University of Virginia Library

76. LETTER LXXVI.

Drove to Schoenbrunn. It is a princely palace, some
three miles from the city, occupied at present by the
emperor and his court. Napoleon resided here during
his visit to Vienna, and here his son died — the two
circumstances which alone make it worth much trouble
to see. The afternoon was too cold to hope to
meet the emperor in the grounds, and being quite
satisfied with drapery and modern paintings, I contented
myself with having driven through the court, and
kept on to Hietzing.

This is a small village of country-seats within an
hour's drive of the city — another Jamaica-Plains, or
Dorchester in the neighborhood of Boston. It is the
summer retreat of most of the rank and fashion of
Vienna. The American consul has here a charming
country-house, buried in trees, where the few of our
countrymen who travel to Austria find the most hospitable
of welcomes. A bachelor friend of mine from
New-York is domesticated in the village with a German

family. I was struck with the Americanism of their
manners. The husband and wife, a female relative
and an intimate friend of the family, were sitting in the
garden engaged in grave, quiet, sensible conversation.
They had passed the afternoon together. Their manners
were affectionate to each other, but serious and
respectful. When I entered, they received me with
kindness, and the conversation was politely changed to
French, which they all spoke fluently. Topics were
started, in which it was supposed I would be interested,
and altogether the scene was one of the simplest and
purest domestic happiness. This seems to you, I dare
say, like the description of a very common thing, but I
have not seen such a one before since I left my country.
It is the first family I have found in two years'
travel who lived in, and seemed sufficient for, themselves.
It came over me with a kind of feeling of
refreshment.

In the evening there was a ball at a public room in
the village. It was built in the rear of a café, to which
we paid about thirty cents for entrance. I was not
prepared for the splendor with which it was got up.
The hall was very large and of beautiful proportions,
built like the interior of a temple, with columns on the
four sides. A partition of glass divided it from a supper-room
equally large, in which were set out perhaps
fifty tables, furnished with a carte, from which each
person ordered his supper when he wished it, after the
fashion of a restaurant. The best band in Vienna
filled the orchestra, led by the celebrated Strauss, who
has been honored for his skill with presents from half
the monarchs of Europe.

The ladies entered, dressed in perfect taste, a la
Parisienne, but the gentlemen (hear it, Basil Hall and
Mrs. Trollope!) came in frock coats and boots, and
danced with their hats on! It was a public ball, and
there was, of course, a great mixture of society; but I
was assured that it was attended constantly by the most
respectable people of the village, and was as respectable
as anything of the kind in the middle classes.
There were, certainly, many ladies in the company of
elegant manners and appearance, and among the gentlemen
I recognised two attachés to the French embassy,
whom I had known in Paris, and several Austrian
gentlemen of rank were pointed out to me among the
dancers. The galopade and the waltz were the only
dances, and dirty boots and hats to the contrary notwithstanding,
it was the best waltzing I ever saw. They
danced with a soul.

The best part of it was the supper. They danced
and eat — danced and eat, the evening through. It
was quite the more important entertainment of the two.
The most delicate ladies present returned three and
four times to the supper, ordering fried chicken, salads,
cold meats, and beer, again and again, as if every
waltz created a fresh appetite. The bill was called
for, the ladies assisted in making the change, the tankard
was drained, and off they strolled to the ball-room to
engage with renewed spirit in the dance. And these,
positively, were ladies who, in dress, manners, and modest
demeanor, might pass uncriticised in any society
in the world! Their husbands and brothers attended
them, and no freedom was attempted, and I am sure it
would not have been permitted even to speak to a lady
without a formal introduction.

We left most of the company supping at a late hour,
and I drove into the city, amused with the ball, and
reconciled to any or all of the manners which travellers
in America find so peculiarly entertaining.

These cold winds from the Danube have given me
a rheumatism. I was almost reconciled to it this
morning, however, by a curtain-scene which I should
have missed but for its annoyance. I had been driven
out of my bed at daylight, and was walking my room
between the door and the window, when a violent
knocking in the street below arrested my attention.
A respectable family occupies the house opposite, consisting
of a father and mother and three daughters, the
least attractive of whom has a lover. I can not well
avoid observing them whenever I am in my room, for
every house in Vienna has a leaning cushion on the
window for the elbows, and the ladies of all classes are
upon them the greater part of the day. A handsome
carriage, servants in livery, and other circumstances,
leave no doubt in my mind that my neighbors are rather
of the better class.

The lover stood at the street door with a cloak on
his arm, and a man at his side with his portmanteau.
He was going on a journey and had come to take leave
of his mistress. He was let in by a gaping servant,
who looked rather astonished at the hour he had chosen
for his visit, but the drawing-room windows were soon
thrown open, and the lady made her appearance with
her hair in papers and other marks of a hasty toilet.
My room in upon the same floor, and as I paced to and
fro, the narrowness of the street in a manner forced
them upon my observation. The scene was a very
violet one, and the lady's tears flowed without restraint.
After twenty partings at least, the lover scarce getting
to the door before he returned to take another embrace,
he finally made his exit, and the lady threw herself on
a sofa and hid her face — for five minutes! I had began
to feel for her, although her swollen eyes added very
unnecessarily to her usual plainness, when she rose
and rang the bell. The servant appeared and disappeared,
and in a few minutes returned with a ham, a
loaf of bread, and a mug of beer! and down sets my
sentimental miss and consoles the agony of parting
with a meal that I would venture to substitute in quantity
for any working man's lunch.

I went to bed and rose at nine, and she was sitting
at breakfast with the rest of the family, playing as good
a knife and fork as her sisters, though, I must admit,
with an expression of sincere melancholy in her countenance.

The scene, I am told by my friend the consul, was
perfectly German. They eat a great deal, he says, in
affliction. The poet writes: —

For silent read hungry.

The Upper Belvidere, a palace containing eighteen
large rooms, filled with pictures. This is the imperial
gallery and the first in Austria. How can I give you
an idea of perhaps five hundred masterpieces! You
see here now, and by whom Italy has been stripped.
They have bought up all Flanders one would
think, too. In one room here are are twenty-eight
superb Vandykes. Austria, in fact, has been growing
rich while every other nation on the continent has
been growing poor, and she has purchased the treasures
of half the world at a discount.[14]

It is wearisome writing of pictures, one's language
is so limited. I must mention one or two in this collection,
however, and I will let you off entirely on the
Esterhazy, which is nearly as fine.

Cleopatra dying. She is represented younger than
usual and with a more fragile and less queenly style of
beauty than is common. It is a fair slight creature of
seventeen, who looks made to depend for her very
breath upon affection, and is dying of a broken heart.
It is painted with great feeling, and with a soft and delightful
tone of color which is peculiar to the artist.
It is the third of Guido Cagnacci's pictures that I have

seen. One was the gem of a gallery at Bologna, and
was bought last summer by Mr. Cabot of Boston.

The wife of Potiphar is usually represented as a
woman of middle age, with a full voluptuous person.
She is so drawn, I remember, in the famous picture in
the Barberini palace at Rome, said to be the most expressive
thing of its kind in the world. Here is a
painting, less dangerously expressive of passion, but
full of beauty. She is eighteen at the most, fair, delicate,
and struggles with the slender boy, who seems
scarce older than herself, more like a sister from whom
a mischievous brother has stolen something in sport.
Her partly disclosed figure has all the incomplete
slightness of a girl. The handsome features of Joseph
express more embarrassment than anger. The
habitual courtesy to his lovely mistress is still there,
his glance is just averted from the snowy bosom toward
which he is drawn, but in the firmly curved lip the
sense of duty sits clearly defined, and evidently will
triumph. I have forgotten the painter's name. His
model must have been some innocent girl whose modest
beauty led him away from his subject. Called by
another name the picture were perfect.

A portrait of Count Wallenstein, by Vandyke. It
looks a man, in the fullest sense of the word. The
pendant to it is the Countess Turentaxis, and she is a
woman he might well have loved — calm, lofty, and
pure. They are pictures I should think would have
an influence on the character of those who saw them
habitually.

Here is a curious picture by Schnoer — Mephistopheles
tempting Faust. The scholar sits at his table,
with a black letter volume open before him, and apparatus
of all descriptions around. The devil has entered
in the midst of his speculations, dressed in
black like a professor, and stands waiting the decision
of Faust, who gazes intently on the manuscript held
in his hand. His fingers are clenched, his eyes start
from his head, his feet are braced, and the devil eyes
him with a side glance, in which malignity and satisfaction
are admirably mingled. The features of Faust
are emaciated, and show the agitation of his soul very
powerfully. The points of his compasses, globes, and
instruments, emit electric sparks toward the infernal
visiter; his lamp burns blue, and the picture altogether
has the most diabolical effect. It is quite a large
painting, and just below, by the same artist, hangs a
small, simple, sweet Madonna. It is a singular contrast
in subjects by the same hand.

A portrait of the Princess Esterhazy, by Angelica
Kauffman — a beautiful woman, painted in the pure,
touching style of that interesting artist.

Then comes a Cleopatra dropping the pearl into the
cup. How often, and how variously, and how admirably
always, the Egyptian queen is painted! I never
have seen an indifferent one. In this picture the
painter seems to have lavished all he could conceive
of female beauty upon his subject. She is a glorious
creature. It reminds me of her own proud description
of herself, when she is reproaching Antony to one
of her maids, in the “The False One” of Beaumont
and Fletcher: —

I have marked a great many pictures in this collection
I can not describe without wearying you, yet I feel
unwilling to let them go by. A female, representing
religion, feeding a dove from a cup, a most lovely thing
by Guido; portraits of Gerard Douw and Rembrandt,
by themselves; Rubens's children, a boy and girl ten
or twelve years of age, one of the most finished paintings
I ever saw, and entirely free from the common
dropsical style of coloring of this artist; another portrait
of Giorgione's wife, the fiftieth that I have seen,
at least, yet a face of which one would never become
weary; a glowing landscape by Fischer, the first by
this celebrated artist I have met; and last (for this is
mere catalogue-making), a large picture representing
the sitting of the English parliament in the time of
Pitt. It contains about a hundred portraits, among
which those of Pitt and Fox are admirable. The
great prime minister stands speaking in the foreground,
and Fox sits on the opposite side of the house listening
attentively with half a smile on his features. It is
a curious picture to find in Vienna.

One thing more, however — a Venus, by Lampi. It
kept me a great while before it. She lies asleep on a
rich couch, and, apparently in her dream, is pressing
a rose to her bosom, while one delicate foot, carelessly
thrown back, is half imbedded in a superb cushion
supporting a crown and sceptre. It is a lie, by all experience.
The moral is false, but the picture is delicious.