A July Holiday in Saxony, Bohemia, and Silesia

We went into one of the houses. There sat a family grinding and polishing glass, alternating field-work by a day at the treadles. The operations were not new to me, but there was novelty to see them carried on in such a homely way; to see elegant vases, dishes, goblets, and jugs, fit ornaments for a palace, in the hands of rustics, or lying about on a rough pine shelf. The father, a tall, pale-faced man, with a somewhat careworn expression, stopped the noise of the wheels as soon as he heard of a visitor from London, and talked about that which he understood best—his business. Full thirty years had he sat at the bench, training up his children to the work one after another, but had not realized all the benefits he once hoped for. The brittle ware came to him in boxes from Prague, forty-five miles, and, when polished, was sent back in the same way; he having to bear the loss of whatever was broken while in his hands. "Look here," he said, showing me a large handsome jug; "my daughter spent a whole month over that jug, and then, as you see, broke the handle off. So I must keep it, and lose fifteen florins." To him it was useless: he could only place it apart with other crippled specimens—memorials of misfortune. "Ah! if glass would not break, then he would not be poor. However," he added, "we always get bread. God be thanked! And our bit of land helps." Cutters and polishers earn about four florins a week. He thought it good that young men got away to England, for they not only earned great wages, but escaped the remorseless military service. "A young man is not safe here: perhaps he works for twelve, eighteen months, and thinks he will be left quiet for the rest of his term, when all at once comes a sharp order, and he must away to Italy for a year or two."

Then he set his treadle going, to show me that in Bohemia the polisher holds his glass against the bottom of the wheel, and, consequently, has the work always under his eye; while, in England, he holds it against the top of the wheel, and must be always turning it over to look at the surface.

Higher up the slope we came to another house, where, instead of the harsh sound of grinding, we heard but a faint, busy hum. A change came over Röschen's manner as she entered, and saw a young man sitting at a lathe; and their greeting, when he looked round, was after the manner of lovers before a witness. On being told that I had come to see glass engraving, the young man plied his wheel briskly, and, taking up a ruby tazza, in a few minutes there stood a deer with branching antlers on a rough hillock in its centre—a pure white intaglio set in the red. I had never before seen the process, and was surprised by its simplicity. All those landscapes, hunting-scenes, pastoral groups, and whatever else which appear as exquisite carvings in the glass, are produced by a few tiny copper wheels, or disks. The engraver sits at a small lathe against a window, with a little rack before him, containing about a score of the copper disks, varying in size from the diameter of a halfpenny down to its thickness, all mounted on spindles, and sharpened on the edge. He paints a rough outline of the design on the surface of the glass, and, selecting the disk that suits best, he touches the edge with a drop of oil, inserts it in the mandril, sets it spinning, and, holding the glass against it from below, the little wheel eats its way in with astonishing rapidity. The glass, held lightly in the hands, is shifted about continually, till all the greater parts of the figure are worked out; then, for the lesser parts, a smaller disk is used, and at last the finest touches, such as blades of grass, the tips of antlers, eyebrows, and so forth, are put in with the smallest. Every minute he holds the glass up between his eye and the light, watching the development of the design; now making a broad excavation, now changing the disk every ten seconds, and giving touches so slight and rapid that the unpractised eye can scarcely follow them; and in this way he produces effects of foreshortening, of roundness, and light and shade, which, to an eye-witness, appear little less than wonderful.

The work in hand happened to be tazzi, and in less than half an hour I saw deer in various positions roughed out on six of them, and three completely finished. Then the engraver fetched other specimens of his skill from up-stairs—a dish with a historical piece in the centre, and vignettes round the rim—a bowl engirdled by sylvan scenes, where fauns and satyrs, jolly old Pan and bacchanals, laughed out upon you from forest bowers and mazy vineyards—all, even to the twinkling eyes, the untrimmed beards, and delicate tendrils, wrought out by the copper wheels.

The merchants at Prague took care that he should never lack work, and, according to the quality, he could earn from four to eight florins a week, and save money. Beef cost him 11 kreutzers the pound, veal 10, and salt 6 kreutzers. His bread was home-made. The lathe was his own: it cost forty florins; and the house, and the long strip of ground that sloped away behind, half hidden by the orchard. He did no field-work, but left that to his mother, who lived with him, and hired labourers. "It goes better in the house where a woman is," he said, with a glance at Röschen.

The cleanliness and order of his own room—workshop though it was—justified his words. And though old habit would not yet permit him to sit with open door and window, he did not aggravate summer-heat by stove-heat, but had a cooking-place in an outer shed. His house had four rooms, of which two up-stairs, and a loft—all built of wood. The floor of the room above formed the ceiling, all the joints covered by a straight sapling split down the middle, resting on joists big and strong enough to carry a town-hall. Between these massive timbers hung pictures of saints, a drawing of trees, and a guitar. The engraver could play and sing, and recreated himself with music in the evenings, and on Sundays.

He had heard that the English were fond of music, and thought there must be plenty of good singing among the working-people; and it surprised him not a little to be told that the Islanders' love for sweet sounds went far—far beyond their power of producing them. "Ah!" interrupted Röschen, "my brother writes that there is no music in his English workmates' singing."

The engraver thought it a great privation, and could not well comprehend how the evenings could pass agreeably without a little music at home. "And when you are away from home," he went on, "it seems still better. Like all the young men here, I have been a soldier, have marched to Bucharest, to Pesth, to Trent, and Innsbruck, and what should we do on those long marches, and in dull quarters, if we could not sing?"

Concerning the military service, he thought it a hardship to be obliged to serve, whether or no, but compensated by advantages. It added to a young man's knowledge and experience to march to distant lands, to see strange scenes, and strange people. You could always tell the difference between one who had travelled, even as a soldier, and a stay-at-home; the one had something to talk about, the other had nothing. Then, the pleasure of coming home again—a pleasure so sweet, that the thought of marching forth once more could hardly embitter it. For his part, he had been at home eighteen months, glad to resume his craft, and for the present saw no prospect of a call to arms. But there remained yet one year of his term unexpired, and he was liable at any moment to get an order requiring him to leave everything, and march. "Who can tell," he said, "how hard it is to go away so suddenly, to leave the little home, and all friends? Right glad shall I be when the year is over."

Röschen looked as if she would be glad too, and, to make me aware of all the young man's cleverness, she took down the frame of trees from the wall and put it in my hands. I then saw that what looked like a coloured drawing was a picture made of insects. The engraver had a taste for natural history, and with a collection of beetles of all sizes, black, brown, green, gold, and sapphire, had constructed the group of trees which, when looked at from the middle of the room, showed as a highly-finished drawing. You saw here and there a withered branch shooting from the foliage—it was nothing but the horns and legs ingeniously placed, and those deep hollows in the trunks, places where owls may haunt, are produced by an artful arrangement of wings.

Then Röschen would have him fetch down his trays of moths and portfolio of drawings. The moths had all been collected in walks about the neighbourhood, and were carefully preserved and labelled. The drawings showed the hand of an artist. The engraver had begun to learn to draw in school at the age of eleven, and had practised ever since, for without good drawing one could not engrave glass. He spoke of Röschen's youngest sister as a real genius, who would one day outstrip all the engravers in Ulrichsthal.

Bohemia was the first to rival, and soon to excel, Venice in the art of glass-making. In her vast forests she found exhaustless stores of fuel and potash, and quartz and lime in her rocks, and produced a white glass which won universal admiration until about the beginning of last century, when English manufacturers discovered the process for making flint-glass with oxyde of lead as an ingredient. There was nothing superior to this glass, so it has been said, but the diamond, and the Bohemians, finding their craft in danger, introduced coloured glass, frosted glass, and pleasing styles of ornament. This practice they have since kept up. Their works are mostly situate in the great forests on the Bavarian frontier, where fuel and labour are alike cheap: the managers are well taught, and have a good knowledge of chemistry, and by striving always after something new, reproducing at times long-forgotten Venice patterns, they have achieved a reputation due more to the taste and elegance displayed in the forms of their manufactures than to their quality. From the rude forest villages the articles are sent all across the kingdom to the northern districts, where, as we have seen, the finishing touches that are to fit them for stately halls and drawing-rooms, are applied by the hands of humble cottagers.

We were about to leave, when the engraver asked if I would not like to try my hand at the lathe, and, without waiting for an answer, he brought out a small, plain beaker of thick glass, and begged me to cut a forget-me-not upon it as a memorial of my visit. The process looked so easy, that I thought there would be no great risk in an attempt, so I sat down, spread out my elbows to rest upon the cushions, put my foot to the treadle, and the glass to the wheel. Whiz—skirr-r-r-r, and there was a fine white blur which, by a stretch of fancy, might have been taken for a cloud. Karl—as Röschen called him—took the beaker, and, leaning across me as I sat, speedily converted the blur into a rose, and bade me try again. I presented the opposite side, and this time with better effect, for the result was a very passable forget-me-not. I have seen many a worse on A Trifle from Margate.

Röschen then said something about meeting in the evening, and we made haste home, for it was dinner-time. Immediately on arrival she proceeded to roll out a small piece of dry brown dough into a thin sheet, which she cut into strips, and these strips, laid three or four together, and shredded down very thin, produced an imitation of vermicelli, which was thrown into the soup.

Now all was ready, and a proud woman was the mother as the soup was followed by two kinds of meat, stewed and roast—salad, potatoes, and a cool, slightly acid preserve, made from forest berries. And for drink there was pale beer from the Wirthshaus. She did not fail to remind me of my promise to "eat a plenty."

Nor, after we had sipped our coffee, did Röschen fail to remind me of my morning's surrender, and pointing to the high hill-top, about two miles off, she said, "I mean to take you up there." So, as my docility remained unimpaired, we braved the hot sun, and had a very pretty walk over broken ground, and down into a bosky valley, watered by a noisy brook, before we reached the hill-foot. Then flowery meads, and presently the shadow of a forest, where we regaled ourselves with a second dessert of juicy bilberries and wild strawberries, both growing in profusion. From a little clearing, not far from the top, we saw heaving darkly against the blue, the hills of the Saxon Switzerland. The last bit was steep and pathless; but at length we came out upon a little hollow platform, the summit of a precipice, from which, the trees diverging and sinking on either hand, there was a grand view over the vale we had left, and far away, over field and hamlet, meadow and coppice, to a wavy line of hills, gray, purple, green, and brown, blended on the horizon. We sat for an hour; and after scanning the principal features Röschen pointed out the details, naming every house and field within a great sweep. Each man's little property lay distinctly mapped out, and we could see the neighbours and her sisters working in the sunshine.

Our way back led us across the hay-field, where the lasses were bustling to finish in time for some evening's diversion, the nature of which was a secret. I proposed to help them, threw off my coat, seized a fork, and flung the hay up to the lass in the wagon quicker than she could trim it. Röschen took a rake, and had enough to do in gathering up the heaps which, pitching too vigorously, I sent clean over the wagon. All at once, as I was stooping, down came a mountain on my back, and the three lasses, taking advantage of my fall, came piling heap on heap above me—Pelion upon Ossa—till I was well-nigh smothered, and they went almost wild with laughter. They sat down to recover themselves; but when they saw me, after laborious thrust and heave, come creeping ingloriously out, their jocund mirth broke out again, and provoked me into a spirit of retaliation.

"As bees flee hame wi' lades o' treasure,The minutes wing'd their way wi' pleasure."

Then we fell to work once more, and when the wagon was laden I showed to the ragged urchin who was hired to drive, three of the lumbering old copper coins, bigger than penny-pieces, which pass for kreutzers in the neighbourhood, and at sight thereof he made the old horse drag the load home and come back for another in less time than horse had ever accomplished the task in Ulrichsthal. The second load was the last: by the time it was all pitched up our shadows grew long, and we followed it up to the house, where the mother had coffee and Semmel ready for us.

Now Röschen, reminding me once more of my promise to be tractable, revealed the secret. Karl was coming down, and Gottfried—the sweetheart I had seen the night before—and perhaps another, and then we were all to go to the Wirthshaus, about half an hour's walk. Presently the young men came in, and the lasses having changed their rustic garb for holiday gowns and dangling gold ear-drops, we walked in procession across fields to the rendezvous. A shout of welcome greeted our arrival from the young fellows already assembled—the Londoner was duly introduced, and treated by the host with especial favour, and we all sat down to a table, every man with his tankard of beer. The cup circulated literally, the custom being that everybody should drink from everybody's tankard. The lasses took their turn, though modestly and with discretion, as became them. The talk crackled merrily for awhile, and when it flagged a small tray bearing a set of little ninepins which were to be knocked down by a teetotum was placed on the table. The pins were so contrived that they could be all erected at once by pulling a string at one end of the tray, and the game went round not less briskly than the tankards, shouts of laughter repaying him who set the teetotum a-spinning without molestation to the pins. Then I proposed a song, and Karl charmed all ears with a musical ditty: another followed with a harmonious ballad, which had a chorus for burden, and as the tuneful harmony filled the room I could not help contrasting it with what would have been heard in a similar rustic alehouse in England. The ballad led to a talk about poetry, and one and another recited stanzas of favourite poems, and all seemed familiar with the best authors, drawing illustrations from Bürger's Lenore, Schiller's Song of the Bell, Goethe's Erl King, and one or two ventured upon the Niebelungenlied.

The moon was high in heaven when we broke up, and gently the night wind swept across the fields laden with the freshness of dew. As we walked along the narrow paths Gottfried had to undergo a test: his maiden plucked a large ox-eye daisy, pulled the petals off one by one, keeping time with a few spoken surmises5:

"Du liebst mich vom Herzen,mit Schmerzen,ein Wenig,oder gar nicht."

The last petal came off with vom Herzen, but yet the inquirer was not quite content. It was all very well to be loved from the heart; but with pain or grief would have been much better. Then nothing would do but Röschen must try the experiment on me, and reciting and plucking she went round the frail circlet, and ended with gar nicht. She looked curiously at Karl, and Karl looked as if he were not by any means dissatisfied that she had got not at all for a conclusion.

It was past twelve when we came to our door, and then "farewell" had to be said, and "adieu till to-morrow;" and so ended for me a day of rural life that I shall long remember.

If, reader, you should ever pay a visit of inquiry to the Ulrichsthalers, I feel assured they will tell you that next to themselves the best fellow in the world is an Englishman.

CHAPTER XIX

More Hospitality—Farewells—Cross Country Walk—Steinschönau—The Playbill—Hayda—All Glass-workers—Away for the Mountains—Zwickau—Gabel—Weisskirchen—A Peasant's Prayer—Reichenberg—Passport again—Jeschkenpeak—Reinowitz—Schlag—Neudorf—A Talk at Grünheid—Bad Sample of Lancashire—Tannwald—Curious Rocks—Spinneries—Populousness—Przichowitz—An Altercation—Heavy Odds—The Englishman Wins—A Word to the Company.

Fresh Semmel for breakfast again the next morning, and renewed entreaties for my stay. I could only reply by putting on my knapsack. The old man grieved that infirmity prevented his showing me the shortest way to Hayda, some ten miles distant, where I should strike the main road. "But," he said, "Röschen knows the way, and she will be glad to go. I can trust her with you, for you are an Englishman."

I felt bound to thank him for his compliment to my nationality, and not less for the unexpected pleasure of his daughter's company. Röschen went to put on her round hat, and then the mother said she would like to go too, "just a little half-hour," and tied on her kerchief. Then I had to give a kiss to the rest of the family—barring the old man—and with cordial hand-grip and many a good-bye I stepped from beneath the hospitable roof.

The day was as bright and breezy as heart could wish, and it was delightful walking in and out, choosing the short cuts across the fields. The "little half-hour" brought us to a great cross by the wayside, where the mother, who lamented all the way that I would not let her carry my knapsack, gave me a hearty kiss, hoped I would soon come again and stay a month, bade Röschen take care of me, and turned away homewards with tears in her eyes.

I thought to myself, if my gracious masters—long may they live!—did but grant me an uncircumscribed holiday, I would stay a month now. And would I not, oh, worthy hearts! strive to repay your hospitality by lessons to that young daughter of yours, who craves to learn English as a hungry man for bread. I had no claim on you: you had never heard of me, and yet you entertained me as if I had been your son. May the love that befalls the cheerful giver dwell ever with you!

Röschen knew all the byepaths and little lanes running through belts of copse, by which, with many a rise and fall among the hills, we took our way, she all the time wondering at my pleasurable emotions at sight of the picturesque cottages and pretty scenery. To her they were nothing remarkable. By-and-by we saw Steinschönau on the left, where the surrounding hamlets buy groceries, hardware, and napery, and resort at times for a holiday. While skirting it we saw here and there on a cottage wall bills of the next Sunday's play. It would be, so states Herr Direktor Feichtinger, In celebration of the highest delighting occurrence of the birth of an Imperial Sproutling, with festive Illumination. First, the Heart-elevating Austrian Folks-hymn: then Hanns Sachs, Shoemaker and Poet, a Drama in Four Acts. And he ends with a notification: Price of Places as always. But to Generosity no Limit will be set. Röschen promised herself much pleasure from a sight of the play.

Hayda, though a small town, is a place of much importance in the glass trade. You hear the noise of wheels in every house. "None but glass-workers here," said the landlord of the inn where we dined. The repast over, I said good-bye to Röschen, vexed with myself for having occasioned her so long a walk, and taking the road which I had left at Markersdorf, stepped out for the Riesengebirge—distant a three days' tramp. The country between teems with manufactures and population—a cheerful country, hill and dale, grain, flax, and fruit-trees, and the people for the most part good-looking. Their faces are round, but not flat, and seemed to me to combine some of the best points of the German and Czech.

You see dye-works and hear looms at Zwickau—not the Saxon town we explored a fortnight ago, but a dull place, with a great dull square; the wooden houses dingy, the brick houses rough and ragged. Beyond, we pass strange-looking rocks and short ranges of cliffs, the castle and grounds owned by Count Clam Gallas, and so to Gabel, a town which bears a fork in its coat-of-arms; and is burdened with recollections of disasters from fire and sword. It has of course a great square, in the centre of which stands a tall column, surmounted by a figure of Christ looking towards the domed church. Its aspect is cheerful, notwithstanding that the old wooden houses with projecting gables are blackened by age.

Then the road becomes more hilly, and the distance appears mountainous. We pass a singular mass of boulders—huge compressed bladders turned to stone; and from time to time other strangely formed rocks, betokening extraordinary geological phenomena, as if to prepare us for what we shall see a few days hence at Adersbach.

By-and-by a deep glen, dark with firs above, green with birches below, into which you descend by long zigzags. Here among the trees sat a cuckoo, piping his name loud enough for all that passed to hear. It was the second time I had heard the gladsome note in Bohemia: the first was on the White Hill, while walking into Prague. Broad views, bounded always by hills, open as you emerge from the last slope, and there in a hollow lies the little village of Weisskirchen, where I tarried for the night. The innkeeper calls his house the Railway Inn, although there is no railway within half a day's walk, and in matter of diet all he could offer was smoked sausage—which is my abomination—and bread and butter.

On the way to Reichenberg next morning I saw a small, tasteful iron crucifix, with a lamp, set up on a stone pedestal by the wayside, at the cost, so runs the inscription, of Gottfried Hermann, Bauer in Rosenthal; and underneath the devout peasant adds a prayer for the solace of wayfarers:

An dem Abend wie am Morgen,Unter Arbeit, unter Sorgen,In der Freude, in dem Schmerz,In der Einsamkeit und Stille,Lenk' O Christ, mit DankesfülleZu dem Kreuz, das fromme Herz!6

At ten o'clock I came to Reichenberg: a town pleasantly situate on hilly ground, and animated by many signs of industry. It is the capital of the manufacturing region, and in importance ranks next to Prague. In 1848 the German Bohemians, not relishing the dictatorial tone of the Czechs in the metropolis and southern parts of the kingdom, made it the seat of their Reform Committee, and held meetings, in which speech, intoxicated by sudden, and, as it proved, short-lifed freedom, mistook words for things, and, before the mistake was discovered, lay once more fettered—faster than ever.