A Tramp's Wallet Part 7

CHAPTER IX.

BERLIN.-OUR HERBERGE.

Fairly in Prussia! We have pa.s.sed the frontier town of Perleberg, and press onward in company with a glovemaker of Berlin, last from Copenhagen, whom we have overtaken on the road towards Wusterhausen.

"Thou wouldst know, good friend, the nature of my prospects in Berlin when I arrive there? Have I letters of recommendation-am I provided in case of the worst? Brother, not so! I am provided for nothing. I dare the vicissitudes of fortune. I had a friend in Hamburg, a Frenchman, who departed thence five months ago for Berlin, under a promise to write to me at the lapse of a month. He has never written, and he is my hope.

That is all. Let us go on."

"I have a cousin," says the glovemaker, "who is a jeweller in Berlin. I will recommend you to him. His name is Kupferkram."

"Strange! I knew a Kupferkram in Hamburg; a short, sallow man, with no beard."

"A Prussian?"

"Yes."

"It cannot be that my cousin was in Hamburg and I not know it. I was there twelve months."

"Why not? A German will be anywhere in the course of twelve months except where you expect to find him."

"His name is Gottlob-Gottlob Kupferkram."

"The very man! Does he not lisp like a child, and his father sell sausages in the stadt?"

"Donnerwetter! Ja!"

This may not appear to be of much importance, but to me it is everything; for upon the discovery of this vender of sausages depends my meeting with my best and only friend in Berlin, Alcibiade Tourniquet, of Argenteuil, the Frenchman before mentioned. It is at least a strange coincidence.

We came into the capital of Prussia in the eil-wagen from Wusterhausen.

We had tramped the previous day a distance of good two-and-thirty English miles, through a flat, uninteresting country, and being dead beat, had made an anxious bargain with the driver of the "Fast-coach," to carry us to Berlin for a dollar a-head. It was late in the evening as we rumbled heavily along the dusty road, and through the long vista of thick plantations which skirt the public way as you enter the city from Spandau. We dismounted, cramped and weary, from our vehicle, and my companion, a native of Berlin, unwilling to disturb his friends at that late hour, and in his then travel-worn guise; and I myself being unknown and unknowing in the huge capital, led the way at once to "Our Herberge."

The English term "House of Call" is but an inadequate translation of the German "Herberge." It must be remembered that the German artisan is ruled in everything by the state; for while English workmen, by their own collective will, raise up their trade or other societies, in whatever form or to whatever purpose their intelligence or their caprices may dictate to them, the German, on the contrary, discovers among his very first perceptions that his position and treatment in the world is already fixed and irrevocable. He becomes numbered and labelled from the hour of his birth, and the gathering items of his existence are duly recorded-not in the annals of history-but in the registry of the police. Thus he finds that the State, in the shape of his Zunft or Guild, is his Sick Benefit Club and his Burial Society, his Travellers' Fund and his Trade Roll-Call; aspires indeed to be everything he ought to desire, and certainly succeeds in being a great deal that he does not want.

I have a little paper at my hand presented to me by the police of Dresden, which may help to elucidate the question of a.s.sociations of workmen in Germany. It is an "Ordinance" by which "We, Frederick Augustus, by G.o.d's grace King of Saxony, &c., &c., make known to all working journeymen the penalties to which they are liable should they take part in any disallowed 'workmen's unions, tribunals, or declarations;'" the said penalties having been determined on by the various governments of the German Union. "Independently," says the Ordinance, "of the punishment" (not named) "which may be inflicted for the offence, the delinquent shall be deprived of his papers, which shall be sealed up and sent to his home Government. On his release from prison(!) he shall receive a restricted pa.s.s for his immediate and direct return home; and on his arrival there he shall be strictly confined within its limits, nor ever be permitted to travel into the other states of the German Union, until by a long course of repentance and good behaviour his home government may think him worthy of such a favour." It will easily be understood from this that mechanics' or other inst.i.tutions, independent of the government, are unknown.

The German Herberge is the home of the travelling workman. It should be clean and wholesome; there should he be provided, together with simple and nutritious food, every necessary information connected with his trade, and such aid and reasonable solace as his often wearisome pilgrimage requires. All this is to be rendered at a just and remunerative price, and it is usually supposed that the fulfilment of these requisites is guaranteed by the care and surveillance of the police. But this is a fiction.

Our Herberge is in the Schuster-ga.s.se; and a vile, ill-conditioned, uncleanly den it is; nor, I am sorry to say, are its occupants, in appearance at least, unworthy of their abode. But we must not be uncharitable; it is a hard task this tramping through the length and breadth of the land; and he is a smart fellow who can keep his toilet in anything like decent condition amid the dust, the wind, the pelting rain or the weltering suns.h.i.+ne that beset and envelope him on the implacable high road. As there is no help, we take our places among the little herd of weary mortals without a murmur; among the ragged beards and uncombed locks; the soiled blouses and travel-worn shoe-leather; the h.o.r.n.y hands and embrowned visages of our motley companions. We are duly marshalled to bed at eight o'clock with the rest; huddled into our loft where nine beds await some sixteen occupants; and having undergone the customary examination as to our freedom from disease and vermin, are safely locked in our dormitory, to be released only at the good will of the "Vater" in the morning.

Your German is truly a patient animal; the laws of his Guild compel him to wander for a period of years, but the laws of his country do not provide him with even the decencies of life upon the road. With his humble pack, and his few h.o.a.rded dollars, he sets forth upon the road of life; he is bullied and hustled by the police upon every step of his journey; burdened with vexatious regulations at every halting-place; and while the law forbids him to seek any other shelter than that of his Herberge, it leaves it to the mercy of his host to yield him the worst fare, spread for him the vilest litter, and to filch him of his scanty savings in the bargain. What, in Heaven's name! are the accommodations for which we in the Schuster-ga.s.se are called upon to pay? There is the common room with its rude benches and tables; a stone-paved court-yard with offices, doubtless at one period appropriated as stabling, but the ground floor of which is now penned off for some few choice biped occupants; while the story above, reached by a railed ladder, and, in fact, no more than a stable loft, is nightly crammed to the door with sweltering humanity. For the purpose of cleanliness there is no other toilette apparatus than the iron pump in the yard; and for the claims of nature and decency, no better resource than is afforded by the sheltering arch of the nearest bridge over the Spree.

The goldsmiths and jewellers in Berlin are too inconsiderable a body to have a Herberge of their own, and therefore we crowd in with the turners, the carpenters, and the smiths; the glove-makers, bookbinders, and others who claim the hospitalities of the asylum in the Schuster-ga.s.se. Let us take a sketch or two among them that may serve as a sample of the whole.

We have a st.u.r.dy young carpenter from Darmstadt, bound to Vienna, or wherever else he may find a resting-place, who makes his morning and almost only meal of _k.u.mmel_-corn spirit prepared with caraways-and brown bread; and whose great exploit and daily exercise is that of lifting the great table in the common room with his teeth. An iron-jawed fellow he is, with every muscle in his well-knit body to match. Fortunately, though a Goliath in strength, he is as simple-minded and joyous as a child.

Then comes a restless pigmy of a Hungarian, a jeweller, last from Dresden, full of life and song, but who complains ruefully that the potatoes of Berlin are violently anti-dyspeptic. This suffering wanderer from the banks of the Theiss is also vehemently expressive in his opinion that the indiscriminate use of soap is injurious to the skin, and, as a matter of principle, never uses any.

Near him stands a lank native of Lubeck, a fringe-maker, whose whole pride and happiness is concentrated in his ponderous staff of pilgrimage; a patriarchal wand, indeed! rightly bequeathed as an heirloom from father to son, and in its state and appearance not unworthy of the reverence with which it is regarded. It is no flimsy cane to startle flies with, but a stout stem some six feet long, duly peeled, sc.r.a.ped and polished, and mounted with a chased head of ma.s.sive silver.

Close by his side an effeminate leather-dresser from Carlsruhe sits stroking his yellow goat's beard. Instead of strapping his knapsack to his back like a stalwart youth, after the manly fas.h.i.+on of his forefathers when on the tramp, he trundles behind him as he goes, a little iron chaise loaded with his pack and worldly equipage.

There broods a sombre cordwainer from Bremen, gloating over his enormous pipe, in form and size like a small barrel, raising an atmosphere for himself of the fumes of coa.r.s.e uncut _knaster_. He has doffed his white kittel (blouse), and has wriggled himself into a short-waisted, long-skirted, German frock-coat, which, having been badly packed in his knapsack, exhibits every crease and wrinkle it has acquired during a three weeks' march. Know, friend, that the skilful folding of apparel, to be worn on his arrival in every important town, is one of the necessary acquirements of the German wanderer.

Add to these a rollicking saddler from Heldesheim, who figures in a full beard, a rich cl.u.s.ter of crisp, brown curls, his own especial pride, and the object of deep envy to his less hirsute companions; and who, far too fond of corn brandy-wine, goes about singing continually the song of the German tramp, "_Ich Liebe das liederliche Leben_!"-This vagabond life I delight in!-an earnest, quiet student, who, for reasons of economy, has made the Schuster-ga.s.se his place of refuge; and a dishevelled b.u.t.ton-maker, last from Hamburg, who has just received his geschenck, or trade-gift, amounting to fifteen silver groschens, about eighteenpence in English money; and who ponders drearily over it as it lies in the palm of his hand, wondering how far this slender sum will carry him on the road to Breslau, his native place, still some two hundred miles away.

We have among us the wily and the simple, the boisterous and the patient, the taciturn and the unruly; but though they will sing songs before they go to sleep, and swagger enormously among themselves, they become as still and meek as doves at the voice of the Herberges-Vater (the father of the Herberge), and quake like timid mice beneath the eye of the police.

CHAPTER X.

A STREET IN BERLIN.

Berlin is a fine city, let the wise Germans of the East say what they will. It may be deficient in those monumental records of "the good old times," the crumbling church, the thick-walled tower, the halls and dungeons of feudal barbarism, but it abounds with evidences of the vigour and life of modern taste and skill; and instead of daily sinking into rotten significance, like some of its elder brethren, is hourly growing in beauty and strength. It has all the attributes of a great city-s.p.a.cious "places," handsome edifices, broad and well-paved streets.

Its monuments, while they are evidences of great cultivation in the arts, tell of times and events just old enough to be beyond the ken of our own experiences, yet possess all the truth and vividness of recent history.

"Der Alter Fritz," Blucher, Zieten, Seyditz, Winterfeldt, Keith, and "Der Alter Dessauer"-what names are these in Prussian story!

The entrance into Berlin, on the western side, from Spandau, by the Brandenburger Gate, is the finest that the capital of Prussia has to present. A thickly-planted wood skirts the road for a mile or two before you reach the city. The trees are dwarfed and twisted, for they cannot grow freely in the dense, eternal sands of this part of North Germany, but they form a rough fringing to the white road; while the n.o.ble gate itself, built of ma.s.sive stone in the Doric order of architecture, and surmounted by an effective group of a four-horse chariot, within which stands the figure of Victory raising the Roman eagle above the almost winged steeds, might grace the entrance to the city of the Caesars.

This Brandenburger Thor, as it is called, is a copy of the Propylaea of the Acropolis of Athens, but built on a much grander scale. The central gate is of iron, eighteen feet high; of the fourteen land gates of Berlin it is immeasurably the finest, and it acquires a still deeper interest when some enthusiastic Berliner, pointing to the prancing steeds upon the summit of the arch, tells you how Napoleon in his admiration had ordered this self-same group to be transported to Paris in 1807, to ornament a French "_arch de triomphe_," and how "We, the Prussians," had torn the spoil from the eagle's very nest in 1814, to replant it on its original site. A glow of military ardour flushes over your heart at the recital, and the echoes of a hundred battles thunder in your ears.

Through this gate, which is in the Dorotheen Stadt, after crossing the Square of Paris, we enter upon one of the handsomest streets in the world, and one bearing the most poetical of t.i.tles: "Unter-den-Linden,"-"Under the Lime Trees!"-there is something at once charming and imposing in the very sound. Nor is this appellation an empty fiction, for there stand the lime trees themselves, in two double rows with their delicate green leaves rustling in the breeze, forming a two-fold verdant allee, vigorous and fragrant, down the centre of the street, and into the very heart of the city. Unter-den-Linden itself is two thousand seven hundred and fifty-four feet in length, and one hundred and seventy-four in width; but it extends, under another t.i.tle, for a much greater distance. This is the summer evening's ramble of your true Berliner, and not a little proud and pompous he is as he parades himself and family beneath the leafy canopy; and here, in the snowy winters, when the city lies half buried in the snowdrift, the gaily dressed sleighs go skimming under the leafless branches, filling the bright cold air with the music of their bells.

As we proceed deeper into the city, we find gay shops and stately houses.

A n.o.ble range of buildings appropriated to the foreign emba.s.sies rises upon the left hand, and is succeeded by the Royal Academy; while some distance beyond stands the University, an edifice of a rather sombre appearance, although graced with columns and pilasters of the Corinthian order. To enter it you traverse a s.p.a.cious court-yard, and it may be that the nature of its contents impart a melancholy character to the building itself; for, on ascending its stone staircase, and wandering for a brief period among its bottles and cases, its wax models and human preserves, we find them of so unsightly and disgusting a character that we are happy to regain the echoing corridor which had led us into this huge, systematised charnel-house.

As we cross to the opposite side of the broad street, the Royal Library faces us; a ma.s.sive temple of stored knowledge, polyglot and universal; while to the right of it, in the centre of a paved s.p.a.ce of considerable extent, stands the Catholic church of St. Hedwig, at once a model of Roman architecture, and the emblem of the liberty of faith.

Close at hand is the Opera-house, once already purified by fire, like so many of its companion edifices, and only lately rebuilt. Some idea may be formed of the extent of its interior from the fact that it affords accommodation for three thousand spectators. Our way lies onward still.

What n.o.ble figure is this? Simple but commanding in character and att.i.tude, it fixes your attention at once. Look at the superscription.

Upon a scroll on its pedestal are the words "Frederick William III. to Field Marshal Prince Blucher of Wahlstatt, in the year 1826." Yes! the impetuous soldier, figured in eternal bronze by the first sculptor of Prussia, Rauch himself, here claims and receives the admiration of his countrymen. Bare-headed stands the old warrior, but is duly crowned with laurels on every returning anniversary of the well remembered day, the 18th of June.

Leaving the sanctuary of the Christian Deity, the heathen temple of Terpsich.o.r.e, and the effigy of the renowned soldier, thus grouped together, we traverse the fine road, and pause for a moment to look at a severe but elegant structure, erected, we are told, in exact imitation of a Roman _castrum_, or fortress, and therefore eminently in character with the purpose for which it is intended. The smart Prussian infantry are grouped about its pillared entrance, which is graced also by two statues of military celebrities-for this is the royal guard-house.

"Der Alter Fritz." "Old Fred!" This is the familiar t.i.tle bestowed upon a great monarch; and there is something in this nickname a thousand times more telling to the ear and heart of a Prussian than the stately appellation of "Frederick the Great." The former is for their own hearts and homes, the latter for the world. And for the world also is the n.o.ble equestrian statue upon which we now gaze. It is a question whether a work of sterling genius does not speak as effectively to the eye of the uninitiated as to that of the most inveterate stickler for antecedents of grace and technicalities of beauty. This statue of Frederick of Prussia tells upon the sense at once, because it is true to art as established by ancient critics, but more so, because it is imitated nature, which art too often only presumes to be, reckoning too much upon fixed rules and time-honoured dogmas. It is n.o.ble and impressive, because it is _like_; no antiquated Roman figure in _toga_ and _calcei_, but the representation of the living man.

Das Zeughaus, or a.r.s.enal, which we now approach, is a ma.s.sive quadrangular building, and the warlike character of its architectural decorations strikingly indicate the nature of its contents. We pa.s.s through the open gate into an inner court, and looking round upon the sombre walls which inclose us, see the fearful faces of dead and dying men, cut in stone, which the taste or caprice of the architect has considered their fittest ornament. There is something strangely original and attractive in the grotesque hideousness of these heads, agonised with pain, scowling in anger, or frightful with their upturned eyes in the rigidity of death, all bleached and shadowed as they are by the vicissitudes of the weather.

Within the a.r.s.enal we find walls of glistening steel, columns of lances, architectural and other devices worked out in dagger blades and pistol handles; while battered armour and faded draperies, in the shape of pennons and standards, storm and battle-tattered, help to make up trophies, and swing duskily in every corner.

After a rapid survey, we are about to leave this magazine of Bellona, when we are struck by the sight of an object which reminds us so completely of one of those "gorgeous processions" in Eastern "spectacles"

at home, that we wonder for a moment whether it be "part of the play," or tangible, sober reality. Yes! placed upon a scarlet cus.h.i.+on lies an enormous gilt key (such a one as clown in the pantomime might open his writing-desk with, or such as hangs over a locksmith's door), and above it glistens a golden legend to the effect that the treasure beneath was presented to "William of Prussia by his loving cousin, Nicolas, Emperor of all the Russias," and is no less a prize than the identical key of the captured city of Adrianople! Has, then, the Russian Emperor so many such trophies of Eastern spoliation that his own museums at Petersburg are insufficient to contain them?

Up the steep way towards the residence of the Prince of Prussia, guarded by its zealous sentries, we pursue our course, and reach the first bridge we have yet seen, being one of the very many which span the Spree as it meanders through the city. This river does not present an imposing appearance in any part of Berlin. The Berliners may shake their heads, and talk of the "Lange Brucke," but let them remember that in no part does the Spree exceed two hundred feet in width. Moreover, the manner in which it is jammed up between locks, like a mere ca.n.a.l-one is puzzled sometimes to know which is ca.n.a.l and which river-does not improve its appearance, while the use to which some of its bridges are appropriated does not increase its purity. Pa.s.sing onwards we come upon the Schloss Platz, which is itself half a garden, and find ourselves in the midst of an a.s.semblage of public wonders-the Museum, the Protestant Cathedral, a handsome basin and fountain (the pride of the true Berliner), the Exchange, and the Old Palace.