lacquered boots. She did not understand one-half the
compliments which he paid; she had never, in her small
experience of mankind, met a professional ladies' man as
yet, and looked upon my lord as something curious rather
than pleasant; and if she did not admire, certainly
wondered at him. Jos, on the contrary, was delighted. "How
very affable his Lordship is," he said; "How very kind of
his Lordship to say he would send his medical man!
Kirsch, you will carry our cards to the Count de
Schlusselback directly; the Major and I will have the
greatest pleasure in paying our respects at Court as soon
as possible. Put out my uniform, Kirsch--both our
uniforms. It is a mark of politeness which every English
gentleman ought to show to the countries which he visits
to pay his respects to the sovereigns of those countries
as to the representatives of his own."
When Tapeworm's doctor came, Doctor von Glauber,
Body Physician to H.S.H. the Duke, he speedily
convinced Jos that the Pumpernickel mineral springs and
the Doctor's particular treatment would infallibly restore
the Bengalee to youth and slimness. "Dere came here last
year," he said, "Sheneral Bulkeley, an English Sheneral,
tvice so pic as you, sir. I sent him back qvite tin after
tree months, and he danced vid Baroness Glauber at
the end of two."
Jos's mind was made up; the springs, the Doctor, the
Court, and the Charge d'Affaires convinced him, and he
proposed to spend the autumn in these delightful
quarters. And punctual to his word, on the next day the
Charge d'Affaires presented Jos and the Major to Victor
Aurelius XVII, being conducted to their audience with
that sovereign by the Count de Schlusselback, Marshal
of the Court.
They were straightway invited to dinner at Court, and
their intention of staying in the town being announced,
the politest ladies of the whole town instantly called upon
Mrs. Osborne; and as not one of these, however poor
they might be, was under the rank of a Baroness, Jos's
delight was beyond expression. He wrote off to Chutney
at the Club to say that the Service was highly appreciated
in Germany, that he was going to show his friend, the
Count de Schlusselback, how to stick a pig in the Indian
fashion, and that his august friends, the Duke and
Duchess, were everything that was kind and civil.
Emmy, too, was presented to the august family, and as
mourning is not admitted in Court on certain days, she
appeared in a pink crape dress with a diamond ornament
in the corsage, presented to her by her brother, and
she looked so pretty in this costume that the Duke and
Court (putting out of the question the Major, who had
scarcely ever seen her before in an evening dress, and
vowed that she did not look five-and-twenty) all admired
her excessively.
In this dress she walked a Polonaise with Major Dobbin
at a Court ball, in which easy dance Mr. Jos had the
honour of leading out the Countess of Schlusselback,
an old lady with a hump back, but with sixteen good
quarters of nobility and related to half the royal houses
of Germany.
Pumpernickel stands in the midst of a happy valley
through which sparkles--to mingle with the Rhine
somewhere, but I have not the map at hand to say exactly at
what point--the fertilizing stream of the Pump. In some
places the river is big enough to support a ferry-boat, in
others to turn a mill; in Pumpernickel itself, the last
Transparency but three, the great and renowned Victor
Aurelius XIV built a magnificent bridge, on which his
own statue rises, surrounded by water-nymphs and
emblems of victory, peace, and plenty; he has his foot on the
neck of a prostrate Turk--history says he engaged and
ran a Janissary through the body at the relief of Vienna
by Sobieski--but, quite undisturbed by the agonies
of that prostrate Mahometan, who writhes at his feet in
the most ghastly manner, the Prince smiles blandly and
points with his truncheon in the direction of the Aurelius
Platz, where he began to erect a new palace that would
have been the wonder of his age had the great-souled
Prince but had funds to complete it. But the completion
of Monplaisir (Monblaisir the honest German folks call
it) was stopped for lack of ready money, and it and its
park and garden are now in rather a faded condition,
and not more than ten times big enough to accommodate
the Court of the reigning Sovereign.
The gardens were arranged to emulate those of
Versailles, and amidst the terraces and groves there are
some huge allegorical waterworks still, which spout and
froth stupendously upon fete-days, and frighten one
with their enormous aquatic insurrections. There is the
Trophonius' cave in which, by some artifice, the leaden
Tritons are made not only to spout water, but to play
the most dreadful groans out of their lead conchs--there
is the nymphbath and the Niagara cataract, which the
people of the neighbourhood admire beyond expression,
when they come to the yearly fair at the opening of the
Chamber, or to the fetes with which the happy little nation
still celebrates the birthdays and marriage-days of its
princely governors.
Then from all the towns of the Duchy, which stretches
for nearly ten mile--from Bolkum, which lies on
its western frontier bidding defiance to Prussia, from
Grogwitz, where the Prince has a hunting-lodge, and
where his dominions are separated by the Pump River
from those of the neighbouring Prince of Potzenthal; from
all the little villages, which besides these three great
cities, dot over the happy principality--from the farms
and the mills along the Pump come troops of people in
red petticoats and velvet head-dresses, or with three-
cornered hats and pipes in their mouths, who flock to the
Residenz and share in the pleasures of the fair and the
festivities there. Then the theatre is open for nothing,
then the waters of Monblaisir begin to play (it is lucky
that there is company to behold them, for one would be
afraid to see them alone)--then there come mountebanks
and riding troops (the way in which his Transparency
was fascinated by one of the horse-riders is well known,
and it is believed that La Petite Vivandiere, as she was
called, was a spy in the French interest), and the delighted
people are permitted to march through room after room
of the Grand Ducal palace and admire the slippery
floor, the rich hangings, and the spittoons at the
doors of all the innumerable chambers. There is one
Pavilion at Monblaisir which Aurelius Victor XV had
arranged--a great Prince but too fond of pleasure--and
which I am told is a perfect wonder of licentious elegance.
It is painted with the story of Bacchus and Ariadne, and
the table works in and out of the room by means of a
windlass, so that the company was served without any
intervention of domestics. But the place was shut up by
Barbara, Aurelius XV's widow, a severe and devout
Princess of the House of Bolkum and Regent of the Duchy
during her son's glorious minority, and after the death
of her husband, cut off in the pride of his pleasures.
The theatre of Pumpernickel is known and famous in
that quarter of Germany. It languished a little when the
present Duke in his youth insisted upon having his own
operas played there, and it is said one day, in a fury,
from his place in the orchestra, when he attended a
rehearsal, broke a bassoon on the head of the Chapel
Master, who was conducting, and led too slow; and during
which time the Duchess Sophia wrote domestic comedies,
which must have been very dreary to witness. But the
Prince executes his music in private now, and the Duchess
only gives away her plays to the foreigners of distinction
who visit her kind little Court.
It is conducted with no small comfort and splendour.
When there are balls, though there may be four
hundred people at supper, there is a servant in scarlet and
lace to attend upon every four, and every one is served
on silver. There are festivals and entertainments going
continually on, and the Duke has his chamberlains and
equerries, and the Duchess her mistress of the wardrobe
and ladies of honour, just like any other and more
potent potentates.
The Constitution is or was a moderate despotism,
tempered by a Chamber that might or might not be
elected. I never certainly could hear of its sitting in my time
at Pumpernickel. The Prime Minister had lodgings in a
second floor, and the Foreign Secretary occupied the
comfortable lodgings over Zwieback's Conditorey. The
army consisted of a magnificent band that also did duty
on the stage, where it was quite pleasant to see the
worthy fellows marching in Turkish dresses with rouge on
and wooden scimitars, or as Roman warriors with
ophicleides and trombones--to see them again, I say, at
night, after one had listened to them all the morning in
the Aurelius Platz, where they performed opposite the
cafe where we breakfasted. Besides the band, there was
a rich and numerous staff of officers, and, I believe, a
few men. Besides the regular sentries, three or four men,
habited as hussars, used to do duty at the Palace, but I
never saw them on horseback, and au fait, what was the
use of cavalry in a time of profound peace?--and whither
the deuce should the hussars ride?
Everybody--everybody that was noble of course, for
as for the bourgeois we could not quite be expected to
take notice of THEM--visited his neighbour. H. E. Madame
de Burst received once a week, H. E. Madame de
Schnurrbart had her night--the theatre was open twice
a week, the Court graciously received once, so that a
man's life might in fact be a perfect round of pleasure in
the unpretending Pumpernickel way.
That there were feuds in the place, no one can deny.
Politics ran very high at Pumpernickel, and parties were
very bitter. There was the Strumpff faction and the
Lederlung party, the one supported by our envoy and the
other by the French Charge d'Affaires, M. de Macabau.
Indeed it sufficed for our Minister to stand up for
Madame Strumpff, who was clearly the greater singer of the
two, and had three more notes in her voice than Madame
Lederlung her rival--it sufficed, I say, for our Minister to
advance any opinion to have it instantly contradicted
by the French diplomatist.
Everybody in the town was ranged in one or other of
these factions. The Lederlung was a prettyish little
creature certainly, and her voice (what there was of it) was
very sweet, and there is no doubt that the Strumpff was
not in her first youth and beauty, and certainly too stout;
when she came on in the last scene of the Sonnambula,
for instance, in her night-chemise with a lamp in her
hand, and had to go out of the window, and pass over
the plank of the mill, it was all she could do to
squeeze out of the window, and the plank used to bend
and creak again under her weight--but how she poured
out the finale of the opera! and with what a burst of
feeling she rushed into Elvino's arms--almost fit to
smother him! Whereas the little Lederlung--but a truce
to this gossip--the fact is that these two women were
the two flags of the French and the English party at
Pumpernickel, and the society was divided in its
allegiance to those two great nations.
We had on our side the Home Minister, the Master of
the Horse, the Duke's Private Secretary, and the Prince's
Tutor; whereas of the French party were the Foreign
Minister, the Commander-in-Chief's Lady, who had
served under Napoleon, and the Hof-Marschall and his
wife, who was glad enough to get the fashions from
Pans, and always had them and her caps by M. de
Macabau's courier. The Secretary of his Chancery was little
Grignac, a young fellow, as malicious as Satan, and who
made caricatures of Tapeworm in all the-albums of the
place.
Their headquarters and table d'hote were established
at the Pariser Hof, the other inn of the town; and though,
of course, these gentlemen were obliged to be civil in
public, yet they cut at each other with epigrams that
were as sharp as razors, as I have seen a couple of
wrestlers in Devonshire, lashing at each other's shins
and never showing their agony upon a muscle of their
faces. Neither Tapeworm nor Macabau ever sent home
a dispatch to his government without a most savage
series of attacks upon his rival. For instance, on our side
we would write, "The interests of Great Britain in this
place, and throughout the whole of Germany, are perilled
by the continuance in office of the present French envoy;
this man is of a character so infamous that he will stick
at no falsehood, or hesitate at no crime, to attain his
ends. He poisons the mind of the Court against the
English minister, represents the conduct of Great Britain in
the most odious and atrocious light, and is unhappily
backed by a minister whose ignorance and necessities
are as notorious as his influence is fatal." On their side
they would.say, "M. de Tapeworm continues his
system of stupid insular arrogance and vulgar falsehood
against the greatest nation in the world. Yesterday he
was heard to speak lightly of Her Royal Highness Madame
the Duchess of Berri; on a former occasion he insulted
the heroic Duke of Angouleme and dared to insinuate
that H.R.H. the Duke of Orleans was conspiring against
the august throne of the lilies. His gold is prodigated in
every direction which his stupid menaces fail to frighten.
By one and the other, he has won over creatures of the
Court here--and, in fine, Pumpernickel will not be
quiet, Germany tranquil, France respected, or Europe
content until this poisonous viper be crushed under
heel": and so on. When one side or the other had written
any particularly spicy dispatch, news of it was sure to
slip out.
Before the winter was far advanced, it is actually on
