A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance

I scowled at him, and he shrank again.

“And this objet is also monsieur’s,” said he, taking up a small white canvas bag which was enclosed in my railroad wrapper.

“What is it?” cried I, taking it up. I almost fell back as I saw that it was one of the despatch-bags of the Foreign Office, which in my hasty departure from the Dover train I had accidentally carried off with me. There it was, addressed to “Sir Shalley Doubleton, H.M.‘s Envoy and Minister at Hesse-Kalbbratonstadt, by the Hon. Grey Buller, Attaché,” &c.

Here was not alone what might be construed into a theft, but what it was well possible, might comprise one of the gravest offences against the law: it might be high treason itself! Who would ever credit my story, coupled as it was with the fact of my secret escape from the carriage; my precipitate entrance into the first place I could find, not to speak of the privacy I observed by not mixing with the passengers in the mail packet, by keeping myself estranged from all observation in the captain’s cabin? Here, too, was the secret of the skipper’s politeness to me: he saw the bag, and believed me to be a Foreign Office messenger, and this was his meaning, as he said, “I can answer for him, he can’t delay much here.” Yes; this was the entire mystification by which I obtained his favor, his politeness, and his protection. What was to be done in this exigency? Had the waiter not seen the bag, and with the instincts of his craft calmly perused the address on it, I believe – nay, I am quite convinced – I should have burned it and its contents on the spot. The thought of his evidence against me in the event of a discovery, however, entirely routed this notion, and, after a brief consideration I resolved to convey the bag to its destination, and trump up the most plausible explanation I could of the way it came into my possession. His Excellency, I reasoned, will doubtless be too delighted to receive his despatches to inquire very minutely as to the means by which they were recovered, nor is it quite impossible that he may feel bound to mark my zeal for the public service by some token of recognition. This was a pleasant turn to give to my thoughts, and I took it with all the avidity of my peculiar temperament. “Yes,” thought I, “it is just out of trivial incidents like this a man’s fortune is made in life. For one man who mounts to greatness by the great entrance and the state staircase, ten thousand slip in by la petite Porte. It is, in fact, only by these chances that obscure genius obtains acknowledgment How, for example, should this great diplomatist know Potts if some accident should not throw them together? Raleigh flung his laced jacket in a puddle, and for his reward he got a proud Queen’s favor. A village apothecary had the good fortune to be visiting the state apartments at the Pavilion when George the Fourth was seized with a fit; he bled him, brought him back to consciousness, and made him laugh by his genial and quaint humor. The king took a fancy to him, named him his physician, and made his fortune. I have often heard it remarked by men who have seen much of life, that nobody, not one, goes through the world without two or three such opportunities presenting themselves. The careless, the indolent, the unobservant, and the idle, either fail to remark, or are too slow to profit by them. The sharp fellows, on the contrary, see in such incidents all that they need to lead them to success. Into which of these categories you are to enter, Potts, let this incident decide.”

Having by a reference to my John Murray ascertained the whereabouts of the capital of Hesse-Kalbbratonstadt, I took my place at once on the rail for Cologne, reading myself up on its beauty and its belongings as I went There is, however, such a dreary sameness in these small Ducal states, that I am ashamed to say how little I gleaned of anything distinctive in the case before me. The reigning sovereign was, of course, married to a Grand Duchess of Russia, and he lived at a country-seat called Ludwig’s Lust, or Carl’s Lust, as it might be, “took little interest in politics,” – how should he? – and “passed much of his time in mechanical pursuits, in which he had attained considerable proficiency;” in other words, he was a middle-aged gentleman, fond of his pipe, and with a taste for carpentry. Some sort of connection with our own royal family had been the pretext for having a resident minister at his court, though what he was to do when he was there seemed not so easy to say. Even John, glorious John, was puzzled how to make a respectable half-page out of his capital, though there was a dome in the Byzantine style, with an altarpiece by Peter von Grys, the angels in the corner being added afterwards by Hans Lûders; and there was a Hof Theatre, and an excellent inn, the “Schwein,” by Kramm, where the sausages of home manufacture were highly recommendable, no less than a table wine of the host’s vineyard, called “Magenschmerzer,” and which, Murray adds, would doubtless, if known, find many admirers in England; and lastly, but far from leastly, there was a Music Garten, where popular pieces were performed very finely by an excellent German band, and to which promenade all the fashion of the capital nightly resorted.

I give you all these details, respected reader, just as I got them in my “Northern Germany,” and not intending to obtrude any further description of my own upon you; for who, I would ask, could amplify upon his Handbook? What remains to be noted after John has taken the inventory? Has he forgotten a nail or a saint’s shin-bone? With him for a guide, a man may feel that he has done his Em-ope conscientiously; and though it be hard to treasure up all the hard names of poets, painters, priests, and warriors, it is not worse than botany, and about as profitable.

For the same reason that I have given above, I spare my reader all the circumstances of my journey, my difficulties about carriage, my embarrassments about steamboats and cab fares, which were all of the order that Brown and Jones have experienced, are experiencing, and will continue to experience, till the arrival of that millenary period when we shall all converse in any tongue we please.

It was at nightfall that I drove into Kalbbratonstadt, my postilion announcing my advent at the gates, and all the way to the Platz where the inn stood, by a volley of whip-crackings which might have announced a Grand-Duke or a prima donna. Some casements were hastily opened, as we rumbled along, and the guests of a café issued hurriedly into the street to watch us; but these demonstrations over, I gained the “Schwein” without further notice, and descended.

Herr Krainm looked suspiciously at the small amount of luggage of the traveller who arrived by “extra post,” but, like an honest German, he was not one to form rash judgments, and so he showed me to a comfortable apartment, and took my orders for supper in all respectfulness. He waited upon me also at my meal, and gave me opportunity for conversation. While I ate my Carbonade mit Kartoffel-Salad, therefore, I learned that, being already nine o’clock, it was far too late an hour to present myself at the English Embassy, – for so he designated our minister’s residence; that, at this advanced period of the night there were but few citizens out of their beds: the Ducal candle was always extinguished at half-past eight, and only roisterers and revellers kept it up much later. My first surprise over, I owned I liked all this. It smacked of that simple patriarchal existence I had so long yearned after. Let the learned explain it, but there is, I assert, something in the early hours of a people that guarantee habits of simplicity, thrift, and order. It is all very well to say that people can be as wicked at eight in the evening as at two or three in the morning; that crime cares little for the clock, nor does vice respect the chronometer; but does experience confirm this, and are not the small hours notorious for the smallest moralities? The Grand-Duke, who is fast asleep at nine, is scarcely disturbed by dreams of cruelties to his people. The police minister, who takes his bedroom candle at the same hour, is seldom harassed by devising new schemes of torture for his victims. I suffered my host to talk largely of his town and its people; and probably such a listener rarely presented himself, for he certainly improved the occasion. He assured me, with a gravity that vouched for the conviction, that the capital, though by no means so dear as London or Paris, contained much, if not all, these more pretentions cities could boast. There was a court, a theatre, a promenade, a public fountain, and a new jail, one of the largest in all Germany. Jenny Lind had once sung at the opera on her way to Vienna; and to prove how they sympathized in every respect with greater centres of population, when the cholera raged at Berlin, they, too, lost about four hundred of their townsfolk. Lastly, he mentioned, and this boastfully, that though neither wanting organs of public opinion, nor men of adequate ability to guide them, the Kalbbratoners had never mixed themselves up in politics, but proudly maintained that calm and dignified attitude which Europe would one day appreciate; that is, if she ever arrived at the crowning knowledge of the benefit of letting her differences be decided by some impartial umpire.

More than once, as I heard him, I muttered to myself, “Potts, this is the very spot you have sought for; here is all the tranquil simplicity of the village, with the elevated culture of a great city. Here are sages and philosophers clad in homespun, Beauty herself in linsey-woolsey. Here there are no vulgar rivalries of riches, no contests in fine clothes, no opposing armies of yellow plush. Men are great by their faculties, not in their flunkeys. How elevated must be the tone of their thoughts, the style of their conversation! and what a lucky accident it was that led you to that goal to which all your wishes and hopes have been converging! – For how much can a man live – a single gentleman like myself – here in your city?” asked I of my host.

He sat down at this, and, filling himself a large goblet of my wine, – the last in the bottle, – he prepared for a lengthy séance.

“First of all,” said he, “how would he wish to live? Would he desire to mingle in our best circles, equal to any in Europe, to know Herr von Krugwitz, and the Gnadige Frau von Steinhaltz?”

“Well,” thought I, “these be fair ambitions.” And I said, “Yes, both of them.”

“And to be on the list of the court dinners? There are two yearly, one at Easter, the other on his Highness’s birthday, whom may Providence long protect!”

To this also might he aspire.

“And to have a stall at the Grand Opera, and a carriage to return visits – twice in carnival time – and to live in a handsome quarter, and dine every day at our table d’hote here with General von Beulwitz and the Hof rath von Schlaff-richter? A life like this is costly, and would scarcely be comprised under two thousand florins a year.”

How my heart bounded at the notion of refinement, culture, elevated minds, and polished habits; “science,” indeed, and the “musical glasses,” all for one hundred and sixty pounds per annum.

“It is not improbable that you will see me your guest for many a day to come,” said I, as I ordered another bottle, and of a more generous vintage, to honor the occasion.

My host offered no opposition to my convivial projects; nay, he aided them by saying, —

“If you have really an appreciation for something super-excellent in wine, and wish to taste what Freiligrath calls ‘der Deutschen Nectar,’ I ‘ll go and fetch you a bottle.”

“Bring it by all means,” said I. And away he went on his mission.

“Providence blessed me with two hands,” said he, as he re-entered the room, “and I have brought two flasks of Lieb Herzentbaler.”

There is something very artistic in the way your picture-dealer, having brushed away the dust from a Mieris or a Gerard Dow, places the work in a favorite light before you, and then stands to watch the effect on your countenance. So, too, will your man of rare manuscripts and illuminated missals offer to your notice some illegible treasure of the fourth century; but these are nothing to the mysterious solemnity of him who, uncorking a bottle of rare wine, waits to note the varying sensations of your first enjoyment down to your perfect ecstasy.

I tried to perform my part of the piece with credit: I looked long at the amber-colored liquor in the glass; I sniffed it and smiled approvingly; the host smiled too, and said, “Ja!” Not another syllable did he utter, but how expressive was that “Ja!” “Ja!” meant, “You are right, Potts, it is the veritable wine of 1764, bottled for the Herzog Ludwig’s marriage; every drop of it is priceless. Mark the odor, how it perfumes the air around us; regard the color – the golden hair of Venus can alone rival it; see how the oily globules cling to the glass!” “Ja!” meant all this, and more.

As I drank off my glass, I was sorely puzzled by the precise expression in which to couch my approval; but he supplied it and said, “Is it not Gôttlich?” and I said it was Gôttlich; and while we finished the two bottles, this solitary phrase sufficed for converse between us, “Gôttlich!” being uttered by each as he drained his glass, and “Gôttlich!” being re-echoed by his companion.

There is great wisdom in reducing our admiration to a word; giving, as it were, a cognate number to our estimate of anything. Wherever we amplify, we usually blunder: we employ epithets that disagree, or, in even less questionable taste, soar into extravagances that are absurd. Besides, our moods of highest enjoyment are not such as dispose to talkativeness; the ecstasy that is most enthralling is self-contained. Who, on looking at a glorious landscape, does not feel the insufferable bathos of the descriptive enthusiast beside him? How grateful would he own himself if he would be satisfied with one word for his admiration! And if one needs this calm repose, this unbroken peace, for the enjoyment of scenery, equally is it applicable to our appreciation of a curious wine. I have no recollection that any further conversation passed between us, but I have never ceased, and most probably never shall cease, to have a perfect memory of the pleasant ramble of my thoughts as I sat there sipping, sipping. I pondered long over a plan of settling down in this place for life, by what means I could realize. sufficient to live in that elevated sphere the host spoke of. If Potts père – I mean my father – were to learn that I were received in the highest circles, admitted to all that was most socially exclusive, would he be induced to make an adequate provision for me? He was an ambitious and a worldly man; would he see in these beginnings of mine the seeds of future greatness? Fathers, I well knew, are splendidly generous to their successful children, and “the poor they send empty away.” It is so pleasant to aid him who does not need assistance, and such a hopeless task to be always saving him who will be drowned.

My first care, therefore, should be to impress upon my parent the appropriateness of his contributing his share to what already was an accomplished success. “Wishing, as the French say, to make you a part in my triumph, dear father, I write these lines.” How I picture him to my mind’s eye as he reads this, running frantically about to his neighbors, and saying, “I have got a letter from Algy, – strange boy, – but as I always foresaw, with great stuff in him, very remarkable abilities. See what he has done, – struck out a perfect line of his own in life; just the sort of thing genius alone can do. He went off from this one’ morning by way of a day’s excursion, never returned, – never wrote. All my efforts to trace him were in vain. I advertised, and offered rewards, did everything, without success; and now, after all this long interval, comes a letter by this morning’s post to tell me that he is well, happy, and prosperous. He is settled, it appears, in a German capital with a hard name, a charming spot, with every accessory of enjoyment in it: men of the highest culture, and women of most graceful and attractive manner; as he himself writes, ‘the elegance of a Parisian salon added to the wisdom of the professor’s cabinet.’ Here is Algy living with all that is highest in rank and most distinguished in station; the favored guest of the Prince, the bosom friend of the English minister; his advice sought for, his counsel asked in every difficulty; trusted in the most important state offices, and taken into the most secret counsels of the duchy. Though the requirements of his station make heavy demands upon his means, very little help from me will enable him to maintain a position which a few years more will have consolidated into a rank recognized throughout Europe.” Would the flintiest of fathers, would the most primitive rock-hearted of parents, resist an appeal like this? It is no hand to rescue from the waves is sought, but a little finger to help to affluence. “Of course you ‘ll do it, Potts, and do it liberally; the boy is a credit to you. He will place your name where you never dreamed to see it. What do you mean to settle on him? Above all things, no stinginess; don’t disgust him.”

I hear these and such-like on every hand; even the most close-fisted and miserly of our acquaintances will be generous of their friend’s money; and I think I hear the sage remarks with which they season advice with touching allusions to that well-known ship that was lost for want of a small outlay in tar. “Come down handsomely, Potts,” says a resolute man, who has sworn never to pay a sixpence of his son’s debts. “What better use can we make of our hoardings than to render our young people happy?” I don’t like the man who says this, but I like his sentiments; and I am much pleased when he goes on to remark that “there is no such good investment as what establishes a successful son. Be proud of the boy, Potts, and thank your stars that he had a soul above senna, and a spirit above sal volatile!”

As I invent all this play of dialogue for myself, and picture the speakers before me, I come at last to a small peevish little fellow named Lynch, a merchant tailor, who lived next door to us, and enjoyed much of my father’s confidence. “So they tell me you have heard from that runaway of yours, Potts. Is it true? What face does he put upon his disgraceful conduct? What became of the livery-stable-keeper’s horse? Did he sell him, or ride him to death? A bad business if he should ever come back again, which, of course, he’s too wise for. And where is he now, and what is he at?”

“You may read this letter, Mr. Lynch,” replies my father; “he is one who can speak for himself.” And Lynch reads and sniggers, and reads again. I see him as plainly as if he were but a yard from me. “I never heard of this ducal capital before,” he begins, “but I suppose it’s like the rest of them, – little obscure dens of pretentious poverty, plenty of ceremony, and very little to eat. How did he find it out? What brought him there?”

“You have this letter before you, sir,” says my parent, proudly. “Algernon Sydney is, I imagine, quite competent to explain what relates to his own affairs.”

“Oh, perfectly, perfectly; only that I can’t really make out how he first came to this place, nor what it is that he does there now that he’s in it.”

My father hastily snatches the letter from his hands, and runs his eye rapidly along to catch the passage which shall confute the objector and cover him with shame and confusion. He cannot find it at once. “It is this. No, it is on this side. Very strange, very singular indeed; but as Algernon must have told me – ” Alas! no, father, he has not told you, and for the simple reason that he does not know it himself. For though I mentioned with becoming pride the prominent stations Irishmen now hold in most of the great states of Europe, and pointed to O’Donnel in Spain, MacMahon in France, and the Field-Marshal Nugent in Austria, I utterly forgot to designate the high post occupied by Potts in the Duchy of Hesse-Kalbbratonstadt. To determine what this should be was now of imminent importance, and I gave myself up to the solution with a degree of intentness and an amount of concentration that set me off sound asleep.

Yes, benevolent reader, I will confess it, questions of a complicated character have always affected me, as the inside of a letter seems to have struck Tony Lumkin, – “all buzz.” I start with the most loyal desire to be acute and penetrating; I set myself to my task with as honest a disposition to do my best as ever man did; I say, “Now, Potts, no self-indulgence, no skulking; here is a knotty problem, here is a case for your best faculties in their sharpest exercise;” and if any one come in upon me about ten minutes after this resolve, he will see a man who could beat Sancho Panza in sleeping!

Of course this tendency has often cost me dearly; I have missed appointments, forgotten assignations, lost friends through it. My character, too, has suffered, many deeming me insupportably indolent, a sluggard quite unfit for any active employment. Others, more mercifully hinting at some “cerebral cause,” have done me equal damage; but there happily is an obverse on the medal, and to this somnolency do I ascribe much of the gentleness and all the romance of my nature. It is your sleepy man is ever benevolent, he loves ease and quiet for others as for himself. What he cultivates is the tranquil mood that leads to slumber, and the calm that sustains it. The very operations of the mind in sleep are broken, incoherent, undelineated, – just like the waking occupations of an idle man; they are thoughts that cost so little to manufacture, that he can afford to be lavish of them. And now – Good-night!

CHAPTER XIII. I CALL AT THE BRITISH LEGATION

Breakfast over, I took a walk through the town. Though in a measure prepared for a scene of unbustling quietude and tranquillity, I must own that the air of repose around, far surpassed all I had imagined. The streets through which I sauntered were grass-grown and untrodden; the shops were but half open; not an equipage, nor even a horseman was to be seen. In the Platz, where a sort of fruit-market was held, a few vendors of grapes, peaches, and melons sat under large crimson umbrellas, but there seemed few purchasers, except a passing schoolboy, carefully scanning the temptations in which he was about to invest his kreutzer.

The most remarkable feature of the place, however, and it is one which, through a certain significance, has always held its place in my memory, was that, go where one would, the palace of the Grand-Duke was sure to finish the view at one extremity of the street. In fact, every alley converged to this one centre, and the royal residence stood like the governor’s chamber in a panopticon jail. There did my mind for many a day picture him sitting like a huge spider watching the incautious insects that permeated his web. I imagined him fat, indolent, and apathetic, but yet, with a jailer’s instincts, ever mindful of every stir and movement of the prisoners below. With a very ordinary telescope he must be master of everything that went on, and the humblest incident could not escape his notice. Was it the consciousness of this surveillance that made every one keep the house? Was it the feeling that the “Gross Herzogliche” eye never left them, that prevented men being abroad in the streets and about their affairs as in other places? I half suspected this, and set to work imagining a state of society thus scanned and scrutinized. But that the general aspect of the town so palpably proclaimed the absence of all trade and industry, I might have compared the whole to a glass hive; but they were all drones that dwelt there, there was not one “busy bee” in the whole of them.

When I rambled thus carelessly along, I came in front of a sort of garden fenced from the street by an iron railing. The laurel and arbutus, and even the oleander, were there, gracefully blending a varied foliage, and contrasting in their luxuriant liberty so pleasantly with the dull uniformity outside. Finding a gate wide open, I strolled in, and gave myself up to the delicious enjoyment of the spot. As I was deliberating whether this was a public garden or not, I found myself before a long, low, villa-like building, with a colonnade in front. Over the entrance was a large shield, which on nearer approach I recognized to contain the arms of England. This, therefore, was the legation, the residence of our minister, Sir Shalley Doubleton. I felt a very British pride and satisfaction to see our representative lodged so splendidly. With all the taxpayer’s sentiment in my heart, I rejoiced to think that he who personated the nation should, in all his belongings, typify the wealth, the style, and the grandeur of England, and in the ardor of this enthusiasm, I hastened back to the inn for the despatch-bag.

Armed with this, and a card, I soon presented myself at the door. On the card I had written, “Mr. Pottinger presents his respectful compliments, and requests his Excellency will favor him with an audience of a few minutes for an explanation.”

I had made up my mind to state that my servant, in removing my smaller luggage from the train, had accidentally carried off this Foreign Office bag, which, though at considerable inconvenience, I had travelled much out of my way to restore in person. I had practised this explanation as I dressed in the morning, I had twice rehearsed it to an orange-tree in the garden, before which I had bowed till my back ached, and I fancied myself perfect in my part. It would, I confess, have been a great relief to me to have had only the slightest knowledge of the great personage before whom I was about to present myself, to have known was he short or tall, young or old, solemn or easy-mannered, had he a loud voice and an imperious tone, or was he of the soft and silky order of his craft. I’d have willingly entertained his “gentleman” at a moderate repast for some information on these points, but there was no time for the inquiry, and so I rang boldly at the bell. The door opened of itself at the summons, and I found myself in a large hall with a plaster cast of the Laocoon, and nothing else. I tried several of the doors on either side, but they were all locked. A very handsome and spacious stair of white marble led up from the middle of the hall; but I hesitated about venturing to ascend this, and once more repaired to the bell outside, and repeated my summons. The loud clang re-echoed through the arched hall, the open door gave a responsive shake, and that was all. No one came; everything was still as before. I was rather chagrined at this. The personal inconvenience was less offensive than the feeling how foreigners would comment on such want of propriety, what censures they would pass on such an ill-arranged household. I rang again, this time with an energy that made the door strike some of the plaster from the wall, and, with a noise like cannon, “What the hangman” – I am translating – “is all this?” cried a voice thick with passion; and, on looking up, I saw a rather elderly man, with a quantity of curly yellow hair, frowning savagely on me from the balcony over the stair. He made no sign of coming down, but gazed sternly at me from his eminence.

“Can I see his Excellency, the Minister?” said I, with dignity.

“Not if you stop down there, not if you continue to ring the bell like an alarm for fire, not if you won’t take the trouble to come upstairs.”

I slowly began the ascent at these words, pondering what sort of a master such a man must needs have. As I gained the top, I found myself in front of a very short, very fat man, dressed in a suit of striped gingham, like an over-plethoric zebra, and wheezing painfully, in part from asthma, in part from agitation. He began again, —

“What the hangman do you mean by such a row? Have you no manners, no education? Where were you brought up that you enter a dwelling-house like a city in storm?”

“Who is this insolent creature that dares to address me in this wise? What ignorant menial can have so far forgotten my rank and his insignificance?”

“I’ll tell you all that presently,” said he; “there ‘s his Excellency’s bell.” And he bustled away, as fast as his unwieldy size would permit, to his master’s room.

I was outraged and indignant There was I, Potts, – no, Pottinger, – Algernon Sydney Pottinger, – on my way to Italy and Greece, turning from my direct road to consign with safety a despatch-bag which many a less conscientious man would have chucked out of his carriage window and forgotten; there I stood to be insulted by a miserable stone-polishing, floor-scrubbing, carpet-twigging Haus-knecht? Was this to be borne? Was it to be endured? Was a man of station, family, and attainments to be the object of such indignity?

Just as I had uttered this speech aloud, a very gentle voice addressed me, saying, —

“Perhaps I can assist you? Will you be good enough to say what you want?”