Scope and Content
On the railway between Cologne and Flushing.
Wednesday
My Dear Friend,
Here I am on my way homeward, trying to beguile the tedium of the journey amidst the jolting through this flat uninteresting country by continuing my last note. The difficulty of the task will probably
cause me to consume half of the hours which have to be got through before we board the steamboat.
Home, I hope, will be attained to-morrow morning. Willie, whom I have left at Freiberg, wanted very much to see a little more of the black forest, so about 10 days a go we started on a walking tour. We had for a
goal the first day the mountain Feldberg, just upon 5,000 feet. Our route lay through the famous Hollenthal, a pass at the base of magnificent perpendicular rocks with a lovely rushing stream. It is a military road
made by the Austrians 100 years ago, and poor Marie Antoinette went to France through it. I purposely omit all descriptions of the scenery for two reasons, firstly because I cannot describe the indescribable, and partly because I cannot work my fine passages into the halting places for the train and I am afraid of a horrid jerk at some railway points, just when I am beginning my loftiest flights into the sublime. On our way to the Feldberg we called in at a charming German public house. We had two pints of milk, Willie had ½ pint of wine, and we both together consumed a good-sized loaf and about ¼lb. of the most delicious butter. The bill was fourteen pence. This is about the scale in Rural Germany. I could live here, away from tourist haunts for £200 a year and keep my present establishment. The land literally flows with good wine milk and honey-such milk and such honey!! The inn at which we stayed before our climb lies in a true sub-alpine valley. My bedroom window looked onto pine-covered slopes, and below them the murmurs of a true sub-alpine brook. Fancy such a place for me, an epicure in bedrooms! The ascent of the Feldberg was in one sense a mistake, for when we got to the top we were shrouded in mist and could not make put what was only a dozen yards ahead of us. But the journey thither was worth all the pains, for it was a showery day and the spectacle of the clouds slowly forming and reforming themselves, scattering and reuniting all around us, revealing sunny spots of pasture and farms below and then shutting them out again was-those horrid junctions with their cross-rails!
I slept in a kind of wooden restaurant near the summit, went to the Feldberger See in the afternoon, before going to bed, and got up at four the next morning to see the sunrise. I had five miles walk out and in before breakfast, but the result was a scene branded in me for ever, for it was perfectly clear towards the east and south, and so there were let into the panorama all the Rhine mountains in Switzerland.
Down again to the inn at the foot. This took me six hours. Next morning by diligence to Neustadt, where most of the Black Forest watchmaking is carried on. We went over a factory and saw men - so great is the subdivision of labour - doing nothing all day long but turning one particular spindle, the turning of a spindle occupying about 20 seconds. This taught us contentment with monotony, and made me wonder at
the power of human nature to exist even with cheerfulness under most adverse conditions and to bend itself in to the roughest outside and live in peace with it.
Next day to St. Blaisien by diligence (stagecoach. Ed.) and through St. Blasien also by diligence to Albbruck, a station on the line to Constance. The diligence road from St. Blasien to Albbruck is the most extraordinary and the dizziest track on which I ever found myself. Imagine a vast chasm miles long, with perpendicular sides and a roaring river at the bottom, the aforesaid track being a ledge cut down on the rock half-way up! Imagine the diligence with its four horses and jangling bells sweeping round the corner-often at right angles-of the precipice, and you won't wonder if I often thought what would a certain lady at Ryde of my acquaintance say if she were perched up here. At no fewer than five points the road cannot get round the rocks and bores through them. From Albbruck to Schaffhausen. Here we beheld the Falls of the Rhine. This on the whole was the crown of all our sightseeing. The whole mighty Rhine goes boldly over a granite shelf. Long before it comes to its final plunge it is agitated as if by anticipation into a series of whirlpools. These are the rapids, and the water boils and leaps in magnificent exultation. You can think what a granite wall is, you can think what a broad river is, but you cannot form any anticipatory picture in the smallest degree of how the said river will behave and what it will do or become when it descends that ledge. Nature is not to be forecast in that way. And then too is the Rhine, the colour of the purest lemon juice, just a trifle lighter perhaps. We crossed in a boat just below the falls and saw the rainbow which lives in the foam at the bottom whenever the sun shines. The boatmen asked us iff we should like to try and land on the rock which actually splits the fall, w said ‘yes’ and they wrapped waterproofs round us. After the most delicate display od steersmanship and a fearful toissing accompanied by a sousing we really did get on the rock and there we were abreast of, and one may really say in the fall itself! No more – we bathed in the Rhine. It is of course only possible to swim one way and the swimmers are protected by a fence which prevents them from being carried to the rapids. It was the most exciting swim though I have had for a long time.
From Schaffenhausen to Zurich – this was a failure. The day was so foggy we could see nothing and Zurich itself is nothing betterthan a Swiss Margate. So after a swim in the lake we turned northwards again, Willie having been dropped at Freiburg and I reaching the spot where I now am, amusing myself by this childish scribble.
One word more though about the Rhinefall. Its colour alters with the angle of the sun. in the afternoon I happened to turn towards it as I was sitting down and it was transparent or rather, lucid emerald. If you look at it you first say ‘lovely’; the next exhilarationis ‘what perfect purity’ and then you are smitten with its majestic force. It is the combination of irresistable might with delicacy like that of a young birch leaf which is so attractive. The keynote is green and in that key the river produces a thousand differences from the green of the midsummer theough never-to-be-imitated grey greens caused by intimate mixture of foam, up to white of snow full of sunlight. Below the falls the stream spereads itself out in peace and goes on its way.
Heard the Catholic service in Cologne Cathedral this morning. I was again struck with the art with which it subdues or would subdue men’s minds. It was high mass. The music which was accompanied by the organ had no melody in it. It was a most depressing monotonous ‘humming’ to use one of tennyson’s Lincolnshire words. I would have given all the tone of the organ to have heard one human tune. The priest too turning his back on the worshippers is such a symbol. The jesuits though are perfect orators. I have listened to two Jesuit sermons preached to great cathedral congrations. Both were entirely estempore and as far as the mere art of speaking goes, I have never heard anything more finished save perhaps from Gladstone & Roebuck.
Finis –
Last note – If youwere a converted character but you are not, for you don’t believe in the cult of the Childe Harolde, the Corsair etc , that is to say of the ever to be adored Byron, you would by me be compelled to read Jeaffreson’s The Real Lord Byron’. But you will I know die in your ungodliness and I will say nothing about the book save this that it has most deeply interested me.
Is William with you? He wrote to me telling me about Enid’s death and begged me not to write to him. I understood what he meant, but I certainly should not have written to him, at least for a long time and shall not write to him yet. Best love to your dear husband and all the little chickens, Mary, Kate & the rest. I hope your adventurous boy has got the better of his accident.
Ever yours
W. Hale White
Mrs Colenutt – You won’t forget in your criticisms the circumstances under which this work of art i.e. my letter is composed.
Thursday morning
Just got to Victoria. I agree with you about sea voyages at night, especially such a night as last when it was impossible to remain on deck. The sea was very rough, we all lay in our cots down below, 4 in a cabin no bigger than a wardrobe, a horrid sense opf shutdownness. I was not sick but nearly everybody else was, my fellow wardrobe comrades were. It was like being sealed up in a place beginning with ‘h’ and with the added malady of the mal de mer, nevertheless after three weeks in a foreign land it was refreshing to hear my own countrymen sick in their natve language.