons with helmets, swords, and bucklers, the trophies of their valour. Such were my own feelings nearly two years since, when first viewing one of these ruins, and notwithstanding I have seen more than two hundred since my arrival, I can not now look at them without feeling a new impulse given to my blood, when stopping to gaze upon their crumbling walls, or standing on their lofty towers. The castles which border the Rhine, are in every state of decay, and of every variety of form. Often three or four of them are visible at the same time, and as you wind round the projecting promontory, new ones will come into view, appearing like the spirits of a stormy age revisiting the earth, as if to re-assert their ancient dominion. A few miles before reaching Coblentz, the sun threw the shadows of the western hills across the stream, and continued for a long time to pour a rich flood of golden light upon these feudal ruins. Had they been adorned with ivy, they would have exhibited the perfection of castled scenery. No part of the Rhine, unless the view near Bopport, is superior to that presented at Coblentz. This city, which contains 10,000 inhabitants, has little besides its scenery to recommend it as a residence; but this is so beautiful, that one might dream away a fortnight, with almost as much pleasure, as on the shores of Leman or Como. Opposite the city the celebrated fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, the broad stone of honour, has risen from its ruins.During the Revolution it was often besieged,and eventually taken by the French in 1799; after the peace of Luneville it was blown up, and remained demolished for a long period. Within a <?page no="62"?> 62 few years the Prussian government has rebuilt it, and it is now considered by military men as almost a second Gibraltar. This and the neighbouring fortifications, on the opposite side of the stream, so completely command the town and the river, that it cannot be taken. On the right bank of the Rhine near the city, is the tomb of the brave young Marceau, who fell in the battle near Altenkirchen. The monument, a truncated pyramid resting on a pedestal, is about twenty-five feet in height, and was erected in honour of this gallant officer by the army which he commanded. (Travels 15-18) WORK CITED Dwight, Henry E. Travels in the North of Germany, in the Years 1825 and 1826. New York: Carvill, 1829. <?page no="63"?> 63 <?page no="64"?> 64 <?page no="65"?> 65 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 - 1882 “He knew the beautiful river [the Rhine] all by heart,- every rock and ruin, every echo, every legend” (Works 8: 14). What is said about Paul Flemming in Hyperion truly applies to Longfellow, who created Flemming as his alter ego. No other American writer saw the Rhine so often and knew the river, the history, the legends, and the people of the Rhineland so well as he. He became one of the most ardent admirers of the Rhine, and during his four sojourns in Germany between 1829 and 1868 he went up and down the river many times. However, he is not only a representative of Rhine romanticism, but also reflects the growing interest of American scholars in German learning and in German university education. When, during his first sojourn in Europe (1826-29), he went to Germany in January 1829, he came as a student to enroll at Göttingen, just as his teachers and friends at Harvard had done a few years before. During the college vacation of April and May, he traveled to England, but also included a first tour of the Rhineland. On May 15, 1829, he writes to his mother: From Göttingen I went to Cassel - thence to Frankfort - and to Mayence. At Mayence I took the steamboat on the Rhine and descended the river as far as Cologne. You have heard of the beauties of the Rhine: for they are told in tales and sung in ballads. It is a noble river: but not so fine as the Hudson. The ruins of old castles and monasteries which look down upon it from every eminence along its banks, give it a most picturesque appearance. The most beautiful and sublime scene is at the Bingerloch - the “Highlands” of the Rhine. It is there the river makes its great bend. The Nahe empties into it at the same spot,- and at their junction stands the beautiful village of Bingen. The river rushes in shallow rapids round the bend, and below spreads out into a long silver sheet - over which looks the most beautiful ruin of the Rhine. It is the old castle of Vautsberg [Rheinstein] - and stands upon the edge of a rugged precipice several hundred feet high, overhanging the river. I never saw a more picturesque object: and seldom a more lovely view. (Letters 1: 311; here he appended a pencil sketch of the “Bingerloch.”) <?page no="66"?> 66 In Outre-Mer (1835), his sketch book of his first European tour, the journey through Germany is mentioned only in passing. He must have been aware that there would be future opportunities to write about a region to which he would dedicate much of his energy as a scholar and writer: From Vienna I passed northward, visiting Prague, Dresden, and Leipsic, and then folding my wings for a season in the scholastic shades of Göttingen. Thence I passed through Cassel to Frankforton-the-Main; and thence to Mayence,where I took the steamboat down the Rhine. These several journeys I shall not describe, for as many several reasons. First,- but no matter,- I prefer thus to stride across the earth like the Saturnian in Micromegas, making but one step from the Adriatic to the German Ocean. I leave untold the wonders of the wondrous Rhine, a fascinating theme. Not even the beauties of the Vautsburg and the Bingenloch shall detain me. I hasten, like the blue waters of that romantic river, to lose myself in the sands of Holland. (Works 7: 322) An echo of this trip is also found in The Blank-Book of a Country Schoolmaster, published in 1834, which contains the poet’s “daydream” evoked by an advertisement in a German newspaper from Philadelphia on the whereabouts of a certain Peter Grimm from Bingen, who had immigrated to America in 1829 and was now sought by his family: What golden dream allured this solitary wanderer from the fatherland - from the glorious Rhine - from the peaceful shades of home? Bingen! I well remember Bingen on the Rhine. A beautiful little city, and all around it as green as an emerald; - placed, too, in the very centre of the most romantic scenery of the whole Rhein-gegend. It leans against the eastern slope of the Rochusberg, with one foot in the waters of the Nahe, and the other in the kingly Rhine. Over against it lie the rich vineyards of Ruedesheim, and Geisenheim and Johannisberg, remembered with a sigh by the lovers of Rhenish flagons. <?page no="67"?> 67 Above, the green meadows of Greifenklau and the sloping hills of Lange Winkel bask luxuriantly in the sun. Below, the river darts through a narrow pass, dark with overhanging crags, and on every crag the ruins of a castle. O glorious scene! O glorious river Rhine! There stand the towers of the Rossel; there the light and graceful castle of Vogtsberg, perched like a fairy palace in the air […]. (Works 7: 498-499) * In April 1835, Longfellow embarks for his second trip to Europe, accompanied by his wife Mary, Mary Caroline Goddard, the daughter of a wealthy Boston merchant, and Clara Crowninshield, a close friend of Mary Longfellow’s. 1 The journey is overshadowed by Miss Goddard’s premature return to the United States in September due to the death of her father, and, on November 29, it takes a tragic turn at Rotterdam when Mary Longfellow dies from the aftereffects of a miscarriage. Full of sorrow, Longfellow and Clara Crowninshield continue the journey on December 2, traveling up the Rhine to Heidelberg to spend the winter there. As Longfellow’s travel experiences of 1835-36 form the background of Hyperion, which will be quoted later, Clara Crowninshield’s Diary will be used here to illustrate the individual stages of the journey. On December 7, the party arrives at Rolandseck, and continues the next day to Andernach and Coblenz. After visiting Ehrenbreitstein on a cold and bleak December afternoon, they go on to Bingen the next morning, but on the way make stops at Stolzenfels and Salzig, from where Longfellow pays a visit to the castles of Liebenstein and Sterrenberg on the other bank of the river: We stopped at Rolandseck (there is a picture of the inn in our book [Tombleson’s Views of the Rhine, 1832]). It lies just beyond the Siebengebirge and the castle of Rolandseck. Just below Drachenfels and opposite Rolandseck lies the Nonnenkloster on a little island. This is the scene of the legend on which Schiller has founded his “Ritter Toggenburg.” A little balcony juts out from our room which commands a view up and down the river. <?page no="68"?> 68 What a scene of romantic associations! The genius of Byron has shed a halo over one peak [cf. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage] and that of Schiller over the other. We opened the glass door of the balcony and listened to the rushing [of] the Rhine where its waters are compressed by the island. The hills were clothed in a soft vapor and the scene was charming, even at this season. (Diary 192) Dined at Salzig in a little inn quite out of the way and which we never should have found if it had not been set down in our book. It was cold and drizzly when the driver drew up to a miserable inn in the principal street. “We want to stop by the Rhine,” said Mr. Longfellow and he showed the driver the print of the inn in our beautiful book with gilt leaves. The idea of being romantic at such a time, when we were half starved and chilled thro’ by the damp cold air, was rather laughable. The driver took the book from our hands and showed it to a man standing by. He recognized the portrait and told us we had passed it, but that it was only a moment’s drive from there. So the driver mounted his seat and turned about [and] jolted us thro’ a narrow, muddy, lane where I expected every moment to be pitched upon one side or other of the houses. In time we launched into daylight and came out close upon the river with the Liebenstein and the Sterrenberg on the opposite side. Each summit is crowned by a ruin called “The Brothers” from a tradition related in our book. Therefore I shall not relate it here. We were shown first into a large, cold room, the receptacle of the Sunday garments, and then invited downstairs - as there was no fire there - to the family apartment, a cottage parlor. In one corner was the spinning wheel which the landlady had quitted to cook our dinner. By one window sat a comely looking Mädchen knitting a coarse stocking. The cat and dog were lying under the stove and the low walls were decorated with various pictures. But they were respectable people and quite sociable with Mr. Longfellow, but they found me inaccessible. Mr. Longfellow asked how long it would take him to ascend the Liebenstein. They told him ein Viertel Stunde and that he would <?page no="69"?> 69 have time before dinner, so he sallied forth, was rowed across the river by a damsel, and then climbed up the steep, slippery, yet winding Fusspfad. The mountains were wrapped in wreaths of vapor which kept shifting and assuming various forms and appearances, but they made the mountains look soft and cloudlike. It was more than eine Stunde before Mr. Longfellow came back. I sat by the stove, half famished and half dozing. I began to think he had lost his footing and fallen or that some other catastrophe had befallen him, and I felt relieved when I saw him walking safe and sound. He brought me a relic from the mountain which I shall press. (Diary 194-195) On December 10, they visit the castles of Klopp and Ehrenfels, pass through Mainz and reach Worms the next day, having spent the night at Oppenheim: Thursday, December 10 Rose, breakfasted, and took a valet de place to guide us to some ruins we wanted to see. First we ascended the Klopp. I plucked some brake by the wall. It is a small ruin and not remarkable except for the view. Bingen is pleasantly situated just where the Nahe flows into the Rhine. We crossed the Nahe [must be the Rhine] and wandered on towards [the tower of] Ehrenfels, which is situated on the side of a hill. The hills, each one of which is marked by a ruin, are high and extend each way as far as you can see. We stopped at Mayence to get warm and as it was not late concluded to proceed a little farther that night so that we might reach Heidelberg without difficulty the next day. We went as far as Oppenheim and there passed the night. I forgot to have my carpetbag brought up and could not undress. Friday, December 11 Our windows looked out upon vineyards. It was clear and cold and frosty. The aspect of the country began to change. We had left <?page no="70"?> 70 the hills behind us and were traversing a level country, thro’ which the waters of the Rhine could be discerned at a distance, and here and there appeared a stunted tree. The scene was pretty but all the striking peculiarities of the Rhine scenery were past. We stopped at Worms to dine and immediately sallied forth to see the churches. The air was still but bitter cold. The first one we visited is not worthy of mention except for one thing. All round the galleries were paintings - all characters and scenes related in the Bible - which I think is a good idea, particularly for children, for it would furnish them with an innocent and useful amusement and impress the events upon their minds. This church [St. Martin’s] is not remarkable in itself but it stands on the spot formerly occupied by the old church of Luther. Then we visited the Cathedral, an older building. Whilst our valet went for the key we amused ourselves looking at the grotesque, ludicrous figures on the outside, animals perched on the top of the spouts, sitting on their tails and leaning over as if in the act of expectorating. Every spout, of which there were many, was surmounted by a different animal. Inside, the ornaments and monuments were quite as ludicrous and I can’t conceive how persons of piety could ever have placed [them] as images in a house of worship. (Diary 196-197) The two travelers spend a quiet and studious winter in Heidelberg, part of it in company with the Bryants (cf. chapter on Bryant). Enjoying the beauty of the city and the view over the plains of the Rhine from the castle terrace, Longfellow writes to his father on May 8, 1836: The view from it is magnificent. Right under you is the town, running a mile along the bank of the river, with one long street from gate to gate. Beyond, the valley of the Neckar opens, like the mouth of a trumpet, into the level plain of the Rhine. You see the spires of Manheim in the distance; and farther westward the blue summits of the Donnersberg and the mountains of Alsatia. (Letters 1: 550) <?page no="71"?> 71 In June, Longfellow, Clara Crowninshield, Mrs. Bryant and her daughter Fanny, went on a joint excursion down the Rhine and to the neighboring spas to see the area in a better season. Traveling again via Worms and Oppenheim, they reach Mainz in the evening of June 11 and stay at the hotel “Zum Rheinischen Hof.” The stages of this journey, to which also belongs a tour of the city, are documented in Clara Crowninshield’s diary: At half past 12 we were on the way to Mainz, riding in a burning sun. The valley thro’ which we first drove was Frankenthal, formerly a possession of Elizabeth of Bohemia, given her as a dower by her husband. The country was exceedingly unbedeutend, flat and devoted to grain, very much like what we had driven thro’ in the morning. We met women returning from market with their great market baskets on their heads which they had filled again with provisions and were now marching home to their families. We met many a simple cart with low basket sides on three sides, in which the family cow was harnessed and the mistress sat within to drive. The condition of the female part of creation is about of a piece in Germany whether you look among cows or mankind. We stopped at Worms at four and then at Oppenheim at a little past six to bait the horses. We sat on a piazza up a flight of steps which overlooked the river. The water was quiet as a mirror and the little boats rowing about on its surface and the green shore on the other side, with here and there a poplar raising its upright form, and on the horizon the undulating hills which closed up the river at either end, made a pretty and quiet scene. We arrived at Mainz a little before dark, between 8 and 9, I believe. Mrs. Bryant and I had lovely rooms looking out upon the river in the front of the hotel Zum Rheinischen Hof. The steamer left at 5 in the morning and we therefore concluded to remain there over Sunday. Our limbs were sore from riding all day and after a supper of beefstake [sic] and gebratene Kartoffeln, we repaired to our beds …. <?page no="72"?> 72 One of the most interesting objects to be seen was the Dome Cathedral and Mr. Longfellow asked what time mass would be sung in the morning. At 10. Sunday, June 12 Rose and got dressed and breakfasted just in time to start at 10 for the Domkirche. We took a Lohnbedienten with us. … In the French revolution the beautiful church was taken by the enemy and disgracefully mutilated and sacrileged. The top of the baptismal font was carried off by them. The whole was originally bronze; now the present top is of brass. The church contains many beautiful statues cut out of a grey stone, the best the work of the 15th century when, as our guide informed us, this species of art was at its height. As soon as the music had ceased, we wandered about till we found ourselves before a door that was locked. Within, as the servant informed us, was the tomb of Frauenlob. A beadle observed our situation and offered to bring the key for us. His costume was truly ridiculous - a large cocked hat, a blue coat with broad skirts, short and white stockings, and then a red, broad sash that was put over one shoulder and then the two ends fastened behind under the other. In his hand was a staff. The part of the church which this door led to was the very oldest. A row of cloisters ran round two sides of a square, the windows were of an immense size and painted, but not one pane remained. The floor was composed of gravestones and in the wall standing upright was the tomb of Frauenlob. The work was somewhat effaced, but in the upper part was the bust of the poet and below the ladies are represented as bearing him to his grave. Still, as the dress of the men in those days was so similar to that of the women, the sexes may have been mistaken. … We were so much charmed with the church that we bought a description of it, to which refer for all further particulars. … [Der Erklärer im Dom zu Mainz, 1833] From the church we went to see the tomb of Gutenberg, who is said to have invented the art of printing. He stands upon a high pedestal, in one hand holding a square containing types and in the other a representation of the press. 2 On two sides of the <?page no="73"?> 73 pedestal are inscriptions, one in German verse, a eulogy upon his invention and well expressed. We heard the sounds of martial music and went to a square where the Prussian soldiers were parading. The music was fine and we followed them till they disbanded. Our guide led us thro’ one of the principal streets and then to the museum which contained a curious astronomical watch and a portrait of Thorwaldsen, which Mr. Longfellow says is a good likeness, and nothing else worthy of note [Museum of Antiquities and Art Gallery, located on Neubrunnenplatz until 1842]. Then home to [the] table d’hôte. After dinner to the Citadel. The fortifications are strong and surround the city in a zigzag form. … Ascended the remains of an old Roman tower built by Drusus, from which the prospect is extensive. Then down to the Anlage, a public walk and garden. We seated ourselves at a table near a refreshment house where we treated ourselves to an ice cream and then returned. Sat up late scribbling journal till I was so blind I could hardly distinguish one letter from another. (Diary 266-269) On June 13, the group embarks for a trip down the Rhine, visits Coblenz, and in the afternoon travels to Ems: As we approached Ems the road descended again into a valley, a lovely narrow valley thro’ which flows die Lahn. The scene was pretty, but still it disappointed me for it is not to be compared to the valley of the Neckar in Heidelberg. It is all too narrow for my taste and the hills rise too precipitously. The first part of the village is built in the humble style of most other small places in Germany with the beams uncovered and unpainted and looking like bare ribs. But presently we came to a row of hotels and boarding houses for the visitors. (Diary 272) They also touch on Nassau and Holzhausen auf der Haide: It was a small Dorf, consisting of but a handful of humble dwellings. We soon found ourselves before the gate of the village church. <?page no="74"?> 74 The gate was of wood, turned black with time. It looked so old and simple that I felt a curiosity to go in. A man stood with his children just beside the wall. He asked if we would go in and see the Kirchhof and a little girl from within unlocked the gate…. The graves looked curiously. They had no tombstones, but only a rod of iron placed upright at each end and a longer rod between to show where the body lay. Some of them were covered with black, arched rods in the form of a lid, just the size of the grave, and having the look of a coffin above ground. Within these frames were all sorts of ornaments made of paper … representations of flowers … and large red and blue beads strung on wires…. They looked altogether like little crowns. These ornaments show the humble advancement of the people. I observed one grave where the three crowns were quite fresh and apparently had never been rained upon. I asked the man who was watching us from the other side of the wall whether these had not been lately placed there by the parents. “The parents do not place them there,” said he, “they are put there by the children, the friends of the deceased.” (Diary 277) They then proceed through the Taunus mountains to Langenschwalbach [Bad Schwalbach], Schlangenbad, Wiesbaden, and further on to Frankfurt. The impressions of all these trips form the background of Longfellow’s work Hyperion (1839), a romance telling the story of Paul Flemming, “into whose experiences he afterwards wove much of his own at this time” (Life 1: 224), viz. descriptions of the scenery and legends, as well as historical, philosophical, and literary reflections and discourses. Paul Flemming follows the itinerary of his creator and begins his solitary journey through the Rhineland at Nonnenwerth. The reader may especially note the transformation of facts as recorded by Clara Crowninshield into a literary travel report: He had already passed many months in lonely wandering, and was now pursuing his way along the Rhine, to the South of <?page no="75"?> 75 Germany. He had journeyed the same way before, in brighter days and a brighter season of the year, in the May of life and in the month of May. He knew the beautiful river all by heart,- every rock and ruin, every echo, every legend. The ancient castles, grim and hoar, that had taken root as it were on the cliffs,- they were all his; for his thoughts dwelt in them, and the wind told him tales. He had passed a sleepless night at Rolandseck, and had risen before daybreak. He opened the window of the balcony to hear the rushing of the Rhine. It was a damp December morning; and clouds were passing over the sky,- thin, vapory clouds, whose snow-white skirts were “often spotted with golden tears, which men call stars.” The day dawned slowly; and in the mingling of daylight and starlight, the island and cloister of Nonnenwerth made together but one broad, dark shadow on the silver breast of the river. Beyond, rose the summits of the Siebengebirg. Solemn and dark, like a monk, stood the Drachenfels, in his hood of mist; and rearward extended the curtain of mountains, back to the Wolkenburg,- the Castle of Clouds. (Works 8: 14-15) The grand view of the Rhine provokes a joyous exclamation of praise for the river: Oh, the pride of the German heart in this noble river! 3 And right it is; for, of all the rivers of this beautiful earth, there is none so beautiful as this. There is hardly a league of its whole course, from its cradle in the snowy Alps to its grave in the sands of Holland, which boasts not its peculiar charms. By heavens! If I were a German, I would be proud of it too; and of the clustering grapes that hang about its temples, as it reels onward through vineyards in a triumphal march, like Bacchus crowned and drunken. But I will not attempt to describe the Rhine; it would make this chapter much too long. And to do it well, one should write like a god; and his language flow onward royally with breaks and <?page no="76"?> 76 dashes, like the waters of that royal river, and antique, quaint, and Gothic times be reflected in it. Alas! this evening mine flows not at all. Flow, then, into this smoke-colored goblet, thou blood of the Rhine! out of thy prison-house,- out of thy long-necked, tapering flask, in shape not unlike a church-spire among thy native hills; and from the crystal belfry loud ring the merry tinkling bells, while I drink a health to my hero, in whose heart is sadness, and in whose ears the bells of Andernach are ringing noon. (Works 8: 17-18) At Coblenz, the narrator reports the following episode: The post-chaise being already at the door, Flemming was soon on the road to Coblentz, a town which stands upon the Rhine, at the mouth of the Mosel, opposite Ehrenbreitstein. It is by no means a long drive from Andernach to Coblentz; and the only incident which occurred to enliven the way was the appearance of a fat, red-faced man on horseback, trotting slowly towards Andernach. As they met, the mad little postilion gave him a friendly cut with his whip, and broke out into exclamation, which showed he was from Münster: “Jesmariosp! my friend! How is the Man in the Kaufhaus? ” Now to any candid mind this would seem a fair question enough; but not so thought the red-faced man on horseback; for he waxed exceedingly angry, and replied, as the chaise whirled by: “The devil take you, and your Westphalian ham, and pumpernickel! ” Flemming called to his servant, and the servant to the postilion, for an explanation of this short dialogue; and the explanation was, that on the belfry of the Kaufhaus in Coblentz is a huge head with a brazen helmet and a beard; and whenever the clock strikes, at each stroke of the hammer this giant’s head opens its great jaws and smites its teeth together, as if, like the brazen head of Friar Bacon, it would say, “Time was; Time is; Time is past.” This figure is known through all the country round about as “The Man in the Kaufhaus; ” and when a friend in the country meets a friend from Coblentz, instead of saying, “How are all <?page no="77"?> 77 the good people in Coblentz? ” - he says “How is the Man in the Kaufhaus? ” Thus the giant has a great part to play in the town. And thus ended the first day of Flemming’s Rhine-journey; and the only good deed he had done was to give an alms to a poor beggar-woman, who lifted up her trembling hands and exclaimed: 4 “Thou blessed babe! ” (Works 8: 25-26) At Salzig, Flemming is told the “Legend of the Inimical Brothers” by the landlady’s daughter: The next stopping-place was the little tavern of the Star, an out-of-the-way corner in the town of Salzig. It stands on the banks of the Rhine; and directly in front of it, sheer from the water’s edge, rise the mountains of Liebenstein and Sternenfels [Sterrenberg], each with its ruined castle. These are the Brothers of the old tradition, still gazing at each other face to face; and beneath them, in the valley, stands a cloister,- meet emblem of that orphan child they both so passionately loved. In a small flat-bottomed boat did the landlady’s daughter row Flemming “over the Rhinestream, rapid and roaring wide.” She was a beautiful girl of sixteen; with black hair, and dark, lovely eyes, and a face that had a story to tell. How different faces are in this particular! Some of them speak not. They are books in which not a line is written, save perhaps a date. Others are great Family Bibles, with both the Old and the New Testament written in them. Others are Mother Goose and nursery tales; others, bad tragedies, or pickle-herring farces; and others, like that of the landlady’s daughter at the Star, sweet love-anthologies, and songs of the affections. It was on that account that Flemming said to her, as they glided out into the swift stream, “My dear child! do you know the story of the Liebenstein? ” “The story of the Liebenstein,” she answered, “I knew by heart when I was a little child.” And her large, dark, passionate eyes looked into Flemming’s, and he doubted not that she had learned the story far too soon and <?page no="78"?> 78 far too well. That story he longed to hear, as if it were unknown to him; for he knew that the girl, who had got it by heart when a child, would tell it as it should be told. So he begged her to repeat the story, which she was but too glad to do; for she loved and believed it, as if it had all been written in the Bible. But before she began, she rested a moment on her oars, and, taking the crucifix which hung suspended from her neck, kissed it, and then let it sink down into her bosom, as if it were an anchor she was dropping into her heart. Meanwhile, her moist, dark eyes were turned to heaven. Perhaps her soul was walking with the souls of Cunizza, and Rahab, and Mary Magdalen. Or perhaps she was thinking of that nun, of whom St. Gregory says, in his Dialogues, that, having greedily eaten a lettuce in a garden without making the sign of the cross, she found herself soon after possessed with a devil. The probability, however, is that she was looking at the ruined castles only, and not to heaven, for she soon began her story and told Flemming how, “a great, great many years ago, an old man lived in the Liebenstein with his two sons; and how both the young men loved the Lady Geraldine, an orphan, under their father’s care; and how the elder brother went away in despair, and the younger was betrothed to the Lady Geraldine; and how they were as happy as Aschenputtel and the Prince. And then the holy St. Bernard came and carried away all the young men to the war, just as Napoleon did afterwards; and the young lord went to the Holy Land, and the Lady Geraldine sat in her tower and wept, and waited for her lover’s return, while the old father built the Sternenfels for them to live in when they were married. And when it was finished, the old man died; and the elder brother came back and lived in the Liebenstein, and took care of the gentle lady. Ere long there came news from the Holy Land that the war was over; and the heart of the gentle lady beat with joy, till she heard that her faithless lover was coming back with a Greek wife,- the wicked man! - and then she went into a convent and became a holy nun. So the young lord of Sternenfels came home, and lived in his castle in great splendor with the <?page no="79"?> 79 Greek woman, who was a wicked woman, and did what she ought not to do. But the elder brother was angry for the wrong done the gentle lady, and challenged the lord of Sternenfels to single combat. And while they were fighting with their great swords in the valley of Bornhofen behind the castle, the conventbells began to ring, and the Lady Geraldine came forth with a train of nuns all dressed in white, and made the brothers friends again, and told them she was the bride of Heaven, and happier in her convent than she could have been in the Liebenstein or the Sternenfels. And when the brothers returned, they found that false Greek wife had gone away with another knight. So they lived together in peace, and were never married. And when they died-” “Lisbeth! Lisbeth! ” cried a sharp voice from the shore; “Lisbeth! where are you taking the gentleman? ” This recalled the poor girl to her senses; and she saw how fast they were floating downstream. For, in telling the story, she had forgotten everything else, and the swift current had swept them down to the tall walnut-trees of Kamp. They landed in front of the Capuchin monastery. Lisbeth led the way through the little village, and, turning to the right, pointed up the romantic, lonely valley which leads to the Liebenstein, and even offered to go with him. But Flemming patted her cheek, and shook his head. He went up the valley alone. (Works 8: 33-36) After a short stay at Bingen he arrives at Mainz and takes lodging at the “Rheinischer Hof.” The same evening he visits the cathedral: They were singing vespers. A beadle, dressed in blue, with a cocked hat and a crimson sash and collar, was strutting, like a turkey, along the aisles. This important gentleman conducted Flemming through the church, and showed him the choir, with its heavy-sculptured stalls of oak, and the beautiful figures in brown stone over the bishops’ tombs. He then led him, by a side door, into the old and ruined cloisters of St. Willigis. Through the low Gothic arches the sunshine streamed upon <?page no="80"?> 80 the pavement of tombstones, whose images and inscriptions are mostly effaced by the footsteps of many generations. There stands the tomb of Frauenlob, the Minnesinger. His face is sculptured on an entablature in the wall; a fine, strongly marked, and serious countenance. Below it is a bas-relief, representing the poet’s funeral. He is carried to his grave by ladies, whose praise he sang, and thereby won the name of Frauenlob.” (Works 8: 44) The excursion to the baths on the Lahn and in the Taunus mountains is also reflected in Paul Flemming’s journeying. Together with his travel companion, Baron von Hohenfels, he arrives one fine morning at Bad Ems: After a few hours’ drive, they were looking down from the summit of a hill directly upon the house-tops of Ems. There it lay, deep sunk in the hollow beneath them, as if some inhabitant of Sirius, like him spoken of in Voltaire’s tale of Micromegas, held it in the hollow of his hand. High and peaked rise the hills that throw their shadows into this romantic valley, and at their base winds the river Lahn. Our travellers drove through the one long street composed entirely of hotels and lodging-houses. Sick people looked out of the windows as they passed. Others were walking leisurely up and down beneath the few decapitated trees, which represent a public promenade, and a boy, with a blue frock and crimson cap, was driving three donkeys down the street. In short, they were in a fashionable watering-place; as yet sprinkled only by a few pattering drops of the summer rain of strangers, which generally follows the first hot days. (Works 8: 148-149) * In 1842, Longfellow made his third trip to Germany. This time he wanted to try the effects of German baths in order to restore his health. He had chosen to stay at the “Wasserheilanstalt” of Marienberg near Boppard, from where he made several excursions <?page no="81"?> 81 along the Rhine in the ensuing weeks. It is during this time, too, that he met Mr. and Mrs. Calvert and became acquainted with Ferdinand Freiligrath. Longfellow arrived at Marienberg, “this ancient cloister, which embosomed in high hills overlooks the town of Boppard,” on June 4. “I am here for my health; and am in retirement among the hills of the Rhine,” he writes to Samuel Ward (Letters 2: 411). On June 12, he makes a trip up the Rhine to St. Goar, where he meets Freiligrath personally and with whom he cherishes a close friendship from that time on. In a letter to his sister Anne he comments on this visit and his new friendship: The neighborhood of Boppard is very delightful. The beautiful green Rhine is always a pleasant object; and the valleys extending in all directions, with the ruins on the hills give occasion for various agreeable excursions. About six miles up the river is the little town of St. Goar where I have some friends, the Freiligraths. He is a youth of about my own age, and the best of the young poets of Germany. His wife is a very genteel person, and quite American in her manner and looks. They are very agreeable people and are a great resource to me. He has translated a good many of my poems into German; which I shall not copy here, as they would not benefit you much. We make excursions together to old castles and ruins. He is goodhumored and stout, like my friend Felton, though of a more restless nature. (Letters 2: 437) In a letter to his father, as in many others, he gives a description of Marienberg and Boppard and of the daily routine of his water cure: The Rhine looks very much as in former days. Half a dozen steamers ply up and down its yellow waters; and cockney tourists infest its towns. Boppard is a very ancient place,- an old Roman town. Parts of the Roman walls are still standing. The church, whose roof and spires you see above, is as old as the thirteenth century. The spires are connected by a covered <?page no="82"?> 82 bridge in which are two rooms, a bed room and a kitchen. The watchman formerly lived up there. Marienberg is just above the town. It is a fine old building, once a convent of noble nuns. The cloisters still remain, with the tomb-stones of the nuns in the wall. Behind the house is a large garden and park; from which walks run up the several valleys and hills in the neighborhood. It is a very beautiful establishment. I have a window towards the garden; as you see by the mark. At present there are about sixty persons here, going through what is called the water-cure. Among them are some very agreeable persons. The process of cure varies of course somewhat with the nature of the disease; but in general it is this. About four o’clock in the morning a servant comes in and wraps you in a blanket, then covers you up in a mass of bedquilts. There you lie for an hour or more, until you perspire freely. You are then wheeled in an arm-chair to the bathing room, where you plunge into a large bath of running water, and remain a couple of minutes, splashing and rubbing. You then dress and walk an hour in the garden, drinking at intervals at the fountains; to the amount of four or five glasses. Next follows breakfast, which consists of bread, butter and milk, and sometimes strawberries. After breakfast another walk; (or a letter, as to-day). At eleven o’clock a douche; which is nothing more nor less than standing under a spout. The douches vary from 18 to thirty-five feet in height; and are perhaps the pleasantest baths, the force of the water making you warm in an instant. The water from the hills is brought into the bathing rooms by pipes, under which you place yourself for three or four minutes. You then take another walk for an hour; then a fliessandes Sitsbad, or flowing bath; in which you sit for half an hour, the water flowing through continually. Then walk till one o’clock. At one dinner; very frugal, without wine or spice of any kind. After dinner, sit or walk or play billiards till five. At five another sitsbad as at 12; and then a long walk up the hills to the neighboring villages, till supper; which is on the table from 7 1 / 2 to 9; and is the same as the breakfast; at 10 to bed. <?page no="83"?> 83 Such is a day in Marienberg; where one day is like another; saving Sunday, when we rest from our bathing. You will think the treatment quite barbarous; but it is not half so much so as it seems. To me, indeed, it is extremely pleasant. I delight in the cold baths; and have great faith in their efficacy. I have been here now a fortnight; and enjoy myself much. I like particularly the long walks we take at sunset, to the neighboring valleys and up the neighboring hills. From morning till night we are in the open air. Indeed I can hardly find time, once a week to write a letter. This part of the treatment, and the diet I think you will approve; and there are here some striking proofs of the efficacy of the Water-cure. (Letters 2: 421-422) The reader of his letters also finds a most amusing characterization of his fellow patients from all over Europe, but mainly from England: I shall remain here a fortnight longer, and then go to London where I hope to find a letter from you, absolving me from the supposed sin of negligence. I shall feel some regret at leaving Marienberg. I shall miss the cold baths in the morning early; I shall miss the strange but now familiar figures that haunt the place; - the old Dutch admiral (the Flying Dutchman) thundering thro’ the cloisters at night with his great cane; - the pale, young Jewess, who is carried out in her chair every morning to sit on the terrace, and breathe the fresh air; - the gouty English surgeon, who rides into his chamber on a donkey, and tumbles out of the saddle into bed; - the meek, suffering faces of so many youthful martyrs to disease, teaching constant lessons of patience; - the pretty Miss Gyde, who walks with a stride, like Ellen Tree [the English actress, 1805-1880] in the Bandit’s Bride; - the Prima Donna of the Düsseldorf theatre, to whom I make love every morning at half-past five o’clock at the fountain in the garden, gallantly filling the tin dipper for her to drink from; (while her husband is lying in his bed bound hand and foot in a blanket); - the Russian Colonel who roars, like a maniac, in the douche; the merry music-master, who sings in bed, and in his baths; - and <?page no="84"?> 84 finally, thou, sweet Jacobina Schmitz, fair daughter of the Waterdoctor at Marienberg bei Boppard am Rhein; - born on the margin of this river of romance; - and now just under the eaves of twenty, looking forth upon the world with thy tender eyes, dark hair, and green album. All these and many more, I shall recall with interest and a certain kind of painful pleasure, when I look upon their faces no more; for it is one of my weaknesses, to become attached to people and places. (Letters 2: 462) From July 25 to 28, Longfellow made an excursion with the Freiligraths down the Rhine as far as Cologne to spend most pleasant days in the area of the Siebengebirge. The company was joined by Karl Simrock, the well-known professor of German literature, and Fräulein von Gall, who also belonged to the circle of German writers around Freiligrath. 5 On September 18, Longfellow leaves Marienberg for good and goes up the Rhine to Bingen, the Rheingau, Mainz, and southern Germany, but returns to St. Goar on September 29 to say goodbye to the Freiligraths. On October 1, this long summer sojourn in the Rhineland comes to its end; in his later letters to Freiligrath Longfellow often alludes to the pleasant encounters and experiences of that summer and hopes to return. I sometimes think that another Summer on the Rhine with a judicious mixture of Water-cure and Grape-cure would make all right again. But all visions of travel float away and dissolve like a beautiful mirage. (Letters 4: 54) [letter dated Nov. 3, 1857] I hope, my dear Freiligrath, that we shall some day meet again; and I wish that it could be on the Rhine. I always remember our last evening at St. Goar, when we paced to and fro on the banks of the river till near midnight; and all that we said. I have always loved you, and never for a moment has my feeling abated or changed. (Letters 5: 140) [letter dated May 24, 1867] The study of medieval German literature and the enthusiasm for the ruins and legends of the Rhine also form the background of <?page no="85"?> 85 Longfellow’s long dramatic poem “The Golden Legend” (1851), from which the following passage in praise of Rhine wine - in agreement with the author’s own enjoyment of it, as his letters attest - may be quoted. Friar Claus in characterizing the contents of the convent’s cellar, introduces the wine from Bacharach thus: Now here is a cask that stands alone, And has stood a hundred years or more, Its beard of cobwebs, long and hoar, Trailing and sweeping along the floor, Like Barbarossa, who sits in his cave, Taciturn, sombre, sedate, and grave, Till his beard has grown through the table of stone! It is of the quick and not of the dead! In its veins the blood is hot and red, And a heart still beats in those ribs of oak That time may have tamed, but has not broke! It comes from Bacharach on the Rhine, Is one of the three best kinds of wine, And costs some hundred florins the ohm; But that I do not consider dear, When I remember that every year Four butts are sent to the Pope of Rome. And whenever a goblet thereof I drain, The old rhyme keeps running in my brain: At Bacharach on the Rhine, At Hochheim on the Main, And at Würzburg on the Stein, Grow the three best kinds of wine! (Works 5: 268) It is the old Vautsburg where much of the story of “The Golden Legend” is set, and where the following pleasant evening scene introduces the happy ending of the love story of Prince Henry of Hoheneck (castle of Heimburg) and Elsie: <?page no="86"?> 86 THE CASTLE OF VAUTSBERG ON THE RHINE PRINCE HENRY and ELSIE standing on the terrace at evening. The sound of bells heard from a distance PRINCE HENRY We are alone. The wedding guests Ride down the hill, with plumes and cloaks, And the descending dark invests The Niederwald, and all the nests Among its hoar and haunted oaks. ELSIE What bells are those, that ring so slow, So mellow, musical, and low? PRINCE HENRY They are the bells of Geisenheim, That with their melancholy chime Ring out the curfew of the sun. ELSIE Listen, beloved. PRINCE HENRY They are done! Dear Elsie! many years ago Those same soft bells at eventide Rang in the ears of Charlemagne, As, seated by Fastrada’s side At Ingelheim, in all his pride He heard their sound with secret pain. ELSIE Their voices only speak to me Of peace and deep tranquillity, <?page no="87"?> 87 And endless confidence in thee! (Works 5: 340-41) Longfellow saw the beloved Rhineland for the fourth and last time, though briefly, in July 1868 in company of twelve family members. The whole party came from England and passed through the Rhineland to Switzerland and Italy. Though he and Freiligrath continued to correspond with another, they found no opportunity to meet again. NOTES 1 In 1843, Clara Crowninshield married the art scholar Louis Thies, a German immigrant, who returned with his family to Dresden in 1866. Clara died in Dresden in 1907. 2 Miss Crowninshield is describing the sandstone monument of Gutenberg by Joseph Franz Scholl, which was erected in 1827. It is now in the Gutenberg Museum. The present monument in Gutenbergplatz was unveiled in 1837. Gutenberg’s tomb no longer existed, as it had disappeared in the destruction of the Franciscan Church in 1793 and its demolition in 1832. 3 Kate Chopin copies this passage into her diary, and it stimulates her to visit the river herself in 1870. Cf. chapter on Chopin. The celebrated romance inspired other writers to write Hyperion-like books, too. Cf. [Earl Shinn] Edward Strahan, The New Hyperion: From Paris to Marly by Way of the Rhine (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1875). 4 The details of the “Man in the Kaufhaus” are verified in such guides as W. O. von Horn, The Rhine: History and Legends of Its Castles, Abbeys, Monasteries, and Towns (Wiesbaden: Niedner, 1872). 5 This episode is most amusingly retold by Käthe Freiligrath-Kroeker, Freiligrath’s daughter. The trip and several others in the Rhine area that Freiligrath and Longfellow made during that summer are characterized by an atmosphere of close friendship and mutual appreciation. Cf. Käthe Freiligrath-Kroeker, “Ein Rhein-Idyll.” Deutsche Revue 26 (1901): 27-41; and Rüdiger Els, “Longfellow und Geisenheim,” Jahrbuch Rheingauschule Geisenheim (Wiesbaden, 1983): 105-114. WORKS CITED The Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Ed. Andrew Hilen. 6 vols. Cambridge: Belknap- Harvard University Press, 1966-1982. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. “The Golden Legend.” Vol. 5 of The Complete Writings of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston: Houghton, 1904. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. Outre-Mer and The Blank-Book of a Country Schoolmaster. Vol. 7 of The Complete Writings of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston: Houghton, 1904. <?page no="88"?> 88 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. Hyperion. Vol. 8 of The Complete Writings of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston: Houghton, 1904. Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Ed. Samuel Longfellow. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton, 1896. The Diary of Clara Crowninshield. A European Tour with Longfellow 1835-1836. Ed. Andrew Hilen. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1956. <?page no="89"?> 89 James Fenimore Cooper 1789 - 1851 During his seven-year sojourn in Europe (1826-1833), James Fenimore Cooper, who had risen to literary fame through several popular novels, including The Pioneers and The Last of the Mohicans, visited the Rhineland in 1831 and 1832. He had already passed through Mainz in 1830 on his return trip from Dresden to Paris, and he had then decided to come back to the Rhine at his earliest convenience (Letters 1: 435). Coming from Belgium, Cooper, Mrs. Cooper, and the children Paul and Frances, traveled through the Rhineland and the Palatinate in September 1831, paying visits to Coblenz, St. Goar, Ingelheim, Mainz, Dürkheim, Kaiserslautern, and Trier (Trèves). In a letter to his friend Charles Wilkes, written immediately after the journey, Cooper comments on this trip and his idea of turning impressions he had won while traveling through the Palatinate into a book: I fell in with a bit of scenery, some old ruins, a multitude of traditions &c, in Rhenish Bavaria [the Palatinate], that will cost me a book. We were twenty days post. Treves pleased us most by its sights, and Coblentz by its beautiful position. (Letters 2: 140) 1 The book that Cooper began to write on the basis of an excursion to the ancient ruins in the neighborhood of Dürkheim 2 and of his study of the local history was The Heidenmauer (the pagan wall), which appeared in the middle of 1832. In the introduction to this book he included the travel report of his first trip through the Rhineland: We had come now to look at its beauties, in its most beautiful part, and to compare them, so far as native partiality might permit, with the well-established claims of our own Hudson. […] There were ruined castles, by scores; gray fortresses, abbeys, some deserted and others yet tenanted; villages and towns; the seven mountains; cliffs and vineyards. At every step we felt how intimate is the association between the poetry of Nature and that of art; between the hill-side with its falling turret, and the moral feeling that lends them interest. Here was an island, of no <?page no="90"?> 90 particular excellence, but the walls of a convent of the middle ages crumbled on its surface. There was a naked rock, destitute of grandeur, and wanting in those tints which milder climates bestow, but a baronial hold tottered on its apex. Here Cæsar led his legions to the stream, and there Napoleon threw his corpsd’armée on the hostile bank; this monument was to Hoche, and from that terrace the great Adolphus directed his battalions. Time is wanting to mellow the view of our own historical sites; for the sympathy that can be accumulated only by the general consent of mankind has not yet clothed them with the indefinable colors of distance and convention. In the mood likely to be created by a flood of such recollections, we pursued our way along the southern margin of this great artery of central Europe. We wondered at the vastness of the Rheinfels, admired the rare jewel of the ruined church at Baccarach, and marvelled at the giddy precipice on which a prince of Prussia even now dwells, in the eagle-like grandeur and security of the olden time. On reaching Mayence, the evening of the second day, we deliberately and, as we hoped, impartially compared what had just been seen with that which is so well and so affectionately remembered. I had been familiar with the Hudson from childhood. The great thoroughfare of all who journey from the interior of the state toward the sea, necessity had early made me acquainted with its windings, its promontories, its islands, its cities, and its villages. Even its hidden channels had been professionally examined, and time was when there did not stand an unknown seat on its banks, or a hamlet that had not been visited. Here then was the force of deep impressions to oppose to the influence of objects still visible. To me it is quite apparent that the Rhine, while it frequently possesses more of any particular species of scenery, within a given number of miles, than the Hudson, has none of so great excellence. It wants the variety, the noble beauty, and the broad grandeur of the American stream. The latter, within the distance universally admitted to contain the finest parts of the Rhine, is <?page no="91"?> 91 both a large and a small river; it has its bays, its narrow passages among the meadows, its frowning gorges, and its reaches resembling Italian lakes; whereas the most that can be said of its European competitor, is that all these wonderful peculiarities are feebly imitated. Ten degrees of a lower latitude supply richer tints, brighter transitions of light and shadow, and more glorious changes of the atmosphere, to embellish the beauties of our western clime. In islands, too, the advantage is with the Hudson, for, while those of the Rhine are the most numerous, those of the former stream are bolder, better placed, and, in every natural feature, of more account. (Heidenmauer 5-7) The return journey to Paris takes the Cooper party through the territory of the Rhenish Palatinate, and due to Mrs. Cooper’s illness they decide to stay at Dürkheim at the sign of the Ox: We left the Rhine, therefore, with regret, for, in its way, a lovelier stream can scarce be found. […] It was a bright autumnal day when we returned to the left bank of the Rhine, on the way to Paris. The wishes of the invalid had taken the appearance of strength, and we hoped to penetrate the mountains which bound the Palatinate on its south-western side, and to reach Kaiserslautern, on the great Napoleon road, before the hour of rest. The main object had been accomplished, and as with all who have effected their purpose, the principal desire was to be at home. A few posts convinced us that repose was still necessary to the invalid. This conviction, unhappily as I then believed, came too late, for we had already crossed the plain of the Palatinate, and were drawing near to the chain of mountains just mentioned which are a branch of the Vosges, and are known in the country as the Haart. We had made no calculations for such an event, and former experience had caused us to distrust the inns of this isolated portion of the kingdom of Bavaria. I was just bitterly regretting our precipitation, when the church-tower of Duerckheim peered above the vineyards; for, on getting nearer to the base of the hills, the land became <?page no="92"?> 92 slightly undulating, and the vine abundant. As we approached, the village or borough promised little, but we had the word of the postilion that the post-house was an inn fit for a king; and as to the wine, he could give no higher eulogium than a flourish of the whip, an eloquent expression of pleasure for a German of his class. We debated the question of proceeding, or of stopping, in a good deal of doubt, to the moment when the carriage drew up before the sign of the Ox. A substantial looking burgher came forth to receive us. There was the pledge of good cheer in the ample development of his person, which was not badly typified by the sign, and the hale, hearty character of his hospitality removed all suspicion of the hour of reckoning. […] Our host of Duerckheim offered a pledge, in his honest countenance, independent air, and frank manner, of his also being above the usual mercenary schemes of another portion of the craft, who, dwelling in places of little resort, endeavor to take their revenge of fortune, by showing that they look upon every post-carriage as an especial God-send. He had a garden, too, into which he invited us to enter, while the horses were changing, in a way that showed he was simply desirous of being benevolent, and that he cared little whether we staid an hour or a week. In short, his manner was of an artless, kind, natural, and winning character, that strongly reminded us of home, and which at once established an agreeable confidence that is of an invaluable moral effect. Though too experienced blindly to confide in national characteristics, we liked, too, his appearance of German faith, and more than all were we pleased with the German neatness and comfort, of which there were abundance, unalloyed by the swaggering pretension that neutralizes the same qualities among people more artificial. The house was not a beer-drinking, smoking caravanserai, like many hotels in that quarter of the world, but it had detached pavilions in the gardens, in which the wearied traveller might, in sooth, take his rest. With such inducements before our eyes, we determined to remain, and we were not long in instructing the honest burgher to that effect. The decision was received with great civility, and, unlike the immortal <?page no="93"?> 93 Falstaff, I began to see the prospects of taking “mine ease in my inn” without having a pocket picked. (Heidenmauer 8-10) A conversation with the innkeeper on the local curiosities quickly catches Cooper’s attention: “It was the ruins of the castle of Leiningen, then, that I saw on the mountain, as we entered the town? ” “No, mein Herr. You saw the ruins of the Abbey of Limburg; those of Hartenburg, for so the castle was called, lie farther back among the hills.” “What! a ruined abbey, and a ruined castle,too! - Here is sufficient occupation for the rest of the day. An abbey and a castle! ” “And the Heidenmauer, and the Teufelstein.” “How! a Pagan’s wall, and a Devil’s stone! - You are rich in curiosities! ” (Heidenmauer 11-12) Cooper immediately begins to study the history of Dürkheim and of the counts of Leiningen, the former rulers of the area: Duerckheim lies in that part of Bavaria which is commonly called the circle of the Rhine. The king, of the country named, may have less than half a million of subjects in this detached part of his territories, which extends in one course from the river to Rhenish Prussia, and in the other from Darmstadt to France. It requires a day of hard posting to traverse this province in any direction, from which it would appear that its surface is about equal to two-thirds of that of Connecticut. A line of mountains, resembling the smaller spurs of the Alleghanies, and which are known by different local names, but which are a branch of the Vosges, passes nearly through the centre of the district, in a north and south course. These mountains cease abruptly on their eastern side, leaving between them and the river, a vast level surface of that description which is called “flats,” or “bottom land,” in America. This plain, part of the ancient Palatinate, extends equally on the other side of the Rhine, terminating as abruptly on the eastern as on the western border. <?page no="94"?> 94 In an air line, the distance between Heidelberg and Duerckheim, which lie opposite to each other on the two lateral extremities of the plain, may a little exceed twenty miles, the Rhine running equi-distant from both. (Heidenmauer 12-13) Accompanied by a local guide named Christian Künzel 3 , Cooper visits the ruins of Limburg monastery and of Hardenburg castle: We scrambled up the hill-side, and, winding among terraces on which the vine and vegetables were growing, soon reached the natural platform. There was a noble view from the summit, but it would be premature to describe it here. The whole surface of the hill furnished evidence of the former extent of the Abbey, a wall having encircled the entire place; but the principal edifices had been built, and still remained, near the longitudinal centre, on the very margin of the eastern precipice. Enough was standing to prove the ancient magnificence of the structure. Unlike most of the ruins which border the Rhine, the masonry was of a workmanlike kind, the walls being not only massive, but composed of the sand-stone just mentioned neatly hewn, for immense strata of the material exist in all this region. I traced the chapel, still in tolerable preservation, the refectory, that never-failing solacer of monastic seclusion, several edifices apparently appropriated to the dormitories, and some vestiges of the cloisters. There is also a giddy tower, of an ecclesiastical form, that sufficiently serves to give a character to the ruins. It was closed, to prevent idlers from incurring foolish risks by mounting the crazy steps; but its having formerly been appropriated to the consecrated bells was not at all doubtful. There is also a noble arch near, with several of its disjointed stones menacing the head of him who ventures beneath. Turning from the ruin, I cast a look at the surrounding valley. Nothing could have been softer or more lovely than the near view. That sort of necessity, which induces us to cherish any stinted gift, had led the inhabitants to turn every foot of the bottom land to the best account. No Swiss Alp could have been <?page no="95"?> 95 more closely shaved than the meadows at my feet, and a good deal had been made of two or three rivulets that meandered among them. The dam of a rustic mill threw back the water into a miniature lake, and some zealous admirer of Neptune had established a beer-house on its banks, which was dignified with the sign of the “Anchor! ” But the principal object in the interior or upland view, was the ruins of a castle, that occupied a natural terrace, or rather the projection of a rock, against the side of one of the nearest mountains. The road passed immediately beneath its walls, a short arrow-flight from the battlements, the position having evidently been chosen as the one best adapted to command the ordinary route of the traveller. I wanted no explanation from the guide to know that this was the castle of Hartenberg. It was still more massive than the remains of the Abbey, built of the same material, and seemingly in different centuries; for while one part was irregular and rude, like most of the structures of the middle ages, there were salient towers filled with embrasures, for the use of artillery. One of their guns, well elevated, might possibly have thrown its shot on the platform of the Abbey-hill, but with little danger even to the ruined walls. After studying the different objects in this novel and charming scene, for an hour, I demanded of the guide some account of the Pagan’s Wall and of the Devil’s Stone. Both were on the mountain that lay on the other side of the ambitious little lake, a long musket-shot from the Abbey. It was even possible to see a portion of the former, from our present stand; and the confused account of the tailor only excited a desire to see more. We had not come on this excursion without a fit supply of road-books and maps. One of the former was accidentally in my pocket, though so little had we expected anything extraordinary on this unfrequented road, that as yet it had not been opened. On consulting its pages now, I was agreeably disappointed in finding that Duerckheim and its antiquities had not been thought unworthy of the traveller’s especial attention. The Pagan’s Wall was there stated to be the spot in which Attila passed the winter before crossing the Rhine, in his celebrated inroad against the capital of the <?page no="96"?> 96 civilized world, though its origin was referred to his enemies themselves. In short, it was believed to be the remains of a Roman camp, one of those advanced works of the empire, by which the Barbarians were held in check, and of which the Hun had casually and prudently availed himself, in his progress south. The Devil’s Stone was described as a natural rock, in the vicinity of the encampment, on which the Pagans had offered sacrifices. Of course the liberated limbs of the guide were put in requisition, to conduct us to a spot that contained curiosities so worthy of even his exertions. (Heidenmauer 14-16) Seated on the top of the Teufelstein (devil’s rock), Cooper describes the spectacular view of the plains of the Rhine; this description also serves as an introduction to a thoughtful essay containing his reflections on the past and on the course of world history: The plain of the Palatinate, far as eye could reach, lay in the view. Here and there the Rhine and the Neckar glittered like sheets of silver, among the verdure of the fields, and tower of city and town, of Manheim, Spires [Speyer], and Worms, of nameless villages, and of German residences, were as plenty in the scene as tombs upon the Appian Way. A dozen gray ruins clung against the sides of the mountains of Baden and Darmstadt, while the castle of Heidelberg was visible, in its romantic glen, sombre, courtly, and magnificent. The landscape was German, and in its artificial parts slightly Gothic; it wanted the warm glow, the capricious outlines, and seductive beauty of Italy, and the grandeur of the Swiss valleys and glaciers; but it was the perfection of fertility and industry embellished by a crowd of useful objects. (Heidenmauer 17-18) Mrs. Cooper, too, kept a record of this memorable trip, which she communicated with her sister in a letter dated September 29, 1831: The Rhine, like most things that are much talked of, did not realize the expectations we had formed of it - we found it <?page no="97"?> 97 much inferior to the fine scenery of Switzerland and Italy - we rode on its banks from Cologne to Mayence, a distance of about a hundred miles, which is the most beautiful part of it, the hills are dotted with ruins, and every nook has its legend - all this gives it an interest - you are constantly pleased, but never amazed and delighted, as when the magnificent views of the former countries burst upon you. […] Well, after quitting Cologne and Aix la Chapelle, we went along the banks of the Rhine, a charming ride to Coblence, and the day after one still more charming, still just on the banks, to Mayence - we were quite among the antiquities of French history, saw, as I told you, a second birthplace of Charlemagne - a Château built by Roland his famous Nephew, in face of a beautiful little island, where stood a Nunnery, containing the lady of his love, who from a false report of his death had taken the veil.- The ruins of a Palace belonging to the Kings of the race, who had preceded that of Charlemagne, and many others of the feudal lords, of the ages that succeeded him.- At Mayence we quitted the Rhine, and went to Francfort, where we found what gave us as much pleasure and interested us more than all we had seen, letters, and good news from our dear little flock at Paris.- From thence we went on to the ruins of Heidelberg, which are very beautiful, and deserve all their fame - walked up on the great ton by a very commodious pair of steps, and after admiring the german idea, of a great Lord showing his state by the size of his wine barrel - we “marched down again” - at Mannheim we crossed the Rhine into Bavaria, and went to Durcheim, a pretty little place in a beautiful valley, with ruined Cloisters, and Châteaus on the fine hills that surround it, altogether, which so pleased the fancy of Mr. Cooper, that he means to make it the scene of his next book, but this is a secret, and you must say nothing about it. (Correspondence 1: 191-193) In order to avoid a five-day cholera quarantine upon entering France, the Coopers visit the valley of the Saar and the city of Trier, <?page no="98"?> 98 which claims to be the most ancient City of Europe, and looks down upon Rome as quite of modern date.- on one of the houses in the great square, it is inscribed in large letters, that Trèves is more ancient than Rome thirteen hundred years.- We here saw some beautiful ruins of the real antiques, and some modern remains of the Romans - such as the baths of Constantine, ruins of an Amphitheatre […]. (Correspondence 1: 194) Writing to Caroline de Lancey on December 3, 1831, Cooper expresses his intention to return to Italy, Switzerland, and Germany (Letters 2: 160). This trip begins on July 18, 1832. Mrs. Cooper, though, is not in a very good state of health, but needs the change of air (Letters 2: 269); after spending two weeks at Spa, the party proceeds to the Rhineland and revisits most of the places that were seen in September 1831. The journal that Cooper kept on this journey later served him as a source for his travel book Gleanings in Europe: The Rhine (1836); as the former is only a relatively matter-of-fact account and the latter a 19th-century classic in travel literature, with Cooper’s comments on the historical, political, and economic background of the region, the textual samples here are taken from Gleanings. On August 15, the Coopers cross the Rhine to the island of Nonnenwerth and stay overnight in a former Benedictine nunnery converted into an inn, the appropriate setting for a “Gothic” sensation: The intense heat of the day had engendered a gust. The thunder was muttering among the “seven mountains,” and occasionally a flash of lightning illumined the pitchy darkness of the night. I walked out into the grounds, where the wind was fiercely howling through the trees. A new flash illumined the hills, and I distinctly saw the naked rock of the Drachenfels, with the broken tower tottering on the half-ruined crag, looking fearful and supernatural. By watching a minute, another flash exposed Rolandseck, looking down upon me with melancholy solicitude. Big drops began to patter on the leaves, and, still bent on sensations, I entered the buildings. <?page no="99"?> 99 The cloisters were gloomy, but I looked into the vast, smoked, and cavern-like kitchen, where the household were consuming the fragments of our dinner. A light shone from the door of a low cell, in a remote corner of the cloisters, and I stole silently to it, secretly hoping it would prove to be a supernatural glimmering above some grave. The three Prussians were eating their cheese parings and bread, by the light of a tallow candle, seated on a stone floor. It was short work to squeeze all the poetry out of this group. The storm thickened, and I mounted to the gallery, or the corridore above the cloisters, which communicated with our own rooms. Here I paced back and forth, a moment, in obscurity, until, by means of a flash, I discovered a door, at one extremity of the passage. Bent on adventure, I pushed and it opened. As there were only moments when anything could be seen, I proceeded in utter darkness, using great caution not to fall through a trap. Had it been my happy fortune to be a foundling, who had got his reading and writing “by nature,” I should have expected to return from the adventure a Herzog, at least, if not an Erz-Herzog. Perhaps, by some inexplicable miracle of romance, I might have come forth the lawful issue of Roland and the nun! As it was, I looked for no more than sensations, of which the hour promised to be fruitful. I had not been a minute in the unknown region, before I found that, if it were not the abode of troubled spirits, it at least was worthy to be so. You will remember that I am not now dealing in fiction, but truth, and, that, unlike those who “read when they sing, and sing when they read,” I endeavour to be imaginative in poetry and literal in my facts. I am now dealing strictly with the latter which I expect will greatly enhance the interest of this adventure. After taking half a dozen steps, with extreme caution, I paused a moment, for the whole air appeared to be filled by a clatter, as if ten thousand bat’s wings were striking against glass. This was evidently within the convent, while, without, the wind howled even louder than ever. My hand rested on something, I knew not what. At first I did not even know whether I was in the open air, or <?page no="100"?> 100 not, for I felt the wind, saw large spaces of dim light, and yet could distinguish that something like a vault impended over my head. Presently a vivid flash of lightning removed all doubt. It flickered, seemed extinguished and flared up again, in a way to let me get some distinct ideas of the locus in quo. I had clearly blundered into the convent chapel; not upon its pavement, which was on a level with the cloisters below, but into an open gallery, that communicated with the apartments of the nuns, and my hand was on the chair of the Lady Abbess, the only one that remained. The dim light came from the high arched windows, and the bat’s wings were small broken panes rattling in the gale. But I was not alone. By the transient light I saw several grim figures, some kneeling, others with outstretched arms, bloody and seared, and one appeared to be in the confessional. At the sight of these infernal spectres, for they came and went with the successive flashes of the lightning, by a droll chain of ideas, I caught myself shouting, rather than singing - “Ship ahoy! ship ahoy! - what cheer, what cheer? ” in a voice loud as the winds. At last, here was a sensation! Half a dozen flashes rendered me familiar with the diabolical looking forms, and as I now knew where to look for them, even their grim countenances were getting to be familiar. At this moment, when I was about to address them in prose, the door, by which I had entered the gallery, opened slowly, and the withered face of an old woman appeared in a flash. The thunder came next, and the face vanished - “Ship ahoy! ship ahoy! - what cheer, what cheer? ” There was another pause - the door once more opened, and the face reappeared. I gave a deep and loud groan; if you ask me why, I can only say, because it seemed to be wanting to the general effect of the scene and place. The door slammed, the face vanished, and I was alone again with the demons. By this time the gust was over, I groped my way out of the gallery, stole through the corridore into my own room, and went to bed. I ought to have had exciting dreams, especially after the Liebfraumilch, but, contrary to all rule, I slept like a postilion in a cock-loft, or a midshipman in the middle watch. (Gleanings 119-121; cf. Letters 2: 301-303) <?page no="101"?> 101 On August 16, the party continues the journey up the river to Coblenz: The day was before us, and we went leisurely up the stream, determined to profit by events. The old castles crowned every height, as you know, and as we had the carriage filled with maps and books, we enjoyed every foot of this remarkable road. At Andernach we stopped to examine the ruins of the palace of the Kings of Austrasia, of whom you have heard before. The remains are considerable, and some parts of the walls would still admit of being restored. The palace has outlasted not only the kingdom, but almost its history. This edifice was partly built of a reddish freestone, very like that which is so much used in New York, a material that abounds on the Rhine. Between Andernach and Coblentz the road passes over a broad plain, at some little distance from the river, though the latter is usually in sight. It may give you some idea of its breadth, if I tell you that as we approached Neuwied, it became a disputed point in the carriage, whether the stream flowed between us and the town, or not. Still the Rhine is a mighty river, and even imposing, when one contemplates its steady flow, and remembers its great length. It is particularly low at present, and is less beautiful than last year, the colours of the water being more common-place than usual. It was still early, though we had loitered a good deal by the way, to study views and examine ruins, when we drew near the fortenvironed town of Coblentz. The bridge across the Moselle was soon passed, and we again found ourselves in this important station. The territory opposite the city belongs to the Duchy of Nassau, but enough has been ceded to the King of Prussia to enable him to erect the celebrated Ehrenbreitstein, which is one of the strongest forts in the world, occupying the summit of a rocky height, whose base is washed by the Rhine, and whose outworks are pushed to all the neighbouring eminences. The position of Coblentz, at the junction of the Rhine and the Moselle, the latter of which penetrates into the ancient electorate of <?page no="102"?> 102 Treves, now belonging to Prussia, may render it an important station to that power, but it does not strike me as military. The enemy that can seize any one of its numerous out-works, or forts, must essentially command the place. As at Genoa, it seems to me that too much has been attempted to succeed. (Gleanings 122-123) The following day the Coopers see the most beautiful stretch of the Rhine valley and pay a visit to the castle of Rheinstein: We quitted Coblentz at ten, and now began in truth to enter the fine scenery of the Rhine. The mountains, or rather hills, for they scarcely deserve the former name, close upon the river, a short distance below the town, and from that moment, with very immaterial exceptions, the road follows the windings of the stream, keeping generally within a few yards of the water. The departures from this rule, are not more than sufficient to break the monotony of a perfectly uniform scene. I have nothing new to tell you of the ruined castles - the villages and towns that crowd the narrow strand - the even and well-kept roads - the vine-covered hills - and the beautiful sinuosities of this great artery of Europe. To write any thing new or interesting of this well beaten path, one must linger days among the ruins, explore the valleys, and dive into the local traditions. (Gleanings 123-124) Cooper, like his traveling countrymen before him, is a lover of Rhine wine, and for this reason the Rheingau and its wines give him special pleasure on this journey: 4 Here then, we were, in the heart of the richest wine region in Europe, perhaps in the world. I looked curiously at mine host, to see what effect this fact might have had on him, but he did not appear to have abused the advantage. He told me there had just been a sale, at which I should have been most welcome, complained that much sour liquor was palmed off on the <?page no="103"?> 103 incredulous as being the pure beverage, and said that others might prefer Johannisberger, but for his part, good Hinterhausen was good enough for him. “Would I try a bottle? ” The proposition was not to be declined, and with my dinner, I did try a bottle of his oldest and best, and henceforth, I declare myself a convert to Rudesheimer Hinterhausen. One cannot drink a gallon of it with impunity, as is the case with some of the French wines, but I feel persuaded it is the very article for our market, to use the vernacular, of a true Manhattanese. It has body to bear the voyage, without being the fiery compound that we drink under the names of Madeira and Sherry. It is a singular fact, that in none but wine growing countries are the true uses of the precious gift understood. In them, wine is not a luxury, but a necessary; its use is not often abused, and its beneficial effect can scarcely be appreciated without being witnessed. […] The Rheingau, or the part of Nassau in which we now are, produces the best wines of the Rhine. The principal vineyards are those of Johannisberg, Hochheim, (whence the name of Hock,) Geissenheim, Steinberg, and Rudesheim. Johannisberg is now the property of Prince Metternich; Geissenheim belongs to the Count of Ingelheim, and Hochheim and Rudesheim are villages, the vines having different proprietors. I do not know the situation of Steinberg. The best wine of Johannisberg has the highest reputation; that of Geissenheim is also delicious, and is fast growing in value; Hochheimer Dom. (or houses,growing near the village,) is also in great request, and of the Hinterhausen of Rudesheim you have already heard. Dr. Somerville once told me he had analyzed the pure Johannisberger, and that it contained less acidity than any other wine he knew. The Steinberger is coming into favour; it is the highest flavoured of all the German wines, its perfume or bouquet, being really too strong. Rudesheim was a Roman station, and it is probable its wines date from their government. There is still a considerable ruin, belonging I believe to the Count of Ingelheim, that is supposed to have been built by the Romans, and which has been partially fitted up by its proprietor, as a place of retreat, during the vintage. <?page no="104"?> 104 This is truly a classical villagiatura. It was curious to examine these remains, which are extensive, so soon after going over the feudal castle, and it must be confessed that the sons of the south maintain their long established superiority here, as elsewhere. Ingelheim, where Charlemagne had a palace, and where some pretend he was born, is in plain view on the other side of the river, but no traces of the palace are visible from this spot. Such is the difference between the false and the true Roman! There is also a ruin, a small high circular tower, that is connected with our Inn, forming even one of our own rooms, and which is very ancient, quite probably as ancient as the reign of the great Frank. (Gleanings 127-129) Irving’s and Cooper’s signatures in the visitors’ book of the Brömserburg at Rüdesheim on August 8, 1822, and on August 18, 1832, respectively. After passing through Johannisberg, the Coopers visit the ducal palace and the palace gardens at Biebrich, both leaving memorable impressions by their beauty, but also stirring Cooper’s republican consciousness: <?page no="105"?> 105 NOTES 1 Charles Wilkes wrote in his answer on December 9, 1831: “[...] I went over part of the ground in 1823. I was very much pleased with the scenery on the Rhine - not so much with the river itself, which is much inferior to our Hudson, but from the associations which, every instant, carried one back as well to the events of olden time, as to those of modern warfare.” (Correspondence 1: 251) 2 Cooper was probably not aware that he was staying near Edenkoben, the town where Johann Adam Hartmann, who is supposed to be the model of his famous hero Natty Bumppo, had emigrated from. 3 Cf. Riese 75. 4 Cf. also his letter to Peter Augustus Jay, dated October 17, 1832 (Letters and Journals 6: 317). WORKS CITED Cooper, James Fenimore. The Heidenmauer. Or, the Benedictines. A Legend of the Rhine. New York: Lovell, n.y. Cooper, James Fenimore. Gleanings in Europe. The Rhine. The Writings of James Fenimore Cooper. Ed. James Franklin Beard. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986. Correspondence of James Fenimore Cooper. Ed. by his grandson James Fenimore Cooper. 2 vols. 1922. New York: Haskell, 1971. The Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper. Ed. James Franklin Beard. 6 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960-68. Riese, Teut Andreas. “Fenimore Cooper als Gestalter deutscher Geschichte. Betrachtungen zu seinem Roman Die Heidenmauer.” Ruperto Carola 19.41 (1967): 59-76. We entered the palace at Biberich, which, without being larger than usual, is an edifice well worth viewing. We could not but compare this abode with the President’s house, and certainly, so far as taste and elegance are concerned, the comparison is entirely to the disadvantage of us Americans. It is easy to write unmeaning anathemas against prodigal expenditures, and extorting the hard earnings of the poor, on such occasions, but I do not know that the castle of Biberich was erected by any means so foul. (Gleanings 132) On August 18, they reach Wiesbaden, enjoy the hot waters and public promenade of the renowned spa and then set out for Frankfurt. From there they proceed to Darmstadt, Heidelberg, Stuttgart, and on into Switzerland. <?page no="106"?> 106 <?page no="107"?> 107 John Lothrop Motley 1814 - 1877 The historian and diplomat John Lothrop Motley of Boston, who, just like his school and college classmate Thomas Gold Appleton, had been educated at the famous Round Hill School under the tutelage of Joseph Green Cogswell and George Bancroft, went to Germany after his graduation from Harvard (1831) and studied in Göttingen and Berlin from 1832 to 1833. He became thoroughly acquainted with German life and literature and was so ardent an admirer of Goethe that as a student at Göttingen he even began a translation of Faust. During his years of study in Germany, Motley became a close friend of Otto von Bismarck, with whom he shared meals and outdoor exercise while they were fellow lodgers in Berlin, Friedrichstraße. This friendship was often renewed (Holmes 343), especially during Motley’s many years of historical research in Europe in the 1850s, when he worked on the History of the United Netherlands , and in the 1860s, when he served as U.S. minister to Austria (1861-67). Motley visited the Rhine several times. The young student from Göttingen explored its scenery for the first time in the fall of 1832, when he went on foot along the river (Correspondence 15, 24). He passed through Mainz in 1842 on his way to Paris and saw the Rhine again in 1851 and 1858. On April 11, 1851, he writes the following letter to his mother from Königswinter: MY DEAREST MOTHER,- I write from a little village some halfdozen miles above Bonn, with the castled crag of Drachenfels over my head, and the wide and winding Rhine under my nose, so that the situation is as romantic as nature and art, history and poetry can make any spot in the world. Much to my satisfaction, Mary [his wife] decided to give up visiting Paris this year. I was very glad, for the idea was anything but agreeable to me, and we are now (having left the bulk of our luggage at Cologne) making a slow and easy tour on the Rhine. We came to this place from Cologne three days ago, and shall leave to-morrow for Coblenz. We could loiter away a much longer time here, for it is a quiet, dreamy place, lying at the gateway of the Rhine glories and full of natural beauty and romantic associations. I am glad to have Mary wait a little while here till she can form a <?page no="108"?> 108 definite and clear idea of the stream which we are about to ascend. It is striking enough for me, having just come from Holland, where I saw the noble river in its feeble old age dribbling languidly by Leyden, and suffocated at last on its dull Dutch death-bed on the Katwyk sands, to witness the copious and exulting flow of its waters here. It was a melancholy sight enough in Holland. The river, after having commenced its career by a magnificent summersault over the precipices of Schaffhausen, and having pursued its winding and fertilising course through so many romantic regions in Germany, subsides into the most stagnant imbecility in the Netherlands, hiding itself in quicksands and miseries, and forgetting its identity and even its time-honoured name, which is changed and extinguished before its waters are lost in the sea. I believe I alluded in my last letter to this inglorious termination of its career. The river actually becomes too feeble even to die, and is pumped out of existence by artificial means at Katwyk. It had lain strangling there one thousand years, its mouth having been choked with a vast mass of sand driven up by a tempest in 840, till at the commencement of the present century it was helped into the ocean of eternity or the eternity of ocean by means of windmills. Up to that period it was lost in nameless bogs and quagmires. What a dreary termination to its Swiss childhood and its picturesque and impetuous career through the Land of Song! Here the stream is beautiful. Probably no river in the world has been so lavishly endowed by nature and by art, by poetry and truth. Its written history extends with unbroken links from Cæsar to Napoleon, the two notorious individuals whose names are the two greatest epochs of recorded time. Across that chasm of two thousand years, the embroidered belt of the Rhine is flung, emblazoned all over with historical emblems and hieroglyphics. How different from the silent and solitary course of our own beautiful but deaf and dumb rivers! Great events, thick as the stars of heaven, have illuminated almost every day of its existence, and ten thousand charming fables from the misty and legendary mythology of the middle ages have lent a charm to every rock on its banks and to every brook that mingles with <?page no="109"?> 109 its waters. Here, where we are at present, is the first but one of the most enchanting spots which engage your attention as you ascend the stream. This village is at the foot of the Drachenfels, and one of the renowned seven mountains. These hills are all of volcanic origin, having been spouted up by craters long since extinguished, and consist of basaltic crags broken into fantastic and jagged outlines. Cornfields and vineyards grow now in deep hollows, which are very visibly volcanic craters whose lips were closed long before those of history were opened. Each one of these crags has its vineyards on its lap, its crumbling baronial ruin on its brow, and a little white village at its feet. The Drachenfels, or Dragon’s rock, is the most picturesque although not the highest of these cliffs. (Correspondence 1: 123-125) On May 13, 1858, he writes to his wife from London: I came accordingly, as above remarked, to Cologne on Tuesday. The day was a fine one - the only fine one for many days, and the voyage down the river was not so tedious as I had anticipated. I enjoyed not so much the ruins and the river as I did looking at the spot where we were together so long ago. The “Hotel du Lis” at St. Goar, where the waiter threw down the dishes to look at the steamboat, the old “chatee” at Braubach, and the house at Königswinter, from whence dear little Mary’s letter of “We are now at Rhine” was composed - were all visible before the mists settled down upon the landscape, and made it dimmer than the memory of it, which is still so fresh. It was ten in the evening when we got to Cologne, and on the following morning at eight I was on my way in a pelting rain to Ostend. (Correspondence 1: 221-22) WORKS CITED The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley. Ed. George William Curtis. 2 vols. New York: Harper, 1889. Holmes, Oliver Wendell. Ralph Waldo Emerson. John Lothrop Motley. Two Memoirs. Vol. 11 of The Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston: Houghton, 1892. <?page no="110"?> 110 William Henry Seward 1801 - 1872 William Henry Seward was one of the most important American political figures in the middle of the nineteenth century. He had been a distinguished governor of New York and U.S. senator before Abraham Lincoln offered him the position of secretary of state in 1861. He survived the attempt on his life by one of the conspirators who assassinated Lincoln and retired from the secretaryship in 1869. He is remembered for his humanitarian spirit and the advanced position he took in the slavery issue. In 1867 he negotiated the acquisition of Alaska from Russia. Seward traveled to Europe for the first time in 1833 together with his father. Having passed through Holland and Belgium, they journeyed up the Rhine into Switzerland. Seward voiced his favorable impressions of this trip in letters published in the Albany Evening Journal and many years later in his autobiography, which was begun in 1871, but not finished at his death one year later: The tour up the Rhine, by steamer, was then the most attractive feature of travel in Europe. Small but strong steamers, adapted to the shallow and powerful currents, navigated the river every day; while their movement was so slow as to allow a distinct and leisurely contemplative view of every hill, crested with its ruined tower or castle, and every dark and shaded valley, with its busy hamlet and terraced banks. Sitting on the deck, with a collection of legends in my hand, I studied the history of each villa, and castle, and ruined monastery, until the whole voyage seemed to me only the changes of a varying but not altogether incoherent dream. […] Here for the first time I found myself in the land of the vine. The famous vineyards of Rüdesheim, Johannisberg, and others, lay around me. I have never been quite able to understand why the manner of culture differs so much in the different climates propitious to the grape. In Italy, and the south of France, and Palestine, they leave the vine much of its natural shape and proportions, training it on trellises, or leaving it to spread over the trees. But on the banks of the Rhine the vines are planted about four feet apart, and are never suffered to grow more than <?page no="111"?> 111 five feet in height, nor to mingle their tendrils with each other. They say they produce more perfect fruit. Perhaps they ripen better under this discipline in a cold climate. Nevertheless, a cultivator in Italy once told me he was satisfied that the German culture was better than the Italian, and said that a grape-vine ought to be so low that you can step over it, instead of being so high that you can walk under it. Coblentz, with the stupendous fortifications of Ehrenbreitstein, gave us our first evidence that we had entered Prussia. Then, passing the ruined castle of Lahnstein, I surveyed the then principalities of Hesse and Nassau. I know not whether I was more interested in the little town of Bingen, known to everybody by that most pathetic of all songs,“Bingen on the Rhine,” [famous poem by Caroline Norton] or in the vine-clad ruins of the castles of Ehrenfels and Rheinfels, whose legends revive the always attractive pictures of chivalry. Mayence, even then, might have interested me by its garrison and its trade. But I was interested more in the dwelling-house of Faust [Fust], and the palace which Napoleon occupied on the way to his disastrous campaign in Russia, not to speak of the tomb of the wife of Charlemagne. At Mayence I changed from the river back to the diligence, stopping at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and afterward at Darmstadt, the capital of the then Hesse-Darmstadt. (Autobiography 119-120) WORK CITED Autobiography of William H. Seward, from 1801 to 1834. With a Memoir of His Life, and Selections from His Letters from 1831 to 1846. Ed. Frederick W. Seward. New York: Appleton, 1877. <?page no="112"?> 112 Thomas Gold Appleton 1812 - 1884 Thomas Gold Appleton, one of Boston’s prominent men of letters and the arts, contributed much to the cultural improvement of his native city as a trustee of the Boston Athenaeum, Public Library, and Museum of Fine Arts. He sailed to Europe for the first time as a twenty-one-year-old in 1833 in company with two friends. This tour of more than one year included the classical places of England, France, Italy, and Switzerland, but Appleton, a student of Joseph Green Cogswell and George Bancroft, felt he had to become acquainted with Germany, too, and so traveled, now in different company, to Heidelberg, Frankfurt, and the Rhine. On September 4, 1833, we find the following entry in his travel journal, recording his arrival at Mainz: September 4th.- We started at three for Mayence, in an excellent calèche, and arrived, after crossing the Rhine upon the bridge of boats. We are at a capital hotel, d’Angleterre, with excellent rooms. […] To our surprise, we saw many of the stiff Prussian and Austrian troops in the streets; since Napoleon’s downfall, these two powers, with Russia, have held the citadel, as allies. (Life and Letters 156) Early in the morning the following day, Appleton takes the boat down the Rhine to Cologne: September 5th.- This morning, by the early hour of five, we were upon our feet, and, half an hour later, on board the Europa, to enjoy the descent of the Rhine. The morning was not favorable, but, as day advanced, it grew warmer and the sky bluer. At first we thought the scenery inferior to our expectation; but, in a few moments, doubt was hushed in delight. The color of the Rhine here is not other than a turbid yellow, whirled in eddies, and sliding at a pace that makes the boat but one day descending, though two coming up. The scenery, as we found, in a short while burst upon us in all its famed beauty. It is unique, and should be compared with no other, as its castles, which are unrivaled, form the chief glory of the scene. They crown every crag, and <?page no="113"?> 113 the dashing boat gives them to the eye like the quick changes of a panorama. Crags and châteaux shoot up at every turn, as fantastic as ever falling cinders take shape of moat and castle, turret and drawbridge, before the dreaming eye. Ranks of vine, step over step, make green every patch that is not rock. But for the castles the scene would not be so fine; but they are all poetry and robber-wildness - all different, but all possessing a Salvator 1 fierceness. We passed numberless towns and storied towers. All the fine portion of the river is between Mayence and Coblentz, with one solitary exception. Below Bingen we passed the Mouse- Tower, where the rats devoured the miserly bishop. At Coblentz we had, on the right, the fine fortifications of Ehrenbreitstein. They are not equal to Quebec, but very fine and enormous in extension. (Life and Letters 156-158) Though Appleton later revisited the Rhine twice, he never became very intimate with Germany and German culture; he much preferred London and Paris, to which he returned many times in his life. In 1835, when his father, Nathan Appleton, a wealthy Boston manufacturer, banker, and politician, sailed to Europe with his daughters Mary and Frances and two of their cousins, Thomas served as a guide during much of the Appletons’ two years of traveling in Europe. In October 1836, the journey unfortunately is interrupted at Mainz, because the young ladies had “a sort of gastric fever” (Life and Letters 236). Thomas Appleton reported the experience in a letter to a relative at home: MAYENCE, October 10, 1836. I do not think it is fair, after all your kindness, to allow a post to escape uncommissioned by our party, and as the ladies fair are hors de combat, I champion myself to say something in their place. You may like to know that the foul fiend that just now so annoys us is gastric fever, a sort of infliction of these regions for the vile compounds of their kitchen, bred of grease, lard, and all the abominations of the German sausage. The doctor, <?page no="114"?> 114 one Herr Grosé, a vast, rotund, cane-sustained stranger, most attentively pock-marked, dares not confess this, but shakes his head and says eternally, ‘Ayez de la patience.’ What with him and the fever, the girls have dragged through a most unsentimental month. The prominent feature of the malady, its slowness, is just now, within jump of Paris, the ugliest that any disorder could wear. But I am happy to say that all goes on well, and soon we shall be cracking our whips over the chaussée to Paris, where we shall make up for lost time. Father and I lounge an hour at the Casino over the ‘Charivari,’ and another at the Favorite, a delicious promenade along the Rhine, and then hurry home to drown our sorrows, amid red-legged partridges, with the tender exhilaration of Mr. Kaiser’s very best Grafenberger. So you perceive our days are much like days in Boston - meaning to pay them no very extensive compliment on the score of variety. We have actually taken to window-gazing, and I recount to Mary, as Rebecca to Ivanhoe, the marvels I espy abroad. We are just on the river’s brink, and opposite the only bridge; so we have a famous selection among barrels and tarry Dutchmen on weekdays, and trim and well-laced officers on Sundays. Out of this it is no difficult matter for do-nothings to weave long romances; we have also ferreted out a nest of overgrown rats, at the corner of our hotel, said to be of the same family who, of old, ate up the wicked Bishop of Mayence, and ‘nibbled his very miter,’ as says the ballad. I have often seen them, of a shiny morning, waddling about with a most diabolical leer in the shadow of our neighbor’s house; I see the inherited stain of blood in the very timidity of their mincing steps. So you perceive we are full of news and bustle as a ship or a prison-yard. Father seems to take it all quite patiently. Quiet is in his way more than in mine. We have a theatre, but there he is shy of going; he is almost as hard to drag out of an evening as at home. He consented, however, to see with me ‘ Hamlet’ in German. We were both much edified, and the tears came into our Appleton eyes as naturally as if we really understood what was going on. (Life and Letters 237-238) <?page no="115"?> 115 In 1868 Thomas Appleton saw the Rhine for the last time when he accompanied Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, to whom he had grown closely attached both as a brother-in-law - Longfellow’s second wife, Frances, was Appleton’s sister - and as a man of letters. WORK CITED Life and Letters of Thomas Gold Appleton. Ed. Susan Hale. New York: Appleton, 1885. NOTE 1 Reference to the robber pictures of Salvatore Rosa (1615-1673). <?page no="116"?> 116 <?page no="117"?> 117 William Cullen Bryant 1794 - 1878 William Cullen Bryant, who had won fame in the 1820s as America’s leading romantic poet and as editor of the New York Evening Post, traveled to Europe in the summer of 1834 for an extended visit of France, Italy, and Germany. He was accompanied by his wife Frances and their two daughters Fanny and Julia. Coming from Italy, they stayed in Munich for the summer, and, on October 6, 1835, took residence at Heidelberg to spend the winter there. In December they were joined by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Clara Crowninshield, and during the following weeks the two parties met almost daily. Unfortunately, Bryant himself was called back to New York in January 1836 and thus was not able to accompany Mrs. Bryant, Fanny, Longfellow, and Clara Crowninshield on their journey along the Rhine and to the Taunus baths in June 1836 (cf. chapter on Longfellow). It was only after nine years that Bryant returned to the Rhineland. He and Charles Leupp, his associate in the management of the American Art Union, were on a six-month tour of Europe, and in August 1845, coming from the Netherlands, they went to Düsseldorf. Here, they visited the famous Art Academy, which in the 1840s and 1850s attracted many young American painters and had a strong influence on romantic painting in America. Bryant also met with the painter Emanuel Leutze, who was to illustrate his poems. From Düsseldorf, Bryant and Leupp proceeded via Cologne and Bonn to Coblenz (August 22), visited Neuwied (August 23), and then went up the river to Mainz (August 24-25). In a letter to his wife, dated Vienna, September 12, 1845, he comments on this trip briefly: You have travelled on the Rhine and I need not therefore tell you how picturesque I found its rocky banks with their castles and towers, and the pleasant paths that follow the shores,where I now and then saw a religious procession moving slowly along - nor how noble appeared to me the cathedral of Cologne unfinished though it is, and still resounding with the noise of the hammer and chisel. We stopped at Cologne and Coblenz and Mainz and <?page no="118"?> 118 Neuwied and Wiesbaden including an excursion to Schwalbach and Schlangenbad, and reaching Manheim took the railway to Heidelberg, and from Heidelberg followed the same railway to Baden-Baden and Strasburg and returned to Heidelberg again. (Letters 2: 402) In August 1849, during his third trip to Germany, again in company with Charles Leupp, Bryant finds the Rhineland and southern Germany suffering from the consequences of the thwarted uprising of 1848. Troops can be seen everywhere, and Heidelberg is under siege. In his letters to the Evening Post, later collected as Letters of a Traveller, he writes critically on the social and political conditions in the Rhineland. These travel sketches well reflect his own position as a liberal democrat: On my journey, I found the cities along the Rhine crowded with soldiers; the sound of the drum was heard among the hills covered with vines; women were trundling loaded wheel-barrows, and carrying panniers like asses, to earn the taxes which are extorted to support the men who stalk about in uniform. I entered Heidelberg with anticipations of pleasure; they were dashed in a moment; the city was in a stage of siege, occupied by Prussian troops which had been sent to take the part of the Grand Duke of Baden against his people. I could hardly believe that this was the same peaceful and friendly city which I had known in better times. Every other man in the streets was a soldier; the beautiful walks about the old castle were full of soldiers; in the evening they were reeling through the streets. “This invention,” said a German who had been a member of the Diet of the Confederation lately broken up [Prof. Hagen], “this invention of declaring a city, which has unconditionally submitted, to be still in a state of siege, is but a device to practice the most unbounded oppression. Any man who is suspected, or feared, or disliked, or supposed not to approve of the proceedings of the victorious party, is arrested and imprisoned at pleasure. He may be guiltless of any offence which could be made a pretext for condemning him, but his trial <?page no="119"?> 119 is arbitrarily postponed, and when at last he is released, he has suffered the penalty of a long confinement, and is taught how dangerous it is to become obnoxious to the government.” From Heidelberg, thus transformed, I was glad to take my departure as soon as possible. (Letters 3: 95-96) In June and July 1857, Bryant, accompanied by his wife, his daughter Julia, and a niece, visits the Rhineland one more time. After having crossed northern Holland, the party goes to Cologne and Königswinter by train, and then, in order to see the most scenic sections of the river, to Coblenz and Wiesbaden by steamer. Mr. and Mrs. Bryant now visit the Rhine and the Taunus baths together and sample the mineral waters, which in 1836 they had not been able to do. In the spring of 1867, Bryant, in company with his daughter Julia, saw the Rhineland for the fifth and last time. WORKS CITED Bryant, William Cullen. Letters of a Traveller; or, Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America. New York: Putnam, 1850. The Letters of William Cullen Bryant. Ed. William Cullen Bryant II and Thomas G. Voss. 4 vols. New York: Fordham University Press, 1975-1984. <?page no="120"?> 120 George Palmer Putnam 1814 - 1872 As a publisher George Palmer Putnam especially promoted writings by American authors, and in his widely read quality magazines Putnam’s Monthly (1853-57) and Putnam’s Magazine (1868-70) both known and little-known American writers found a forum for publication. He visited the Continent in 1836, 1847, and 1869, and in 1838 published his travel account The Tourist in Europe. It was the first popular travel guide to Europe written by an American. Coming from Switzerland and having visited places on the Upper Rhine, he arrived at Mainz on September 6, 1836: It was dusk when we came in sight of the famous and very pretty town of Mayence, our steamer passing through the bridge of boats over the Rhine, which was promptly opened to admit it. The spires, and domes of the town, as seen from the river, give it quite an imposing appearance. We stepped on the quay, with very little bustle, and without any obstruction or examination. The hotels near the river were all full, but we found good lodgings at the ‘ Trois Couronnes’ in the interior. I shall proceed to-morrow to Frankfort and Leipsic, with the intention of returning here to take the Rhine to Cologne. (Tourist in Europe 242) A week later he returns to visit the “glorious Rhine: ” The entrance into Mayence, at one o’clock at night, was quite impressive. On the opposite side of the river, in Cassel [Kastel], is an extensive military establishment, through the gates and court of which we had to pass. The postilion sounded a martial air on his trumpet, and the sentinel, opening the ponderous gates, admitted us to the bridge of boats, on which we crossed the Rhine to the city. Every thing was still and quiet, but our rumbling diligence; the stars and the lights of the town were looking at their portraits in the river. At the city portals, another blast of the trumpet 1 procured us admission, but no living thing was to be seen, except the military ‘guardians of the night.’ To-day it rains torrents. So I will merely tell you, in guide book style, that Mayence, as well as Cologne, owes its origin to the <?page no="121"?> 121 Romans, and was occasionally the residence of some of the emperors. The city has also been an electorate of the German empire, but at present it belongs to Prussia; and it is remarkable, that, with a population of thirty-two thousand, it has a garrison of twelve thousand soldiers. It claims the honor of being the birthplace of Guttenberg, one, at least, of the inventors of printing, of whom there is a statue in one of the squares. I have been to see the cathedral, noted only for antiquity, and for the numerous monuments and statues of church dignitaries in the interior. Coblentz, (on the Rhine,) September.- The steam-boat left the quay at Mayence this morning at six, with about one hundred passengers, mostly English, on their homeward retreat. For two or three miles, the banks of the river continued to be low and tame. We passed the palace of the Grand Duke of Nassau, a fine edifice, near the river. The classical Brunnens of Langen- Schwalbach are a few miles in the interior. We were this day to see the only interesting part of the ‘glorious Rhine,’ that between Mayence and Cologne. Along here, there are a plenty of little islands, and the banks of the river abound with picturesque rocky crags, capped by ruins of castles, and relieved here and there by a green meadow, a vineyard, or a neat village. Johannisberg, a chateau belonging to Prince Metternich, is one of the first from Mayence. This estate has fifty-five acres of vine-grounds, from whence comes the most celebrated of the Rhenish wines. Speaking of Metternich, I need not remind you of his portraiture as ‘Beckendorf,’ in that unique production, ‘Vivian Grey’ [novel of Benjamin Disraeli with Rhineland setting, 1826-27]. Then we passed the ruins of Klopp and Ehrenfels, Vantsberg castle, at present occupied, from which we were saluted with a gun; the ruins of Falkenberg, Guttenfels, Schoenberg, and the rocks of ‘the Seven Sisters’ in the river; Sternberg and Liebenstein, ‘the Brothers,’ etc., all famed by many a pathetic legend. There are also the pretty villages of Rudesheim, Geisenheim, Bingen, Oberwesel, Saint Goar, and others too tedious to mention; and the rock of Lureley, with an echo which repeats seven times. <?page no="122"?> 122 The steamboat is now before the castle of Ehrenbreitstein, the strongest fortress in Europe, built on a rocky elevation, commanding the river for several miles. The city of Coblentz, nearly opposite, and connected with it by a floating bridge, is strongly fortified, and garrisoned by five thousand Prussian soldiers. It was founded by Drusus, the Roman general, thirteen years before Christ. (Tourist in Europe 253-258) When leaving the picturesque section of the Rhine, Putnam draws typical comparisons between the Hudson and the Rhine as well as the political systems in America and Germany. Characteristically, pride in the grandeur of American natural scenery and democratic achievements is set against the charms of legends, songs and history. On leaving Coblentz, the shores are again ‘flat and stale,’ (though perhaps not ‘unprofitable’ to the vinters,) until thou comest unto Remagen, when there are a few miles of the picturesque, and then the scenery of the Rhine is finished. On the score of natural beauty, it would take a good many Rhines to make a Hudson; but, as [Nathaniel Parker] Willis says, here we are constantly reminded of the past; history, tradition, and song, have given every thing a charm, and even these rough old ruins are tinted with a couleur de rose; but amidst the hills, and streams, and forests, of the so-called new world, our thoughts stretch forward to the future. We have already the rich material, and perhaps the time will come when Europe may not claim superiority, even in works of art, or in historical associations and reminiscences; albeit we have no princely palaces or baronial strong-holds, and, thanks to our democratic rulers! we are in no immediate danger of them. (Tourist in Europe 258-259) NOTE 1 Not included in the text are poems and legends Putnam quotes in footnotes. <?page no="123"?> 123 WORK CITED Putnam, George Palmer. The Tourist in Europe: Or a Concise Summary of the Various Routes, Objects of Interest, &c. in Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Belgium, and Holland; with Hints on Time, Expenses, Hotels, Conveyances, Passports, Coins, &c. Memoranda During a Tour of Eight Months in Great Britain and on the Continent, in 1836. New York: Wiley, 1838. <?page no="124"?> 124 WORK CITED Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner. Ed. Edward L. Pierce. 4 vols. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1881-1893. Charles Sumner 1811 - 1874 Charles Sumner of Boston, who during his many years as United States senator from Massachusetts (1851-1874) became one of the most influential political leaders in the Civil War era, is remembered today as an uncompromising fighter for slave emancipation, an advocate of civil rights, and a spokesman of other reform causes. Sumner went to Europe for four long sojourns between 1837 and 1872 and visited the Rhine in 1838, 1840, 1857, and 1858. On his last trip along the Rhine, he paid special tribute to the memory of Martin Luther standing before the diet of Worms. Sumner, who had suffered personal injury in his fight against slavery, felt great admiration for the courageous German Reformer of 1521. In a letter to his close friend Edward L. Pierce, he wrote from Worms on November 8, 1858: ‘ Though every tile on every roof were a devil,yet will I enter Worms.’ These words of Luther, my dear Pierce, are not to be forgotten; they have brought me a pilgrim here. I knew well the architectural importance of the venerable cathedral, and also the literary associations which cluster in this home of the Minnesingers and the old Nibelungenlied; but that lesson of fortitude has inspired my homage. In itself it is a perpetual fountain of encouragement. Wandering about these decayed streets, I have been reminded of that remarkable letter of Cicero where he pictures the ruined cities which he passed on his way up the Mediterranean as so many corpses; ‘ Cadavera’ was his word. But the cathedral is truly interesting. It belongs to the Romanesque in architecture, and proclaims to the curious observer an antiquity beyond that of the pointed Gothic. Much as I have studied the cathedrals of Europe, I think that none has touched me more on artistic as well as historic grounds. Pardon these allusions, which surely are not unnatural in writing from this place. (Memoir and Letters 3: 570) <?page no="125"?> 125 Catharine Maria Sedgwick 1789 - 1867 The New England writer Catharine Maria Sedgwick, who enjoyed a considerable reputation as a novelist among her contemporaries and had reached highest fame in the mid-1830s - especially through her novels Redwood (1824) and Hope Leslie (1827)-, went on a trip to Europe from 1839 to 1840 in company with five other relatives. Using her letters and travel journal, she published her two-volume Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (1841), a detailed and knowledgeable account of her fifteen months in Europe. In July 1839, the party entered Germany at Aachen, and from there proceeded to Cologne and Bonn. At Bonn they embarked on a boat for Coblenz: At Bonn the romantic beauty of the Rhine begins. I have often heard our Hudson compared to the Rhine; they are both rivers, and both have beautiful scenery; but I see no other resemblance except so far as the Highlands extend, and there only in some of the natural features. Both rivers have a very winding course, and precipitous and rocky shores. But remember, these are shores that bear the vine, and so winding for forty miles that you might fancy yourself passing through a series of small lakes. I have seen no spot on the Rhine more beautiful by Nature than the Hudson from West Point; but here is “A blending of all beauties, streams, and dells, Fruits, foliage, crag, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine, And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells, From gray but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells.” Read Byron’s whole description in his third canto of Childe Harold, of this “abounding and exulting river,” and you will get more of the sensation it is fitted to produce than most persons do from actually seeing it. Its architecture is one of its characteristic beauties; not only its ruined castles - and you have sometimes at one view three or four of these stern monuments on their craggy eminences - but its pretty brown villages, its remains of <?page no="126"?> 126 Roman towers,its walls and bridges,and its military fortifications and monuments: “A thousand battles have assailed its banks,” and have sown them richly with their history. And every castle has its domestic legend of faithful or unfaithful love, of broken hopes or baffled treachery. Story, ballad, and tradition have breathed a soul into every tumbling tower and crumbling wall. (Letters 1: 154-155) From the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein she overlooks the confluence of the Rhine and the Moselle: Oh, for my magic-mirror to show you how lovely looked, in this morning light, the scene below us; the blue Moselle coming down through its vine-covered hills, towns, ruins, villas, cottages, and the Rhine itself, “the charm of this enchanted ground! ” I think I like it the better that it is frozen three months in the year. This seems to make it a blood-relation of our rivers. You cannot imagine how much the peasant girls in their pretty costumes embellish these surroundings. They do not wear bonnets, but, in their stead, an endless variety of headgear. Some wear a little muslin cap or one of gay-coloured embroidery, and others a sort of silver case that just encloses the long hair, which is always braided and neatly arranged. (Letters 1: 156-157) The Sedgwick party stays at Wiesbaden for more than a month, enjoying life at the famous spa. Sedgwick’s description of the scenery and her comments on fellow travelers during an excursion down the Rhine render a vivid portrait of mid-nineteenth-century Rhine tourism: The big Russian princess, who is a sort of “man of the sea” to us, is flourishing up and down the deck with two of her suite, one on each side, as if to guard her from contact with the plebeian <?page no="127"?> 127 world. Every look and motion says “I do not love the people.” The royal brood may wince, but they must submit to the democratic tendencies of the age. These steamers and rail-cars are undermining their elevations. I have not, as you know, my dear C. [her brother Charles], any vulgar hostility to those who are the heirs of the usurpations of elder times - “the accident of an accident” - but when I see a person, radically vulgar like this woman, queening it among those who are her superiors in everything but this accidental greatness, my Puritan blood and republican breeding get the better of my humanity. We are passing the chateau of Johannisberg - a castle of Prince Metternich, an immense white edifice which, as we see it, looks much like a Saratoga hotel. It is a gently-sloping hill, covered with vines which confessedly produce the best Rhine wine. […] WE met a countryman to-day who has been travelling through France and Italy with his sister, “without any language,” he says, “but that spoken on the rock of Plymouth,” which, true to his English blood, he pronounces, with infinite satisfaction, to be the best, and all-sufficient. He is a fair specimen of that class of Anglo-American travellers who find quite enough particulars, in which every country is inferior to their own, to fill up the field of their observation. He has just crossed the deck to say to me, “I have let them know what a tall place America is; I have told them that an American steamer will carry 2000 people and 1000 bales of cotton, and go down the river and up twice as fast as a Rhine steamer.” He has not told them that a Rhine steamer is far superior in its arrangement and refinement to ours. These little patriotic vanities are pleasant solaces when one is three thousand miles from home - but truth is better. Braubach.- WE arrived here at half past three, having passed about fifty miles of the most enchanting scenery on the Rhine. Imagine, my dear C., a little strip of level land, not very many yards wide, between the river and precipitous rocks; a village with its weather-stained houses in this pent-up space; an old chateau with its walls and towers, and at the summit of the rocks, and hanging over them, for the rocks actually project <?page no="128"?> 128 from the perpendicular, the stern old Castle of Marksburg, and you have our present position. Murray [the first edition of the popular Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent appeared in 1836] says this castle is the only one of the strongholds of the middle ages that has been preserved unaltered, the beau ideal of an old castle; and this is why we have come to see it. I am sitting at the window of the chateau, now the Gast-haus zur Phillipsburg. Under my window is a garden with grapes, interspersed with fruit-trees and flowers, and enclosed by a white paling, and finishing at each end with the old towers of the castle-wall. Along the narrow road between the garden and the river there are peasant-girls going homeward with baskets of fresh-mown grass on their heads, followed by peasants in their dark blouses, with their sickles swung over their shoulders. Little boats are gliding to and fro, guided, and, as their ringing voices tell you, enjoyed by children. But here is mine host to tell us the esels are ready - the four asses we have ordered to take us to Marksburg. OF all “riding privileges,” that on a donkey is the least. You are set on to something half cushion, half saddle, that neither has itself nor imparts rest. Though there is a semicircular rampart erected, to guard you from the accident of “high vaulting ambition,” it seems inevitable that you must fall on one side or the other. There is a shingle strapped to the saddle for the right foot, and a stirrup for the left; fortunate are you if you can extricate your feet from both. A merry procession we had of it, however, up the winding road to Marksburg. The Braubach donkeys have not had much custom of late, I fancy, for we ran a race, fairly distancing our donkey-drivers, who seemed much amused with our way of proceeding. The fellow who was spokesman demanded, as I thought, an exorbitant price, and I appealed to one of his comrades, who decided that half he asked was quite enough. I mention this with pleasure, because it is the only thing of the sort we have had to complain of since we came into Germany. The fellow was a stranger and an alien from this worthy household, I am sure; he had a most un-German expression. <?page no="129"?> 129 The castle has been, till recently, a state-prison, and is now occupied by invalid soldiers. We were led through dark passages and up a winding stone staircase to the apartment where prisoners were put to the rack; and we were shown another gloomy den, where there were two uprights and a transverse beam, and beneath them a trap-door; if not satisfied with so much of the story as these objects intimate, you may descend and search for the bones which you will certainly find there! In another apartment are some mediocre paintings on the wall, done with only a gleam of light by a poor fellow who had thus happily beguiled weary years of imprisonment. On the whole, the castle was not so interesting, not nearly so striking as I expected. Nothing is left to indicate the rude luxury of its lordly masters; its aspect is merely that of an ill-contrived prison. (Letters 1: 184-188) WE landed at St. Goar’s, in the midst of the most enchanting scenery of the Rhine, and in showery weather giving us the most favourable possible light. Nature, like “ladies and fine Holland,” owes much of its effect to the right disposition of light and shadow. The mountains enclose this little village. The Mouse and the Cat, the beautiful ruins of two castles, are at either extremity of the view. The “Cat” is well stationed to watch its prey, but, contrary to all precedent, the “Mouse” is said always to have been the strongest when they were held by their lords, rivals and enemies. The immense Castle of Rheinfels, half way up the steep behind St. Goar, looks, as L. says, like a great bulldog that might have kept all its subordinates civil. […] We took a boy from the steps of “The Lily” to cross the river with us and guide us up the Schweitzer Thal (the Swiss Valley). We followed the pathway of a little brook resembling some of our mountain-haunts. Die Katz hung over our heads half way up a steep, which Johanne (our guide) told us was higher than the Lurlieburg. It may be, but there is nothing on the Rhine so grand as this pile of rocks, which look with scorn on the perishable castles built with man’s hands. It is in the whirlpool in their deep <?page no="130"?> 130 shadow that Undine, the loveliest of water-nymphs, holds her court. No wonder it requires, as says the faith of the peasants of St. Goar, the miraculous power of their canonized hermit to deliver the ensnared from her enchantments. […] MY DEAR C., I WILL not even name to you the beautiful pictures past which we floated. Everything is here ready for the painter’s hand. Oberwesel, with its Roman tower, its turreted walls and Gothic edifices; the old Castle of Schonberg, Anglice Beautiful Hill, where there are seven petrified maidens who were converted into these rocks for their stony-heartedness - fit retribution. Villages, vineyards, and ruins appeared and disappeared, as the mist, playing its fantastic tricks, veiled and unveiled them. As we drew near to Bingen the sun shone out, throwing his most beautifying horizontal beams on Rheinstein and other famed points of the landscape, while masses of black clouds, driven on by the gusty wind, threw their deep shadows now here, now there, as if (we flies on the wheel fancied) to enchant the senses of travellers for the picturesque. (Letters 1: 192-195) See us now standing at the Rossel, looking with the feeling of parting lovers at the queenly Rheinstein sitting on her throne of Nature’s masonry - at a long reach of the river up and down - at the lovely Nahe; not merely at its graceful entrance into the Rhine, but far, far away as it comes serenely gliding along its deep-sunken channel from its mountain-home - at Drusus’ bridge, with its misty light of another age and people - at the massy ruin of Ehrenfels under our feet - at the Mouse Tower of old Bishop Hatto on its pretty island - at vineyards without number - at hills sloping to hills, at the green ravines between them, and the roads that traverse them - at villages, towers, and churches; and, finally, at our little hamlet of Rudesheim, which, with its 3500 people, is so compact that it appeared as if I might span it with my arms. And remember that into all this rich landscape, history, story, ballad, and tradition have breathed <?page no="131"?> 131 the breath of life. Do you wonder that we turned away with the feeling that we should never again see anything so beautiful? thank Heaven, to a scene like this “there can be no farewell! ” (Letters 1: 200-201) WORK CITED Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home. 2 vols. New York: Harper, 1841. <?page no="132"?> 132 Bayard Taylor 1825 - 1878 Among the numerous American visitors to the Rhineland in the nineteenth century, Bayard Taylor stands out as one of the most influential promoters of German-American cultural interchange. The tireless traveler, journalist, poet and writer won fame through his translation of both parts of Goethe’s Faust (1863-70), which brought him a non-resident professorship of German literature at Cornell University (1869-77). Before his untimely death he served as U.S. minister to Germany. Taylor traveled to Europe for the first time in 1844, together with two companions, and the nineteen-year-old spent about six months in the Rhineland and at Frankfurt to become familiar with the German language, German customs and institutions. He published the impressions of his two years of traveling in Europe in vivid and fresh magazine articles, which appeared as Views A-Foot in 1846. The book became immensely popular and saw twenty editions in only nine years. The young student’s enthusiastic description of the Rhineland as seen from the deck of a boat reflects the image of romantic Germany that has remained popular in the United States up to the present: 1 I was glad when we were really in motion on the swift Rhine the next morning, and nearing the chain of mountains that rose up before us. We passed Godesberg on the right, while on our left was the group of the seven mountains which extend back from the Drachenfels to the Wolkenberg, or “Castle of the Clouds.” Here we begin to enter the enchanted land. The Rhine sweeps around the foot of the Drachenfels, while, opposite, the precipitous rock of Rolandseck, crowned with the castle of the faithful knight, looks down upon the beautiful island of Nonnenwerth, the white walls of the convent still gleaming through the trees as they did when the warrior’s weary eyes looked upon them for the last time. I shall never forget the enthusiasm with which I saw this scene in the bright, warm sunlight, the rough crags softened in the haze which filled the atmosphere, and the wild mountains springing up in the midst of vineyards and crowned with crumbling towers filled with the memories of a thousand years. <?page no="133"?> 133 After passing Andernach we saw in the distance the highlands of the middle Rhine - which rise above Coblentz, guarding the entrance to its wild scenery - and the mountains of the Moselle. They parted as we approached; from the foot shot up the spires of Coblentz, and the battlements of Ehrenbreitstein, crowning the mountain opposite, grew larger and broader. The air was slightly hazy, and the clouds seemed laboring among the distant mountains to raise a storm. As we came opposite the mouth of the Moselle and under the shadow of the mighty fortress, I gazed up with awe at its massive walls. Apart from its magnitude and almost impregnable situation on a perpendicular rock, it is filled with the recollections of history and hallowed by the voice of poetry. The scene went past like a panorama, the bridge of boats opened, the city glided behind us, and we entered the highlands again. Above Coblentz almost every mountain has a ruin and a legend. One feels everywhere the spirit of the past, and its stirring recollections come back upon the mind with irresistible force. I sat upon the deck the whole afternoon as mountains, towns and castles passed by on either side, watching them with a feeling of the most enthusiastic enjoyment. Every place was familiar to me in memory, and they seemed like friends I had long communed with in spirit and now met face to face. The English tourists with whom the deck was covered seemed interested too, but in a different manner. With Murray’s Handbook open in their hands, they sat and read about the very towns and towers they were passing, scarcely lifting their eyes to the real scenes, except now and then to observe that it was “very nice.” As we passed Boppart, I sought out the inn of the “Star,” mentioned in Hyperion; there was a maiden sitting on the steps who might have been Paul Flemming’s fair boatwoman. The clouds which had here gathered among the hills now came over the river, and the rain cleared the deck of its crowd of admiring tourists. As we were approaching Lurlei Berg, I did not go below, and so enjoyed some of the finest scenery on the Rhine alone. The mountains approach each other at this point, and the Lurlei rock rises up for <?page no="134"?> 134 six hundred feet from the water. This is the haunt of the waternymph Lurlei, whose song charmed the ear of the boatman while his barque was dashed to pieces on the rocks below. It is also celebrated for its remarkable echo. As we passed between the rocks, a guard, who has a little house built on the roadside, blew a flourish on his bugle, which was instantly answered by a blast from the rocky battlements of Lurlei. The German students have a witty trick with this echo: they call out, “Who is the burgomaster of Oberwesel? ” a town just above. The echo answers with the last syllable, “Esel! ” which is the German for “ass.” The sun came out of the cloud as we passed Oberwesel, with its tall round tower, and the light shining through the ruined arches of Schonberg castle made broad bars of light and shade in the still misty air. A rainbow sprang up out of the Rhine and lay brightly on the mountain-side, coloring vineyard and crag in the most singular beauty, while its second reflection faintly arched like a glory above the high summits. In the bed of the river were the seven countesses of Schonberg turned into seven rocks for their cruelty and hard-heartedness toward the knights whom their beauty had made captive. In front, at a little distance, was the castle of Pfalz, in the middle of the river, and from the heights above Caub frowned the crumbling citadel of Gutenfels. Imagine all this, and tell me if it is not a picture whose memory should last a lifetime. We came at last to Bingen, the southern gate of the highlands. Here, on an island in the middle of the stream, is the old mouse-tower where Bishop Hatto of Mayence was eaten up by the rats for his wicked deeds. Passing Rudesheim and Geissenheim - celebrated for their wines - at sunset, we watched the varied shore in the growing darkness, till like a line of stars across the water we saw before us the bridge of Mayence. (Views A-Foot 71-74) After visiting Frankfurt and Darmstadt, Taylor proceeds along the Bergstraße to Heidelberg. From the top of the Kaiserstuhl he enjoys the view of the plains of the Rhine and, just like Cooper on the Teufelstein, muses on the past and present of this historical region: <?page no="135"?> 135 THERE is so much to be seen around this beautiful place that I scarcely know where to begin a description of it. I have been wandering among the wild paths that lead up and down the mountain-side or away into the forests and lonely meadows in the lap of the Odenwald. My mind is filled with images of the romantic German scenery, whose real beauty is beginning to displace the imaginary picture which I had painted with the enthusiastic words of Howitt [The Rural and Domestic Life of Germany, 1842]. I seem to stand now upon the Kaiser-stuhl, which rises above Heidelberg, with that magnificent landscape around me from the Black Forest and Strasburg to Mainz, and from the Vosges in France to the hills of Spessart in Bavaria. What a glorious panorama! and not less rich in associations than in its natural beauty. Below me had moved the barbarian hordes of old, the triumphant followers of Arminius and the cohorts of Rome, and later full many a warlike host bearing the banners of the red cross to the Holy Land, many a knight returning with his vassals from the field to lay at the feet of his lady-love the scarf he had worn in a hundred battles and claim the reward of his constancy and devotion. But brighter spirits had also toiled below. That plain had witnessed the presence of Luther, and a host who strove with him to free the world from the chains of a corrupt and oppressive religion. There had also trodden the master-spirits of German song - the giant twain with their scarcely less harmonious brethren. They, too, had gathered inspiration from those scenes - more fervent worship of Nature and a deeper love for their beautiful fatherland. Oh what waves of crime and bloodshed have swept like the waves of a deluge down the valley of the Rhine! War has laid his mailed hand on those desolate towers and ruthlessly torn down what Time has spared, yet he could not mar the beauty of the shore, nor could Time himself hurl down the mountains that guard it. And what if I feel a new inspiration on beholding the scene? Now that those ages have swept by like the red waves of a tide of blood, we see, not the darkened earth, but the golden sands which the flood has left behind. Besides, I have come from <?page no="136"?> 136 a new world, where the spirit of man is untrammelled by the mouldering shackles of the past, but in its youthful and joyous freedom goes on to make itself a noble memory for the ages that are to come. Then there is the Wolfsbrunnen, which one reaches by a beautiful walk up the bank of the Neckar to a quiet dell in the side of the mountain. Through this the roads lead up by rustic mills always in motion, and orchards laden with ripening fruit, to the commencement of the forest, where a quaint stone fountain stands, commemorating the abode of a sorceress of the olden time who was torn in pieces by a wolf. There is a handsome rustic inn here, where every Sunday afternoon a band plays in the portico, while hundreds of people are scattered around in the cool shadow of the trees or feeding the splendid trout in the basin formed by the little stream. They generally return to the city by another walk, leading along the mountainside to the eastern terrace of the castle, where they have fine views of the great Rhine plain, terminated by the Alsatian hills stretching along the western horizon like the long crested swells on the ocean. We can even see these from the windows of our room on the bank of the Neckar, and I often look with interest on one sharp peak, for on its side stands the castle of Trifels, where Coeur de Lion was imprisoned by the duke of Austria, and where Blondel, his faithful minstrel, sang the ballad which discovered the retreat of the noble captive. (Views A-Foot 76-78) The simple life of the German peasantry also attracts Taylor on his trip: The hills are crowned with castles and their sides loaded with vines; along the road the rich green foliage of the walnut trees arched and nearly met above us. The sun shone warm and bright, and everybody appeared busy and contented and happy. All we met had smiling countenances. In some places we saw whole families sitting under the trees shelling the nuts they had beaten down, while others were returning from the vineyards <?page no="137"?> 137 laden with baskets of purple and white grapes. The scene seemed to realize all I had read of the happiness of the German peasantry and the pastoral beauty of the German plains. (Views A-Foot 75) * In the 1850s Taylor revisited Germany and many other countries on extensive tours, accounts of which were published in journals and later collected in At Home and Abroad (1860). This book also echoed memories of his first long stay in Germany as a student in 1844. Most amusing is his recollection of how he and his companions became acquainted with wine from the Rhine: We had all been infected by the temperance revival, which, set on foot by the Baltimore Washingtonians, had swept over the United States. We might have tasted wine as small children, but its flavor had been wholly forgotten, and we looked upon the beverage as a milder sort of poison. When, therefore, we saw every man with his bottle of Rhenish, we were inexpressibly shocked; still more so, when the servant asked us (in English) what wine we should take. The favorite beverage at home then was - and still is, in the West - coffee, even at dinner; and accordingly we ordered coffee. The man hesitated, as if he had not rightly understood; but, on the order being repeated, brought us coffee, as if for breakfast, with French rolls. He could scarcely believe his eyes, when he saw us place the cups beside our beefsteaks and potatoes. We tried the same experiment once or twice afterwards, but were finally driven to taste the dreaded poison of the Rhine. Finding, after a fair trial, that our health did not suffer, nor our understandings become confused, we came to the conclusion that we had been a little hasty in pronouncing upon the nature of wine, from the representations of those who had been ruined by whisky. (At Home and Abroad 31-32) Taylor’s first impressions of the river now appear tinged with the colors of nostalgia for the carefree days of a student: <?page no="138"?> 138 Our next day on the Rhine was a golden one. All these little embarrassments were forgotten, when we saw the Seven Mountains rising, fair and green, in a flood of sunshine - when we passed under the ramparts of Ehrenbreitstein, and heard the bugle-notes flung back from the rocks of the Loreley. To me it was a wonderful, a glorious dream. I have tried, since then, to recall the magic of that day; but in vain. I miss the purple tint breathed upon the hills - the mystic repose of the sky - the sweetness of the air - the marvellous splendor of the sunshine; or, perhaps, the missing note, which alone could have restored the harmony of the first impression, has been lost by me - the ardent inspiration of youth, the light that is once, on sea and land - once, and never again! (At Home and Abroad 32) And yet, like so many travelers before and after him, Taylor finds the Hudson River superior to the Rhine. Remembering a boyhood excursion up the Hudson to the Catskills, he writes: We enjoyed to the fullest extent, the scenery of the glorious river - still, to my eyes, after seeing the Danube, the Rhine, the Rhone, the Nile, and the Ganges, the most beautiful river in the world. (At Home and Abroad 9) NOTE 1 During the Easter holidays of 1932, the seventeen-year-old Thomas Merton (1915-1969), who as a prolific religious writer gave millions of readers in the fifties and sixties spiritual guidance, wanted to recapture the experiences of mid-nineteenth-century English and American students at Heidelberg by making a walking tour along the Rhine: “I had gone to Germany, by myself as usual, for the vacation. In Cologne I had bought a big rucksack and slung it over my shoulders and started up the Rhine valley on foot, in a blue jersey and an old pair of flannel bags, so that people in the inns along the road asked me if I was a Dutch sailor off one of the river barges. In the rucksack, which was already heavy enough, I had a couple of immoral novels and the Everyman Library edition of Spinoza. Spinoza and the Rhine valley! I certainly had a fine sense of appropriateness. The two go very well together. However I was about eighty years too late. And the only thing that was lacking was that I was not an English or American student at Heidelberg: then the mixture would have been perfect in all its midnineteenth-century ingredients. I picked up more, on this journey, than a few intellectual errors, half understood. Before <?page no="139"?> 139 WORKS CITED Merton, Thomas. The Seven Storey Mountain. New York: Harcourt, 1948. Merton, Thomas. My Argument with the Gestapo: A Macaronic Journal. 1968. New York: New Directions, 1975. Taylor, Bayard. Views A-Foot; or, Europe Seen with Knapsack and Staff. Pref. by N. P. Willis. 1846. Philadelphia: McKay, [1890]. Taylor, Bayard. At Home and Abroad: A Sketch-Book of Life, Scenery, and Men. New York: Putnam, 1860. I got to Koblenz, I had trouble in one foot. Some kind of an infection seemed to be developing under one of the toenails. But it was not especially painful, and ignored it. However, it made walking unpleasant, and so, after going on as far as St. Goar, I gave up in disgust. Besides, the weather had turned bad, and I had got lost in the forest, trying to follow the imaginary hiker’s trail called the Rheinhöhenweg. I went back to Koblenz, and sat in a room over a big beer hall called the Neuer Franziskaner and continued my desultory study of Spinoza and my modern novelists. Since I understood the latter much better than the philosopher, I soon gave him up and concentrated on the novels” (Seven Storey Mountain 95). In the preface to Merton’s My Argument with the Gestapo (the preface was written in 1968, but the book itself as early as 1941), the trip to the Rhine has lost its romantic charm and is colored instead with the ominous political stirrings that would soon topple the Weimar Republic: “One Sunday morning in the spring of 1932 I was hiking through the Rhine Valley. With a pack on my back I was wandering down a quiet country road among flowering apple orchards, near Koblenz. Suddenly a car appeared and came down the road very fast. It was jammed with people. Almost before I had taken full notice of it, I realized it was coming straight at me and instinctively jumped into the ditch. The car passed in a cloud of leaflets and from the ditch I glimpsed its occupants, six or seven youths screaming and shaking their fists. They were Nazis, and it was election day. I was being invited to vote for Hitler, who was not yet in power. These were future officers in the SS. They vanished quickly. The road was once again perfectly silent and peaceful. But it was not the same road as before. It was now a road on which seven men had expressed their readiness to destroy me” (Argument 5). <?page no="140"?> 140 Charles Godfrey Leland 1824 - 1903 Charles Godfrey Leland, the versatile Philadelphia journalist, essayist, humorist, poet, and translator (best known are his Heine translations), went to Europe as a student in 1845 after he had graduated from Princeton. After some travels in Italy, he stayed at Heidelberg and Munich for over two years and learned to love Germany and, above all, student life at Heidelberg. He enjoyed the drinking, singing, and feasting of a “bursch” and became, as it were, the paragon of the American student at Heidelberg. During his two semesters there he got acquainted with the Swabian poet and doctor Justinus Kerner, and he also became a friend of Josef Viktor von Scheffel, the popular late nineteenth-century humorist, with whom he spent many an evening in the Heidelberg taverns. In Leland’s Memoirs this experience is summarized in the sentence: “And here I may say, once for all, that having discovered that, if I had no gift for mathematics, I had a great natural talent for Rheinwein and lager [...]” (Memoirs 1: 200). During this time, Leland, accompanied by a few fellow students, made an excursion along the Rhine down to Cologne. In a letter, dated June 24, 1846, he comments briefly on this trip: I have been all along the Rhine. I first made the tramp in company with students, on foot, with pipe and knapsack, and returned in steamer. I visited every old ruin. I went all through the Rhine towns. I drank all the Rhine wines. (Pennell 1: 87) When writing his Memoirs many years later (in 1883), he recalls those happy days as a student: It was resolved among the Americans that we should all make a foot-excursion with knapsacks down the Rhine to Cologne. It was done. So we went gaily from town to town, visiting everything, making excursions inland now and then. We had a bottle or two of the best Johannisberg in the very Schloss itself - omne cum prætio - and meeting with such adventures as befell all wandering students in those old-fashioned, merry times. The Rhine was wild as yet, and not paved, swept, garnished, and full <?page no="141"?> 141 of modern villas and adornment, as now. I had made, while in America, a manuscript book of the places and legends of and on the Rhine, with many drawings. This, and a small volume of Snow’s and Planché’s “Legends of the Rhine,” [first published 1827] I carried with me. I was already well informed as to every village and old ruin or tower on the banks. So we arrived at Cologne, and saw all the sights. The cathedral was not then finished, and the town still boasted its two-andseventy stinks, as counted by Coleridge [allusion to his poem “Cologne,” 1828]. Then we returned by steamer to Mainz, and thence footed it home. (Memoirs 1: 209) Though Leland, like many of his compatriots, found the Hudson more impressive than the Rhine (Memoirs 1: 144), he returned to the German river again and again in his later life (1869, 1870, 1886). In 1857 he published his first poem in the burlesque German- American dialect of Hans Breitmann (“Hans Breitmann’s Barty”), a comic German-American character, an honest, good-natured, yet naturally shrewd fellow sharing Leland’s love for good companionship and enjoyment of life. In the ensuing years, more of Breitmann’s ballads followed, and when they first appeared as a book (1868), they became popular both in America and England and jolted Leland into a prominent place in the American humorist tradition. Breitmann’s travels along the Rhine are reflected in several of these verses, amongst which is also a Breitmann version of the Lorelei legend. Leland confessed he had composed it during a train ride in Ohio in 1864 (cf. Pennell 1: 344): BALLAD, BY HANS BREITMANN Der noble Ritter Hugo Von Schwillensaufenstein, Rode out mit shper and helmet, Und he coom to de panks of de Rhine. <?page no="142"?> 142 Und oop dere rose a meermaid, Vot hadn’t got nodings on, Und she say, “Oh, Ritter Hugo, Vhere you goes mit yourself alone? ” And he says, “I rides in de creenwood, Mit helmet und mit shpeer, Till I cooms into em Gasthaus, Und dere I trinks some beer.” Und den outsphoke de maiden Vot hadn’t got nodings on: “I tont dink mooch of beoplesh Dat goes mit demselfs alone. “You’d petter coom down in de wasser, Vhere dere’s heaps of dings to see, Und hafe a shplendid tinner Und drafel along mit me. “Dere you sees de fisch a schwimmin’, Und you catches dem efery von: ”- So sang dis wasser maiden Vot hadn’t got nodings on. “Dere ish drunks all full mit money In ships dat vent down of old; Und you helpsh youself, by dunder! To shimmerin’ crowns of gold. “Shoost look at dese shpoons und vatches! Shoost see dese diamant rings! Coom down und fill your bockets, Und I’ll giss you like efery dings. <?page no="143"?> 143 “Vot you vantsh mit your schnapps und lager? Coom down into der Rhine! Der ish pottles der Kaiser Charlemagne Vonce filled mit gold-red wine! ” Dat fetched him - he shtood all shpell pound; She pooled his coat-tails down, She drawed him oonder der wasser, De maiden mit nodings on. (Ballads 8-9) Another Rhine poem combines a motif from Carmina Burana with Breitmann’s (i.e. Leland’s) own enthusiasm for the celebrated river: AM RHEIN.- NO. II. IM KAHN. Were diu werlt alle min, Von deme mere unze an den Rin, Des wolt ih mih darben, Daz diu dame von Engellant Lege an minen armen. - Carmina Burana. Am Rhein! Acain am Rheine! In boat oopon der Rhein! De castle-bergs soft goldnen Im Abendsonnenschein, Mit lots of Rudesheimer, Uns saitenklang und sang, Und laties singin lieder, Ash ve go sailin ’long. <?page no="144"?> 144 Und von fair Englisch dame Vas dere, so wunderscheen; Vene’er der Breitmann saw her, Id made his heartsen pain. Oh, dose long-tailed veilchen Augen, Vitch voke soosh hopes und fears, Deir shape vas nod like almonds, Boot more like fallin tears. Und shpecdagles were o’er dem, De glass of pince-nez kind, In mercy to de beoples, Less dey pe shdrucken blind. Und gazin in dem glasses, Reflected he pehold De Rhine, mit all de shdeam-poats, Und crags in Sonnengold. De signs upon de bier-haus; De gals a-washin close; De wein-garts on de moundain, Like heafenly shdairs in rows; De banks, basaltic-paven, Like bee-hife cells to view; A donkey shtandin on dem, Likevise her lofer too. All dis oopon dos glasses Vas blainly to pe seen; One saw whate’er vas nodiced, Py de schöne Engländrinn. Boot oh! de fery lofe-most Of all dat lofe-most pe Her own plue veilchen Augen- Herself she couldt not see. <?page no="145"?> 145 So ist es in dis Leben; For beaudy oft we spied, Nor know de cratest peaudy Ish in our soul inside. Mein Gott! Vot himmlisch shplendor Vas seen mitout an toubt, If some crate bower supernal Vas toorn life insite out! Und gazin long on Natur, Und gazin long on Man, Shdill all dings glite vorüber, Ash since de vorldt pegan: Ash in dat laity’s glasses, Ve see dem bassin py; Yet veel a soul beneat’ dem, A schweet eternal eye. O schöne Englisch maiden Mit honey colored hair, Dat flows ash if a bienen korb Had got oopsettet dere- Und all de schweetness of your soul Vas dripplin from your brain! Oh shall I efer meet mit dir Oopon dis eart’ acain? O Englisch engel maiden! O schveet betaubend dofe! O Rheinwein und cigarren! O luncheon, mixed mit lofe! O Drachenfels und Nonnenwerth! O Liebeslust und pein! Dus ents de second chapterlet Of Breitmann on der Rhein. (Ballads 234-37) <?page no="146"?> 146 Leland’s love for the wines of Germany never failed him. When during a trip to St. Louis in 1867 wines from the Rhine and the Moselle were served, Leland quickly composed lines of praise in Latin: “Vinum Rhenense decus et gloria mense.” - “Vinum Moslanum fuit omne tempore sanum.” (Memoirs 2: 158) WORKS CITED Leland, Charles G. The Breitmann Ballads. London: Trübner, 1872. Leland, Charles, G. Memoirs. 2 vols. London: Heinemann, 1893. Pennell, Elizabeth Robins. Charles Godfrey Leland: A Biography. 2 vols. London: Constable; Boston: Houghton, 1906. <?page no="147"?> 147 George William Curtis 1824 - 1892 George William Curtis of Providence, who ranks among the most prominent journalists, public lecturers, and political leaders in the Civil War era, received much of his liberal education together with his brother Burrill at Brook Farm (1842-43) and among the writers of Concord (1844-46). As a columnist for Harper’s Monthly and political editor for Harper’s Weekly, he voiced his abolitionist views and supported the Republican Party from its inception. He also campaigned for Frémont (1856) and Lincoln (1860), and after the Civil War he directed his efforts mainly at the reform of the civil service, thus backing Carl Schurz, whose friendship he had won. He made the grand tour to Europe and the Orient from 1846 to 1850, and during that time he began his career as a journalist by writing travel letters to the New York Tribune. He and his brother Burrill were in Germany from the fall of 1847 to the summer of 1848, combining traveling in the Rhineland and northern Germany with a short sojourn of study at Berlin, where they witnessed the March uprising of 1848. In 1852 he published Lotus Eating: A Summer Book, which contains a charming description of the Rhine and an extensive discourse on the subject so popular among American travelers in Germany, the comparison of the Hudson and the Rhine. Though he was in Germany during the troubled times of 1848, he took little note of the political events and remained chiefly interested in the scenery, which he describes with great sensibility: The first day upon the Rhine is an epoch in the traveller’s memory. I came out of the Tyrol through Southern Germany to Heidelberg, and on a brilliant July morning took the steamer at Mayence for Boppart, a few miles above Coblentz, and not far below St. Goar. It was a soft, windless day. I lay in the very bow of the boat, with a Scotch boy going home for the summer from his school in Zurich. All day he buzzed in my ears stories of Switzerland and Scotland, and through his words I saw the misty and snowy grandeur of each. Our way was straight over the gleaming river, by the open spaces of Nassau and the sunny slopes of the vineyards of the Schloss Johannisberger, through the narrow pass of Bingen, where the Highlands of the Rhine <?page no="148"?> 148 begin,- and under the Rudesheimer vines and the little castles, it still wound onward, every mile revealing the picture which fancy had so plainly seen, until in the late afternoon I stepped ashore at Boppart. On the other side of the river were the ruins of the twin castles of “The Brothers,” which every reader of Bulwer’s Pilgrims of the Rhine [Bulwer-Lytton’s famous Rhine book, first published 1834] remembers, and crossing in a small boat at twilight, we climbed the conical hills and rambled and stumbled by moonlight among the ruins. The feeling of that evening was of the nameless sadness which is always born of moonlight in spots of romantic association. Yet it would not be possible to experience precisely the same thing upon any other than that river. The Rhine has its own character, its own romance; and Uhland’s ballad with which I accompanied the slow dip of the oars, as at midnight we rowed homewards, is the music and the meaning of the Rhine. Many a year is in its grave, Since I crossed the restless wave, And the evening, fair as ever, Shines on ruin, rock, and river. Then, in this same boat, beside, Sat two comrades, old and tried; One with all a father’s truth, One with all the fire of youth. One on earth in silence wrought, And his grave in silence sought, But the younger, brighter form, Passed in battle and in storm. So whene’er I turn my eye Back upon the days gone by, Saddening thoughts of friends come o’er me, Friends, who closed their course before me. <?page no="149"?> 149 Yet what binds us friend to friend But that soul with soul can blend? Soul-like were those hours of yore Let us walk in soul once more! Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee: Take, I give it willingly, For, invisible to thee, Spirits twain have crossed with me. [“Auf der Überfahrt” (1823)] A few evenings afterward I was standing with a fellowcountryman upon the terrace of the castle of Heidelberg, looking out toward the glorious opening of the Neckar valley upon the plain of the Rhine, and was severely taken to task by him for my indiscreet Rhenish raptures and absolute light-speaking of the Hudson. “Of course you don’t prefer the Rhine! ” exclaimed my friend with patriotic ire. I contemplated the height of the terrace from the ground, and accommodated my answer to it. “Yes! ‘for this night only’ I think I do. But I have no doubt I shall sleep it off. I am sure I shall be better in the morning.” “Strange words they seemed of slight and scorn, My true-love sighed for sorrow, And looked me in the face, to think I thus could speak of Yarrow.” [Wordsworth, “Yarrow Unvisited” (1803)] I did not sleep it off, however, that night, at least, for a day or two afterward I returned to the Rhine, and in my friend’s absence carried the question clear against the Hudson. The difference between the rivers is that of the countries. The Rhine is a narrow belt of turbid water winding among the vineyards that wall it upon each side. In its beautiful reach between Bingen and <?page no="150"?> 150 Bonn,the onlybeautifulpartofthe river,exceptnear Lake Constance, it has no shores but vineyarded hillsides, and occasionally a narrow grain field in front of them. There are no trees, no varieties of outline, and the vines, regularly planted and kept short for wine, not left to luxuriate at length, for beauty, are a little formal in their impression. The castles - the want of which is so lamented upon the Hudson shores - are not imposing, but romantic. They are rather small and toy-like, and stand like small sentries upon small hills commanding the entrances to small valleys. But they are interesting enough to make their own traditions, even better than those you read in Murray’s red-book [Hand- Book for Travellers on the Continent]: and the mass of travellers who merely pass in the steamers, when the white glare of noon hardens the hills, as if they were sullen, and would not reveal their charms to a hasty stare, can have but faint idea of the tranquil and romantic beauty of the river. A river is the coyest of friends. You must love it and live with it before you can know it. “And you must love him, ere to you He will seem worthy of your love.” [Wordsworth, “A Poet’s Epitaph” (1799)] The Rhine, after all, is the theme and mistress of romance and song - although to many of us, that fame be only traditional. The Rhine songs, both those which directly celebrate its beauty, and those which are ballads of life upon its banks, are among the most sonorous in the songful German literature. It is the Rhine wine, pure Rhenish, the blood of the life that blooms along these monotonous hillsides, which is the wine poetic, that routs all the temperance societies. The foliage of the vine itself is fair and lustrous. It wreathes the hot hills with a gorgeous garland, and makes the day upon the Rhine a festival. Then the old crumbling castles, if vague in fame, are so much the more suggestive, and from one shattered buttress to another, miles away on a distant hilltop, the gay vine-garland sweeps, <?page no="151"?> 151 alive now, as much as ever, and by the vivid contrast softens the suggestion and deepens the delight. Near St. Goar you glide under the rock of the Lorelei. Henry Heine in one of his tender songs relates its mournful tradition, which is the most beautiful and wildest of the Rhine. Willow and Xtopher and I sing it nightly as we lie on the lawn here, watching the moonlight streaming upon the river, and to-day Xtopher has translated it without letting the aroma escape. The first line of the last verse is hard to render. The verb in German expresses the river embracing the boat and sailor, like a serpent with its folds. I know not what it presages, This heart with sadness fraught, ’T is a tale of the olden ages, That will not from my thought. The air grows cool and darkles, The Rhine flows calmly on, The mountain summit sparkles In the light of the setting sun. There sits in soft reclining A maiden wondrous fair, With golden raiment shining, And combing her golden hair. With a comb of gold she combs it, And combing, low singeth she, A song of a strange, sweet sadness, A wonderful melody. The sailor shudders as o’er him, The strain comes floating by, He sees not the cliffs before him, He only looks on high. <?page no="152"?> 152 Ah! round him the dark waves flinging Their arms, draw him slowly down,- And this with her wild, sweet singing The Lorelei has done. [Translation of Christopher Pearse Cranch] […] These are the genuine delights of the Rhine. They are those of romantic association and suggestion. They are those which are only possible in an old and storied country. It is not what you see there, but what you feel through what you see, that charms you. The wild grape in our woods is pleasant from the association with the Rhenish vineyards, and they in turn from their association with the glory of the grape in all literature and tradition. The Rhine is a lyric, or a ballad. Avoid the steamer, if you can, and in some country marketboat float at evening or morning along its shores, following the wildest whim of fancy, with Uhland in one pocket and a flasche of Rüdesheimer in the other, dozing away the noon in the coolest corner of some old ruin, and dreaming of Ariadne as you drift, sighing, beneath the moonlighted vineyards. Then you, too, will exasperate some chance friend at Heidelberg, and believe in the Rhine, for that night only. I know that romance is in the poet’s heart, and not in the outward forms he sees. But there is a technical material of romance - the moonlight, a ruin, an Italian girl, for instance - which is useful in begetting a romantic mood of mind, as a quotation will often suggest verses that haunt you all day long. And it is in this material that the Rhine is so rich. The Hudson, however, is larger and grander. It is not to be devoured in detail. No region without association, is, except by science. But its spacious and stately character, its varied and magnificent outline, from the Palisades to the Catskill, are as epical as the loveliness of the Rhine is lyrical. The Hudson implies a continent behind. For vineyards it has forests. For a belt of water, a majestic stream. For graceful and grain-goldened heights it has imposing mountains. There is no littleness about <?page no="153"?> 153 the Hudson, but there is in the Rhine. Here every thing is boldly touched. What lucid and penetrant lights, what broad and sober shadows! The river moistens the feet, and the clouds anoint the heads, of regal hills. The Danube has, in parts, glimpses of such grandeur. The Elbe has sometimes such delicately pencilled effects. But no European river is so lordly in its bearing, none flows in such state to the sea. Of all our rivers that I know, the Hudson, with this grandeur, has the most exquisite episodes. Its morning and evening reaches are like the lakes of dreams. Looking from this garden, at twilight, toward the huge hills, enameled with soft darkness, that guard the entrance of the Highlands, near West Point, I “would be a merman bold,” to float on the last ray through that mysterious gate to the softest shadow in Cro’ Nest where, if I were a merman bold, I should know the culprit fay was sleeping. 1 Out of that dim portal glide the white sails of sloops, like spectres: they loiter languidly along the bases of the hills, as the evening breeze runs after them, enamored, and they fly, taking my fascinated eyes captive, far and far away, until they glimmer like ghosts and strand my sight upon the distance. (Lotus-Eating 15-24) WORK CITED Curtis, George William. Lotus-Eating: A Summer Book. New York: Harper, 1852. NOTE 1 Allusion to Joseph Rodman Drake’s famous fairy poem “The Culprit Fay,” which was written in the highlands of the Hudson in 1816. <?page no="154"?> 154 Caroline M. Kirkland 1801 - 1864 The New York author and editor Caroline M. Kirkland won a reputation as a truthful portrayer of frontier life in the Midwest through her bold realism and fine sense of humor in A New Home (1839) and Forest Life (1842), two books based on her own experiences as a pioneer in Michigan from 1835 to 1843. She was married to the educator and editor William Kirkland, who from 1825 to 1827 had studied at Göttingen, and who may have been instrumental in developing her interest in Goethe; in 1847 she published two admiring essays on Dichtung und Wahrheit in the Union Magazine, whose editor she had become the same year. From the spring to the fall of 1848 she traveled through Europe in the company of two friends and witnessed the political and social upheavals in many parts of the continent. During and after the journey she wrote a series of travel essays for the Union Magazine; a more comprehensive travel account, however, was offered to a larger reading public in the two volumes of Holidays Abroad (1849). Her lively and humorous descriptions of people and places, which can also be found in the report on her two trips up and down the Rhine in August 1848, deserve special attention: We took our seats in the train for Maintz (Mayence) at three, and had a most amusing exhibition of undisguised love-making, between a damsel in pink and her Indian-looking innamerato. For the first time we observe very gay and showy dresses in the public carriages. It must be the vicinity of Wiesbaden that produces the change. […] We came to Maintz, in the Grand Duchy of Hesse Darmstadt, to hear the military bands, which play in the public gardens there once a week; and so set up our rest in the Rheinischer Hof, meaning to spend the night, at least. But the bands did not play, for some reason or other; and Wiesbaden being within sixteen minutes by railway, we determined rather to see that famous Brunnen than this old Rhine town. (Holidays Abroad 2: 230) After visiting Wiesbaden, the party proceeds to the baths in the Taunus mountains and on to the Lahn: <?page no="155"?> 155 Ems is a mere line, stretched between the Lahn and the Baederley, against whose rocky side the row of lodging-houses seems to rest. Between the houses and the river is a garden promenade, very pleasant - when it does not rain, as it did to-day. The Kurhaus is handsome, though not comparable to those of Baden and Wiesbaden; and at the gaming-table sat four officials, cards in hand, glaring round for players, but none came. I was pleased to see the anxious looks of these harpies, who evidently suffer from the thought that their craft is in danger. The shower which limited our explorations, cut off also the rides of several ladies and gentlemen, who came scampering down the street on donkey, followed by boys at full run, shouting encouragement to their charge. We were in the pump-room for a few moments; but it is a low-browed gloomy place, and so full of hot steam that we were glad to run out as soon as possible. I think I should be afraid to live here; the earth seems to be bursting out with violent gases at every pore. Hot springs gush up even in the river, and there is a stream of carbonic gas which bubbles up not far from the shore, which will destroy animal life in a short time. Perhaps some morning it will be found that the Lahn and the Baederley have changed places, without consulting this long row of lodging-houses. We dined at the Hotel d’Angleterre, an English party being the sole guests besides ourselves. At the head of the table sat Sir W.W-, an old and decayed person; next him his wife, quite young enough to be his granddaughter. Then two young ladies, ineffable altogether. Besides these there was a Captain M- with his wife, and last of all a foreigner, whose attempts at English were infinitely amusing. We were led to observe these people from a certain pretentious insolence which caught our attention at first; and before we parted we had quite made up our minds that they were the first really ill-bred persons we had seen. The poor old baronet, being toothless, said little, though he attempted some gallantry of manner; and the ladies were not very talkative, though now and then vouchsafing some fadaises, in an artificial voice, and with an affectation of extreme delicacy. <?page no="156"?> 156 The talkers were captain M- and his foreign friend; and the impudence of the former and the blunders of the latter made us laugh in spite of ourselves, disgusted as we were with the tone of the conversation and the manners of the party. Capt. M.’s talk, though evincing some humor and even wit, was interlarded with coarse expressions, and breathed the spirit of a roué; his friend had a puzzled look, but was very desirous of seeming up to all the subjects the captain chose to introduce. “Have you ever shot grouse? ” said the Englishman. “Oh yaas! yaas! sanglier! ” was the reply. And when one of the ladies praised a Scotch breakfast - “Ah! ah - mince-pies - excellent! ” said the victim - everybody laughed. Captain M- finished by putting his dog upon the table among the dessert - a piece of insolence which, while the ladies seemed to think it vastly amusing, capped the climax of our disgust at this specimen of English “fashionable” manners - a specimen, I am bound to say, which stands alone in our recollections of the English we have encountered on the continent. THE RHINE. FROM Ems to Coblentz in the rain; Hotel du Géant facing the Rhine, a dirty, uncomfortable place. We made up letters for home, and felt little inclination to wander about the town, which was slippery with mud. I did not go to look at the sarcasm cut in stone by the Russian commander on the monument of the Invasion of Russia; or even climb to Ehrenbreitstein, for the interior of which I cared nothing. It makes a fine object from the other side of the river, but the details of war are simply odious to me. Coblentz affords many beautiful pictures, and the junction of the Rhine with the “blue Moselle” is one of them. We took the post road to Bingen, still in rain, and had a pleasant drive, although obliged nearly to close the carriage, which was a little vexatious. Stolzenfels, one of the finest of the Rhine castles, crowns a steep rock on our right, and nearly opposite is that of Lahneck, at the confluence of the Rhine and Lahn. We alighted <?page no="157"?> 157 for a while at Boppart, but could not be romantic in the rain, and so went on - through scenery very much like that of the Hudson, but having additional charm of numerous picturesque ruins - to St. Goar, where we had resolved to spend the night, in order to examine the celebrated castle of Rheinfels, the largest on the river. Zur Lilie, the inn at which we stopped, is plain, but comfortable. The landlord plays the pianoforte well, and takes good care of a pretty little daughter, the joy of his life. His wife is a respectable and good-looking person, and the people very attentive. I asked for a book which would enlighten me a little as to the particulars of interest in the neighborhood. The head waiter ran with the utmost alacrity to bring one, which proved to be German, of which I could not read a word. We dined, but without salmon, which the steamers have frightened out of the Rhine, and then went very naturally to sleep; and after our several naps began admiring the Rhine with all our might, having come here for the purpose of doing so. We were almost in sight of the Lurleiberg, about which so many pretty things have been said in prose and verse; at least we knew it was there, which was a great comfort, although the raindarkness prevented our seeing it. So with several other things of great interest: we found them in the guide-book, and looked for them on the Rhine, and - then we had tea. At dusk a man came with a horn and pistols to show up the echo, which was “wonderful, wonderful, and yet again wonderful, out of all whooping.” After the reverberations we had reflections - that is to say, we spent some time in admiring the reflector (which the French call a reverbere,) of a lamp in the passage, on which some ingenious person had arranged a single dahlia with a china-aster in the middle of it, and a sprig or two of green, in such a way that they were made into a beautiful wreath, by the multiplying effect of the bits of looking-glass. We wanted to buy the reflector to bring home with us, but concluded such things were to be found in the new world. We go to bed to dream of climbing the hill to Rheinfels early in the morning. <?page no="158"?> 158 WEDNESDAY, AUG. 23.- We came to Bingen this morning after breakfast, without seeing Rheinfels any nearer than we saw it last night. We went to bed late - slept ill - rose in no good season, and found the clouds still lowering; had our breakfast and planned staying a day or two at Bingen; then got into the carriage and drove off without saying a single word about Rheinfels! Now the question is, did we forget it? I did, I confess. We had come a mile or two, when somebody said - “Why we didn’t see Rheinfels, after all! ” and then we laughed, and could not tell why we had left the duty undone. If I dared, I should say it was because the Rhine did not interest us half as much as we tried to think it did; but this is heterodox, and I must not. To-day we have seen with our mortal eyes Lurleiberg, which frowns black and bare a little above St. Goar, on the other side, at a sharp turn of the river. Opposite is a cave, out of which pops an old man to make echoes. At this spot it is that boats tilt a little, from the influence of the whirlpool at the foot of Lurleiberg, and the tradition teaches that the water-witch is insulting them with a cold shoulder. Oberwesel, where the Jews ate the little boy, is a stony-looking place, sure enough; but not without beauty. From here we saw Schönberg, and should have seen the seven cruel sisters, but the water was too high. Pfalz, rising out of the very middle of the river, took my fancy. One might be even more than fashionably exclusive in a house which has not an inch of ground on any side, nor any opening in the walls, by which intruders can enter, within twenty feet of the water. Bacharach is particularly curious, being a walled town with towers, the inner halves of which are cut away, so that the shells stand bare and empty, looking the very image of desolation. This is supposed to have been done in order to prevent the danger to the town of an enemy’s gaining possession of these towers. Here too is the fragment of a beautiful gothic church,- such another piece of exquisite symmetry and delicacy as that of St. John, at Chester, in England - the first gothic ruin I ever saw, and as such enshrined in my memory. Nothing I have yet seen on the Rhine charms me like <?page no="159"?> 159 this broken wall. Above is the castle of Stahleck, from which a fine view of the best portion of the river and its picturesque adjuncts may be had. Castles thicken upon us as we approach Bingen. What charming times the peasantry of this region must have had when every one of these petty fortresses was in the hand of some baron who was privileged to be judge, jury and executioner in his own case. The more I see of old castles, the less I am in love with feudalism. These robber-holds of the Rheingau were put down by the people, when their tamer blood had been heated to the point of desperate resistance by pillage and oppression. We alightedatthefootofaprecipitoushillto examine Rheinstein - a small castle lately refitted by Prince Frederic of Prussia. The steep, winding approach is beautifully shaded, and we entered the court-yard by a portcullis and I think a drawbridge. Within all was appropriate, for the greatest pains had been taken to reproduce in miniature the constituents of a knightly dwelling of the middle ages, and with success. The seneschal or schlossvoght, met us with two great dogs, but deputed his lady to show us the castle,- the prettiest baby-house I ever saw. Little stairs in little turrets; little furniture in little rooms; little pictures on little walls - allis like a castle seen through a reversed telescope. The chapel is no larger than a boudoir; the Princess’s atelier (for she is an artist,) just a good-sized closet to shut up naughty boys in. How Prince Frederic and Princess Frederic - both reputed to be good, portly, German people of fifty or so, get about in this nut-shell, I know not. Indeed it is said they do not often both come at once. There are some pretty Holbeins, and some other pictures of exquisite finish; a portrait of Catherine de Bora, sweet, like all hers; a fine collection of antique drinking glasses; a bedstead of the sixteenth century, looking about as comfortable as the bunks provided for prisoners or - sailors, who are about as well treated. (Holidays Abroad 2: 235-241) From Bingen they cross the river to overlook the scenery from the top of the Niederwald: <?page no="160"?> 160 From this height we looked down upon the Mouse Tower, in the middle of the river, where the cruel Bishop was eaten by the rats. Is it not wonderful, since all the traditions in the world preach justice and mercy, that so many things should continue to be done contrary to both? Was this Bishop Hatto any more than a church dignitary who lived sumptuously in the midst of a starving flock, who were forced, of their penury, to give him for his state what made their misery pass the point of endurance? […] As we rowed across the river the setting sun shone out gloriously for a moment, and the whole scene was touched with magic. The Rhine was all that we had hoped - its shores fit home for romance. As Johannisberg gleamed white in this golden splendor, we thought of Prince Metternich, and remarked that he was now far away, in London. One of the boatmen hearing his name exclaimed, “Metternich is a good man! ” and we learn that the common people in this neighborhood are much attached to the formidable diplomatist. On our return to Bingen, our host informed us that there had been a revolution in Russia, which had forced the Emperor to take refuge on board the fleet. I suppose news-manufacturers are obliged, like other dealers, to consult the state of the market. Here, and now, anything less than a revolution is despised; and before long a massacre or two will be required to make the revolution piquant enough. (Holidays Abroad 2: 242-244) When traveling down the river from Bingen to Cologne, the more inconvenient side of traveling disturbs the enjoyment of the scenery: THURSDAY.- F. and the trunks returned duly, and we found ourselves steaming down the Rhine in the “Joseph Miller,” with everything about us so commonplace that we concluded the steamboat, like genius, is of no country. Here was the usual variety of passengers - one lady flounced up to the waist, and immensely bedizened otherwise; another, on her way with her <?page no="161"?> 161 three children, to Calcutta, by London, to find her husband; a gentleman and two ladies whom we met at Vevay and Geneva - Americans; and Germans of all grades, with long beards and short pipes - blue blouses or drab sacks. We wanted now to take a good look at both banks of the Rhine in descending, but truly the cold wind and drizzling rain were too much for us, and we were obliged to content ourselves with the cabin. So many persons were equally deprived of the opportunity of studying the locale, that when dinner-time came, it seemed necessary to open a window, the weather having cleared and the closeness being very oppressive. This was instantly objected to by a German in the other side of the cabin, who insisted that the window should be shut. The American gentleman of the Vevay party made some resistance, and after a while the captain was called and the window shut, greatly to the discomfort of most of the passengers. (Holidays Abroad 2: 244-245) WORK CITED Kirkland, [Caroline M.] Holidays Abroad; or, Europe from the West. 2 vols. 1849. New York: Scribner, 1851. <?page no="162"?> 162 Worthington Whittredge, Sunrise. View of Drachenfels from Rolandseck, 1850. Oil on canvas Published courtesy of the Fruitlands Museums, Harvard, Massachusetts. <?page no="163"?> 163 Worthington Whittredge 1820 - 1910 and Eastman Johnson 1824 - 1906 In the 1840s and 1850s the Art Academy at Düsseldorf was at the height of its international fame and became a center of study for art students from all over Europe and North America. For the many American artists who went to Düsseldorf in those two decades, an essential factor in the attraction of the Academy was the presence of Emanuel Leutze, who had won fame as a historical painter and who also served as friend, advisor, and patron for the young American artists flocking to the Rhine. 1 Worthington Whittredge, who is today remembered as a major representative of the Hudson River School, went to Europe in 1849, and after short stays in London, Brussels, and Paris, moved to Düsseldorf to study under Leutze, Andreas Achenbach, and Carl Friedrich Lessing. During his more than six years in Düsseldorf he became one of Leutze’s closest associates, and in 1849/ 50, when Leutze was working on his famous painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” Whittredge posed for the figure of General Washington. The romantic charms of the Rhine were also important in bringing Whittredge to Germany. As he tells us in his autobiography, he went on a sketching trip up the river immediately after his arrival in Europe, even before settling in Düsseldorf: I bought a ticket on the boats from Bonn to Schaffhausen but never went further than a short distance above Bingen. On these boats I could be taken on or put off by signalling from the shore or mentioning on the boat that I wanted to get off. My first landing was Drachenfels. Guide-book in hand and constantly watching for the “castled crag of Drachenfels” [Byron, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”], I went miles beyond this renowned place without thinking that I might not know it when I came to it. I got off the boat as soon as possible and walked back and ascended the peak where I expected to meet the “peasant girls with deep blue eyes” which Byron had intimated were there to be found. I looked but saw nothing of them. Two rather shabbily dressed peasant girls with blue eyes, it is true, pressed me to buy wreaths made of oak leaves. I bought one and asked or tried to ask, for I knew no <?page no="164"?> 164 German at that time, what I was to do with the wreaths. I got no answer except a shake of the head, which revealed some rather sunny but unkempt locks, and this was all I ever saw of Byron’s blue-eyed girls on Drachenfels. I stayed all night at a little Wirtshaus on the summit. When I went to bed that night there was absolutely nothing I thought worthy of sketching. But next morning as the sun was rising over the “Seven Hills” I looked out of my window with the Rhine at my back, and saw a picture. It was but a moment, but I made some memoranda, and in the following winter painted a large picture of this subject for my Cincinnati friend, Mr. William Groesbeck. It was exhibited, before it was sent home, in Düsseldorf, where at once it attracted attention and won for me a hearty recognition by the professors of the Düsseldorf Academy and other artists of distinction. I soon left Drachenfels and proceeded on my way up the Rhine. It was some time before I began to find things which really interested me. Nevertheless, I kept on and made some sort of a sketch every day, stopping over night at one of the numerous little inns on either side of the river. At Bacharach, where there are the remains of a very beautiful Gothic church, I remained one week. Here I began to experience difficulty in getting along without some knowledge of German, of which I then knew only one word, and that was “Wasser”, a word little needed by anyone in a wine country. At the inn where I stopped (one of the humblest sort, the little donkeys with their pack saddles used for excursions occupying all the lower part of the house), I met no blue-eyed maids who “walk smiling o’er this paradise” but a prodigiously homely girl with a kind heart who waited on the table, so far as her attention could be called waiting. This girl knew no English and didn’t want to know any, but she was patient and obliging and I resolved to stay there a few days and learn the names of a few necessary articles I was constantly wanting. Later I had a teacher of German and learned finally to speak quite fluently in the language and to read it with considerable pleasure, even to translate some of Heine’s and <?page no="165"?> 165 Schiller’s short poems. I had made sketches all along the Rhine that summer when I returned for a brief stay in Brussels with the Clemsens. (Autobiography 20-21) In his autobiography Whittredge presents some lively episodes of sketching trips up the river in company with fellow artists from America. One of these outings takes them to Bingen in early July 1856: A goodly number of American students had foregathered at Düsseldorf and I had been conspicuous among them in finding out new places to go to for summer sketching. I talked of a little village high up on the River Nahe, a tributary of the Rhine, emptying into that River at Bingen, a place I had wandered to alone in the month of March. I soon had applications to take along with me a goodly number - in fact, all the young American artists of the town, whether landscape painters or not, and in a little while I found myself at the head of a band of jolly fellows guiding them to the region I had so enthusiastically described. Among them was Furness, the gentle and gifted painter of beautiful women; Perry, his dear friend; Haseltine, of Philadelphia; Irving, of South Carolina; Washington, a descendent of the family of the father of our country; and Lewis, the well known painter of the panorama of the Mississippi River. There was a little “Wirtshaus” in the village where we were to put up, too small to accommodate many guests, but as strangers were few in the neighborhood, we had the whole house to ourselves. This particular hostelry was one of those peculiar inns found only in Germany where the landlord gives himself up, body and soul, to make his house and all under its roof comfortable and happy. My love of the wood soon led me into a large hunting reserve where there was a thick growth of trees overshadowing a small stream of water that came dashing down over ledges of shale to form clear pools. In the midst of these pools could be seen great numbers of trout that darted away at the slightest disturbance of the water and disappeared none knew where. I mentioned <?page no="166"?> 166 this to Lewis, who possessed some piscatorial skill; he said at once that he must see that place. I took him there and on the way we met the gamekeeper. We saw instantly the difficulties in the way of ever getting hold of these finny creatures, but the Fourth of July was near at hand, a day which we had all thought should be appropriately celebrated with a mess of fish. A council of war was held. Lewis said the fish could be caught; that no such thing as a fly or a harpoon was of any use; that the fish darted into holes in the shale which lined the sides of the pools; that they could be tickled; that they liked to be tickled when they could get their heads into some dark place; that the pools were shallow and if he could get there unmolested, he could wade in and follow them up and tickle them until he could get his forefinger in their gills and pull them out. The day before the Fourth of July was fixed upon for the experiment. Lewis got himself up as the most innocent sketcher of us all, pipe in his mouth, his white umbrella under his arm and his knapsack on his back, but his sketch box was not in his knapsack. He went alone and returned late in the afternoon, whistling “Yankee Doodle”. The fish were in the knapsack. The next day the fish came to the table, tolerably well cooked, accompanied by plenty of wine, the wine of the neighborhood which was very good, and we had a most jolly time. (Autobiography 30-31) On another occasion Whittredge remembers a trip he made together with Sanford R. Gifford, another eminent painter of the Hudson River School, known for his fine technique in rendering light and atmosphere: He had but a day to give to the Rhine, and I joined him on the steamer from Cologne to Bingen, which took us through the castled Rhine. At Bonn he was interested in the University, and wanted to catch a glimpse of some of the students, but he was not greatly interested in the fact that it was the birthplace of Beethoven although he was fond of music, and had a correct ear. <?page no="167"?> 167 At Drachenfels, which had been the subject of a recent picture of mine, I was a little nettled that he should take so little interest in the place. I tried in vain to inspire him by reading to him a few verses of Byron which I found in my guide book. Fond of poetry and fond of Byron, he was still listless until we drifted into an argument arising out of a comparison of the Rhine with the Hudson as affording material for the landscape painter. If I remember rightly, he said in general terms that no historical or legendary interest attached to landscape could help the landscape painter, that he must go behind all this to nature as it had been formed by the Creator and find something there which was superior to man’s work, and to this he must learn to give intelligible expression. These ideas were not new or wonderful, but he impressed me as a man earnestly looking into a problem, as in truth he was. Arriving at Coblenz, I found him familiar with the history of its fortifications and ready enough to look at them. As we came to the old castles jutting out in black outlines against the sky and frequently presenting really picturesque effects, he seemed to care but little for them, but when his eye caught the vigorous forms of the Gothic windows in the ruined nave at Bacharach, he was pleased. In short, he was then, as he was afterwards and indeed all his life, in search of beauty. The dead, the ruined, the weak did not interest him. The living, the perfect, the strong did interest him, and it matters little where he found it, whether upon the Rhine or upon the Hudson. (Autobiography 56-57) In 1856, a whole group of American painters at the Düsseldorf Academy, including Emanuel Leutze, Worthington Whittredge, William Stanley Haseltine, Albert Bierstadt, and John B. Irving, went on a study tour up the Rhine to Switzerland and Italy. This trip marked the end of Whittredge’s training at Düsseldorf. * Eastman Johnson, who had won a reputation through his portrait drawings of prominent Americans, went to Düsseldorf together <?page no="168"?> 168 with his friend George Hall in the summer of 1849 in order to study oil painting. He stayed in Düsseldorf until 1851 and became a close friend of Leutze and Whittredge. In March 1851, he wrote the following letter from Düsseldorf to his childhood friend Charlotte Child, in which he describes his impressions of the Rhineland in a pleasant tone, mixing humor, irony, and earnestness: My Dear Charlotte: - You no doubt expect in this a most interesting letter, coming awa-a-ay from Germany, a land of fable-poetry-and song, where every mountain and every castle has its story, and the rivers flow in murmurs that seem but voices of the lingering spirits of sainted warriors, sprites, heroes and maidens, with which fancy and romance and the legends of a thousand years have peopled them, but Lord bless you - my dear child - you have not yet learned that commonplaceness - is the sum and substance of what one finds go where one will, and that to see all these fine things, the Rhine with its rocks and ruins its castles and its crags that have been sung and sung in a thousand meters, while I have found great pleasure in it, I have found also to a greater degree than I expected a multitude of guides, beggars and other nuisances. One must live amongst them for a time and learn to divest himself of the multitude of annoyances that are mixed up with all sight-seeing in these lands before one can enjoy the fine things to a reasonable extent. I have now been here a year and a half but my time has been most entirely spent in this quiet town whose interesting and distinguishing points are very few and are now to me as hum drum as any of the peculiarities of our own down-east villages. The extent of my journeying is in having made the tour of the Rhine, with an additional excursion to Heidelberg and into a portion of Bavaria ending the long list of ancient ruins which are of course the cherished and most interesting feature of this delightful trip with the Castle of Trifels where Richard Coeur de Lion was two years a prisoner on his return from Palestine, <?page no="169"?> 169 and where Blondel his minstrel sang beneath his walls and then discovered his place of long concealment. It is perched on the top rock projecting from the summit of a conical mountain, three sides of which rock are perpendicular and, by any means, of great difficulty of ascent. From a small area on this high point rises a solitary tower, the only remains of what was once a strong fortress, and the prison of England’s heroic and romantic king. It contains however the dungeons where he was said to be confined. But the scenery which it overlooks is of extraordinary beauty, mountains receding one beyond the other, villages and vineyards and all at this time clothed in the brown and beautiful colors of autumn. Although you may not be able to account for it, I assure you that while looking at this fine sight and enjoying the thoughts which its history suggested I was seized with the idea and a desire to make a sketch of the whole and address it with a note to you two girls. But it was already late in the season, and at this elevation so frightfully cold, that I was utterly unable to accomplish it. So after making but an imperfect drawing of the town and ruins and plucking a quantity of leaves from the evergreen ivy that was clinging to the rocks and twisting its branches around its ancient and crumbling walls I was forced to descend very much benumbed and blue. Of these [leaves] I at least send you one thinking you may probably have pleasure in such a memorial of this interesting spot similar to my own. They were grown on the outside of the dungeon wall just over the entrance. I mention this chiefly to show you that although I give perhaps but poor proof of a proper remembrance in the way of writing letters I still think of the girls over the “way” a thousand times when they do not think of me - and by the way I will here thank you for the yellow leaf enclosed in your letter. It came to me safely its long way across the ocean and in its bright color spoke to me of the glowing autumn forests of America, and of those rich landscapes whose million hues blend in such matchless beauty I have loved to gaze upon in my own home before I knew that they were unrivalled by any other, and that the sad sweet song <?page no="170"?> 170 that always rests upon them in all their gayness of attire is perhaps peculiarly their own. This [leaf] comes from the “ledge”, that old familiar name “up on the ledge”, where we had strolled in summer and slid down hill in winter. Here the trees grow gradually into the sere and yellow leaf and wither away into brown-ness without putting on the bright hectic that fortells their decay with us as they perish into winter. This owing to the want of the sudden frost which we have that nips the leaves while they are full of sap. Although so much farther north the winters here are much milder with but very little snow and ice. But the summers are much colder - and indeed the last to me seemed no summer at all tho’ it was to be sure unusual for this region. It is suited however for grapes and wine which flows most beautifully from all southern hillsides and sunny slopes and valleys. They were beginning the vintage while I was on my journey. The vineyards all about me were laden with the ripe fruit and without fences or hedges to prevent the frost access. The peasantry were all at work, men and women, and it was my habit to give each party a call. Now and then a pretty girl would emerge from the vines with her tub of grapes on her head and I would help her to plunge them into the great cart that always stood by the roadside for the bruising of them which was an excellent commencement to a nice little rustic flirtation and then she would gather me some particularly nice bunches. I would tell her what an odd thing it seemed to me to see such a pretty girl working in the field and how nice and lazy she could live where I come from in America where all the girls do nothing but grow fat and get married and have black slaves to wait upon them, which she could scarcely believe, tho she had heard America was a paradise. But the fair eyed lovely maids generally associated with the vineyards and poetry, I am pretty well convinced is a fiction entirely, at least in Germany, for they are for the most part less fascinating than the cows yoked to their carts and ploughs. Constant labor in the field their whole lives or not. (Baur 11-12) <?page no="171"?> 171 WORKS CITED “The Autobiography of Worthington Whittredge: 1820-1910.” Ed. John I. H. Baur. Brooklyn Museum Journal (1942): 4-68. Baur, John I. H. An American Genre Painter: Eastman Johnson, 1824-1906. New York: Brooklyn Museum, 1940. Die Düsseldorfer Malerschule und ihre internationale Ausstrahlung 1819-1918. Ed. Bettina Baumgärtel. 2 vols. Petersberg: Imhof, 2011. Groseclose, Barbara S. Emanuel Leutze, 1816-1868: Freedom Is the Only King. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1975. The Hudson and the Rhine: Die amerikanische Malerkolonie in Düsseldorf im 19. Jahrhundert. Ed. Wend von Kalnein. Düsseldorf: Kunstmuseum, 1976. NOTE 1 Notable American painters at Düsseldorf, besides Leutze (worked in Düsseldorf from 1841 to 1858), Whittredge, and Johnson, were: Albert Bierstadt, George Caleb Bingham, John Whetton Ehninger, William Henry Furness, James McDougal Hart, William Stanley Haseltine, John Beaufain Irving, Henry Lewis, Enoch Wood Perry, William Trost Richards, William D. Washington, Charles Wimar, Richard Caton Woodville. For further reference see Groseclose pp. 132-151, The Hudson and the Rhine pp. 97-101 and Die Düsseldorfer Malerschule esp. vol. 1 pp. 186-199. <?page no="172"?> 172 Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze „Bacharach“ [ruins of Wernerkapelle], September 14, 1841. Watercolor and pencil on cream paper, 10 13/ 16 x 15 11/ 16 inches. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Gift of Rear Admiral E.H.C. Leutze, son of the artist. <?page no="173"?> 173 Herman Melville 1819 - 1891 In October 1849, Herman Melville, who had just won fame for his South Sea novels Typee, Omoo, and Mardi, sailed for England for the second time, and at the end of November began his first brief visit to the Continent, which also included a trip through the Rhineland. After visiting Paris and Brussels, he arrived at Cologne by train on December 9: I took tea (à la Français) and retired early into a German bed, with a pillow at my feet. I intended taking the boat at 10¼ in the morning, & so slept sweetly dreaming of the Rhine. (Journal 1849-1850 54) But he decided to spend the day sightseeing in Cologne, and he took a night steamer so that he arrived at Coblenz early in the morning on December 10: Embarked last night about 9½ P.M. for Coblenz. But before so doing went out after tea to take a final stroll through old Cologne. Upon returning to the hotel, found a large party assembled, filling up all the tables in the Dining Saloon. Every man had his bottle of Rhenish and his cigar. It was a curious scene. I took the tall spires of glass for castles & towers, and fancied the Rhine flowed between. I drank a bottle of Rüdesheimer (? ). When the boat pushed off it was very dark, & I made my way into the 2d cabin. There I encountered a German who was just from St. Louis in Missouri. I had a talk with him. From 9½ P.M. till 5 A.M. I laid down & got up, shivering by turns with the cold. Thrice I went on deck, & found the boat gliding between tall black cliffs & crags.- A grand sight. At last arrived at Coblenz in the dark, & got into a bed at the ‘Géant Hoff’ near the quay. At ten o’clock in the morning descended to breakfast, & after that took a valet de place & crossed the Bridge of Boats to the famous Quebec fortress Ehrenbreitstein. A magnificent object truly. The view from the summit is superb. Far away winds the Rhine between its castellated mountains. Crossed the river again, & walked about the town, entering the curious old churches, half Gothic, <?page no="174"?> 174 half Italian - and crossed the Moselle at the stone bridge near where Prince Metternich was born. Singular that he was born so near the great fortress of Germany. Still more curious that the finest wine of all the Rhine is grown right under the guns of Ehrenbreitstein. At one o’clock dined at ‘The Géant’ at the table d’hôte. There were some six or eight English present - two or three ladies & many German officers. The dinner was very similar to the dinner at the Hôtel de Cologne yesterday. After dinner walked out to the lower walls & into the country along the battlements. The town is walled entirely. At dinner I drank nothing but Moselle wine - thus keeping the counsel of the ‘Governor of Coney Island’ whose maxim it is, ‘to drink the wine of the country in which you may be travelling’. Thus at Cologne on the banks of the Rhine & looking at the river through the window opposite me - what could I imbibe but Rhenish? And now, at Coblenz - at the precise junction of the Moselle - what regale myself with but Moselle? - The wine is bluish - at least tinged with blue - and seems a part of the river after which it is called. At dusk I found myself standing in the silence at the point where the two storied old rivers meet. Opposite was the frowning fortress - & some 4000 miles was America & Lizzie. Tomorrow I am homeward-bound! Hurrah & three cheers! (Journal 1849-1850 56-58) 1 On December 11, Melville returns to Cologne, thus missing the most scenic part of the river: At 3 o’clock started for Cologne on a Düsseldorf boat. It was intensely cold. Dined at the table d’hôte in the cabin. Fine dinner & wine. Drank Rhenish on the Rhine. Saw Drachenfels & the Seven Mountains, & Rolandseck, & the Isle of Nuns. The old ruins & arch are glorious - but the river Rhine is not the Hudson. In the evening arrived at my old place, Hôtel de Cologne. Recognized Drachenfels in a large painting on the wall. Drank a bottle of Steinberger with the landlord, a Rhinelander & a very gentlemanly well-informed man, learned in wines. (Journal 1849-1850 58-59) <?page no="175"?> 175 In October 1856, Melville embarks on his extended visit to “Europe and the Levant,” which gives him another opportunity to see Germany on the return journey. Having visited Heidelberg and Frankfurt, he arrived in Mainz on April 22, 1857, actually by mistake, since he had wanted to go to Wiesbaden: At half past eleven A.M. started in cars for Wiesbaden, but by mistake arrived at Mayence - at 2 P.M. Took boat for Cologne. Mayence on low land, but covering large space, fine cathedral & buildings. Passed through Hock-land. Plenty of vineyards (sticks) down Rhine. Got to Cologne at 10 P.M. (Journal 1856-1857 253-254) WORKS CITED Melville, Herman. Journal of a Visit to London and the Continent 1849-1850. Ed. Eleanor Melville Metcalf. London: Cohon, 1949. Melville, Herman. Journal of a Visit to Europe and the Levant: October 11, 1856-May 6, 1857. Ed. Howard C. Horsford. Princeton Studies in English 35. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955. Williams, William Carlos. The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams. 1951. New York: New Directions, 1967. NOTE 1 Melville, who was traveling alone, felt quite homesick on the Rhine, as did Harriet Beecher Stowe on her journey, and much later, in 1909, William Carlos Williams (cf. Autobiography 109). <?page no="176"?> 176 George Copway - Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh 1818 - 1863 George Copway, a Chippewa (Ojibwa) chief and Methodistmissionary in the Great Lakes area, attended the Third General Peace Congress at Frankfurt in August 1850 on behalf of the Christian Indians of America. Today he is remembered for his books on the history and life of the Chippewa Indians and his active engagement in promoting the Indian cause in America. Longfellow, whose friendship Copway had won, had asked him to visit Ferdinand Freiligrath at Düsseldorf and bring back some books from his German friend. Copway saw the Rhine both on his way to Frankfurt and on his return trip, each time enjoying the scenery from the deck of a steamer. In the report on his trip to Europe, published in 1851, it becomes obvious that he was deeply inspired by the two most famous works of literature in English celebrating the Rhine, Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (Canto III, stanzas xlvi-lxi) and Longfellow’s Hyperion: Grand and lofty hills or mountains rise from the water’s edge. The seven mountains are now around us. And really I am now on the Rhine. A reality, yet like a fairy dream. About this river I have heard and read a great deal. History, romance, and song, dwell along these banks. The towering cliffs frown down the works of man. These hills bear on their points the ruins of palaces and fortifications. Crumbling they loiter down to the very edge of the water. Towers appear on our right and on our left. Ages have rolled on the years, and every year has added interest to the events already recorded. O! beautiful! As we turn from one point of view to another, every variety of scenery is presented. Along these deep valleys are fields growing with the grape, and harvest. Every hill looks down. And the sides of the banks seem places as wild as any scenery in America. The hills jutting up from all directions present new features. Town after town, city after city, and village, cluster on the edge of the banks. Every point of land has with it associations which the traveller beholds with a great deal of interest. Legends, and notions of superstition are creeping into the ideas of people even here. Our <?page no="177"?> 177 guide-books relate to us many a fabulous story connected with miracles of deliverance. Poetry and song. Over this river each sweet strain has exhausted itself. The Germans rightly think that there is only one Rhine in the world. We give them credit for love of country, and we ask them the same, when we say it would take twenty-five or thirty such rivers to make one Mississippi! When any nation comes to boasting of rivers, we have one too that could swallow all the German rivers at once. Along these banks in profusion lay the fragments of ancient glory. The thirty years’ war has left its sad memorials along its shore. Armies have stood gazing at each other from bank to bank. These high hills have been clothed with mailed warriors. Furious they have rushed on against one another, and blood has rolled on, and mingled in the stream. The armies of the Romans have made these shores rumble with their tread; their voice has echoed along its bank. O thou river of majestic beauty, and grandeur! A tale couldst thou unfold, if but to mortal ears thy silent waters could only speak. Undisturbed kings repose along thy shore, and no voice nor shout shall ever wake them to battle again. Thy waters they have disturbed. Thy glens they have loaded with their gains, and defaced thy natural walls. Lofty and giant trees waved on high their proud and shaggy tops, where now whisper the leaves of the vine. I would be willing to linger on thy shore, could the scene which nations have acted be once more brought in view. From the frozen tops of the Icy Alps, thy waters drip, and gently roll. Along thy course, Princes bow to thee. Till lost in the ocean of immensity. O! see, see! the grand peaks of the hills on the left.- Our boat whirls from eddy to eddy.- The company gaze and admire. The long and narrow steamer cuts the water without much noise. “Bang,” “Bang,” echoes the firing of a gun; and the sound rolls back, and back again, from side to side. This is done at every steamer that passes here, for the pleasure of travellers, that they might hear the sound. <?page no="178"?> 178 The hills gradually rise higher and higher. We have just passed the palace where the Queen of England stayed when she was here on a recent visit [Queen Victoria visited the Rhineland in 1845 and 1850]. Beautiful palaces rest on the sides of the hills. Old ruins, ivy-covered, lay desolate on each hill, and towers leaning to the water’s edge. Tales and Legends are told at each crevice of the rocks. Wonders and displays of miraculous power, and a great deal of superstition, much more than the North American Indians ever had. The Germans adore this river. Its historians, J. V. Müller, Heeren, Rotleck [Rotteck], Ranke, and Winklemann, have left on their shores which other generations will see and admire. Its poets, the names, Lessing, Gessner, Wieland, Gillert [Gellert], Vass [Voß,] Stolberg, Göthe, and Schiller, have all left something as a memento of their fond love for this noble river. (Running Sketches 198-202) WORK CITED Copway, George. Running Sketches of Men and Places, in England, France, Germany, Belgium, and Scotland. New York: Riker, 1851. <?page no="179"?> 179 Horace Greeley 1811 - 1872 The journalist and political leader Horace Greeley, who is today revered as the father of modern journalism, was perhaps the most widely known and generally respected newspaper editor in the era of the Civil War. Under his editorship the New York Tribune, which he had founded in 1841, quickly became a prominent and influential national political voice, promoting Greeley’s liberal views and his crusades against political and social ills, especially slavery. He toured Europe for the first time in the summer of 1851, but spent only three months there, and traveled down the Rhine rather hastily within three days. His letters to the Tribune about the trip were published in book form in 1851 as Glances at Europe. Greeley is always eager to comment on the political and social conditions of the countries he visited, and when comparing them to America, his patriotic conviction of the superiority and happy destiny of America finds new support. It is probably due to his haste and his interests as a political newspaperman that his description of the Rhine appears rather matter-of-fact and uninspiring: THE RHINE After spending the night at Mannheim, I took a steamboat at 5½ this morning for this place [Cologne], 165 miles down the Rhine, embracing all the navigable part of the river of which the scenery is esteemed attractive. As far down as Mayence or Mentz (55 miles), the low banks and broad intervale continue, and there is little worthy of notice. From Mentz to Coblentz (54 miles), there is some magnificent scenery, though I think its natural beauties do not surpass those of the Hudson from New-York to Newburgh. Certainly there are no five miles equal in rugged grandeur to those beginning just below and ending above West Point. But the Rhine is here somewhat larger than the Hudson; the hills on either side, though seldom absolutely precipitous, are from one to five hundred feet high, and are often crowned with the ruins of ancient castles, which have a very picturesque appearance; while the little villages at their foot and the cultivation (mainly of the Vine) which is laboriously prosecuted up their rocky and almost <?page no="180"?> 180 naked sides, contribute to heighten the general effect. These sterile rocks impart a warmth to the soil and a sweetness to the grape which are otherwise found only under a more southerly sun, and, combined with the cheapness of labor, appear to justify the toilsome process of terracing up the steep hill-sides, and even carrying up earth in baskets to little southward-looking nooks and crevices where it may be retained and planted on. Yet I liked better than the vine-clad heights those less abrupt declivities where a more varied culture is attempted, and where the Vine is intermingled with strips of now ripened Rye, ripening Wheat, blossoming Potatoes, &c., &c., together imparting a variegated richness and beauty to the landscape which are rarely equaled. But the Rhine has been nearly written out, and I will pass it lightly over. Its towers are not very imposing in appearance, though Coblentz makes a fair show. Opposite is Ehrenbreitstein, no longer the ruin described (if I rightly remember) in Childe Harold, but a magnificent fortress, apparently in the best condition, and said to have cost Five Millions of dollars. The “blue Moselle” enters the Rhine from the west just below Coblentz. This city (Cologne) is the largest, I believe, in Rhenish Prussia, and, next to Rotterdam at its mouth, the largest on the Rhine, having a flourishing trade and 90,000 inhabitants. (Coblentz has 26,000, Mayence 36,000, Mannheim 23,000 and Strasburg 60,000.) There are some bold heights dignified as mountains below Coblentz, but the finest of the scenery is above. The hills disappear some miles above this city, and henceforward to the sea all is flat and tame as a marsh. On the whole, the Rhine has hardly fulfilled my expectations. Had I visited it on my way to the Alps, instead of just from them, it would doubtless have impressed me more profoundly; but I am sure the St. Mary’s of Lake Superior is better worth seeing; so I think, is the Delaware section of the Erie Railroad. It is possible the weather may have unfitted me for appreciating this famous river, for a more cloudy, misty, chilly, rainy, execrable, English day I have seldom encountered. To travelers blessed with golden sunshine, the Rhine may wear a grander, nobler aspect, and to such I leave it. […] <?page no="181"?> 181 On the Rhine, the steamboats are so small and shabby, without state-rooms, berth-rooms, or even an upper deck - that the passengers are necessarily at all times under each other’s observation, and, as the fare is high, and twice as much in the main as in the forward cabin, it may be fairly presumed that among those who pay the higher charge are none of the poorest class - no mere laborers for wages. Yet in this main cabin welldressed young ladies would take out their home-prepared dinner and eat it at their own good time without seeking the company and countenance of others, or troubling themselves to see who was observing. A Lowell factory-girl 1 would consider this entirely out of character, and a New-York milliner would be shocked at the idea of it. (Glances 264-267) WORK CITED Greeley, Horace. Glances at Europe: In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. Inlcuding Notices of the Great Exhibition, or World’s Fair. New York: Dewitt & Davenport, 1851. NOTE 1 In the 1820s the city of Lowell in northeastern Massachusetts developed into a major textile center. Most of the workers in the textile mills were girls. <?page no="182"?> 182 Benjamin Silliman 1779 - 1864 During his long career of research and teaching as the first professor of chemistry and natural history at Yale College (1802- 1853), Benjamin Silliman became one of the most prominent scientists in America and an internationally respected scholar. He visited Europe in 1805, and again in 1851. In 1805 the political conditions on the Continent prevented him from going beyond Holland, but in 1851 he was able to make the grand tour and to visit the Rhine on his way from Switzerland to North Germany. Silliman and his children arrived at Mainz on the evening of July 29, 1851: There was still an hour or two of daylight, and as we were to leave Mayence in the morning, we took a carriage without loss of time, and with a commissionaire acquainted with the city and its environs, we drove through the principal streets; viewed the cathedral, the theatre, and the royal palace, all constructed of red sandstone, and all of them buildings of imposing appearance. We went out of the city through a very strong portal, and saw the thick massy walls, double on this side of the town, and with the deep and wide fosse forming a defence apparently impregnable. There are, of course, embrasures for cannon, with loopholes for musketry; and as war has often visited this stronghold of Germany, it will not be found unprepared when it shall come again. Prussian and Austrian soldiers met us every where. We were assured that 10,000 soldiers of those nations are now here in garrison, and in war 30,000 would be required to man the works and defend the fortress. As we had met with no elevated ground since leaving Heidelberg, we were the more gratified as we rode out of the city at finding ourselves in the public gardens, which are situated so high as to afford a beautiful view of the powerful Rhine, and of its important auxiliary, the Maine. Their junction takes place a little above the city; and the Maine is then merged in the Rhine, upon whose banks Mayence stands. The prospect is rich in mild rural scenery, with excellent cultivation. <?page no="183"?> 183 Returning, we drove rapidly here and there, and continued our recognizance until the dark curtain of night was dropping before our eyes. We passed the palaces of the Austrian, and of the Prussian commander; also another palace, where Napoleon lodged when he was here. We saw, also, the barracks of the troops, and the best built street in the city, where the nobility live. Mayence is a handsome city, and its position gives it peculiar importance in a military point of view. Its population is 36,600. exclusive of the soldiers of the garrison. It belongs to the Grand Duke of Hesse Darmstadt, and is the most important city in his dominions. It was the Moguntiacum of the Romans, and was founded by Drusus. (Visit 2: 301-302) The next morning they descend the Rhine to Cologne: We left Mayence at seven and a half o’clock A. M., in a beautiful steamer of small size, but sufficiently large to afford a neat and comfortable cabin, and we arrived at Cologne at four P. M., after a smooth and pleasant passage of about 100 miles. I shall not attempt to describe the various towns, villas, and ruins which line both shores of this river, nor to sketch the history of the memorable events which have happened along its banks. This region has indeed been the theatre of much bloodshed, and its history is, to a great extent, that of the wars of the large and important part of Europe, through which this river runs. Such is the impulse which the Rhine receives in its descent from its parent Alps, that, even opposite to this city, it flows so rapidly, that the natural current carries the wheels of mills anchored in the stream. As far as we have seen the Rhine, its waters are muddy, like those of the Ohio and Mississippi; not, however, in so great a degree as in the last named river. Flowing from the Alps, like the Rhone, and fed by torrents from the melting glaciers, it can never exhibit entirely pellucid waters. Unlike the Rhone, it has no Leman Lake to receive its sedimentary deposits, and thus <?page no="184"?> 184 render it clear - no fountain in which “to wash the River Rhine” [allusion to Coleridge’s poem “Cologne” (1828)]. Its steamers, although of beautiful model, long and sharp, and well adapted to the service of this river, are mere toys, when compared with the vast naval structures which navigate the Hudson, and other great North American rivers and lakes. Their number, although considerable, is much inferior to that on our waters. The number of people whom they can transport must be very limited, compared with the immense human flood which rolls between the banks of the Hudson, Ohio, and Mississippi. At our dinner-table I counted thirty-five persons, and the people of the boat being added, the entire number would not exceed fifty. If we multiply these numbers by ten, we shall be within limits as regards the number of persons usually found on the large Hudson river boats. The width of the Rhine at its widest point is stated at 2000 feet. I crossed this river (1805) in Holland, near to its mouth, and my recollection is, that it does not there exceed that width. The Rhine abounds with towns, villages, and cities all along its banks. There are also many palaces of nobles, and even of crowned heads, embellished with ornamental groves, and with grounds laid out in princely style. Among them we regretted to pass that of the prince of Newid [Neuwied], so advantageously known in the United States. His mansion is modestly beautiful, his grounds appeared in the same taste, and both were in harmony with his character. The Rhine has bold shores of rocks and hills, rising almost to the altitude of mountains; and for 70 or 80 miles in continuation, from Mayence to Bonn, the steamboat dashes along between the towering barriers. Many a barren precipitous cliff or shelving rock, shows the ruined castles of other centuries, with their broken walls and tottering towers, dilapidated by violence and by time, and telling of an era of local feuds, of aggressive violence, of robbery and murder; and, these ruthless deeds being accomplished, were followed by lordly revelry, securely held within the frowning battlements. […] <?page no="185"?> 185 A comparison is often made between the Hudson and the Rhine, by those who have been familiar with both streams. Both rivers have their lofty barriers of volcanic and other rocks, giving a certain similarity of natural scenery, and both are the channels of a large commerce. The romance of ancient legends of castles and barons, knights and ladies, and of the fierce conflicts of two thousand years, throws an indescribable interest over every promontory, valley, and hill along the Rhine. But aside from this, and in comparison merely of natural beauty, it appears to me that the advantage is on the side of the Hudson. The feature of cultivation peculiar to the Rhine is, of course, the vine, which is altogether wanting upon the Hudson; and so far as beauty is concerned, the absence of this stiff and ungraceful culture is not to be regretted. (Visit 2: 302-305) WORK CITED Silliman, Benjamin. A Visit to Europe in 1851. 2 vols. New York: Putnam, 1853. <?page no="186"?> 186 Harriet Beecher Stowe 1811 - 1896 The publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852 had made Harriet Beecher Stowe the most famous woman of America, and when she traveled to Europe in 1853, the champion against slavery received universal respect and affection in England and on the Continent. The trip of 1853, the first of three sojourns in Europe in the 1850s, included an extensive tour of Germany and yielded Stowe’s prodigious travel letters, published in 1854 as Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands. This book contained both her detailed letters to family members and extracts from the diary of her brother Charles, who had accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Stowe. The Stowe party had made a triumphal tour through Great Britain, had traveled through France and Switzerland, and came to the Rhine in early August. The Reverend Charles Beecher records the impressions of the trip on a Rhine steamer in his diary: WEDNESDAY, August 3. Frankfort to Cologne. Hurrah for the Rhine! At eleven we left the princely palace, calling itself Hotel de Russie, whose halls are walled with marble, and adorned with antique statues of immense value. Lo, as we were just getting into our carriage, the lost parcel! basket, shawl, cloak, and all! We tore along to the station; rode pleasantly over to Mayenz; made our way on board a steamer loaded down with passengers; established ourselves finally in the centre of all things on five stools, and deposited our loose change of baggage in the cabin. The steamer was small, narrow, and poor, though swift. Thus we began to see the Rhine under pressure of circumstances. The French and Germans chattered merrily. The English tourists looked conscientiously careworn. Papa with three daughters peered alternately into the guide book, and out of the loophole in the awning, in evident terror lest something they ought to see should slip by them. Escaping from the jam, we made our way to the bow, carrying stools, umbrellas, and books, and there, on the very beak of all things, we had a fine view. Duly and dutifully we admired Bingen, Coblentz, Ehrenbreitstein, Bonn, Drachenfels, and all the other celebrities, and read Childe Harold on the Rhine. Reached Cologne at nine. (Sunny Memories 464-465) <?page no="187"?> 187 Mrs. Stowe, unfortunately, did not feel well during this passage and actually slept “even on the classic Rhine” (Sunny Memories 454). This explains why her observations on the scenery are restricted to an uncharacteristic minimum. However, her letter written from Cologne the same evening is most interesting in expressing her feelings in view of the river: COLOGNE, 10 o’clock, Hotel Bellevue DEAR: - The great old city is before me, looming up across the Rhine, which lies spread out like a molten looking-glass, all quivering and wavering, reflecting the thousand lights of the city. We have been on the Rhine all day, gliding among its picture-like scenes. But, alas! I had a headache; the boat was crowded; one and all smoked tobacco; and in vain, under such circumstances, do we see that nature is fair. It is not enough to open one’s eyes on scenes; one must be able to be en rapport with them. Just so in the spiritual world, we sometimes see great truths,- see that God is beautiful, glorious, and surpassingly lovely; but at other times we feel both nature and God, and O, how different seeing and feeling! To say the truth, I have been quite homesick to-day, and leaning my head on the rails, pondered an immediate flight, a giving up of all engagements on the continent and in England, an immediate rush homeward. Does it not seem absurd, that, when within a few days’ journey of what has been the longdesired dream of my heart, I should feel so - that I should actually feel that I had rather take some more of our pleasant walks about Andover, than to see all that Europe has to offer? (Sunny Memories 465-466) WORK CITED Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands. London: Low, 1854. <?page no="188"?> 188 William Trost Richards, Stolzenfels (1856). Oil on canvas, 85,5 x 61,5 cm. LVR - LandesMuseum Bonn <?page no="189"?> 189 Edward Everett Hale 1822 - 1909 Edward Everett Hale, a descendant of old-established Boston families, won considerable recognition in his time as a Unitarian minister, philanthropist, and a prolific writer of stories, novels, travel accounts, sermons, and journalistic pieces. Though much of his prodigious writing is forgotten now, his famous story “The Man without a Country” (1865) and his autobiography A New England Boyhood (1893) preserve his reputation as a writer. Hale paid two visits to the Rhineland (1859 and 1873), the first of which yielded Ninety Days’ Worth of Europe (1861), a travel account based on his letters to family members and on his notebooks. In 1881 he published together with his sister Susan Hale (she had studied art at Weimar in 1872/ 73) a fictionalized travel book under the title A Family Flight Through France, Germany, Norway and Switzerland. Hale, who in 1859 was accompanied by his friend and classmate George Hayward, wrote with great pleasure of the Rhine. From Coblenz he writes on October 20, 1859, in the manner of his teacher at Harvard, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: But how shall I tell you about the Rhine and Ehrenbreitstein? To see the river, we selected the damp-skiff, which is slow, instead of the railroad, which is fast. River-steamboat travelling is the perfection of voyage everywhere: what shall one say when it is on the Rhine? From 8.15 to 4.15 we came only forty-five miles to this place. Current very fast; river low beyond precedent; sky overcast, without rain. Oh, how lovely it is! After Bonn, the Highlands of the Seven Mountains - Drachenfels, Rolandseck, and that set - begin, just as two or three of our West-Point Mountains will look when the wood is all gone, and the Longworths of that day have covered their sides with Catawba. I ought not to say this, however, without going back to the hour of sunset, which I spent last night in the belvedere on top of our hotel, looking on the Rhine, its boats, its bridges, and on the dying light and gathering lanthorns, as, a thousand years hence, the New Zealander, tired of sketching ruins, will sit in a belvedere on Water Street in Hartford, and look up on the flow of the river there. The feeling <?page no="190"?> 190 of the two places is the same; the flow is the same; the boating not quite the same, but like. The color of the forests, which begin to appear on the west side of the river after you pass the Seven Mountains, is just that of our woods where there is no maple. The yellows are as brilliant, the green (without evergreen) even more so; and you constantly feel that you have seen the same at home. But the east side, more sunny for some reason which I do not quite verstehen, is all vine,- all but what is bare rocks or house or road or ruin. You know how they grow, tied to little sticks,- terraces where they can terrace up the volcanic rock, steeper than West Rock in places, or Cat Hole; and, where they cannot terrace, the vines growing in baskets, with stone steps cut up the cliff,- stairways where they ascend to pick. Give me the most of a day of this, with Nonnenwerth, Rolandseck, Rheinseck, and so forth, thrown in; enough balladbooks and legend-books to refresh lagging memories; a nice picture-book-looking old man of fifty, who nicht verstand Franzose, but potuit dicere Latine ut plures gentes literati, and with whom we dicebamus Latine all the way by Rolandseck; he traducens the German ballad into Latinam linguam, which we read in the German, over his shoulder, from his guide-book, as he did so,- give me, I say, a day of this, instead of three miserable pages weighing four and a half grammes of wetted ink on thin paper, and you will see and know what I saw and knew till I saw Ehrenbreitstein. Ehrenbreitstein is opposite this place. We stopped at the Hotel am Reisen [sic] (the Giants’ Hotel), left our trunks, walked across the bridge and up the laborious way to the fortifications, or rather through them; satisfying the guards on duty with two and a half groschen for each of us, so variable are these maiden fortresses,- uncertain, coy, and hard to please, in time of war; but, in peace, so easily sapped and won. Through arch, over moat, along inclined planes, and the rest, you ascend four hundred feet, and come out on a gallery, terrace, parapet I suppose it is, right above the Rhine. The Moselle flows in opposite. Coblentz (is not its name Confluentia Fluviorum? ) is between; - Entre Rios, as they say in South America; eastward, Nassau; northward, Rhenish Prussia <?page no="191"?> 191 and Belgium; westward, Belgium, and even France; and, south of it, this German Coblentz. But it was not political geography, but paradisiacal garden beauty, that in the sunset glow one looked upon, and remembers. … Marvellous as all the Rhine is, I think this view stands out as the most marvellous. You ascend by inclined planes cut in the rock to this very highest terrace of the fortress,- the broad stone of Honor itself. A miserable recruit takes you in charge, and leads you from terrace to terrace; where, but for stout iron railings, you might fall never so far below. He points out all the posts of these different States, and even tells you that Luxembourg is French territory; but the real glory of it is, that the sun is setting behind the western mountains. As you look, the Rhine and Moselle begin to fade away in the misty light he leaves behind him,- mist and light all the more glorious that you are surrounded by all the colors of an Indian summer; for on the face of Ehrenbreitstein they have something, I know not what, which even vies with the brilliancy of our sumach. Indeed, I will say here of all the coloring of the Rhine as we saw it, that, if you remember sundry Rhine views which different travellers have brought home to us, you have thought very likely, like me, that their colors both of yellow and green were intensely exaggerated for the sake of a painter’s effect of contrast. But it is not so. At this season, the vine changes to a yellow as brilliant as our most brilliant grape-leaves or birches; the blue of the sky is equally marked; and we constantly caught ourselves saying, “How like a Swiss water-color! ” I think some of these little pictures are as good representations of actual scenery as I have ever seen. But, as I say, the sunset would fade away. I walked pensive down, and we crossed the funny bridge of boats, and paid funny kreutzers at the funny little toll-house, quite resolved to write another “Childe-Harold” verse to those from Byron: but when we arrived at the Hotel des Géants, Hotel am Reisen, (and to what other could we have gone? ) the cotelettes were ready, and the appetit aussi; and we descended to other cares, and the verses never came. <?page no="192"?> 192 Oct. 22.- COBLENTZ TO BINGEN. It has been a charming sail, though the weather has been cold. I understand now why people always compare the Rhine and the Hudson; but there is ten times as much of this beautiful mountain-pass scenery here as there. This I feel now, being only three months or thereabouts from the same sail there. [As I look over these notes, I am struck with the truth of James Lowell’s words: - “Nature is not the same in America, and perhaps never will be, as in lands where man has mingled his being with hers for countless centuries; where every field is steeped in history, every crag is ivied with legend, and the whole atmosphere of thought is hazy with the Indian summer of tradition.”] At every turn of the river, on the Rhine, there is a ruin, a profile, a legend, a ballad, or a joke. But I spare my faithful readers my sketches or my raptures; though there is a temptation to put in parallel columns Schiller’s ballad of the Toggenburg, and our schoolmaster-friend’s Latin version of it which he made for our edification (and indeed he succeeded), quite unconscious that we knew it by heart, and were reading over his shoulder. Of the castles of the two brothers who fell in love with the same lady, fought and died, he said, “Unus in pugna mortuus est, unus a dolore.” We have been talking four languages in about equal proportion to-day. Bingen is a sweet little village, where the Rhine begins to open its way through the mass of basaltic rock, of which the Lurlei is the boldest precipice. Looking back as the boat rounds the precipice, they affect to show a profile of Napoleon I.; which everybody looked for, and I, to my satisfaction, found. But it wears a bushy moustache. Did he ever wear any? Bingen is at the head of the picturesque scenery of the Rhine. We should have gladly kept on by the boat to Mayence, as we intended to: but the water was so low, that we had already changed for a smaller boat at Pfalz the pretty and curious old <?page no="193"?> 193 palatine’s tower in the Rhine; and at seven o’clock, therefore (long after dark), we stopped for the night at the Victoria Hotel at Bingen. Oct. 23.- BINGEN TO MAYENCE. We were up early to take the morning train for Mayence; which is a short “sabbath-day’s journey,” if you count by time. I ran down to the shore to see Bishop Hatto’s Tower,- the Mouse Tower. “I’ll go to my tower on the Rhine,” replied he; “’Tis the strongest place in all Germany: The walls are high and the shores are steep, And the river is near and the water deep.” I suppose I knew that ballad by heart as soon as I knew any verse outside of Mother Goose. It looks just like the pictures: how often we say that in a world turned up-side down! They have somewhat refitted it, and a flag now waves upon it as a signal for the very difficult pilotage of the rapid river; and so it stands as it did when- “He listened and looked,- it was only the cat: But the bishop he grew the more fearful for that; For she sat screaming, mad with fear, At the army of rats that were drawing near. For they have swum over the river so deep, And they have climbed the shores so steep; And up the tower their way is bent, To do the work for which they were sent. They are not to be told by the dozen or score; By thousands they come, and by myriads and more: Such numbers had never been heard of before; Such a judgment had never been witnessed of yore. <?page no="194"?> 194 Down on his knees the bishop fell, And faster and faster his beads did he tell, As louder and louder, drawing near, The sound of their teeth from without he could hear. And in at the windows and in at the door, And through the walls, helter-skelter they pour; And down from the ceiling and up through the floor, From the right and the left, from behind and before, From within and without, from above and below; And all at once to the bishop they go. They have whetted their teeth against the stones; And now they pick the bishop’s bones: They gnawed his flesh from every limb; For they were sent to do judgment on him! ” [Robert Southey, “God’s Judgement on a Wicked Bishop” (1799)] A quick ride carried us into Mayence in less than an hour. It is fortified, and we could see on the buildings the marks of shot left from old times. We went to service in the Cathedral, which had been left wellnigh a ruin by the French troops, who used it as some sort of a storehouse; and it has not been fully restored. The proportions are immense; but it is unsatisfactory after what we have seen. The outer dome is modern, I believe; certainly very fine. Oct. 23, 24.- MAYENCE. The town, like all these towns, is charmingly quaint; the Hotel du Rhin, like all these inns, charmingly comfortable: but we had to rise early, and dress by candle-light, that we might start early enough for the long day’s ride to Lucerne. The palatinate, now Darmstadt and Rhenish Bavaria, is as flat as Holland or Cambridgeport. It is cultivated like a garden; and <?page no="195"?> 195 here, for the first time, we saw the people gathering grapes. As soon as we came to Ludwigs-hafen, the railroad station where the Bavarian lines begin, we saw, even in a station, poor old Ludwig’s good taste. It was a large building, of fine proportions, built with light carvings for its verandah support, as if for a festival, and the columns overgrown with vines. In Mayence and its Prussian neighborhood, the toll-gates, sentry-boxes, et id genus omne, are striped black and white; in Darmstadt, red and white; in the Bavarian Palatinate, blue and white; in France, not at all: so that you have a constant sign of the allegiance which you owe. (Ninety Days 52-60) In A Family Flight Edward Everett Hale and Susan Hale present a lively description of the Rhine journey of the fictional Horner family, the typical Americans on the grand tour in Europe: After two nights in Cologne, they found themselves, on a bright July morning, comfortably installed on the open deck of the Lorelei, steaming up the Rhine. Baedeker’s and tourists’ guides were in their hands, and they bought more guides and maps, from wandering boys who brought them about, as they do “Harper’s” and the “New York papers” in America. […] Their first Rhine day took them to Coblenz, during which they passed the Drachenfels, a castle of the twelfth century, a complete ruin since the Thirty years’ war. The cavern half-way up the hill, is said to have been the home of the dragon that Siegfried killed; and when he bathed in its blood he became invulnerable. Mary wondered if the “dragon’s blood” of Newman, a delicious tint in water color, came from the same source. There is a beautiful view from the top, but the Horners did not stop for it. Miss Lejeune read to them, from the guide-book, Byron’s celebrated lines, which pleased the rest, but Jack pronounced them “bosh.” At Coblenz they stayed over for a day, and climbed to the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, three hundred and seventy-seven feet above the level of the sea. It has long been a fortress of great importance, and has only twice been taken, once by stratagem, <?page no="196"?> 196 and once reduced by famine. During the French revolution, between 1795-1798, it was besieged four times, and finally surrendered to the French; but in the restoration of all things to the Prussians, the French had to pay them fifteen millions of francs, to repair the fortifications. The view from the fortress is magnificent, for at Coblenz the Rhine is joined by the Moselle, and the two gleaming rivers, winding off in the distance, are seen far below as on a map. The second day the river was narrower, and the steamer passed one ruined castle after another, till the children were all fairly tired of running from side to side of the boat to see them. They now began to have an ardent desire for ruins, and to stop and examine the winding stairs and crumbling arch-ways of those they saw from the river; but their father only smiled and said, “Wait till we get to Heidelberg.” (A Family Flight 306-309) WORKS CITED Hale, Edward Everett. Ninety Days’ Worth of Europe. Boston: Walker, 1861. Hale, Edward Everett and Susan Hale. A Family Flight Through France, Germany, Norway and Switzerland. Boston: Lothrop, 1881. <?page no="197"?> 197 Henry James 1843 - 1916 Although Henry James stayed in Germany several times, he never felt very comfortable in this country and, unlike his brother William, avoided it during most of his continental sojourns. He got to know the Rhineland as a young student in 1860 when the James family settled in Bonn for the summer, so that the three elder boys, William, Henry, and Wilkinson, might learn German in the houses of German professors. Writing to his Newport schoolmate and friend Thomas Sergeant Perry on July 18, 1860, the seventeenyear-old Henry describes his arrival at Bonn and the activities pursued until then: We came almost directly here [from Geneva], stopping for a couple of days only at Wiesbaden and Frankfort. At the former place of which I suppose you have heard, we drank of course of the hot waters, and witnessed the gambling for which it is famous. Then we sailed up (or down) the Rhine. I am not the first person who has been disappointed in the Rhine and have a better reason than many for such sacreligiousness inasmuch as I had just come from among the mountains of Switzerland whose high privilege it is to make everything else look mean and small. (Letters 1: 25) In a second letter to Perry, dated August 5, 1860, he describes the events of the past weeks, including a trip up the river to the Drachenfels and Königswinter: After dinner I went up stairs and set to work again, but had not been long occupied when Willie came in and told us that Mother proposed going to the Drachenfels, a mountain on the other side of the Rhine and commanded our attendance. This was cheerfully given. I went with Willie up to mothers lodgings. These are in a huge brick mansion built to imitate a feudal castle, situated immediately on the flat shore of the Rhine, so as that the water, I am told, sweeps in winter round its base. From M.’s sitting room which has a fine big stone balcony overlooking the river there is a lovely view. The Rhine is just here very broad. On <?page no="198"?> 198 its opposite bank are some fertile meadows and green hills called the Seven Mountains. The Drachenfels is one of these. Mother, my Aunt, Willie, Wilky, and Theodor the Doctor’s son whom we asked to come with us formed our party. We took the steamboat for a place called Königswinter at the foot of the mountain. On the boat were a lot of students from the University here, who were going down the river to hold what they call a Commerz i.e. to go into a room and swill beer and wine with certain formalities and with emulative vigour till an advanced hour in the morning. I saw one of these entertainments in Switzerland and will tell you more about it when I see you. They had already commenced their work with huge ox-horns filled with Rhenish wine, and forced all the ladies on board (the German ones at least) to assist them therein at intervals of about ten minutes. We walked up the Drachenfels (it is not more than an hours ascent, with an excellent road), that is we all walked except mother who had the aid, if aid it truly be, of a donkey. On the top of the mountain, there stands a high crag with a ruined castle on the top of it, in truly Rhenish fashion. (Do you remember the picture in Brown Jones and Robinson of one of those gentlemen’s preconception of the Rhine? 1 (Letters 1: 30-31) On the occasion of a renewed visit to the Rhine in August 1874, James remembers his earlier experience. The reader will note the change in perspective and style: <?page no="199"?> 199 As many as thirty years ago, I believe, it was good taste to make an apology for a serious mention, of the descriptive sort, of the vineyards of Bingen or the cloister of Nonnenwerth; and if the theme had been rubbed threadbare then, it can hardly be considered presentable now. But thus much I may boldly affirm, that if my corrupt modern consciousness had not assured me that these were terribly faded charms, I should not have guessed it from the testimony of my eyes. After platitudes, as well as after battles, Nature has a way - all her own - of renewing herself; and in a decent attitude, at the bow of the boat, with my face to Nature and my back to man, I ventured to salute the castled crags as frankly as if I were making a voyage of discovery. The time seems to me to have come round again when one ought really to say a good word for them. I insist upon the merits of no particular member of the crumbling fraternity; there are many worthy men whose pockets it might be awkward to examine; and the Rhenish dungeons, from a more familiar standpoint than the deck of the steamer, may prove to be half buried in beer-bottles and lemon-peel. But they still pass their romantic watchword from echo to echo all along the line, and they “compose” as bravely between the river and the sky as if fifty years of sketching and sonneteering had done nothing to tame them. The fine thing about the Rhine is that it has that which, when applied to architecture and painting, is called style. It is in the grand manner - on the liberal scale; that is, it is on the liberal scale while it lasts. There is less of it, in time, than I had been remembering these fifteen years. The classic sites come and go within an easy four hours; and if you embark at Mayence you leave the last and most perfect of the castled crags - the Drachenfels - behind you just as your organism, physical and mental, is being thoroughly attuned to the supreme felicity of river navigation. It was a grayish day as I passed, and the Drachenfels looked as if it had been stolen from a background of Claude to do service in the Rhenish foreground. It has the ideal, romantic contour. (Transatlantic Sketches 380-381) <?page no="200"?> 200 Whereas German cities and German civilization held little attraction for James, the Rhine and the memories of Bonn and its neighboring woods left lasting impressions on him. Whenever German woods appear in his works, they radiate a romantic and magic charm (cf. Hovanec 50). The following passage from his autobiographical narrative Notes of a Son and Brother (1914) will illustrate this particular attitude: The long vistas of the beeches and poplars on the other side of the Rhine, after we had crossed by the funicular ferry, gothically rustled and murmured: I fancied their saying perpetually “We are German woods, we are German woods - which makes us very wonderful, do you know? and unlike any others: don’t you feel the spell of the very sound of us and of the beautiful words, ‘Old German woods, old German woods,’ even if you can’t tell why? ” I couldn’t altogether tell why, but took everything on trust as mystically and valuably gothic - valuably because ministering with peculiar directness, as I gathered, to culture. I was in, or again I was “out,” in my small way, for culture; which seemed quite to come, come from everywhere at once, with the most absurd conciliatory rush, pitifully small as would have been any list of the sources I tapped. The beauty was in truth that everything was a source, giving me, by the charmingest breach of logic, more than it at all appeared to hold; which was exactly what had not been the case at the Institution Rochette [Geneva], where things had appeared, or at least had pretended, to hold so much more than they gave. The oddity was that about us now everything - everything but the murmur of the German woods and the great flow and magic name of the Rhine - was more ugly than beautiful, tended in fact to say at every turn: “You shall suffer, yes, indeed you are doing so (stick up for your right to! ) in your sense of form; which however is quite compatible with culture, is really one of the finest parts of it, and may decidedly prove to you that you’re getting it.” I hadn’t, in rubbing, with whatever weakness, against French and, so far as might be, against France, and in sinking, very sensibly, more and <?page no="201"?> 201 more into them, particularly felt that I was getting it as such; what I was getting as such was decidedly rather my famous “life,” and without so much as thinking of the degree, with it all, of the valuable and the helpful. (Autobiography 257-258) WORKS CITED Hovanec, Evelyn A. Henry James and Germany. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1979. James, Henry. Transatlantic Sketches. Boston: Osgood, 1875. James, Henry. Autobiography. Ed. Frederick W. Dupee. New York: Criterion, 1956. James, Henry. Letters. Ed. Leon Edel. 4 vols. Cambridge: Belknap, 1974-1984. Jochum, K.P.S. “Henry James’s Strong American Light on Darmstadt.” Transatlantic Encounters. Studies in European-American Relations Presented to Winfried Herget. Ed. Udo J. Hebel and Karl Ortseifen. Trier: WVT, 1995. 205-217. NOTE 1 This drawing appeared originally in The Foreign Tour of Brown, Jones and Robinson by Richard Doyle (1854); as Leon Edel points out in the edition of the letters, James kept this book all his life. <?page no="202"?> 202 William Dean Howells 1837 - 1920 Before William Dean Howells became known as the preeminent representative of American literary realism, he had written a campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, and in return was made American consul at Venice. At the end of his consulship in 1865, Howells, together with his wife and little daughter, returned to America via Switzerland, Germany, and England. They went by train from Berne to Mainz, and from there took a steamer to Cologne the next day. On July 10, 1865, he writes to his father: It is at this point that the magnificence of the Rhine scenery begins, and the glory of it ends just before you reach Cologne. The river is well enough and the hills are good, but the scenery is not nearly so fine as that of the Ohio, and is infinitely inferior to the Hudson’s. My feeling was consequently one of great disappointment, as I shall explain to you later. The truth is, that Italy and Switzerland are the only countries in Europe comparable to America in natural loveliness. Switzerland is charming, and one feels that atmosphere of freedom which is the best air in the world. I saw only proofs of industry and happiness among the Swiss, who produce a supper of cold chicken and honey of unequaled magnificence. (Letters 1: 223) More than thirty years later, in 1897, Mr. and Mrs. Howells journeyed down the Rhine again. In a letter to his sister Aurelia, Howells summarizes his impressions of this trip: I wrote you last Sunday from Mayence [reproduced on pp. 208- 209], and the next day, we came down the Rhine. It is more beautiful than I remembered it, though the beauty is not greater than that of the upper Ohio, and it is not nearly as grand as the lower Hudson. It is the quaint towns, and the ruined castles that give the Rhine its charm; and it is vineyarded all the way to Cologne. It was raw and cloudy weather at first, but cleared, and we had a most brilliant hour at Cologne for the cathedral. (Life in Letters 2: 80) <?page no="203"?> 203 In his novel Their Silver Wedding Journey (1899), present and past impressions of Mr. and Mrs. Howells’s Rhine journeys are mirrored in the experiences of Mr. and Mrs. March, who recall their first trip to the Rhine thirty years earlier: The Main widened and swam fuller as they approached the Rhine, and flooded the low-lying fields in places with a pleasant effect under a wet sunset. When they reached the station in Mayence they drove interminably to the hotel they had chosen on the river-shore, through a city handsomer and cleaner than any American city they could think of, and great part of the way by a street of dwellings nobler, Mrs. March owned, than even Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. It was planted, like that, with double rows of trees, but lacked its green lawns; and at times the sign of Weinhandlung at a corner, betrayed that there was no such restriction against shops as keeps the Boston street so sacred. […] It was very bleak, though very beautiful, when they stopped before their hotel on the Rhine, where all their impalpable memories of their visit to Mayence thirty years earlier precipitated themselves into something tangible. There were the reaches of the storied and fabled stream with its boats and bridges and wooded shores and islands; there were the spires and towers and roofs of the town on either bank crowding to the river’s brink; and there within-doors was the stately portier in gold braid; and the smiling, bowing, hand-rubbing landlord, alluring them to his most expensive rooms, which so late in the season he would fain have had them take. (Silver Wedding Journey 2: 367-368) March spent the rainy Sunday, on which they had fallen, in wandering about the little city alone. His wife said she was tired and would sit by the fire, and hear about Mayence when he came in. He went to the cathedral, which has its renown for beauty and antiquity, and he there added to his stock of useful information the fact that the people of Mayence seemed very Catholic and very devout. They proved it by preferring to any of the divine old Gothic shrines in the cathedral, an ugly baroque altar, which <?page no="204"?> 204 was everywhere hung about with votive offerings. A fashionably dressed young man and young girl sprinkled themselves with holy water as reverently as if they had been old and ragged. Some tourists strolled up and down the aisles with their red guidebooks, and studied the objects of interest. A resplendent beadle in a cocked hat, and with a long staff of authority posed before his own ecclesiastical consciousness in blue and silver. At the high altar a priest was saying mass, and March wondered whether his consciousness was as wholly ecclesiastical as the beadle’s, or whether somewhere in it he felt the historical majesty, the long human consecration of the place. He wandered at random in the town through streets German and quaint and old, and streets French and fine and new, and got back to the river, which he crossed on one of the several handsome bridges. The rough river looked chill under a sky of windy clouds, and he felt out of season, both as to the summer travel and as to the journey he was making. (Silver Wedding Journey 2: 375-376) The Marches embark on a boat at Mainz and travel in company with fellow Americans, Englishmen, and Germans down the river to Cologne: The morning was raw, but it was something not to have it rainy; and the clouds that hung upon the hills and hid their tops were at least as fine as the long board signs advertising chocolate on the banks. The smoke rising from the chimneys of the many manufactories of Mayence was not so bad, either, when one got them in the distance a little; and March liked the way the river swam to the stems of the trees on the low grassy shores. It was like the Mississippi between St. Louis and Cairo in that, and it was yellow and thick, like the Mississippi, though he thought he remembered it blue and clear. A friendly German, of those who began to come aboard more and more at all the landings after leaving Mayence, assured him that he was right, and that the Rhine was unusually turbid from the unusual rains. March had his own belief that whatever the color of the Rhine might be the rains <?page no="205"?> 205 were not unusual, but he could not gainsay the friendly German. Most of the passengers at starting were English and American; but they showed no prescience of the international affinition which has since realized itself, in their behavior towards one another. They held silently apart, and mingled only in the effect of one young man who kept the Marches in perpetual question whether he was a Bostonian or an Englishman. His look was Bostonian, but his accent was English; and was he a Bostonian who had been in England long enough to get the accent, or was he an Englishman who had been in Boston long enough to get the look? He wore a belated straw hat, and a thin sack-coat; and in the rush of the boat through the raw air they fancied him very cold, and longed to offer him one of their superabundant wraps. At times March actually lifted a shawl from his knees, feeling sure that the stranger was English and that he might make so bold with him; then at some glacial glint in the young man’s eye, or at some petrific expression of his delicate face, he felt that he was a Bostonian, and lost courage and let the shawl sink again. March tried to forget him in the wonder of seeing the Germans begin to eat and drink, as soon as they came on board, either from the baskets they had brought with them, or from the boat’s provision. But he prevailed, with his smile that was like a sneer, through all the events of the voyage; and took March’s mind off the scenery with a sudden wrench when he came unexpectedly into view after a momentary disappearance. At the table d’hôte, which was served when the landscape began to be less interesting, the guests were expected to hand their plates across the table to the stewards but to keep their knives and forks throughout the different courses, and at each of these partial changes March felt the young man’s chilly eyes upon him, inculpating him for the semi-civilization of the management. At such times he knew that he was a Bostonian. The weather cleared, as they descended the river, and under a sky at last cloudless, the Marches had moments of swift reversion to their former Rhine journey, when they were young and the purple light of love mantled the vineyarded hills along the shore, <?page no="206"?> 206 and flushed the castled steeps. The scene had lost nothing of the beauty they dimly remembered; there were certain features of it which seemed even fairer and grander than they remembered. The town of Bingen, where everybody who knows the poem was more or less born 1 , was beautiful in spite of its factory chimneys, though there were no compensating castles near it; and the castles seemed as good as those of the theatre. Here and there some of them had been restored and were occupied, probably by robber barons who had gone into trade. Others were still ruinous, and there was now and then one such a mere gray snag that March, at sight of it, involuntarily put his tongue to the broken tooth, which he was keeping for the skill of the first American dentist. For natural sublimity the Rhine scenery, as they recognized once more, does not compare with the Hudson scenery; and they recalled one point on the American river where the Central Road tunnels a jutting cliff, which might very well pass for the rock of the Loreley, where she dreams Sole sitting by the shores of old romance 2 and the trains run in and out under her knees unheeded. “Still, still, you know,” March argued, “this is the Loreley on the Rhine, and not the Loreley on the Hudson; and I suppose that makes all the difference. Besides, the Rhine doesn’t set up to be sublime; it only means to be storied and dreamy and romantic, and it does it. And then we have really got no Mouse Tower; we might build one, to be sure.” “Well, we have got no denkmal, either,” said his wife, meaning the national monument to the German reconquest of the Rhine, which they had just passed, “and that is something in our favor.” “It was too far off for us to see how ugly it was,” he returned. “The denkmal at Coblenz was so near that the bronze Emperor almost rode aboard the boat.” He could not answer such a piece of logic as that. He yielded, and began to praise the orcharded levels which now replaced <?page no="207"?> 207 the vine-purpled slopes of the upper river. He said they put him in mind of orchards that he had known in his boyhood; and they agreed that the supreme charm of travel, after all, was not in seeing something new and strange, but in finding something familiar and dear in the heart of the strangeness. (Silver Wedding Journey 2: 378-384) WORKS CITED Howells, W. D. Their Silver Wedding Journey. 2 vols. New York: Harper, 1899. [A condensed version of the experiences of the Marches was also published as Hither and Thither in Germany (New York: Harper, 1920). Cf. George Arms, “Howells’ Last Travel Book,” Old Northwest 8.2 (1982): 131-155.] Howells, W. D. Selected Letters. Ed. George Arms et al. 6 vols. Boston: Twayne, 1979-1983. Life in Letters of William Dean Howells. Ed. Mildred Howells. 2 vols. Garden City: Doubleday, 1928. NOTES 1 Allusion to a line in Caroline Norton’s famous poem “Bingen on the Rhine: ” “For I was born at Bingen - at Bingen on the Rhine.” 2 Quotation from William Wordsworth’s “A Narrow Girdle of Rough Stones and Crags” (1800). <?page no="208"?> 208 <?page no="209"?> 209 <?page no="210"?> 210 Louisa May Alcott 1832 - 1888 Louisa May Alcott, whose present-day fame rests primarily on her many stories and novels for children and her dedication to humanitarian and reformist causes, was the second daughter of the educational theorist and Transcendentalist philosopher Amos Bronson Alcott, also known as “the Pestalozzi of America.” Her life and her literary themes and settings were very much determined by her New England background, especially her years in Concord, Massachusetts, where she grew up with Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau as neighbors and teachers. She traveled to Europe in 1865 and again in 1870. On the first trip, which lasted from July 19, 1865 to July 19, 1866, she journeyed together with Anna Weld, the invalid daughter of a wealthy Boston shipping merchant, and her half brother George Weld. Impressions of her passage up the Rhine on August 12, 1865, can be found in Louisa’s journal: On the 12th began a lovely voyage up the Rhine. It was too beautiful to describe so I shall not try, but I feel richer & better for that memorable day. We reached Coblentz at sunset & I was up half the night enjoying the splendid view of the fortress opposite the town, the moonlight river with its bridge of boats & troops crossing at midnight. A second day still more charming took us through the famous parts of the Rhine & filled my head with pictures that will last all my life. Anna was ill before we reached Biebrich so we stopped at a little town & had a queer time, for no one spoke English & we only a little bad French. night there & next day reached Schwalbach after many trials & tribulations. (Journals 142) They spent the rest of August and all of September at Schwalbach to take the waters. The party then proceeded to Wiesbaden, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, and further south to Switzerland. Two years later, Alcott published a more detailed travel account in the New York Independent. Most amusing and interesting are her sketches of the different foreign travelers on the Rhine steamer: <?page no="211"?> 211 AT 9 o’clock that lovely August morning we gladly left the evilsmelling city which so belies its name - Cologne - and steamed away into fairy-land. At least it seemed so to one member of the party, who, as soon as she landed at Ostende, felt as if she had walked into a romance and found every new chapter more delightful than the last. The boat was full of travelers, all enjoying themselves in their different ways. The English sat bolt upright, with a somewhat grim and defiant air, as if they had made up their minds to be surprised at nothing, and warned every one to let them alone. The French chattered and pranced, “bon joured” every mortal who approached, and made themselves at home in the most cheerful manner. The Germans began to smoke and eat the moment the boat started, and kept up those amusements vigorously all day. The men tended their meerschaums, the women their babies; and all ate with an air of placid satisfaction which made them resemble a row of cattle meditatively chewing their cud. The Americans stared and asked questions; the gentlemen, hands in pockets, examined the steamboat, and would have harrowed the soul of the captain by praises of American boats, could they have spoken French or German well enough. The ladies sketched, took notes, and laughed privately at the droll groups all about. A party of English lads from Rugby pervaded the boat - rosy, wellbred, gay, and altogether refreshing in their boyish enthusiasm and hearty relish for everything under the sun. […] There is no use in trying to describe the Rhine beyond saying that it is not wonderful nor magnificent like Niagara, the Mississippi, or Mt. Washington; it is exquisitely beautiful, and it is like sailing through a gallery of ever-new, ever-lovely landscapes, painted with a skill no human artist can attain. Vineyards, summer palaces, gray ruins, charming villages, mountains, green valleys, and ancient churches follow one another in such picturesque succession that one can hardly believe they are real. Here is an outline of one of these scenes. Steaming round a bend in the river, a great gorge opened before us, high cliffs on each side crowned with the ruins of two famous castles called “The Brothers; ” <?page no="212"?> 212 just beyond, at the water’s edge, a quiet village lay basking in the sun, with gay gardens, flocks of goats among the rocks, and funny babies, in black silk night-caps and wooden shoes, playing about the doors. Church-bells were ringing from a quaint old chapel half way up the cliff, and several boats full of people were floating down the river, singing as they went. The men in blue caps and blouses, the women in bright skirts, black bodices, and white sleeves, with gilt suns on the flat plaits of hair behind, or, prettier still, lace and muslin handkerchiefs thrown loosely over their heads. Sturdy brown folk, with little beauty, but honest, peaceful faces, full of pious feeling as they warbled Dutch, with their tired hands at rest for one day in seven. Every one knows the famous sights to be seen on the Rhine: the Lurley-berg; the Mouse Tower; Stalzenpels; the fine castle owned by William of Prussia, who entertained Victoria there once upon a time; the Sieben Jungfrauen, or Seven Sisters, as the seven rocks are called; Bopport, the gloomy town with Roman ruins; the Mouse and Cat; St. Goor; Altar of Bacchus, where the fine wines are made; Assmonhausen, where grapes are grown in such steep spots that earth is carried up to them in baskets, and in same places the vineyards are 1,000 feet above the river, in crannies of the rock; the copper and silver mines; the Devil’s Ladder at Lorch; the fortress of Monksburg; and Bonn, with flocks of jolly students rioting about the walls and kissing their hands from the windows as the steamboats pass. But even on the Rhine one must eat; and at noon long tables were spread on the deck, and we luxuriously took scenery with our salad, castles and cheese, vineyards and cabbage, ruins and boiled cucumbers, picturesque donkeys and famous wine. It was jovial beyond description, and the Major and I enjoyed it immensely, especially one party of Germans, who emptied nine bottles and devoured everything they could lay their hands on, to the great wrath of an old Englishman, who tried to take his dinner in solemn state. One stout young charmer, in bright yellow, with a golden dagger through her black braids, seemed to be the belle, and was overwhelmed with tender mottoes <?page no="213"?> 213 from the bon-bons which were brought on at dessert. Three youths from some military school and a long-haired student were devoted, while her elderly lover blandly filled her glass, heaped her plate, and toasted his “Liebchen” without a frown for the young Werthens who surrounded his Charlotte. Hardboiled eggs are henceforth associated with the grand passion in my mind, for these German lovers consumed a dozen at lunch, dividing each one between them, as they sat with their arms about one another in the most artless manner, quite undaunted by the scandalized glare of several British spinsters opposite. The old gentleman cherished a firm conviction that the elderly German would drop in a fit after that dinner, and watched him eagerly all the afternoon - feeling, doubtless, that apoplexy was but a just retribution for the sin of eating coriander seeds in bread, rosewater on mashed potato, and plums in the gravy. The placid unconsciousness of the German and the fussy interest of the Englishman was intensely ludicrous; and when Meinherr ordered refreshment at four o’clock, and fell to with renewed relish, John Bull’s indignant amazement made me fear that he would fall a victim to his own dark prophecy. We passed the night at Coblentz, and I spent a greater part of it in the little balcony outside my window; for the midsummer moon was at the full, and the scene it showed me was too beautiful to lose in sleep. Opposite towered the famous fortress of Ehrenbreightstein; at its feet lay villas, bathing-houses, and hotels; on the heights stood watch-towers; and between fortress and town flowed the great river, where steamers, boats, and rafts came and went all night long. Just before the hotel was a bridge, built on boats, and over this passed a constant succession of picturesque figures. Peasant girls, with gold and silver arrows shining in their hair; old women, spinning with the distaff or knitting as they went; donkeys, laden with fruit, fish, vegetables; priests, soldiers, artists, and strangers. At midnight a regiment crossed from the fortress, with the band playing, bayonets glittering, and the steady tramp that made my heart beat fast, as it recalled the days when so many of my own dear boys marched away, never to return. <?page no="214"?> 214 All my dreams were waking ones that night, yet they were very happy; and, though I travel the world over, I think I never shall enjoy anything more truly than I did that midsummer night’s dream at Coblentz. Another pleasant day looking at the great picture-book, “as we sailed, as we sailed,” ended rather dismally. Before we reached Bieberich, our proper stopping-place, poor little Mademoiselle gave out, and implored to be put ashore anywhere and left to rest. A hasty conference with the captain decided us to stop, and trust to fortune for food and shelter. Armed with the address of a certain amiable old wine-dealer, who the captain was sure would take us in, we three with our five trunks were set ashore at sunset in the little town of Oestrich. (“Up the Rhine” 2) During the second European trip, which was overshadowed by the Franco-Prussian War, Louisa Alcott saw the Rhineland again in April 1871, though only in passing, on her way from Munich to London. WORKS CITED Alcott, Louisa May. “Up the Rhine.” The Independent 18 July 1867: 2. The Journals of Louisa May Alcott. Ed. Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy. Boston: Little, 1989. <?page no="215"?> 215 Charles Dudley Warner 1829 - 1900 The novelist and essayist Charles Dudley Warner went to Europe for the first time in 1868. The travel sketches he sent to the Hartford Courant appeared in book form as Saunterings in 1872. The description of his journey up the Rhine is humorous and mildly ironic, but at times also quite critical of the commercial spirit of tourism, which in 1868 was just as conspicuous as it is today: A Glimpse of the Rhine You have seen the Rhine in pictures; you have read its legends. You know, in imagination at least, how it winds among craggy hills of splendid form, turning so abruptly as to leave you often shut in with no visible outlet from the wall of rock and forest; how the castles, some in ruins so as to be as unsightly as any old pile of rubbish, others with feudal towers and battlements, still perfect, hang on the crags, or stand sharp against the sky, or nestle by the stream or on some lonely island. You know that the Rhine has been to Germans what the Nile was to the Egyptians,- a delight, and the theme of song and story. Here the Roman eagles were planted; here were the camps of Drusus; here Cæsar bridged and crossed the Rhine; here, at every turn, a feudal baron, from his high castle, levied toll on the passers; and here the French found a momentary halt to their invasion of Germany at different times. You can imagine how, in a misty morning, as you leave Bonn, the Seven Mountains rise up in their veiled might, and how the Drachenfels stands in new and changing beauty as you pass it and sail away. You have been told that the Hudson is like the Rhine. Believe me, there is no resemblance; nor would there be if the Hudson were lined with castles, and Julius Cæsar had crossed it every half mile. The Rhine satisfies you, and you do not recall any other river. It only disappoints you as to its “vine-clad hills.” You miss trees and a covering vegetation, and are not enamoured of the patches of green vines on wall-supported terraces, looking from the river like hills of beans or potatoes. And, if you try the Rhine wine on the steamers, you will wholly lose your faith in the vintage. <?page no="216"?> 216 We decided that the wine on our boat was manufactured in the boiler. There is a mercenary atmosphere about hotels and steamers on the Rhine, a watering-place, show sort of feeling, that detracts very much from one’s enjoyment. The old habit of the robber barons of levying toll on all who sail up and down has not been lost. It is not that one actually pays so much for sightseeing, but the charm of anything vanishes when it is made merchandise. One is almost as reluctant to buy his “views” as he is to sell his opinions. But one ought to be weeks on the Rhine before attempting to say anything about it. One morning, at Bingen,- I assure you it was not six o’clock,- we took a big little row-boat, and dropped down the stream, past the Mouse Tower, where the cruel Bishop Hatto was eaten up by rats, under the shattered Castle of Ehrenfels, round the bend to the little village of Assmannshausen, on the hills back of which is grown the famous red wine of that name. On the bank walked in line a dozen peasants, men and women, in picturesque dress, towing, by a line passed from shoulder to shoulder, a boat filled with marketing for Rüdesheim. We were bound up the Niederwald, the mountain opposite Bingen, whose noble crown of forest attracted us. At the landing, donkeys awaited us; and we began the ascent, a stout, good-natured German girl acting as guide and driver. Behind us, on the opposite shore, set round about with a wealth of foliage, was the Castle of Rheinstein, a fortress more pleasing in its proportions and situation than any other. Our way was through the little town which is jammed into the gorge; and as we clattered up the pavement, past the church, its heavy bell began to ring loudly for matins, the sound reverberating in the narrow way, and following us with its benediction when we were far up the hill, breathing the fresh, inspiring morning air. The top of the Niederwald is a splendid forest of trees, which no impious Frenchman has been allowed to trim, and cut into allées of arches, taking one in thought across the water to the free Adirondacks. We walked for a long time under the welcome shade, approaching the brow of the hill now <?page no="217"?> 217 and then, where some tower or hermitage is erected, for a view of the Rhine and the Nahe, the villages below, and the hills around; and then crossed the mountain, down through cherry orchards, and vineyards, walled up, with images of Christ on the cross on the angles of the walls, down through a hot road, where wild flowers grew in great variety, to the quaint village of Rüdesheim, with its queer streets and ancient ruins. Is it possible that we can have too many ruins? “Oh dear! ” exclaimed the jung-frau, as we sailed along the last day, “if there is n’t another castle! ” (Saunterings 65-67) Mainz, unfortunately, is mentioned only in passing, and unfavorably at that: Cologne has a cheerful look, for the Rhine here is wide and promising; and as for the “smells,” they are certainly not so many nor so vile as those at Mainz. (Saunterings 61) WORK CITED Warner, Charles Dudley. Saunterings. Vol. 2 of The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner. Ed. Thomas R. Lounsbury. Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1904. <?page no="218"?> 218 Helen Hunt Jackson 1830 - 1885 One of the most prolific women writers of the nineteenth century, Helen Hunt Jackson is now best remembered as a champion of the rights of the American Indians. In her documentary book A Century of Dishonor (1881) and her famous novel Ramona (1884), she exposed the injustice done to the Indians and appealed to the American public to end a shameful history of Indian deprivation. Early in her career as a writer she traveled to Europe (1868-70) and composed the travel sketches which in 1872 were published as Bits of Travel. In Germany she journeyed along the Rhine in company with a German woman, a certain Fräulein Hahlreiner 1 , whom she introduced to this region and the ‘ways of the world: ’ Thus laughing and listening, and looking out on the pleasant meadows of the Main, we came to Mayence, and at Mayence took boat to go down the Rhine. This was the Fräulein’s first sight of the Rhine. All the tenderness and pride and romance of her true German soul were in her eyes, as the boat swung slowly round from the pier, and began to glide down the river. And now began a new series of surprises. From Mayence to Cologne there was not a ruin of which my Fräulein did not know the story. Baedeker was superseded, except for the names of places; as soon as I mentioned them to her she invariably replied, “oh yes, I know; and have you read, my lady, how,” etc. The Johannisberg Castle, given to Metternich by his Emperor, the cruel Hatto’s Tower, the Devil’s Ladder, the Seven Virgins, the Lurley, the Brothers, Rolandseck and Nonnenwerth,- she knew them all by heart; and for the sake of hearing the time-worn old stories, in her delicious broken English, I pretended to have forgotten all the legends. Nothing moved her so much as the sight of the two rocky peaks on which the two brothers had lived, and looked down on the Bornhofen Convent in which their beloved Hildegarde was shut up. “O, each brother, he could see her if she walk in that garden,” she said, with tears in her eyes. “Now, it come no more that a man love so much, so long, so true.” <?page no="219"?> 219 Just beyond the Brothers we passed the great Marienburg water-cure. Reading from Baedeker, I said: “Fräulein, that would be a cheap place to live; only twelve thalers a week for board and lodging and medical attendance.” “O no, my dear lady. It are not cheap, for there be nothing to eat. At end of eight day the man from Wassercure he shall be so thin, so thin, it shall shine the sun through him.” Throughout our whole journey the Fräulein’s astonishment was unbounded at the poor fare and the high prices. In her beautiful goodness, she had supposed that all landlords were content, as she, with moderate profits, and anxious, as she, to give their guests the best food. “O my lady, find you this chicken good? ” “Not very, Fräulein. What is the matter with it? ” “O, the bad man, the bad man, to ask for this chicken one gulden. He are old chicken, my lady, and he are boiled before he are in oven. O, I know very well. O, I win much money by this journey; never before had I courage to give old chicken. Now I give! ” Much I fear me that from this time henceforth the lodgers in my dear Fräulein’s house will not find it such a marvel of cheap comfort as we did. “O my lady,” she said one day, “if you come again to me, you shall all have as before. But to other peoples, I no more give beefsteak for fifteen kreutzers. I will be more rich, I have been ass.” (Bits 12-13) WORKS CITED H. H. [Helen Hunt Jackson]. Bits of Travel. Boston: Osgood, 1873. Kersten, Holger. Von Hannibal nach Heidelberg: Mark Twain und die Deutschen. Eine Studie zu literarischen und soziokulturellen Quellen eines Deutschlandbildes. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neuhausen, 1993. NOTE 1 Reference to Caroline Dahlweiner, her landlady in Munich. See further details in Kersten p. 303. <?page no="220"?> 220 Kate Chopin 1851 - 1904 Even before she had the opportunity to visit Germany, Kate Chopin, now especially remembered for her local color stories depicting Creole and Cajun life in the lower Mississippi area, had developed a great interest in German culture, an interest also nourished by her appreciation of Longfellow’s works. She read his romance Hyperion with great enthusiasm and even copied Paul Flemming’s passage in praise of the Rhine into the commonplace book she kept between 1867 and 1870. One can say that Longfellow served her as a spiritual guide on her own trip through the Rhineland: What a subtle charm exists in each line of Longfellow’s. He is a poet and a true one - and prose and poetry bear alike the stamp of his soft poetic genius. His Hyperion from beginning to end might be compared to a ‘river of flowing gold’ so rich is it in real and imaginative beauties. I read and reread with the keenest enjoyment his exquisite descriptions of German scenes and scenery; for my passion has always been to travel in that land - that cradle and repository of genius. And even while longing, I still fear to visit it lest my long cherished dreams fail of accomplishment and prove but the baseless fabric of a vision. ‘Hyperion’ would implant in any heart an aching after Germania’s beauties as it has long since implanted in mine. Heigh Ho! Il faut espérer. (Miscellany 57) After her marriage to Oscar Chopin on June 9, 1870, the young couple’s extended wedding trip to Europe gives her the chance to satisfy her yearning for Germany. They leave New York on June 25, 1870, on a German vessel appropriately called the “Rhein” and arrive at Bremen on July 7. Two days later they proceed to Cologne, and on July 12, they reach Bonn by boat. From here they make an excursion to Rolandseck: We took the 3 o’clock train and went about half an hour’s ride up the Rhine to obtain one of the finest views on the river. It was indeed lovely! The Drachenfels - black and in bold relief against the sky; below it and nearer us the island of Nonnenwerth, half <?page no="221"?> 221 buried in the Rhine waters - with Rollensecke [Rolandseck] keeping guard in the distance. The legend attached to the spot is romantic, & I have no doubt perfectly true. It is related that during the first Crusade, Rollen, a brave and generous youth, fired with holy enthusiasm, took himself off to fight in the good cause, leaving behind him disconsolate friends, and a weeping sweetheart. Time went on, and in an evil hour a report reached the quiet neighborhood that Rollen had met his death in Palestine. Fancy the wild grief of the maiden! In her utter despair she fled from friends and family & entered the convent still to be seen on the island of Nonnenwerth, intending there to bear with her grief, and in the course of human events, to die. But listen! On a warm summer’s day a solitary horseman entered the small town which had since been demolished, and the lone traveller was none other than Rollen. He hastens to the home of his beloved filled with expectant happiness. He enters - “Where is Gretchen? ” he cries. “Mein Gott, we thought you were dead - she has gone to the convent.” Grief and rage mingle in the bosom of the hero to render the scene terrible. Moved by contending emotions, he flies to the top of a distant mountain and builds himself the castle of Rollensecke, from the windows of which he watches the convent night and day, catching occasional glimpses of a form which he loved alas! too well. Thus ended his live [sic] - a wreck - the fruits of a false report. We stopped at a very attractive and nicely situated house,- commanding a lovely view of surrounding objects - and with the people of which B. [Bunnie Knapp] seemed to be very familiar. He speaks German astonishingly well. We were treated with a delightful beverage composed of Rhine wine and strawberries and known as “Endebeeren-Boule.” At 5 o’clock we took the train returning to Bonn, and arrived here to find Mr. and Mrs. G. [Griesinger, fellow travelers from New Orleans] awaiting us in the Garden; so there we were a nice little party at once, and knowing that our companionship was to be of short duration, we made excellent good use of our time. There was a concert in the Garden which of course we attended - but did not pay <?page no="222"?> 222 much attention to. What quantities of that maddening Rhine wine I have drunk today. The music - the scenery - the bright waters - the wine - have made me excessively gay. In fact we all gave play to our spirits more or less, and I fear these phlegmatic Germans will consider our American sociability as somewhat too loud. During the tableaux which followed the concert there was a little encounter between a citizen and a student; brought about by some fancied slight on the part of the citizen. Bunnie fears it will end in a duel, which, he tells me are of frequent occurrence.- Dear me! I feel like smoking a cigarette - think I will satisfy my desire and open that sweet little box which I bought in Bremen. Oscar has gone to some Halle to witness these Germans’ interpretation of a galop - a waltz etc. Tomorrow we take the boat far up the Rhine - perhaps B. will accompany us. I must not forget to note that we travelled on the same train this afternoon with the Queen of Prussia, who was going to attend a concert in Rollensburg. (Miscellany 73-75) On July 14, they continue their journey up the Rhine to Mainz and Wiesbaden: 14 “The Rhine! the Rhine! A blessing on the Rhine” so says Longfellow & so say I. It seems like an exquisite panorama - as I close my eyes, and pass again in fancy Drockenfeld, Godesberg and the Rollensecke. Shall I ever forget the beauties of the beautiful Rhine? The gray & stately ruins,- the churches peeping out of the dense foliage, & those vineyards upon vineyards sloping to the water’s edge. 15th. Wiesbaden We left Mayence this afternoon & arrived in Wiesbaden. What an unpleasant souvenir I retain of Mayence. Let it dwell only in my memory - and I trust even there, not too long. We strolled into the Cursaal tonight and watched intently the gambling. It is all as I had pictured - the sang froid of the croupier - the eager, greedy, and in some instances fiendish look upon the faces of the players. I was tempted to put down a silver piece myself - but had not the courage. <?page no="223"?> 223 WORK CITED A Kate Chopin Miscellany. Ed. Per Seyersted. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget; Natchitoches: Northwestern State University, 1979. 16th. Walked about town rather listlessly today. In the morning went to the boiling springs - tasted the water and thought it shocking. Oscar of course found it delicious. Dined at 6 and afterwards went to the Opera to hear the incomparable Wachtel [Theodor Wachtel, the famous tenor, 1823-1893] in Wm. Tell. How I could and how I would have enjoyed it, had I felt better, but have been feeling badly all day. Tomorrow en route for Frankfurt. 17th. What an uproar! What an excitement! I do not see how we got out of Wiesbaden alive. News reached us last night of the declaration of war between France & Prussia; so this morning all the hotels emptied their human contents into the various depots. French women with their maids, their few children, their laces and velvets hastening to get started on their homeward journey - every other nationality equally anxious to get back to their respective domiciles. The depot from whence we took the train for Frankfurt, presented a scene of fashionable excitement, that I shall never forget. (Miscellany 75-76) Though overshadowed by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, the wedding journey takes its course to Heidelberg, and from there further on to Switzerland and France. The fall of the Second Empire, however, forces the Chopins to hurry back to New York prematurely. <?page no="224"?> 224 Richard Malcolm Johnston 1822 - 1898 The Southern writer and educator Richard Malcolm Johnston achieved literary prominence in the 1880s through his local color fiction with settings in Georgia. Best-known is his collection Dukesborough Tales (1871), which records the life of middle-class people in antebellum rural and small-town Georgia. Johnston visited Europe in 1873 and 1874, later turning the impressions of these trips, especially that of 1873 when he chaperoned two schoolboys on the grand tour (Hitchcock 121), into a humorous travel account under the title Two Gray Tourists (1885). In this book he created a picaresque pair of travelers, Mr. Philemon Perch and Major James Rawls, who personify different reactions of the author to Europe. Mr. Perch, the nom de plume of the author himself, is the serious student “perhaps too fond of antiquarian research” (Two Gray Tourists 3), whereas Major Rawls represents the practical, simple-minded Southern planter confronted with the puzzling history and the quaint legends of the Old World. The dialogues between the two personas render a lively and entertaining travel account with elements of both local color writing and Southern humor: At ten o’clock we were on the boat for Mayence. At once I opened my map, a “Panorama of the Rhine,” which I had purchased the day before. “You look, from the length of that map, as if you had a good long geography lesson to get.” “Yes, sir; I’m going to learn all I can to-day about this river from Cologne to Mayence.” “Go ahead; tell me something occasionally which you think they’d be apt to ask me about at home, but not too much. My head’s pretty well packed now, and not otherwise in very good order.” Among the Americans and English on board he soon made acquaintances. Occasionally, as he passed by me in his promenades on the deck, he would address some remark of playful encouragement of my studies or of praise of the scenery around us.” […] <?page no="225"?> 225 “Here’s a little bit of romance, Jim; you’ll read that at least. We will come to the scene presently.” I gave him the guide-book and pointed out the account of the unhappy Roland, the remains of whose castle, Rolandseck, after passing the Seven Mountains, we reached. “Poor fellow! But I should’nt have done any such thing as that. When I got back from the wars and found the girl, hearing I was dead, had gone into that convent - but look here, man, would’nt they have let her off when they knew that she had gone there under a mistake of the facts? ” “No, SIR; she was as dead to him there in Nunnenwerth as if she had been in her grave.” “Well, I should’nt have settled on that hill, just to be able to see all the time where she was, but I’d have gone off as far as I could get.” “And married some other woman, doubtless.” “Not improbable. However, that would have looked mean, and nothing good ever comes out of meanness. It was a hard case all around.” Surely there is no where else so enchanting scenery as that from Bonn to Coblentz. The country itself, aside from historic and romantic associations, seemed eminently suited as a theatre for stirring events. The variations of mountain and vale, the remains of fortresses apparently impregnable by all assaults except those of time, united with these the memory of Roman, German, and French prowess, of Paladin and Crusader, are so crowded upon the mind as one travels up the famous river that it is a hard day’s work to note them all. At Oberwinter one has barely time to take that fine view backward to Rolandseck, Nunnenwerth, Drachenfels, and the rest of the Siebenberg before he must turn to the new beauties which lie in profusion on either side before him. To the right, in rapid sequence, Unkelbach, St. Apollinaris- Kirch, Remagen, the Valley of the Aar, Rheinech, Andernach; on the left, Unkel, Ochanfels, Linz, Neuweid, Bendorf, the Island of Neiderwerth, and many others. “No wonder they call it strong, and are proud of it,” Jim said, as we passed along by the base of Ehrenbreitstein, and looked up <?page no="226"?> 226 the long, steep, rocky ascent. “Cannon nor trick can take that, nor famine either, for they say the magazines and cisterns hold supplies enough to last a hundred thousand men three years.” “It is a great fortress; but yonder is a building at the confluence of the Rhine and the Moselle more interesting to me than that. It is the Church of St. Castor, founded in the ninth century. That old church has seen many a dynasty rise and fall from Charlemagne downwards. It was there, after his death, that his grandsons met in order to divide among themselves his vast dominions in Germany, Italy, and France - the great empire of the West.” ‘I think they might have taken some other place besides a church to settle up the estate. Coblentz! It’s a curious name, but a sight easier to call than the most of them we’ve seen to-day.” Coblentz is a corruption of the Roman confluentia, so called from the confluence of the two rivers.” “It sounds different now. Been through so many mouths, and German mouths at that, it’s been smartly chawed. There’s the dinner-bell. You won’t go down? All right. I’ll send you a beefsteak and half bottle of Moselle. Let me know when I get to Bingen. I promised Jake that I’d think of him when I got to ‘Bingen on the Rhine,’ [allusion to Caroline Norton’s famous poem] God bless him.” “You will have plenty of time for that and get your dinner also. But would you, just for one dinner, Jim Rawls, would you miss seeing Stotzenfels, Oberlahnstein, Braubach, Rheinfels, the Lurlie, Schonberg, and especially the brothers Sternberg and Liebenstein? ” “Those two last were brothers, were they? What kin were the balance? No, sir, I give up my dinner for no places with names like that.” And off he went. He came up just as we were nearing that curious structure in the middle of the river above Caub, called the Pfalz.” “In the name of common sense, what is that confounded thing? ” “It was built,” this pamphlet says, “several hundred years ago for the purpose of having a convenient place for collecting tribute from passing vessels; but read that.” <?page no="227"?> 227 “In 1194, the Emperor Henry VI wished to marry the daughter of Count Palatine Conrad to one of his friends, but the young princess had already gained the affections of Henry of Brunswick. The father, dreading the emperor’s wrath, would not consent to the alliance, but caused a tower to be built in the middle of the river below Bacharach, where he kept his prisoner. Her mother, however, secretly aided the Prince of Brunswick in gaining admittance to the tower, where his union with the princess was privately solemnized. When the princess was about to give birth to a child, her mother disclosed the affair to her husband, who, finding his opposition no longer availing, capriciously passed a law that all future Countesses Palatine should repair to the castle to await their accouchements. Such is the ancient and improbable tradition connected with the Pfalz, whence it also derives its name.” “No telling what young folks won’t do, nor where they won’t go when they take a notion to marry. Where did the old man live? ” “Just beyond the bend yonder, to the right, at Stahlek, the old castle.” “All come from meddling with young people’s matches. My notion is, if you can’t persuade ‘em you need’nt try to drive ‘em. We are getting into the great wine region, I heard at dinner.” “Yes. Just behind Stahlek yonder is Bacharach, celebrated for its wine.” Passing, in succession, Furstenberg, Heinberg, Falkenberg, Rheinstein and Ehrenfels, we reached Bingen. “Is that another Piffals? ” asked Jim, pointing at the Meurth Thurm in the middle of the river near the landing. “Another what? ” “Piffals. Was’nt that what you called that concern back yonder where the young woman got married to that fellow unbeknownst? ” “Pfalz.” “I don’t see much difference, and I bet you don’t call it right. Is this another one? ” “No, that’s the Mouse Tower, so called from a legend that, in <?page no="228"?> 228 former times, a very despotic archbishop was devoured there by mice. It was used, at one time, as the Pfalz, for collecting toll. Now it is a sort of lighthouse. You see how narrow the river is here? Rushing down those high mountains, it forms this, what is called the Bingerloch, over which it is dangerous for two boats to pass each other. The watchman who occupies it signals to any boats that may be meeting, so that they may avoid collision.” “That’s sensible. A pretty town. It will do old Jake good to know I’ve seen it. Poor little fellow! There’s another river coming in just above yonder.” “It is the Nahe; the old ruin is the Klopp, built by Drusus.” “Of the same set that you put me to sleep with last night? ” “The same. He was the son of Livia, wife of Augustus and her first husband, Tiberius Nero. Augustus fell in love with her, and divorcing his own wife, Scribonia, took Livia away from her husband three months before her third son was born, and married her.” “What! Take a fellow’s wife when she’s borne him two children and pretty nearly three? No wonder that old empire broke down. Things can’t last when God Almighty’s laws are run over in that style.” Near Rudesheim, the river suddenly turned towards the north, and we were now at the beginning of the Rhinegau, the great wine region of the Rhine. Here I handed Jim another legend to read, that of Bromserberg, once the property of the old knights of Rudesheim. […] The night closed in upon us after passing the Castle of Johannesberg, and soon we were landed at Mayence. Jim said he intended to dine with me, because he felt so lonesome at the table on the boat without me that it took away his appetite. And now we must have a bottle of Johannesberger. We owed it to the satisfaction of having seen the vines that made it; we owed it to the country generally, and we owed it to ourselves. We had opened upon the great Rheingau with the Rudesheimer, we would now have a Johannesberger, and to-morrow we would wind up with a Steinberger. <?page no="229"?> 229 “People that can afford to drink such wine as this,” he continued, when we had opened the bottle and tasted, “ought to be a good people. Isn’t it glorious all the way down? If I did’nt know myself, I should feel like making a speech.” After dinner we lighted our cigars and repaired to the smokingroom, and in spite of his pretended hostility to old things, we talked long upon the scenes through which we had passed during the day, and their history, ancient and modern. Next morning after a drive to the barracks, the cathedral, the confluence of the Rhine and Main, the fruit market, and Gutenburg monument, we took the road again. (Two Gray Tourists 192-200) WORKS CITED Hitchcock, Bert. Richard Malcolm Johnston. TUSAS 314. Boston: Twayne, 1978. Johnston, Richard Malcolm. Two Gray Tourists: From Papers of Mr. Philemon Perch. Baltimore: Baltimore Publishing, 1885. <?page no="230"?> 230 Mark Twain 1835 - 1910 On April 25, 1878, Mark Twain and his family arrived in Hamburg for an extended tour of Europe, which was to become the subject of a new travel book. It was the first of a sequence of visits to Germany, especially to Berlin. After short stays at Cassel and Frankfurt - where Twain wanted to “visit the birthplace of Gutenberg” (Notebooks 2: 76) - the family settled in Heidelberg from May 6 to July 23. In a letter to William Dean Howells, Twain describes the view of Heidelberg and the Rhine plain as seen from the Schloßhotel, where the family is living: From this airy perch among the shining groves we look down upon Heidelberg Castle, & upon the swift Neckar, & the town, & out over the wide green level of the Rhine valley - a marvelous prospect. We are in a cul de sac formed of hill-ranges & river: we are on the side of a steep mountain; the river at our feet is walled, on its other side, (yes, on both sides,) by a steep & wooded mountain-range which rises abruptly aloft from the water’s edge; portions of these mountains are densely wooded; the plain of the Rhine, seen through <the mouth of the opening of> the mouth of this pocket, has many & peculiar charms for the eye. Our <big> bed-room has two great glass bird-cages (enclosed balconies) one looking toward the Rhine Valley & sunset, the other looking up the Neckar-cul de sac, & naturally we spend nearly all our time in these - when one is sunny the other is shady. We have tables & chairs in them; we do our reading, writing, studying, smoking & suppering in them. The view from these bird-cages is my despair. The picture changes from one enchanting aspect to another in ceaseless procession, never keeping one form half an hour, & never taking on an unlovely one. (Twain-Howells Letters 1: 229) Based on the Garnham translation of Kiefer’s Die Sagen des Rheinlandes von Basel bis Rotterdam, Twain makes his American readers familiar with one of the most popular Rhine legends, the “Lorelei: ” Lore (two syllables) was a water nymph who used to sit on a high rock called Ley or Lei (pronounced like our word lie) in the <?page no="231"?> 231 Rhine, and lure boatmen to destruction in a furious rapid which marred the channel at that spot. She so bewitched them with her plaintive songs and her wonderful beauty that they forgot everything else to gaze up at her, and so they presently drifted among the broken reefs and were lost. In those old, old times, the Count Bruno lived in a great castle near there with his son, the Count Hermann, a youth of twenty. Hermann had heard a great deal about the beautiful Lore, and had finally fallen very deeply in love with her without having yet seen her. So he used to wander to the neighborhood of the Lei, evenings, with his Zither and “Express his Longing in low Singing,” as Garnham says. On one of these occasions, “suddenly there hovered around the top of the rock a brightness of unequaled clearness and color, which, in increasingly smaller circles thickened, was the enchanting figure of the beautiful Lore. “An unintentional cry of Joy escaped the Youth, he let his Zither fall, and with extended arms he called out the name of the enigmatical Being, who seemed to stoop lovingly to him and beckon to him in a friendly manner; indeed, if his ear did not deceive him, she called his name with unutterable sweet Whispers, proper to love. Beside himself with delight the youth lost his Senses and sank senseless to the earth.” After that he was a changed person. He went dreaming about, thinking only of his fairy and caring for naught else in the world. “The old count saw with affliction this changement in his son,” whose cause he could not divine, and tried to divert his mind into cheerful channels, but to no purpose. Then the old count used authority. He commanded the youth to betake himself to the camp. Obedience was promised. Garnham says: “It was on the evening before his departure, as he wished still once to visit the Lei and offer to the Nymph of the Rhine his Sighs, the tones of his Zither, and his Songs. He went, in his boat, this time accompanied by a faithful squire, down the stream. The moon shed her silvery light over the whole Country; the steep bank mountains appeared in the most fantastical shapes, and <?page no="232"?> 232 the high oaks on either side bowed their Branches on Hermann’s passing. As soon as he approached the Lei, and was aware of the surf-waves, his attendant was seized with an inexpressible Anxiety and he begged permission to land; but the Knight swept the strings of his Guitar and sang: “Once I saw thee in dark night, In supernatural Beauty bright; Of Light-rays, was the Figure wove, To share its light, locked-hair strove. “Thy Garment color wave-dove, By thy hand the sign of love, Thy eyes sweet enchantment, Raying to me, oh! entrancement. “O, wert thou but my sweetheart, How willingly thy love to part! With delight I should be bound To thy rocky house in deep ground.” That Hermann should have gone to that place at all, was not wise; that he should have gone with such a song as that in his mouth was a most serious mistake. The Lorelei did not “call his name in unutterable sweet Whispers” this time. No, that song naturally worked an instant and thorough “changement” in her; and not only that, but it stirred the bowels of the whole afflicted region round about there,- for - “Scarcely had these tones sounded, everywhere there began tumult and sound, as if voices above and below the water. On the Lei rose flames, the Fairy stood above, as that time, and beckoned with her right hand clearly and urgently to the infatuated Knight, while with a staff in her left she called the waves to her service. They began to mount heavenward; the boat was upset, mocking every exertion; the waves rose to the gunwale, and splitting on the hard stones, the Boat broke into Pieces. The youth sank into <?page no="233"?> 233 the depths, but the squire was thrown on shore by a powerful wave.” The bitterest things have been said about the Lorelei during many centuries, but surely her conduct upon this occasion entitles her to our respect. One feels drawn tenderly toward her and is moved to forget her many crimes and remember only the good deed that crowned and closed her career. “The Fairy was never more seen; but her enchanting tones have often been heard. In the beautiful, refreshing, still nights of spring, when the moon pours her silver light over the Country, the listening shipper hears from the rushing of the waves, the echoing Clang of a wonderfully charming voice, which sings a song from the crystal castle, and with sorrow and fear he thinks on the young Count Hermann, seduced by the Nymph.” (Tramp Abroad 137-140) Twain also introduces the reader to Heinrich Heine’s famous poem on the Lorelei and its setting to music by Friedrich Silcher: “I could not endure it at first, but by and by it began to take hold of me, and now there is no tune which I like so well” (Tramp Abroad 136). He even presents his own translation of the poem: THE LORELEI. I cannot divine what it meaneth, This haunting nameless pain: A tale of the bygone ages Keeps brooding through my brain: The faint air cools in the gloaming, And peaceful flows the Rhine, The thirsty summits are drinking The sunset’s flooding wine; The loveliest maiden is sitting High-throned in yon blue air, <?page no="234"?> 234 Her golden jewels are shining, She combs her golden hair; She combs with a comb that is golden, And sings a weird refrain That steeps in a deadly enchantment The list’ner’s ravished brain: The doomed in his drifting shallop, Is tranced with the sad sweet tone, He sees not the yawning breakers, He sees but the maid alone: The pitiless billows engulf him! - So perish sailor and bark; And this, with her baleful singing, Is the Lorelei’s grewsome work. (Tramp Abroad 141) In his Notebooks and Journals Twain has further short comments on the beauty of the scenery, on Rhine wine (“All Rhine wines are bad, but some worse than others - that is, less vinegary” [2: 108]), and on a visit to Worms on July 10, 1878 (“Luther, Diet of Worms - thought, as a boy he ate the worms” [2: 96]). Even before he traveled to Germany he had some ideas about places he wanted to see on the Rhine: In the freshness of May go up the Rhine - don’t wait later, for then the boats are crowded. Cologne, <Mayence> Mainz (fresh) & Coblentz should be seen. & Heidelberg. A very short trip. A great thing to do, is to stop at Bingen on the Rhine in May - then, at day-dawn, go down the bank of the river (walk) 3 miles, then you <?page no="235"?> 235 will see the castle of <Königsberg> Rheinstein on the hill overhead - walk up to it through woods by a zig-zag path. It belongs to crown prince of Germany who has restored to its middle-age state & one can see perfectly what a medieval fortress <wh> was in middle ages when <garrisoned &> ready for service. & occupation. Then come down to river & get man to row you across, where is an old ruin & fine river & vista-views - young girl will drive your donkey & act as guide. Then go south on the <dong[--]> donkey to Rudesheim & get drunk on real Rudesheim. Then re-cross in boat to Bingen. Grumbler. (Notebooks and Journals 61) During his stay at Heidelberg, however, he apparently never had the opportunity to execute these plans. From Heidelberg and the Black Forest, Twain and his party pursue their journey on to Switzerland and Italy, but they return to Germany in November to spend the winter in Munich, where Twain begins working on A Tramp Abroad. In an appendix to this book he added “The Awful German Language,” a burlesque record of his attempt to master the intricacies of this language. WORKS CITED Kersten, Holger. Von Hannibal nach Heidelberg: Mark Twain und die Deutschen. Eine Studie zu literarischen und soziokulturellen Quellen eines Deutschlandbildes. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neuhausen, 1993. Mark Twain-Howells Letters. The Correspondence of Samuel L. Clemens and William D. Howells 1872-1910. 2 vols. Ed. Henry Nash Smith and William M. Gibson. Cambridge: Belknap-Harvard University Press, 1960. Mark Twain’s Notebooks and Journals. Vol. 2. (1877-1883). Ed. Frederick Anderson, Lin Salamo and Bernard L. Stein. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. Twain, Mark. A Tramp Abroad. Vol. 3 of The Writings of Mark Twain. New York: Harper, 1907. <?page no="236"?> 236 Bret Harte 1836 - 1902 Bret Harte, who had achieved literary prominence as a humorist and writer of local color stories about California mining life, sought and was offered the position of American consul at Crefeld in Rhenish Prussia in 1878. He held this post for two years, and during this time he traveled and lectured in Germany, England, and Switzerland. On December 2, 1878, he went to Wiesbaden to lecture in the “Kursaal: ” I lectured at Wiesbaden on the 2d inst., to about four hundred English people in the Kursaal. I rather enjoyed the journey there and my first glimpse of the spectacular Rhine. May I be pardoned for saying, in confidence, that it seemed to me slightly theatrical and somehow looked like very nice landscape gardening and grotto work. I said nothing of this in the lecture, of course, but gossiped away quite cheerfully for an hour, with my thoughts in the Sierras, where there were valleys in which the Drachenfels and Loreleiberg might lie hidden overlooked and forgotten. (Letters 113-114) In July 1879, Harte travels to Zurich: I went first by rail to Rolandseck, on the Rhine, opposite the famous ‘Drachenfels’ and the ruined castle of the old robber knight, which looks exactly as it does in the pictures. I stayed there one night, and the next morning took the train to Coblenz, an old fortified town with a high stone wall surrounding it - looking again exactly like the pictures; then I took a steamer, one of the largest of the Rhine ‘Schnelldampschiffs,’ but not as large nor half as comfortable or quarter as fast as the old ‘Sewanhaha.’ Every mile of the Rhine thence to Mayence was historical and crested with old ruined castles, looking like scenes in the theatres, and all very strange and new, but around me on the steamer were Americans and English, and everything on board the boat was less foreign than my home at Crefeld. From ‘Mayence’ or ‘Mainz,’ as they call it - for they have German names for all the <?page no="237"?> 237 towns that are historical to us - I went to Strassburg to see the Cathedral and the famous clock. (Letters 148) Just as during his first trip along the Rhine, memories of American scenery come to his mind; like many other American travelers before him, he compares the Rhine with the Hudson. Even the Swiss Alps do not equal the landscapes of California and New York: “As the Rhine is inferior to the Hudson, so is Switzerland to California, and even to the Catskills in New York” (Letters 150). * In August 1895, Bret Harte, now living in England, sees the Rhine again: I came directly to Cologne without stopping at Aix [Aachen], as I had intended, and met my friend there, with the son of one of his friends, and together we made some trips up and down the Rhine in the hottest weather I ever experienced in Europe, and the densest crowds I ever mingled with, out of an English bank holiday. Luckily they were local tourists, mostly German, and very good-natured, so for a few days we basked in the sun, and the sauerkraut, and the dear old smell of pipes and dregs of beer glasses, which reminded me of the old days. I found myself able to ‘check off’ the castles of the Rhine for my friends, and waved my handkerchief (to Collins’s intense English disgust) to all the other boats that passed, just like old times. We parted at Bonn, he and his friend for England, and I the same night through Strasbourg into Switzerland […]. (Letters 410-411) WORK CITED The Letters of Bret Harte. Ed. Geoffrey Bret Harte. Boston: Houghton, 1926. <?page no="238"?> 238 W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the founders and early activists of the NAACP, dedicated his life and work to the promotion of the black cause in America and has long been recognized as the leading black American intellectual in the first half of the twentieth century. After he had received his first degree at Fisk University, the brilliant student was accepted at Harvard, and upon the recommendation of the historian Albert Bushnell Hart and with the help of a grant from the Slater Fund, went to Germany in 1892 to study Economics, History, and Sociology at the University of Berlin. He stayed in Germany for two years and traveled widely in the country that he felt had received him so well. Immediately upon his arrival in Europe in August 1892, he visited the Rhine, going by boat from Rotterdam to Mainz. The experience meant more for him than the mere enjoyment of the beautiful scenery; he experienced, as he recalled this episode in his autobiography, a world unbounded by color restrictions: Of greatest importance was the opportunity which my Wanderjahre in Europe gave of looking at the world as a man and not simply from a narrow racial and provincial outlook. This was primarily the result not so much of my study, as of my human companionship, unveiled by the accident of color. From the days of my later youth in the South to my boarding a Rhine passenger steamer at Rotterdam in August 1892, I had not regarded white folk as human in quite the same way that I was. I had reached the habit of expecting color prejudice so universally, that I found it even when it was not there. So when I saw on this little steamer a Dutch lady with two grown daughters and one of 12, I proceeded to put as much space between us as the small vessel allowed. But it did not allow much, and the lady’s innate breeding allowed less. Soon the little daughter came straight across the deck and placed herself squarely before me. She asked if I spoke German; before I could explain, the mother and other daughters approached and we were conversing. Before we reached the end of ourtrip,we were happy companions, laughing, eating and singing together, talking English, French W.E.B. Du Bois 1868 - 1963 <?page no="239"?> 239 and German and viewing the lovely castled German towns. Once or twice when the vessel docked for change of cargo, the family strolled off to visit the town. Each time I found excuse to linger behind and visit alone later; until once at Düsseldorf, all got away before I sensed it and left me and the prettiest daughter conversing. Then seeing we had docked she suggested we follow and see the town. We did; and thereafter we continued acting like normal, well-bred human beings. I waved them all good-bye, in the solemn arched aisles of the Cologne Cathedral, with tears in my eyes. (Autobiography 159-160) During the Christmas recess the year after, Du Bois traveled through southern Germany with two fellow students and stayed for Christmas with a family at Gimmeldingen in the Palatinate: My Christmas vacation I spent in making a trip through South Germany, visiting Weimar, Frankfort, Heidelberg, Strassburg, Stuttgart, Ulm, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Munich, Prague, and Dresden. In the Pfalz region we stopped for a week in a small country village where I had the opportunity of studying peasant life and comparing it with the country life in the United States, north and south. We visited perhaps twenty different families, talked and ate with them, went to their assemblies, etc. (Correspondence 1: 23) The impressions of Christmas 1893 left lasting memories on him, which he also recalled when writing his Autobiography: The Christmas holidays of 1893 I spent in making a trip through south Germany. Three of us visited Weimar, Frankfort, Heidelberg and Mannheim. From Christmas Day to New Year’s we stopped in a little German “Dorf” in the Rheinpfalz, where I had an excellent opportunity to study the peasant life closely and compare it with country life in the South. Three of us started out - a Scotsman, an American and myself. The American was descended from German immigrants to the United States and <?page no="240"?> 240 had relatives in the Rhineland in southwest Germany. We spent Christmas in the village of Gimmeldi[n]gen. What a lovely holiday, visiting and feasting among peasant folk who treated me like a prince! We visited perhaps 20 different families, talked, ate and drank new wine with them; listened to their gossip, attended their social assemblies, etc. The bill which my obsequious landlord presented on my departure was about onetenth of what I expected. We stayed in Naustadt a week, with a family whose dead father had driven the first locomotive into France at the opening of the Franco-German war. The daughter was a fine, homely young woman who did everything to make us comfortable. (Autobiography 172) Du Bois often remembered his happy student days in Germany, and he revisited the country, though it had changed a great deal, both before (1936) 1 and after World War II; in 1958 he received an honorary doctorate from Humboldt University, and during his last stay in (East) Berlin in 1959, he met Gertrude and Stefan Heym, who were to publish his last book, An ABC of Color (1963). WORKS CITED The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century. Ed. Herbert Aptheker. New York: International Publishers, 1968. The Correspondence of W.E.B. Du Bois. Ed. Herbert Aptheker. 3 vols. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973-78. NOTE 1 For his critical portrait see Werner Sollors, “W.E.B. Du Bois in Nazi Germany, 1936,” Amerikastudien/ American Studies 44 (1999): 207-222. <?page no="241"?> 241 <?page no="242"?> 242 Theodore Dreiser 1871 - 1945 When Theodore Dreiser, one of the chief representatives of naturalistic writing in America, traveled to Europe for the first time (1911-1912), he had published the novels Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt, upon which much of his literary reputation rests. From Rome he wrote on February 25, 1912, to his English publisher and friend Grant Richards regarding his further itinerary: I can tell you nothing about Venice but about March 9th I shall be in Milan for 1 day and March 11th in Frankfort, Germany at the Grand Hotel Frankfurterhof. I am stopping there because my father was born at Mayence [sic] only 25 miles away and I want to see for myself what sort of country he came from. (Letters 1: 138) As his extensive account of this journey in A Traveler at Forty (1913) shows, he has high expectations of the visit to his father’s birthplace: Ever since I was three or four years old and dandled on my father’s knee in our Indiana homestead, I had heard more or less of Mayen, Coblenz, and the region on the Rhine from which my father came. As we all know, the Germans are a sentimental, fatherland-loving race and my father, honest German Catholic that he was, was no exception. He used to tell me what a lovely place Mayen was, how the hills rose about it, how grape-growing was its principal industry, how there were castles there and grafs and rich burghers, and how there was a wall about the city which in his day constituted it an armed fortress, and how often as a little child he had been taken out through some one of its great gates seated on the saddle of some kindly minded cavalryman and galloped about the drillground. (Traveler 431) When booking a train ride to Germany at Cook’s travel agency in Rome, a ticket for Mayence via Frankfurt is issued, as Mayen is not known to the agent. Dreiser thus visits Mainz under the impression that it is his father’s home town: <?page no="243"?> 243 When we reached Mayence and I had deposited my kit-bag, for the time being I strolled out into the principal streets wondering whether I should get the least impression of the city or town as it was when my father was here as a boy. It is curious and amusing how we can delude ourselves at times. Mayence I really knew, if I had stopped to consider, could not be the Mayen, where my father was born. The former was the city of that Bishop-Elector Albert [Albrecht] of Brandenburg who in need of a large sum of money to pay Rome for the privilege of assuming the archbishopric, when he already held two other sees, made an arrangement with Pope Leo X - the Medici pope who was then trying to raise money to rebuild or enlarge St. Peter’s - to superintend the sale of indulgences in Germany (taking half the proceeds in reward for his services) and thus by arousing the ire of Luther helped to bring about the Reformation in Germany. This was the city also of the amiable Dominican Prior, John Tetzel, who, once appealing for ready purchasers for his sacerdotal wares declared: “Do you not hear your dead parents crying out ‘Have mercy on us? We are in sore pain and you can set us free for a mere pittance. We have borne you, we have trained and educated you, we have left you all our property, and you are so hard-hearted and cruel that you leave us to roast in the flames when you could so easily release us.’” I shall always remember Mayence by that ingenious advertisement. (Traveler 433-434) A new perspective on the city is found in his original typescript of Traveler at Forty, which portrays the cathedral and life in the city in a somewhat somber light: The cathedral of Mayence is poor. It is full of the gingerbreadiest details, and the various bishops and archbishops and medieval, hochwürdige gentlemen are delineated in sculpture with such a gross reality as to destroy all odor of sanctity. Their faces are too blunt and stodgy and scowling, their stomachs too protuberant. You would have thought they never had a light, gay, tender <?page no="244"?> 244 thought in their lives. The street markets outside - and there were a number, one confined exclusively to crockery and another to chickens, ducks, geese, eggs and the like - were crowded with a heavy-faced mass of old German men and women. The Germans at times - and I think often it is more an exterior seeming than anything else - take life too dolefully. The poorer masses look as though they had never seen a happy day in their lives. Their clothing in the main is too drab, their motions too deliberate and heavy, and they look at you with such low-keyed, moody eyes. I think it is unquestionable that in the main they take life far too seriously. The belief in a hell, for instance, took a tremendous grip on the Teutonic mind, and the Lutheran interpretation of Protestantism, as it finally worked out, was as dreary as anything could be - almost as dreary as Presbyterianism in Scotland. That is the sad, German temperament. A great nationality, business success, public distinction are probably tending to make over, or at least modify, the Teutonic cast of thought, which is gray, but in parts of Germany - here, for instance, at Mayence - you see the older spirit almost in full force. My stay in Mayence was only until ten the next morning, but by that time I had been there long enough to realize that at least this part of Germany would never appeal to me. The old order depressed me. We have done so much better since these buildings were built and this type of life prevailed. I could see from various examples how charming it might once have been and possibly still was in spots, but it would never do for me. I ate a lonely meal that evening, after which I inspected a local, or rather traveling, Coney Island with tents, sideshow wonders, cane-ringing and Japanese ball-rolling features, after which I went to bed. (Traveler 2004: 604-605) Besides, he is always in doubt whether he is visiting the real place: My father had described to me a small, walled town with frowning castles set down in a valley among hills. He had said over and over that it was located at the junction of the Rhine <?page no="245"?> 245 and the Moselle. I recalled afterward that he told me that the city of Coblenz was very near by, but in my brisk effort to find this place quickly I had forgotten that. Here I was in a region which contained not a glimpse of any hills from within the city, the Moselle was all of a hundred miles away, and no walls of any medieval stronghold were visible anywhere and yet I was reasonably satisfied that this was the place. (Traveler 434) At long last he meets a traveling salesman who informs him of the location of the true Mayen near Coblenz. During the train ride there he has the chance to see the Rhine valley, which to him possesses an unequaled personality, though it does not come up to the Hudson valley: In a half hour we were at Bingen-on-the-Rhine, and in threequarters of an hour those lovely hills and ravines which make the Rhine so picturesque had begun, and they continued all the way to Coblenz and below that to Cologne. […] After Italy and Switzerland the scenery of the Rhine seemed very mild and unpretentious to me, yet it was very beautiful. The Hudson from Albany to New York is far more imposing. A score of American rivers such as the Penobscot, the New in West Virginia, the James above Lynchburg, the Rio Grande, and others would make the Rhine seem simple by comparison; yet it has an individuality so distinct that it is unforgetable. I always marvel over this thing - personality. Nothing under the sun explains it. So, often can you say “this is finer,” “that is more imposing,” “by comparison this is nothing,” but when you have said all this, the thing with personality rises up and triumphs. So it is with the Rhine. Like millions before me and millions yet to come, I watched its slopes, its castles, its islands, its pretty little German towns passing in review before the windows of this excellent train and decided that in its way nothing could be finer. It had personality. A snatch of old wall, with peach trees in blossom; a long thin side-wheel steamer, one smokestack fore and another aft, labeled “William Egan Gesellschaft”; a dismantled castle <?page no="246"?> 246 tower, with a flock of crows flying about it and hills laid out in ordered squares of vines gave it all the charm it needed. (Traveler 435-437) At Coblenz, Dreiser must overcome further difficulties and confusions in order to locate Mayen and to find means of getting there. In the process of his investigations, he visits the junction of the Rhine and the Moselle: […] I was entertained at first by a fine view of the two rivers, darkly walled by hills and a very massive and, in a way, impressive equestrian statue of Emperor William I, armed in the most flamboyant and aggressive military manner and looking sternly down on the fast-traveling and uniting waters of the two rivers. Idling about the base of this monument, to catch sightseers, was a young picture-post-card seller with a box of views of the Rhine, Coblenz, Cologne and other cities, for sale. He was a very humble-looking youth,- a bit doleful,- who kept following me about until I bought some post-cards. “Where is Mayen? ” I asked, as I began to select a few pictures of things I had and had not seen, for future reference. “Mayence? ” he asked doubtfully. “Mayence? Oh, that is a great way from here. Mayence is up the river near Frankfort.” “No, no,” I replied irritably. (This matter was getting to be a sore point with me.) “I have just come from Mayence. I am looking for Mayen. Is n’t it over there somewhere? ” I pointed to the fields over the river. He shook his head. “Mayen! ” he said. “I don’t think there is such a place.” “Good heavens! ” I exclaimed, “what are you talking about? Here it is on the map. What is that? Do you live here in Coblenz? ” “Gewiss! ” he replied. “I live here.” “Very good, then. Where is Mayen? ” “I have never heard of it,” he replied. “My God! ” I exclaimed to myself, “perhaps it was destroyed in the Franco-Prussian War. Maybe there is n’t any Mayen.” <?page no="247"?> 247 “You have lived here all your life,” I said, turning to my informant, “and you have never heard of Mayen? ” “Mayen, no. Mayence, yes. It is up the river near Frankfort.” “Don’t tell me that again! ” I said peevishly, and walked off. The elusiveness of my father’s birthplace was getting on my nerves. Finally I found a car-line which ended at the river and a landing wharf and hailed the conductor and motorman who were idling together for a moment. “Where is Mayen? ” I asked. “Mayence? ” they said, looking at me curiously. “No, no. M-a-y-e-n, Mayen - not Mayence. It’s a small town around here somewhere.” “Mayen! Mayen! ” they repeated. “Mayen! ” And then frowned. “Oh, God! ” I sighed. I got out my map. “Mayen - see? ” I said. “Oh, yes,” one of them replied brightly, putting up a finger. “That is so. There is a place called Mayen! It is out that way. You must take the train.” “How many miles? ” I asked. “About fifteen. It will take you about an hour and a half.” (Traveler 438-439) Dreiser’s ambivalent feelings about Germany’s military power are echoed in his remarks about Coblenz as a garrison city: It was at Coblenz, while waiting for my train, that I had my first real taste of the German army. Around a corner a full regiment suddenly came into view. They swung past me and crossed a bridge over the Rhine, their brass helmets glittering. Their trousers were gray and their jackets red, and they marched with a slap, slap, slap of their feet that was positively ominous. Every man’s body was as erect as a poker; every man’s gun was carried with almost loving grace over his shoulder. They were all big men, stolid and broad-chested. As they filed over the bridge, four abreast, they looked, at that distance, like a fine scarlet ribbon with a streak of gold in it. They eventually disappeared between the green hills on the other side. <?page no="248"?> 248 In another part of the city I came upon a company of perhaps fifty, marching in loose formation and talking cheerfully to one another. Behind me, coming toward the soldiers, was an officer, one of those band-box gentlemen in the long gray, military coat of the Germans, his high-crowned, low-visored cap, and lacquered boots. I learned before I was out of Germany to listen for the clank of their swords. The moment the sergeant in charge of the men saw this officer in the distance, he gave vent to a low command which brought the men four by four instantly. In the next breath their guns, previously swinging loosely in their hands, were over their shoulders and as the officer drew alongside a sharp “Vorwärts! ” produced that wonderful jackknife motion “the goose-step”- each leg brought rigidly to a level with the abdomen as they went slap - slap - slapping by, until the officer was gone. Then, at a word, they fell into their old easy formation again and were human beings once more. It was to me a most vivid glimpse of extreme military efficiency. All while I was in Germany I never saw a lounging soldier. The officers, all men of fine stature, were so showily tailored as to leave a sharp impression. They walked briskly, smartly, defiantly, with a tremendous air of assurance but not of vainglory. They were so superior to anything else in Germany that for me they made it. (Traveler 440-441) Dreiser finally reaches Mayen, the town where his father had come from: […] in the valley below me, after I had walked a little way, I could actually see the town my father had described, a small walled city of now perhaps seven or eight thousand population, with an old Gothic church in the center containing a twisted spire, a true castle or Schloss of ancient date, on the high ground to the right, a towered gate or two, of that medieval conical aspect so beloved of the painters of romance, and a cluster or clutter of quaint, many-gabled, sharp-roofed and sharp-pointed houses which speak invariably of days and nations and emotions and <?page no="249"?> 249 tastes now almost entirely superseded. West Mayen was being built in modern style. Some coal mines had been discovered there and manufactories were coming in. At Mayen all was quite as my father left it, I am sure, some seventy years before. Those who think that this world would be best if we could have peace and quiet should visit Mayen. Here is a town that has existed in a more or less peaceful state for all of six hundred years. The single Catholic church, the largest structure outside of the adjacent castle, was begun in the twelfth century. Frankish princes and Teuton lords have by turns occupied its site. But Mayen has remained quite peacefully a small, German, walled city, doing - in part at least - many of the things its ancestors did. Nowhere in Europe, not even in Italy, did I feel more keenly the seeming out-of-placeness of the modern implements of progress. When, after a pause at the local graveyard, in search of ancestral Dreisers, I wandered down into the town proper, crossed over the ancient stone bridge that gives into an easily defended, towered gate, and saw the presence of such things as the Singer Sewing Machine Company, a thoroughly up-to-date bookstore, an evening newspaper office and a moving-picture show, I shook my head in real despair. “Nothing is really old,” I sighed, “nothing! ” Like all the places that were highly individual and different, Mayen made a deep impression on me. It was like entering the shell of some great mollusc that had long since died, to enter this walled town and find it occupied by another type of life from that which originally existed there. Because it was raining now and soon to grow dark, I sauntered into the first shelter I saw - a four-story, rather presentable brick inn, located outside the gate known as the Brückentor (bridge-gate) and took a room here for the night. It was a dull affair, run by as absurd a creature as I have ever encountered. He was a little man, sandyhaired, wool-witted, inquisitive, idle, in a silly way drunken, who was so astonished by the onslaught of a total stranger in this unexpected manner that he scarcely knew how to conduct himself. (Traveler 443-445) <?page no="250"?> 250 From the window of his room near the Brückentor he enjoys another view of this little medieval town: The next morning at dawn I arose and was rewarded with the only truly satisfying medieval prospect I have ever seen in my life. It was strange, remote, Teutonic, Burgundian. The “grafs” and “burghers” of an older world might well have been enacting their life under my very eyes. Below me in a valley was Mayen,- its quaint towers and housetops spread out in the faint morning light. It was beautiful. Under my window tumbled the little stream that had served as a moat in earlier days - a good and natural defense. Opposite me was the massive Brückentor. Further on was a heavy circular sweep of wall and a handsome watch-tower. Over the wall, rising up a slope, could be seen the peak-roofed, gabled houses, of solid brick and stone with slate and tile roofs. Never before in my life had I looked on a truly medieval city of the castellated, Teutonic order. Nothing that I had seen in either France, England, or Italy had the peculiar quality of this remote spot. (Traveler 451-452) The pilgrimage to the town of his ancestors naturally leads him to the graveyard: My search for dead or living Dreisers, which I have purposely skipped in order to introduce the town, led me first, as I have said, to the local graveyard - the old “Kirchhof.” It was lowering to a rain as I entered, and the clouds hung in rich black masses over the valley below. It was half-after four by my watch. I made up my mind that I would examine the inscription of every tombstone as quickly as possible, in order to locate all the dead Dreisers, and then get down into the town before the night and the rain fell, and locate the live ones - if any. With that idea in view I began at an upper row, near the church, to work down. Time was when the mere wandering in a graveyard after this fashion would have produced the profoundest melancholy in me. It was so in Paris; it made me morbidly weary and ineffably <?page no="251"?> 251 sad. I saw too many great names - Chopin, Balzac, Daudet, Rachel - solemnly chiseled in stone. And I hurried out, finally, quite agonized and unspeakably lonely. Here in Mayen it was a simpler feeling that was gradually coming over me - an amused sentimental interest in the simple lives that had had, too often, their beginning and their end in this little village. It was a lovely afternoon for such a search. Spring was already here in South Germany, that faint, tentative suggestion of budding life; all the wind-blown leaves of the preceding fall were on the ground, but in between them new grass was springing and, one might readily suspect, windflowers and crocuses, the first faint green points of lilies and the pulsing tendrils of harebells. It was beginning to sprinkle, the faintest suggestion of a light rain; and in the west, over the roofs and towers of Mayen, a gleam of sunlight broke through the mass of heavy clouds and touched the valley with one last lingering ray. […] As I was meditating how, oysterlike, little villages reproduce themselves from generation to generation, a few coming and a few going but the majority leading a narrow simple round of existence, I came suddenly, so it seemed to me, upon one grave which gave me a real shock. It was a comparatively recent slab of gray granite with the modern plate of black glass set in it and a Gothic cross surmounting it all at the top. On the glass plate was lettered: Here Rests Theodor Dreiser, Born 16 - Feb. - 1820. Died 28 - Feb. - 1882. R.I.P. I think as clear a notion as I ever had of how my grave will look after I am gone and how utterly unimportant both life and death are, anyhow, came to me then. (Traveler 446-448) Finding no living Dreisers, however, he leaves Mayen with a pensive glance at places related to his father’s boyhood and at the local priest’s infamous cherry tree, which had once been the cause of his father receiving a solid whipping for stealing some cherries: <?page no="252"?> 252 Below the town I lingered in the little valley of the Moselle, now laid out as a park, and reëxamined the gate through which my father had been wont to ride. I think I sentimentalized a little over the long distance that had separated my father from his old home and how he must have longed to see it at times, and then finally, after walking about the church and school where he had been forced to go, I left Mayen with a sorrowful backward glance. For in spite of the fact that there was now no one there to whom I could count myself related, still it was from here that my ancestors had come. I had found at least the church that my father had attended, the priest’s house and garden where possibly the identical cherry-tree was still standing - there were several. I had seen the gate through which my father had ridden as a boy with the soldiers and from which he had walked finally, never to return any more. That was enough. I shall always be glad I went to Mayen. (Traveler 453) WORKS CITED Dreiser, Theodore. A Traveler at Forty. 1913. New York: Century, 1914. Dreiser, Theodore. A Traveler at Forty. Ed. Renate von Bardeleben. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004. Letters of Theodore Dreiser: A Selection. Ed. Robert H. Elias. 3 vols. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959. <?page no="253"?> 253 Writing for the Toronto Daily Star as a staff correspondent in Europe, young Ernest Hemingway saw the Rhineland briefly in late summer 1922 and again in spring 1923. The dispatches - especially those written during his assignment to the Ruhr district in April 1923 - are mainly concerned with the political, economic, and social problems of post-World War I Germany. Though his interest in hunting and fishing is never quite forgotten, he is much more interested in the economic consequences of the Ruhr strike, and he has little to say about the scenery of the Rhineland. In his dispatch titled “Amateur Starvers Keep Out of View in Germany,” datelined Cologne April 27, 1923, he refers to both Rhine passages only in passing: 1 Coming down the broad flood of the Rhine on a freight boat from Weisbaden through the gloomy brown hills with their ruined castles that look exactly like the castles in goldfish bowls, in fourteen hours on the river we only passed fifteen loaded coal barges. All were flying the French flag. Last September, in an express passenger boat, we passed an endless succession of them moving up the river toward the canal mouth that would take them, by a network of quiet waterways, to feed the Lorraine furnaces. Then France was getting the hundreds of barges of coal as part of German reparation payment. Now the fifteen barges we passed were part of the thin stream of coal that trickles out of the Ruhr through the mazes of arrested industry and military occupation. (Dateline 287-288) Later in the year, he writes reports on hunting possibilities in the Black Forest - which he had visited in August 1922 - and in the Rhineland: There are lots of snipe, plover and woodcock all down through the Rhineland and around the Ruhr and good duck shooting along the Rhine in the spring. Last spring, coming down the river from Mayence to Cologne, we passed great rafts of ducks. The British officers in the garrison at Cologne had very good Ernest Hemingway 1899 - 1961 <?page no="254"?> 254 pheasant, grouse and quail shooting in the country within sight of the great cathedral towers. (Dateline 357) WORKS CITED Hemingway, Ernest. Dateline: Toronto. The Complete Toronto Star Dispatches, 1920-1924. Ed. William White. New York: Scribner’s, 1985. [An earlier, though selective, collection of Hemingway’s newspaper dispatches is The Wild Years, ed. Gene Z. Hanrahan (New York: Dell, 1962)] Reynolds, Michael. Hemingway: The Paris Years. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. NOTE 1 In his book Hemingway: The Paris Years, Michael Reynolds resolved conflicting dates in the chronology of Hemingway’s stays in Germany: After the Rhine trip in 1922, Hemingway and his wife left Coblenz by train for Paris on August 31 (69). In 1923, the assignment to the Ruhr lasted from March 30 to April 8 (119-120). <?page no="255"?> 255 Louis Untermeyer 1885 - 1977 The poet Louis Untermeyer, known in Germany as a translator of Heine, Keller, and Toller, visited the Rhineland in 1928 and published a popular “Hand- & Day-book” of this trip two years later under the title Blue Rhine, Black Forest. The trip, partly on a steamer, partly on foot, took him from Cologne to Mainz and then to Heidelberg and the Black Forest. Blue Rhine, Black Forest is a “depersonalized and idealized” travel book, as Untermeyer put it (Bygones 115). It contains Baedeker information as well as personal observations, and retells well-known legends and stories of the Rhine. At the beginning of the journey at Cologne expectations of the trip up the Rhine generate a wealth of cultural associations: “The Rhine,” one says - and the word summons a kaleidoscope of figures moving to their own music. The Rhine - and young Siegfried rides out of Xanten unaware of misapprehending dragons and matchmaking birds; Loreleis of local fame are shrill and self-conscious next to the skilfully operatic Flosshilde, Woglinde, and Wellgunde, placed there by Wagner; every rock that splinters sunlight is the fabulous hoard coveted by the Nibelungs; a chauffeur’s three-toned bugle a block away becomes the hunting-horn of the hero who never learned fear; the Knave of Bergen (out of A Tramp Abroad) invades Bishop Hatto’s mousetower. Der Rhein of Heinrich Heine and Mark Twain, of Wagner and Longfellow. A mysterious nostalgia, summed up in the essential lyric of the Rhine: Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten … (Blue Rhine 43) However, Untermeyer finds the Rhine in the vicinity of Cologne disappointing, and the due comparison with the Hudson River is unfavorable to the Rhine: Some one speaks of the Hudson, and, contrasting this meagre flow with that broad channel, the Palisades take on greater majesty. (Blue Rhine 44) <?page no="256"?> 256 After the steamer has passed Bonn, Untermeyer finds that now “the river justifies its fame” (Blue Rhine 55). He lists and describes all the places he sees with meticulous accuracy; the outcome is a new kind of Baedeker written from his point of view. Thus, at Coblenz, he observes: “The first thing one notices in Coblenz is not its openmindedness, but the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial” (Blue Rhine 71). The Lorelei rock is first presented in a broad cultural perspective: Another sudden twist of the river swings us to the narrowest, deepest, and most dramatic part of the stream. We face that huge mass of basalt with which romance has identified the very overtones of the Rhine. This is the Lorelei. Lorelei, one says, and simultaneously there rise through the stream of halfconsciousness the poem of Heine, the incongruous folk-tune of Silcher, the melodramatic bedizened creature of the Abbé Liszt. The Lorelei - and the syllables bring her half-sisters, the nixies, the river-sprites, the merwomen, the water-wives, the oreads, swimming on a rising flood. Legend hangs a hundred decorative variants on these rocks; every new poet turns the romancer’s gossip into gospel. Here, we are assured, the imps (the Luren) of the rock (Lei) used to lure the unsuspecting pilots - and, since this was the most dangerous part of the river, hence the old name Lurelei. Here, at the base of the rock, one hundred feet below the stream, lies the Rhinegold, the Nibelung’s treasure, with which a man might possess the world if he did not lose his soul. Here, above the deadly rapids, hover the ghosts of Calypso and Morfydd and all those sirens that have called adventurers since Ulysses bound himself to the trembling mast. And here, in shifting guises, the impalpable projection of Heine waits for evening to comb her golden hair, singing that song whose prelude is life fulfilled and whose cadence is death. I cannot tell why this imagined Sorrow has fallen on me; The ghost of an unburied legend That will not let me be. <?page no="257"?> 257 The air is cool, and twilight Flows down the quiet Rhine; A mountain alone in the high light Catches the faltering shine. One rosy peak half gleaming Reveals, enthroned in air, A goddess, lost in dreaming, Who combs her golden hair. With a golden comb she is combing Her hair as she sings a song; Heard and reheard through the gloaming, It hurries the night along. The boatman has heard what has bound him In throes of a strange, wild love. He is blind to the reefs that surround him, Who sees but the vision above. And lo, the wild waters are springing- The boat and the boatman are gone … Then silence. And this with her singing The Loreley has done. The prevalent prose version is somewhat more elaborate. According to the local Minnesingers, the threatening cliff was always sagenumwoben - an ominous adjective which can be translated only by the ineffectual ‘saga-surrounded.’ Here when the full moon threw an unreal bridge across the Rhine and changed the slippery stone into a flight of silver stairs a woman would appear seated on the pinnacle as though on her rightful throne. So delicate was her form, so filmy the blue of her robe, so transparent her skin, that she seemed compounded of light and her garments nothing more than a condensation of air. Seeing her, a man remembered his dearest dream; when she opened <?page no="258"?> 258 her lips to sing he knew the impossible had happened and that his dream had been fulfilled. Alas, for the deluded souls who trusted what their eyes saw and their ears heard! They are led to believe a lie Who see with, not through the eye. Their feet slipped toward the shining treachery; their hands clutched moonlight; their ears caught laughter running up a silver scale. She opened her arms to lovers, and they fell into the bosom of a wave. Upreaching hands, seeking her hair, found their fingers tangled in ripples. The waters smoothed; the song continued on a higher note. (Blue Rhine 80-82) Untermeyer goes on, providing yet another version of the Lorelei legend, and then gives an ironic account of modern Rhine tourism, which reflects American stereotypes of the German neo-romantic celebration of the rock in the Heine/ Silcher song: THE LORELEI TO-DAY But that was many yesterdays ago. It is no frail bark that now approaches the once-fatal cliff, but a high-powered, oil-burning double-decked steamer. The travellers rise to inspect the site, half curiously, half flippantly. “I don’t know what it’s all about,” says one with a grimace; and another, turning his remark to the original, hums the first line of Heine’s song: Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten. The line is taken up and continued. Other voices announce: Dass ich so traurig bin. Most incongruous of folk-songs! The poem is so definitely macabre and tragic, the music so gemütlich, so affably <?page no="259"?> 259 sentimental. For all its fear-inspiring words, one could sing babies to sleep with it. In Germany one does. More than that, it supplants the national anthem at Schützenfeste, meetings of Gesangvereine, and other convivial gatherings. Nothing is more common, more enjoyable, and, incidentally, more typical of the German spirit than a score of jovial Teutons, lifting replenished beer-mugs and roaring happily: Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten Dass ich so traurig bin. - “I don’t know why I should be so unhappy.” And so the travellers carry the melody, dwelling on the separate phrases while the song rises in pitch and conviction. Little by little the burlesque dies, the mockery gives way to full-throated earnestness; the passengers are on their feet, straining their larynxes to swell the cadence: Und das hat mit ihrem Singen Die Lorelei getan. Romance has triumphed; the past lives more radiantly than the smoke-obscured present. … And then, on the opposite bank, a crescendo of thunder turns every head to to-day. But it is still Romance, Romance bringing up the three-fifteen in the form of the Rhinegold Express, hurling its blue-and-gold Pullmans from Basel to Rotterdam at sixty miles an hour. (Blue Rhine 85-87) The wines of the whole region receive Untermeyer’s unreserved praise. He is well familiar with the great names of the Ahr valley, Middle Rhine, Moselle, Nahe, Saar, Ruwer, Rheingau, Rhenish Hesse, and the Palatinate: The cult of Rhine wine is not only a study, but a passion to the fastidious taster. Your heavy drinker will never appreciate it; it is for the tippler who is also a scholar, a lover of sunlight, a <?page no="260"?> 260 philosopher, a man (rarely a woman) of leisure. “It” did I say? Increase the singular twenty times and you will still have no idea of the proper plural. (Blue Rhine 44) His description of the Rheingau and its wine villages provides ample illustration of his appreciation of the region characterized by history and wine-growing: Lucky the traveller who reaches Rüdesheim just before November 1. On that day he would be waked at eight o’clock (if he were not already prepared and out on the street) by a ringing of bells compared to which the vociferous campaniles of Southern Italy are a dispute among tired crickets. The chiming and clanging echo from village to village along the entire Rheingau, calling and clamoruing, as has been the custom for countless years. It is the signal; it proclaims the rounding of the grape; it announces that the first fruits of the vine may now be gathered. Its significance can be appreciated only by a native to whom the vine is not only his livelihood, but his life. It is, in fact, his religion, and no ritual could be stricter than the care and ceremony attending the growth of the vine. Tendrils must be twined; the heresy of weeds must be excommunicated; birds must be discouraged here; eyes must be vigilant to seize the parasite in the flying dust. Strangers are suspect all through the growing months. So strict is the surveillance that, long before gathering, every patch of fenced ground is locked by order of the constabulary, and even the owners cannot enter except by almost unprocurable permission. But at eight o’clock on the morning of November 1 the bells are loud with thanksgiving, and the long waiting is over. Out come the fathers and mothers - and grandfathers as well - up they go to the Weinberge (literally, ‘Wine-mountains’), and along both banks of the Rhine - at Rüdesheim, Geisenheim, Hattenheim, Erbach on the left, and at Ingelheim, Heidesheim, Budenheim on the right - fingers and shears are busy until five o’clock, when the bells become more peremptory than ever. <?page no="261"?> 261 This is the Rheingau, a region of gentle hills, sunny villages, and acre after acre of terraced slopes. The villages, crowding upon each other, are a wine-merchant’s catalogue; Geisenheim has a lime-tree as venerable as Bede, a viticultural museum, and the “Œnological and Pomological Academy,” which means nothing more alarming than an institution for the study of vineand fruit-growing. Schloss Johannisberg, situated above the vineyards, has a long and involved lineage; the fifty-five famous acres yielding the golden liquor are jealously watched, and, though visitors may stroll about the terrace, no one is permitted to enter the castle itself. […] Winkel ist less identified with wine and more with the Brentanos, a family of folklorists that Goethe was fond of visiting. Winkel also contains an indisputable ninth-century structure (Graues Haus), “unquestionably,” says our trusty cicerone, “one of the oldest dwelling-houses in Germany.” (Blue Rhine 97-98) WORKS CITED Untermeyer, Louis. Blue Rhine, Black Forest: A Hand- & Day-book. London: Harrap, 1930. Untermeyer, Louis. Bygones: The Recollections of Louis Untermeyer. New York: Harcourt, 1965. <?page no="262"?> 262 Thomas Wolfe 1900 - 1938 Of the American travelers in the twentieth century, none held greater admiration for Germany and things German than the novelist Thomas Wolfe. Before and during his stays in Germany - six altogether between 1926 and 1936 - Germany was a land of enchantment, a “Gothic fairyland” (Web 650) for him. In a letter to Aline Bernstein, written on November 9, 1926, he shows his excitement at the forthcoming trip to the country he admired so much. There is a land where this strange life shall find a home[.] I am going into Germany because there - I will tell you - below old dreaming towers a river runs; upon the rocks Loreli comb their hair; the winds about the castle crags at right are full of demon voices; and the gabled houses of the toyland towns are full of rich and gluttonous warmth. (Loneliness 118) It was only after the Berlin Olympics, when he returned to the United States for good, that the shadow of the Third Reich darkened his view of this nation. In the summer of 1928, during his third trip to Germany, Wolfe paid his first visit to the Rhineland. On August 15, he embarks on a boat at Cologne in order to proceed slowly up the Rhine as far as Mainz. While he finds the river disappointing in the Bonn area (“There is nothing yet to compare with the Hudson, but the charm of the place comes from its legendary antiquity and from the comfort of eating and dining arrangements” [Notebooks 1: 161- 162]), the passage from Coblenz to Mainz greatly pleases him. On August 24, we find the following entry in his notebook: The trip up the Rhine was lovely and magnificent. It was somewhat disappointing up to Koblentz; after that it became unreal and magical - the landscape is really magical - it has a faery [sic] quality - and the vineyards that take up every inch of the great piles of rock which form the Rhine Bergs - the vineyards which are one marvellous network of elaborate terraces, and the great castles sometimes a ruin - a wall, an arch, a door that leans above the cliff - completes the atmosphere of magic - And the boats, the <?page no="263"?> 263 pleasure boats that swim by under this breathtaking loveliness filled with huge gross people all eating and drinking, drinking the glorious wine and peering through the glass at magic, sustains the strangeness of it. The wonderful part is only 30 or 40 miles long - but you get the impression that you have been through the measureless realm of Elfland. (Notebooks 1: 165-166) From Wiesbaden, where he stayed for about a week, he wrote a postcard (a view of Rolandseck) to his mother, telling her about his journey: Dear Mama: This is a view of the Rhine - I made the whole trip up from Bonn to Mainz the other day. It is a beautiful thing and deserves all that has been said about it. I stayed in Mainz, which is occupied by thousands of French soldiers, for two days and I am writing this from Wiesbaden, a great bathing resort a few miles away. This place is occupied by the English - Tom (Letters of Thomas Wolfe to His Mother 141) While at Mainz, he was especially attracted by the “Picture Gallery and Roman Antiquities Gallery” (Notebooks 1: 232). It was in this city, too, that he went to the market place to buy fruits, as he tells Aline Bernstein in a letter written from Frankfurt: Sometimes in the old market place here and in Mainz, or at the fruit stalls, I have grown mad to buy up all the wonderful fruits and vegetables. I have rushed from one stall to another, buying a peach at one, a bunch of grapes at another, and at Mainz, even a huge cucumber which I began to devour before all the yelling peasant women. (Letters of Thomas Wolfe 142) WORKS CITED The Letters of Thomas Wolfe. Ed. Elizabeth Nowell. New York: Scribner’s, 1956. The Letters of Thomas Wolfe to His Mother. Ed. C. Hugh Holman and Sue Fields Ross. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968. <?page no="264"?> 264 My Other Loneliness: Letters of Thomas Wolfe and Aline Bernstein. Ed. Suzanne Stutman. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983. The Notebooks of Thomas Wolfe. Ed. Richard S. Kennedy and Paschal Reeves. 2 vols. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970. Wilson, Frank. “Anticipation, Adulation, Separation, and Epiphany. Thomas Wolfe’s German Experience.” The Thomas Wolfe Review 21.1 (1997): 1-7. Wolfe, Thomas. The Web and the Rock. 1939. Garden City: Sun Dial, 1940. <?page no="265"?> 265 Appendix: Americans in Europe - Beyond the Rhine Winfried Herget With the exception of Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson, many American authors would travel in Europe or even live there for an extended period. American travelers in general - as most of them originally belonged to the leisure class and were brought up in New England culture - came to the Old Continent in search of a past America could not provide. They came to experience what was different from their contemporary American environment - an “otherness,” or alterity 1 . At the beginning of the nineteenth century, they followed the romantic urge to trace the Middle Ages. The Rhine river valley offered a much publicized opportunity for such a venture into the past. As the collected documents in the present volume show, Americans perceived the Rhine river valley as picturesque. The view of the castles as ruins made history tangible. It triggered the imagination of times long passed but present as architectural remainders. Altogether, the travelers were fascinated by the charm of the landscape but failed to be overwhelmed by the scenery, which - in contemporary aesthetic terminology - lacked the sublime. It was not awe-inspiring and overwhelming as Americans would perceive nature in the New World, particularly Niagara Falls, the Hudson River, and the Mississippi. The Alps, of course, could provide a comparable sense of the sublime, but they were seldom the destination of American travelers who usually experienced them as the gateway to Italy. Americans in search of sublimity in Europe turned instead to another specimen of alterity. America offered awe-inspiring nature, which was in their eyes superior to Europe and its cultivated landscapes. But what America did not have were cathedrals constructed in the Middle Ages, which represented the spirit of a past that could still be sensed in the present. Particularly in Gothic cathedrals, Americans experienced the sublime that they missed in natural scenery. The English writer and art critic John Ruskin taught his contemporaries the appreciation of Gothic architecture as an expression of Nordic mentality (John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, 1851). Travelers were impressed by the “solemn twilight” and the “dusky obscurity” that the cathedrals offered. In the “dim <?page no="266"?> 266 religious light,” as John Milton described it, they found a tranquility that shut out the noise and glaring outside light. Bayard Taylor, who always looked for the cathedral first when he came to a foreign city, called European cathedrals a sanctuary where you could flee from the harsh reality of everyday life: “a few steps removed one from the bustle and din of the crowd to the stillness and solemnity of the holy retreat! ” 2 The sublime effect was frequently compared to the overwhelming power of natural sights, such as Niagara Falls, so that cathedrals were not beheld as human structures but as something organic. Nathaniel Hawthorne noted that the pinnacles and towers of Salisbury cathedral in England “ascend toward Heaven with a kind of natural beauty, not as if man had contrived them. They might be fancied to have grown up, just as the spires of a tuft of grass do.” 3 Hawthorne also displayed the traveler’s plight in that his actual experience was pre-structured by his expectations and previous representations. He knew what he was supposed to feel when he visited a cathedral and could not help to be disappointed when the actual building failed to meet his preconceptions. Sometimes he blamed himself for “looking at noble objects in the wrong mood.” 4 At Chester, he noted that “still, an American must always have imagined a better cathedral than this.” 5 At Lichfield, he compared the timeworn structure with the “ideal edifice” he had in mind. 6 For similar reasons, Henry James was disappointed in Reims, and Harriet Beecher Stowe did not hide her frustration when she saw the Strasbourg Munster. Mark Twain then debunked the obligation of admiration, awe, and appreciation by demystifying the sublimity of the cathedral. When relating his experience in Milan, he liked “to revel in the driest details of the great cathedral” by giving statistics, figures, and the cost of construction as well as drawing attention to signs of decay. 7 Still, American travelers in Europe kept Gothic cathedrals on their sight-seeing itinerary. Like the castles along the Rhine river, they bore witness to the Middle Ages and represented a sense of history that the United States lacked. Not before the nineteenth century did Americans begin to construct their own neo-gothic cathedrals, such as St. Patrick’s in New York City (1858-78/ 79), Rockefeller <?page no="267"?> 267 Memorial Chapel at the University of Chicago (1925-28), Duke University Chapel (1930-32), and, more recently, the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. (1907-1990). * While American travelers cherished the Rhine river scenery and Gothic cathedrals as remainders of a past that did not exist in the United States, they likewise went to Italy because of its monuments of classical antiquity and the Renaissance but also to observe a present-day lifestyle that was contrary to the Protestant work ethic they subscribed to in their home country. For the better part of the nineteenth century, Italy had not gained national selfdetermination but was ruled by foreign powers such as Austria and France as well as the Pope. Regions like Lombardy in the North and the Mezzogiorno in the South, and cities such as Venice or Rome were culturally diverse. Yet Italy had been mentally mapped by many generations who had preconceived images of its past, influenced by their readings in the course of a classical education. The so-called Grand Tour allowed young aristocrats from Great Britain to connect their book knowledge with actual places. The German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe sojourned in Italy from 1786 to 1788, hoping for a spiritual and aesthetic rebirth by seeing “familiar objects in an unfamiliar world” “as I imagined it.” 8 American artists felt drawn to Italy from 1760 onward; Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, and Thomas Cole, to name just a few, all went to Italy (particularly to Rome) to find inspiration. Many well-known American authors registered their Italian experience in various journals and novels, among them Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Marble Faun, set in Rome, 1860; French and Italian Notebooks, 1871), William Dean Howells (Venetian Life, 1866; Italian Journals, 1869; Roman Holidays, 1908), Edith Wharton (Italian Backgrounds, 1905), and Henry James (Italian Hours, 1909). Margaret Fuller’s These Sad but Glorious Days, Dispatches from Europe 1846-1850 was not published until 1991. Her realist account of war-torn Italy is singular because of her eye for present-day problems facing the emerging Italian nation. In one of her letters, she divulged: “I take <?page no="268"?> 268 interest in the state of the people, their manners, the state of the race in them.” 9 In general, American authors were more aware of traces of the past than of the turmoils and social conditions of the present. For them, Italy represented an ultimate “otherness” because of its antiquity, Catholicism, and the dolce far niente lifestyle so different from that in the United States. Moreover, in Italy, the past appeared multilayered, offering remainders of the Roman Empire, the Renaissance, and the baroque. Tourists were attracted by the charm of decay; American tourists shunned attempts at restoration and reconstruction - as William Dean Howells put it: “What you want in Rome is not the best-preserved monument, not the most perfect pagan building, but the most ruinous ruin you can get.” 10 The founders of the New American Republic looked to Ancient Rome as a model for the Young United States, as the designation of their political institutions shows (the Senate, Capitol, for instance); later, those who followed John Ruskin and his admiration for the Nordic Gothic would judge the Roman grandeur as tawdry and an expression of ruthless vainglory. In the same manner, Ruskin condemned the neo-classical style as “[p]agan in its origin, proud and unholy in its revival.” 11 Howells clearly preferred the Gothic over baroque and Renaissance art: “As far as my imagination affected me, I thought the Gothic churches much more tolerable than the temples of Renaissance art.” 12 Howells even spoke of “ugly baroque churches.” 13 By contrast, Edith Wharton and Henry James, writing after 1870, regretted the American disdain for and neglect of the baroque and attempted to make them appreciate aesthetically what they had hitherto shunned for its perceived immorality. For Wharton, Rome was worth seeing because it was “the most undisturbed baroque city in Italy.” 14 James was likewise particularly fond of Florence and its Renaissance art. For most nineteenth century Americans, baroque art was associated with Catholicism. Mark Twain openly professed his anti-Catholic sentiments. His bias made him insensitive to the aesthetics of St. Peter’s Cathedral in the Vatican. Even though Henry James explicitly expressed his fascination for the grandeur <?page no="269"?> 269 and beauty of the church and, in particular, his admiration for Michelangelo’s “Pieta,” 15 most American Protestants “approached St. Peter’s much in the spirit of an American visiting the Kremlin today.” 16 Margaret Fuller was convinced that the Italians must emancipate themselves from the power and authority of the Catholic Church. She can well be considered a typical American traveler who “vigorously attacked Catholic usages and blamed on the Church many of the ills of society, continuing to maintain that his own religious practices were distinctly superior.” 17 Aside from Fuller, most American tourists observed Italian people as though they were actors in a spectacle of difference playing roles Americans had designed for them in their heads. They were seen as tranquil, indolent loafers who took life easy and had no purpose but to enjoy themselves. Contrary to the cult of domesticity in the United States, in which the home was considered the center of life, Italians seemed to live primarily in public places - the streets, squares, and cafes. Henry James stressed this striking difference, noting the “great number of unoccupied people of every age and condition sitting about early and late on the benches and gazing at you, from your hat to your boots as you pass. Europe is certainly the continent of the practised stare.” 18 James was aware that he ought to criticize this “parade of eternal idleness,” but he was quick to realize that “Life on these terms seems so easy, so monotonously sweet that you feel it would be unwise, would be really unsafe, to change.” 19 Italy, then, seemed to be a tangible antidote to American purposefulness, hard work, and morality. The country and its people were a sort of heterotopia - a place to enjoy while on vacation, but that, ultimately, would undermine the American work ethic if applied at home. Joyful danger also loomed in another attraction of Italian “otherness”: for many Americans, Italy was the land of artistic freedom, and its museums were sites of temptation for anyone not accustomed to sensual licentiousness. In particular, New Englanders with a Victorian mindset were uncertain about confronting nudity in art. Yet to avoid world-famous masterpieces because they might compromise one’s morality would have <?page no="270"?> 270 been counter to the travelers’ agenda. George Stillman Hillard, a prestigious Boston lawyer and author, warned: “An artist should never light his torch at the fires of sense, no subject should ever be painted, which a man would hesitate to look at in the presence of his children, or of the woman that he loves - and who will say that of a naked Venus? ” 20 Hawthorne may serve as an example of the way (New England) American travelers might have solved the dilemma: when describing his reaction to Titian’s “Magdalen,” he granted its artistic accomplishment and could not help being titillated by the woman’s sensuality, but stressed her impudent immorality that only feigned religious penitence. Hawthorne next approached Michelangelo’s “Venus” with trepidations. Familiar with casts and copies widely exhibited in the United States, he marveled at the sight of the original. He acknowledged the statue’s beauty and charm, but almost desexualized the visual body by attributing it a godlike quality, “an inmate of the heart, as well as a spiritual existence.” He singled out her face as “beautiful and intellectual,” whereas her body was marked by the fragility and decay of the marble which helped him to envision the idea of tender and chaste womanhood without fleshly distraction. As though with relief, Hawthorne concluded his experience: “I am glad to have seen this Venus and to have found her so tender and so chaste.” He then afforded only a side glance at Titian’s painting of Venus, to be seen in the same room, “reclining on a couch, naked and lustful.” 21 * Temptations of sensuality and a leisurely life did not only lure in Italy, but in the twentieth century increasingly drew Americans to France. Paris acquired the image of the pleasure capital of the world, where gaiety, permissiveness, and promiscuity were possible. In the 1920s, Paris seemed to offer a pleasurable naughtiness, which “nobody but a minister’s wife wants to miss.” 22 It was seen as a transgressive space where alcohol - which was at the time prohibited in the United States - could be openly enjoyed, various sexual preferences could be realized, and interracial relations were not forbidden. Conventional boundaries <?page no="271"?> 271 were blurred, if not deleted. For example, Gertrude Stein, for many the American mother of Modernism, lived in a well-publicized same-sex relationship with Alice B. Toklas. Her salon became the center for artists like Picasso and young American expatriate authors, such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. These authors, joined by James Joyce, would also convene at Sylvia Beach’s “Shakespeare and Company” bookstore. The writers of the so-called “lost generation” (Gertrude Stein’s term) fled from America in disgust of American materialism, political and social conservatism, prudishness, and anti-intellectualism. For them, Paris became the capital of American bohemians, replacing Greenwich Village in New York City before World War I. In the words of Glenway Wescott, Paris made him overcome “my origins, my prejudices, my Wisconsin.” 23 In Paris, the colorline that separated black people and white people did not seem to exist. For some Americans, this tolerance was offensive and endangered morals and manners in the United States. Efforts were made to impose American segregationist practices on French night clubs and bars, which in turn caused the French government in 1919 to denounce American racism and demand equal treatment of blacks and whites. Nevertheless, for many African Americans, Paris became a refuge from American racism. In a way, the emerging Harlem Renaissance as a proud, self-assertive expression of African American art, literature, and music in post-World War I America owed much to the fascination blackness held in Paris. Americans in Paris recognized that black was beautiful. Blackness was considered chic, African American jazz and dance were widely appreciated; the Charleston was enjoyed as the latest dance craze. The icon of this infatuation with blackness, with African rhythm and African beauty, was a young American mulatta, Josephine Baker, who, as a singer and dancer, exhibited her beautiful body, often clad only in a banana skirt. For the gazing spectators, she represented the exotic, the erotic “other.” Baker’s success may be attributed to the fascination she exerted on white American males, because she embodied a “forbidden fruit,” a fantasy come <?page no="272"?> 272 true in Paris but unrealizable in the United States where racial intermingling was deemed illicit. For many Americans, the image of Paris as “sin city” was forged during World War I when the United States sent expeditionary forces to France. A considerable number of the so-called “doughboys” had a rural background and thus had never been exposed to big city life, let alone the temptations Paris allowed. On the side of the American government and a concerned public, precautions were taken to protect these young American males from “easy virtue” in general, and from venereal disease in particular. Nevertheless, many American soldiers returned home after the war with a changed worldview, no longer content with the life they had known before. One of the most popular songs of 1919 expressed the disruptive effect of their experience: Walter Donaldson’s “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘em Down on the Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree)? ” The lyrics of the bestseller express the fear of an elderly couple that their son will not be willing to take over the farm after “parleyvous-ing” in Paris, “loose with change,” “jazzing and painting the town.” In his novel The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway has one of his characters accuse Americans in post-war Paris: “You’re an expatriate. You’ve lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafés.” Yet, the claim that “nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing” 24 was certainly discredited by literary history: seminal works of Modernism were produced by American writers who found their inspiration in Paris. It was these same modernists - Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, above all - who “discovered” the Riviera as a vacation site in the 1920s. Before the war, mainly upper-class people, the hivernants, would go to the Mediterranean to spend the winter months. Americans made it fashionable to go to the Côte d’Azur in the summer. The all-night parties with Rudolph Valentino and other celebrities became legend, glorified by F. Scott Fitzgerald in his novel Tender Is the Night (1934). General tourism was soon to follow. When Coco Chanel returned from the Riviera and displayed <?page no="273"?> 273 her tan as a mark of beauty, health, and sensuality, a new worldwide fashion was born. From the Rhine river to the Riviera - what began as a journey into the past as the “other,” became an experience of alterity in the present. What was originally conceived of as an American lack of history, was increasingly perceived as an alternate lifestyle, which had remarkable repercussions on modern American society. The picturesqueness of the Rhine valley and the sublimity of the cathedrals bore witness to an envied past. Italy represented both a multilayered past as well as an alternate culture of the present. Paris held the fascination of different morals and manners in the modern world. World War II, then, brought an end to a culture of travel that had begun in the early nineteenth century. NOTES 1 For an extended elaboration on the concept of this search for “otherness” see Buzard. 2 Taylor 66. 3 Hawthorne, Our Old Home 2: 294. 4 Hawthorne, Our Old Home 1: 155. 5 Hawthorne, Our Old Home 1: 453. 6 Hawthorne, Our Old Home 1: 154. 7 Twain 142. 8 Goethe quoted in Siegel 23. 9 Fuller 271. 10 Howells, Roman Holidays 117. 11 Ruskin 3: 177. 12 Howells, Venetian Life 45. 13 Howells, Roman Holidays 83. 14 Wharton 182. 15 James 134-135. 16 Amfitheatrof 39. 17 Baker 182. 18 James 183. 19 James 184-185. 20 Hillard 78. 21 Hawthorne, Passages 290-292. 22 Helen Josephy and Mary Margaret McBride, Paris is a Woman’s Town (1929). Quoted in Levenstein 250. 23 Quoted in Levenstein 239. 24 Hemingway 111. <?page no="274"?> 274 WORKS CITED Amfitheatrof, Erik. The Enchanted Ground: Americans in Italy, 1760-1980. Boston, Toronto: Little Brown, 1980. Baker, Paul R. The Fortunate Pilgrims: Americans in Italy. 1800-1860. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964. Buzard, James. 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By permission of the Houghton Library. From The Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, ed. James Franklin Beard. Copyright (c) 1960-68 by Harvard University Press. By permission of Harvard University Press. From James Fenimore Cooper, Gleanings in Europe: The Rhine, ed. James Franklin Beard. Copyright (c) 1986 by the State University of New York Press. By permission of the State University of New York Press. From Thomas Merton, My Argument With the Gestapo. Copyright (c) 1968 by The Abbey of Gethsemani, Me. By permission of New Directions Publishing. From Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain. Copyright (c) 1948 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, renewed 1976 by The Trustees of the Merton Legacy Trust. By permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. From Herman Melville, Journal of a Visit to Europe and the Levant, ed. Howard C. Horsford. Copyright (c) 1955, renewed 1983 by Princeton University Press. By permission of Princeton University Press. From Henry James, Letters, ed. Leon Edel. Copyright (c) 1974-1984 by Harvard University Press. By permission of Harvard University Press. The letter of William Dean Howells, dated September 12, 1897. By permission of the Houghton Library. From The Journals of Louisa May Alcott, ed. Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy. Copyright (c) 1989 by The Estate of Theresa W. Pratt. By permission of Little, Brown and Company. From Mark Twain-Howells Letters, ed. Henry Nash Smith and William M. Gibson. Copyright (c) 1960 by Harvard University Press. By permission of Harvard University Press. From The Correspondence of W.E.B. Du Bois, ed. Herbert Aptheker. Copyright (c) 1973 by The University of Massachusetts Press. By permission of The University of Massachusetts Press. From Letters <?page no="279"?> 279 of Theodore Dreiser, ed. Robert H. Elias. Copyright (c) 1959 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. By permission of the University of Pennsylvania Press. From Theodore Dreiser, A Traveler at Forty. Copyright (c) 2004 by the University of Illinois Press. By permission of the University of Illinois Press. From Louis Untermeyer, Blue Rhine, Black Forest: A Hand- & Day-Book. Copyright (c) 1930 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, renewed 1958 by Louis Untermeyer. By permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. From The Letters of Thomas Wolfe, ed. Elizabeth Nowell. Copyright (c) 1956 by Edward C. Aswell, Administrator C.T.A. of the Estate of Thomas Wolfe. Copyright renewed (c) 1984 by Paul Gitlin, Administrator C.T.A. of the Estate of Thomas Wolfe. By permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing Company. <?page no="280"?> 280 Index Places in Germany Andernach 24-25. 76. 101 Assmannshausen 216 Bacharach 85. 158. 164. 167 Biebrich 104-105 Bingen 22. 38. 49. 58. 65. 66. 69. 111. 192-193. 206. 226 Boppard 81. 82. 133 Bodenheim 33 Braubach 127-129 Drachenfels 109. 163-164. 167. 195. 197-198. 199 Dürkheim 19. 91-93. 97 Dusemond (Brauneberg) 29-30 Ehrenbreitstein 23. 25. 48. 61-62. 101. 113. 121-122. 133. 156. 173-174. 180. 190. 195-196. 213. 225-226 Ems (Bad Ems) 73. 80. 155-156 Geisenheim 86. 261 Gimmeldingen 240 Hardenburg 94-95 Heidelberg 70. 97. 118-119 Heidenmauer 95-96 Holzhausen auf der Haide 73-74 Ingelheim 46-47. 86. 104 Johannisberg 34. 36. 121. 127. 140. 160. 228. 261 Kastel (Cassel) 120 Koblenz (Coblenz) 23. 25. 33- 34. 37-38. 45-46. 61-62. 76- 77. 101-102. 122. 156. 173- 174. 191. 210. 213-214. 226. 236. 246-248. 256 Liebenstein (‘The Brothers’) 68-69. 77-79. 148 Limburg (Abbey) 94-95 Loreley 17. 133-134. 141-143. 151-152. 157. 206. 230-234. 256-259 Mainz (Mayence) 20-21. 31-33. 39-41. 42-43. 53-56. 71-73. 79-80. 112. 113-114. 120- 121. 154. 175. 182-183. 194- 195. 203-204. 217. 222. 229. 241-244. 246-247. 263 Marienberg 48-49. 51. 82-84. 219 Marksburg 128-129 Mouse Tower/ Hatto’s Tower (Mäuseturm) 58-59. 113. 159- 160. 193-194. 206. 227-228 Mayen 244-245. 246-247. 248- 252 The Mouse and the Cat 129 Nassau 30 Neuwied 184 Nierstein 33 Nonnenwerth 67-68. 75. 98- 100. 132. 221 Oberwesel 134. 158 Oppenheim 20. 71 Pfalz (Palatinate) 18-19. 33. 71. 89. 194-195. 239-240 Pfalz (Kaub) 158. 226-227 Rheinfels 38. 157 Rheingau 32. 40. 49. 58. 66-67. 102-104. 110-111. 260-261 Rheinstein (Vautsburg) 65. 86- 87. 130. 159. 216. 235 Only major references are listed. <?page no="281"?> 281 Rolandseck 67. 75. 97. 132. 221. 225. 236 Rüdesheim 32. 103. 104. 130. 216-217. 228. 235. 260 Schönburg 130. 134. 158 Speyer 29. 53 Sterrenberg (‘The Brothers’) 68-69. 77-79. 148 St. Goar 38. 129-130. 157 Stolzenfels 156 Teufelstein 95-96 Trier 98 Trifels 136. 168-169 Wiesbaden 37. 50. 154. 197. 222-223. 236. 263 Winkel 67. 261 Worms 19-20. 53. 70. 124. 234 Places in the United States Adirondacks 216 Alleghenies 93 Boston 203 Cambridgeport 194 Cat Hole 190 Coney Island 244 Highlands (New York) 18. 153. 189 Hudson (North River) 22. 41- 42. 65. 89-91. 122. 125. 138. 149-150. 152-153. 157. 167. 174. 179. 184-185. 192. 202. 206-207. 215. 245. 255. 262 James River (Virginia) 245 Maryland 33 Mississippi River 177. 183. 184. 204. 211 New River (West Virgina) 245 Niagara 211 Ohio River 183. 184. 202 Pennsylvania 33 Penobscot River 245 Rio Grande 245 Sierras 236 Mount Washington 211 West Rock 190 <?page no="282"?> 282 Map of Rhineland-Palatinate <?page no="283"?> Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Americans - along with their British cousins - began to include the Rhine and its famed scenery in their continental grand tour. Whereas English travelers and travel impressions are quite well remembered, the American contribution to the first century of Rhine tourism is much less documented. The present volume seeks to recover American encounters with the Rhine and bring back the voices of prominent transatlantic travelers - from Trumbull and Jefferson in the eighteenth century to Cooper and Longfellow in the nineteenth, and on to Dreiser and Wolfe in the twentieth - through selections from their diaries, letters and other travel accounts. However different their backgrounds and points of view, all these visitors are united in their praise of this historical region and its heritage. Their impressions are important elements in the American image of Germany in past and present. ISBN 978-3-8233-6893-9