: Thomas Hughes
: Vacation Rambles
: anboco
: 9783736420786
: 1
: CHF 0.80
:
: Erzählende Literatur
: English
: 881
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Dear C--- So you want me to hunt up and edit all the 'Vacuus Viator' letters which my good old friends the editors of The Spectator have been kind enough to print during their long and beneficent ownership of that famous journal! But one who has passed the Psalmist's 'Age of Man,' and is by no means enamoured of his own early lucubrations (so far as he recollects them), must have more diligence and assurance than your father to undertake such a task. But this I can do with pleasure-give them to you to do whatever you like with them, so far as I have any property in, or control over them. How did they come to be written? Well, in those days we were young married folk with a growing family, and income enough to keep a modest house and pay our way, but none to spare for menus plaisirs, of which 'globe trotting' (as it is now called) in our holidays was our favourite. So, casting about for the wherewithal to indulge our taste, the 'happy thought' came to send letters by the way to my friends at 1 Wellington Street, if they could see their way to take them at the usual tariff for articles. They agreed, and so helped us to indulge in our favourite pastime, and the habit once contracted has lasted all these years. How about the name? Well, I took it from the well-known line of Juvenal, 'Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator,' which may be freely rendered, 'The hard-up globe trotter will whistle at the highwayman'; and, I fancy, selected it to remind ourselves cheerfully upon what slender help from the Banking world we managed to trot cheerfully all across Europe. I will add a family story connected with the name which greatly delighted us at the time. One of the letters reached your grandmother when a small boy-cousin of yours (since developed into a distinguished 'dark blue' athlete and M.A. Oxon.) was staying with her for his holidays. He had just begun Latin, and was rather proud of his new lore, so your grandmother asked him how he should construe 'Vacuus Viator.

Munich, 29th August 1862.


Abird’s-eye view of any country must always be unsatisfactory. Still it is better than nothing, and in the absence of a human view, one may be thankful for it. My view of Wurtemberg was of the most bird’s-eye kind. The first thing that strikes one is the absence of all fences except in the immediate neighbourhood of towns. Even the railway has no fence, except for a few yards where a road crosses the line, and here and there a hedge of acacia, or barberry bushes (the berries were hanging red ripe on the latter), which are very pretty, but would not in any place keep out a seriously-minded cow or pig.

Wurtemberg is addicted to the cultivation of crops which minister to man’s luxuries rather than to his necessities. The proportion of land under fruit, poppies, tobacco, and hops, to that under corn, was very striking. There was a splendid hemp crop here also. They were gathering the poppy-heads, as we passed, into sacks. The women and girls both here and in Bavaria seem to do three-fourths of the agricultural work; the harder, such as reaping and mowing, as well as the lighter. The beds of peat are magnificent, and very neatly managed. At first I thought we had entered enormous black brick-fields, for the peat is cut into small brick-shaped pieces, and stacked in rows, just as one sees in the best managed of our brick-fields. As one nears Stuttgart the village churches begin to show signs of the difference in longitude. Gothic spires and arches give place to Eastern clock-towers, with tops like the cupolas of mosques, tinned over, and glittering in the hot sun. I hear that it was a fancy of the late Emperor Joseph to copy the old enemies of his country in architecture; but that would not account for the prevalence of the habit in his neighbour’s territory. I fancy one begins to feel the old neighbourhood of the Turks in these parts. The houses are all roomy, and there is no sign of poverty amongst the people. They have a fancy for wearing no shoes and scant petticoats in many districts; but it is evidently a matter of choice. Altogether, the whole fine, open, well-wooded country, from Bruchsal to Munich, gives one the feeling that an easy-going, well-to-do people inhabit and enjoy it.

As for Munich itself, it is a city which surprised me more pleasantly than almost any one I ever remember to have entered. One had a sort of vague notion that the late king had a taste for the fine arts, and spent a good deal of his own and his subjects’ money in indulging the taste aforesaid in his capital. But one also knew that he had been tyrannised over by Lola Montes, and had made a countess of her—and had not succeeded in weathering 1848; so that, on the whole, one had no great belief in any good work from such a ruler.

Munich gives one a higher notion of the ex-king; as long as the city stands, he will have left his mark on it. On every side there are magnificent new streets, and public buildings and statues; the railway terminus is the finest I have ever seen; every church, from the Cathedral downwards, is in beautiful order, and highly decorated; and it is not only in the public buildings that one meets with the evidences of care and taste. The hotel in which we stayed, for instance, is built of brick, covered with some sort of cement, which gives it the appearance of terra-cotta, and is for colour the most fascinating building material. The ceilings and cornices of the rooms are all carefully and tastefully painted, and all about the town one sees frescoes and ornamentation of all kinds, which show that the people delight in seeing their city look bright and gay; and every one admits that all this is due to the ex-king Lewis. But he has another claim on the gratitude of the good folk of Munich. The Bavarians were given to beer above all other people, and the people of Munich above all other Bavarians, long before he came to the throne; and former kings, availing themselves of the national taste, had established a “Hof-Breihaus,” where the monarch sold the national beverage to his people. King Lewis found the character of the royal beer not what it should be, and the rest of the metropolitan brewers were also falling away into evil ways of adulterating and drugging. He reformed the “Hof-Breihaus,” so that for many years nothing but the soundest