Leading the Blind

CHAPTER SIX GERMANY AND THE RHINE

Many travellers took the German route over the Alps so as to enjoy a stay at the various spas, either refreshing and rejuvenating themselves after whatever exertion they had undergone in England, or in preparation for encountering the heat and heavy cultural rounds of the tourist in Italy.

Murray’s handbook of 1858 tells us that four steamers a week left London for Ostend in the summer, the passage lasting twelve hours, of which seven were spent descending the Thames. If our travelling gentleman thought of taking his own servant, the advice was discouraging. ‘It is notorious that English servants taken for the first time to the Continent, and ignorant of every language but their own, are worse than useless — they are an encumbrance.’ The traveller who required a servant was recommended to hire a foreign one or, better still, ‘save himself much expense by dispensing with a servant altogether’.

The best course, though an expensive luxury, was to hire a courier: ‘He relieves his master from much fatigue of body and perplexity of mind, in unravelling the difficulties of long bills and foreign moneys, sparing his temper the trials it is likely to endure from disputes with innkeepers and the like. He must make arrangements for his employer’s reception at inns where he intends to pass the night; must secure comfortable rooms, clean and well-aired beds, and order meals to be prepared, fires to be lighted, taking care that his master is called in proper time, and that the horses are ordered at the right hour. He should superintend the packing and unpacking of the luggage, should know the number of parcels, etc., and be on his guard against leaving anything behind. It falls to the courier to pay innkeepers, postmasters, and postboys, and he ought to take care that his master is not overcharged. Besides this, he performs all the services of waiting and attendance, cleaning and brushing clothes, etc.’

There are disadvantages in this seemingly perfect proceeding, because a courier, as the guidebooks have already suggested, will often ‘sell’ by pre-arrangement the rich family he is working for to innkeepers along the road, so that what he extorts from the innkeeper ‘inevitably comes out of his employer’s pocket’. Perhaps the traveller could be consoled by the fact that railways were spreading through the Continent, in combination with steam navigation on the rivers. This is seen by Murphy as an argument against taking a carriage from England. ‘With such expeditions and comfortable modes of travelling at command, it is far better for those who study economy at all to hire vehicles from place to place when required.’

The many confidence men on the Continent gave rise to Murray’s classic ‘Caution to Innkeepers and Others’: ‘A person or persons have of late been extorting money from innkeepers, tradespeople, artists, and others … under pretext of procuring recommendations and favourable notices of them and their establishments in the Handbooks for Travellers. The Editor, therefore, thinks proper to warn all whom it may concern, that recommendations in the Handbooks are not to be obtained by purchase, and that the persons alluded to are not only unauthorised by him, but are totally unknown to him. All those, therefore, who put confidence in such promises may rest assured that they will be defrauded of their money without attaining their object.’

He goes on to say that the character of hotels, good and bad, inserted in the handbook, ‘are given either from personal knowledge or upon unexceptionable authority of travellers whose names and residences are known to the Editor. Where the objections stated in this book no longer exist, and where a positive improvement has taken place, the Editor is always ready to listen to respectable and well-authenticated testimony, and to remove in future editions the condemnatory epithets or passages. Thus he hopes to stimulate to exertion and amendment, to protect travellers from neglect and imposition, and to do justice to deserving innkeepers.’

With such assurances our traveller will set out, the indispensable Murray buttoned into his pocket, though when he reaches Ostend he is not likely to linger after reading the following: ‘… a few hours there exhaust a traveller’s patience; while the visit to the douane, and the extortions of innkeepers and commissionaires, are not likely to improve his temper.’ Apart from which, travellers should be on their guard against drinking water, ‘which is filtered rain-water. Seltzer water is drunk in preference.’ Even so, ‘Ostend is a favourite watering-place, and is much resorted to in summer; even the King and Queen of the Belgians repair hither, and occupy 2 or 3 ordinary-looking houses in the Rue Longue. There are 80 Bathing Machines on the beach, and the sands are very extensive and smooth, and crowded with bathers of both sexes, decorously clad in bath dresses, by order of the police.’

The handbook also deals with Holland where ‘the roads run on the tops of the dykes; and, as there are no parapets or railings, there is at least the appearance of danger, and accidents sometimes happen’. Dutch hotels were said to be nearly as expensive as those of England, and inferior to those of most other countries. They were, however, generally clean, but ‘owing to the humidity of the climate the beds are often damp, and should be warmed with the warming-pan, a much employed article in Dutch households’.

The subject of cleanliness clearly fascinated the writer of the handbook, though he considered the matter to be ‘carried to excess in Holland; but the passion for purifying really runs to such a height among Dutch housewives that the assertion is by no means groundless: everything has an air of freshness, and the stranger in vain looks for a particle of dust. It is on the last day of the week that an extraordinary cleaning takes place. Every house door presents a scene of most energetic activity — the brushing and mopping, the scrubbing and scraping, are not confined to steps and doorways — the pavement, wall, windows, however guiltless they may be of impurity, are all equally subjected to the same course of ablution. Those spots which are out of the reach of the hand or broom do not escape a well-aimed stream from the pipe of a small engine-pump, which is always reserved for such service. The unsuspecting stranger who walks the streets is subjected to the danger of perpetual wettings. He looks up to ascertain whence the shower descends, and he perceives a diligent servant girl, stretched out of a window two-thirds of her length, and, with eyes intently turned upwards, discharging bowls full of water upon some refractory stain, imperceptible to all but herself.’

The traveller is reminded that life was formerly most fraught in Holland — and possibly still is. The town of Dort, for example, stands on an island formed by an inundation in 1421, ‘when the tide in the estuary of the Rhine, excited by a violent tempest, burst through a dyke, overwhelming a populous and productive district, which it at once converted into a waste of waters called the Biesbosch … 72 villages and 100,000 human beings were swallowed up by the waves. 35 of the villages were irretrievably lost, so that no vestige, even of the ruins, could afterwards be discovered.’

A more immediate danger awaited those who thought to wander freely around the houses of gentlemen: ‘Many of the grounds of the country seats are open; but some have notices — only in Dutch — of man-traps and spring-guns.’

On reaching Germany the Customs examination was said to be ‘strict without being vexatious. The Prussian douanier (often an old soldier invalided) is above taking a bribe, or rather, government regulates matters so as to prevent his taking one. The person offering a bribe is even liable to punishment by law. Strangers are treated with invariable civility, provided they conduct themselves becomingly.’

The money problems was again infinitely difficult, this time due to the proliferation of different states and principalities, leading Murray to warn us that the values marked on German coins ‘are sometimes not the value at which the coin passes’. He then goes on to juggle Friedrichs d’or, dollars, silver groschen, thalers, kreutzers and gulden with pounds, shillings and pence, which must have left our traveller’s head spinning, so that it would come as something of a relief to learn that: ‘Travellers in Prussia are protected by a regulation of the police from the impositions of innkeepers, who are compelled to hang up in every apartment, or at least in the public room, a tariff, or list of charges for lodging, food, fuel, servants, valets-de-place, etc. This is inspected periodically by a proper officer, who regulates the price of each article, and ascertains that none of the charges are exorbitant.’

All the same, our traveller must have read the following with something like exasperation: ‘All innkeepers are compelled to submit to the inspection of the police the daily arrivals and departures of their guests; and not merely the name, surname, and country, but frequently the age, condition, whether married or single, profession, religion, motives for travelling, and other particulars, are required. A book called Strangers’ Book, ruled into columns, and methodically classed, is presented to the traveller for him to fill up.’

Another point made is that German hotelkeepers were of a ‘higher class’ than their equivalents in England, and that they usually sat at the common table, ‘entering familiarly into conversation with their guests’. Travellers must have responded in various ways to this blatant intrusion into their privacy, from one of welcome at gaining some picture of local conditions, to that of wishing the hotelkeeper would eat in his own kitchen where he belonged. No doubt the silent Englishman’s protection against having to answer probing questions was helped by his lack of knowing what the upstart was talking about.

Let us assume that our gentleman-traveller is not too much discouraged by this and makes for Cologne where, consulting his Murray, he would put up at the Hollandischer Hof. Delacroix stayed there in 1850, and ‘felt depressed by the strange jargon and the sight of foreign uniforms. The Rhine wine at dinner made me feel more reconciled to my situation, but unhappily I had the worst bed in the world, even though this is supposed to be one of the best hotels.’

From Cologne it would take our traveller fourteen and a half hours to reach Berlin by railway, ‘allowing time for refreshment at Minden’. We are told that the 455,000 inhabitants of the Prussian capital included 15,000 Roman Catholics, 15,000 Jews, 5300 descendants of the French Protestants driven out of France by the religious intolerance of Louis XIV, and 15,000 soldiers of the garrison. Murray says: ‘The city is situated in the midst of a dreary plain of sand, destitute of either beauty or fertility. The great number of soldiers gives to Berlin almost the air of a camp.’ He evinces surprise that it had grown into the capital of a great empire. ‘Owing to the want of stone in the neighbourhood, the larger part even of the public buildings are of brick and plaster. The flatness of the ground and the sandy soil produce inconveniences which the stranger will not be long in detecting. There is so little declivity in the surface, that the water in the drains, instead of running off, stops and stagnates in the streets. In the Friedrichsstrasse, which is two miles long, there is not a foot of descent from one end to the other. In the summer season the heat of the sun reflected by the sand becomes intolerable, and the noxious odours in the streets are very unwholesome as well as unpleasant.’ A complaint was also made about the pavements, which were so narrow that ‘two persons can scarcely walk abreast, and many are infamously paved with sharp stones, upon which it is excruciating pain to tread’.

A mere fortnight was needed to see Berlin, after which the traveller would find it tedious without the company of friends. ‘The society of the upper classes is on the whole not very accessible to strangers, nor is hospitality exercised to the same extent among them as in England, chiefly because their fortunes are limited.’

Murray admitted, however, that Berlin was one of the finest cities in Europe, but then comments on the number of statues erected in the streets, most being of military men. ‘A Corinthian pillar surmounted by an eagle, absurdly called National Krieger Denkmal, has been set up in the Invalids’ Garden, as a monument to the 475 soldiers whose names are inscribed on the marble tablets around its base, who fell in defending the city and their sovereign from the brutal revolutionary rioters of 1848 and 1849.’

Our traveller, if an officer in the army, may be interested in the Grand Review of the garrison, which takes place in the neighbourhood of Berlin during the autumn: ‘20,000 troops are sometimes collected, and the manoeuvres last several days. To see the reviews to advantage a uniform is desirable, though not absolutely necessary. A good horse warranted to stand fire may be hired for a louis a day; with these you may ride on the ground and join the staff, which sometimes amounts to 500 officers of all nations. The field manoeuvres usually last several days, the regiments bivouacking at night. Ladies in carriages are enabled to see the whole by the good arrangement of the gendarmerie.’

So a fortnight of boredom will see our traveller on the train to Dresden, and accommodated in the new Hotel Victoria, or if by now looking after his pocket, at Eichler’s Boarding House, ‘in the English quarter’. Dresden was known as ‘the German Florence’, and Murray grudgingly agrees, telling us: ‘Few European capitals contain a greater number of objects calculated to gratify the curiosity of an intelligent traveller. The opera is good, and music is much cultivated; the climate is generally mild and agreeable, food and lodgings are not dear. It has been much resorted to since 1830 by the English for education and economy; and for those who are not alarmed by the recent revolutionary events in Germany, is eligible as a residence.’

Perhaps life was a little too regimented for the locals, because if any wanted to cross to the other side of the Elbe on foot they had always to ‘take the path on the right hand, “a rule of the road” which is enforced by the police, and prevents collision and confusion’.

Murray recommends a visit to nearby Saxon Switzerland, and especially to the fortress of Königstein, to which one is admitted on showing a passport and paying a small fee. ‘This fortress once served as a state prison: it was scaled for the first time in 1848 by a chimney-sweep, at mid-day; he reached the top half dead with fatigue.’

Between Dresden and Chemnitz lies the coal district of Saxony, where a somewhat sinister picture is given of local life. The miners, of a rather primitive class, ‘are enrolled in a sort of semi-military corps, of which the common workmen are the privates, and the superintendents and managers the officers. They are called out several times a year for inspection or parade, and in addition assemble in a body at certain stated times to attend miners’ prayers in the church, at the funeral of a superior officer, during the visit of a royal personage, and on days of rejoicing for the discovery of a rich vein. On these occasions they appear in uniform, their leather aprons fastened on behind, leather pockets in the place of cartouche-boxes, and a large knife stuck in the girdle. The common miners march with their pickaxes shouldered, the carpenters with their axes, and the smiths with their hammers borne in the same fashion. These processions have a martial appearance, are headed by a band playing a miners’ march, and accompanied by flying colours. The officers have similar uniforms, distinguished according to their rank.’

The inhabitants of the textile manufacturing town of Chemnitz receive good marks for knowing their place, with a certain sense of regret from Murray that such conditions could not exist at home: ‘The stocking-weavers for the most part are not congregated into manufactories, but live in cottages of their own, the fee-simple of which they have purchased by their own earnings. They cultivate in their own gardens the potatoes and other vegetables which form their usual food, and support from the same source the animals which provide them with the small quantity of meat they consume: they live commonly with great frugality on potatoes and coffee. When the demand for manufacture is slack, they employ themselves in the fields and garden; when it is active, they devote themselves to their frames and looms. The state provides them with gratuitous instruction, which has the happiest effect both on their industry and frugality.’

If our traveller is still snorting fire and smoke from the Berlin tattoo he will call at the Schlachtfeld (battlefield) of Lützen, and learn — if he didn’t already know — that at the first set-to in 1632, Gustavus Adolphus was killed, his body taken to nearby Weissenfels and embalmed ‘in a room of the Town-house, in the presence of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar. It is recorded that his heart weighed 1 lb. 2 oz.; that the body bore the marks of 8 wounds, i.e. 5 gunshots, 2 cuts, 1 stab. A part of the wall, which was stained with his blood, is still preserved from external contact. The heart was instantly conveyed to Stockholm; but the bowels are interred in the Kloster Kirche …’

Before setting off down the Rhine the traveller will no doubt have read his Byron but, if not, Murray (the poet’s publisher) spread 137 lines in half a dozen parts of the text, such quotations describing certain sections of the river in a more poetic way than Murray can aspire to, though a little advice from Don Juan might have cut the wordage down a bit: ‘Plain truth, dear Murray, needs few flowers of speech.’

In 1827, when the first company of Rhine steamboats commenced operations, 18,000 passengers travelled between Cologne and Mainz, the number increasing to a million by the mid-1850s. Murray somewhat spoils the enthusiasm of the deck traveller by reminding him that ‘the views in many places, looking down upon the Rhine from its lofty banks, far surpass those from the river itself; and the small valleys, which pour their tributary streams on the right hand and left have beauties to unfold of which the steam-driven tourist has no conception, which are entirely lost to him’.

At Coblenz Murray can’t resist a dig at his arch rival in the guidebook trade: ‘Baedeker, a very intelligent bookseller in the Rhein Strasse … keeps a good assortment of English, French, and German books, guide-books, prints, maps, etc. He has also published German Handbooks for Travellers, enriched by his own observations, and is personally acquainted with all parts of his own country.’ It is related, though not in Murray, that when the original Karl Baedeker died in 1859, a solitary Englishman followed the cortege to the cemetery carrying one of the little red guidebooks as a token of his esteem.

Further upriver, at Oberwesel, we come across an infamous blood-libel story against the Jews, though Murray of course is not taken in: ‘In some period of the dark ages a boy named Werner is said to have been most impiously crucified and put to death by the Jews in this place. A similar story is told in many other parts of the world; even in England, at Gloucester and Lincoln (vide Chaucer). It is probable that the whole was a fabrication, to serve as a pretext for persecuting the Jews and extorting money from them’, which is perhaps as balanced an account as you could get in the nineteenth century. The Church of St Werner, erected to commemorate his canonization, gets an asterisk in Baedeker, the story being put down to tradition, as it is also in Thomas Cook’s Traveller’s Handbook The Rhine and the Black Forest (1912). In Ernest Benn’s Blue Guide, 1933, it is said to have been a legend, but the calumny is rightly omitted altogether from the Guide Bleu, 1939.

Should our traveller get off the boat at Worms his Murray will tell him that the synagogue ‘is said to be more than 800 years old, and certainly displays in its structure the style of the 11th century … The Jews have been established in this spot from a very early period, and enjoyed privileges denied them in most other parts of Germany.’ This is more or less true, though they were forced out by the Guilds in 1615, upon which the synagogue was destroyed and the cemetery laid waste; a year later an Imperial Decree ordered them to be readmitted. They also suffered three massacres during the times of the Crusades in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Frankfurt, we are told, is the cradle of the Rothschild family, and Murray goes on to say, ‘The Jews, who form no inconsiderable portion of the community here, have till very lately been treated with great illiberality by the Free Town. The gates of the quarter to which they were exclusively confined were closed upon them at an early hour every night, after which ingress and egress were alike denied. This arbitrary municipal regulation was enforced, until Marshal Jourdan, in bombarding the town (1796), knocked down the gate of the Jews’ quarter, along with many houses near it, and they have not been replaced since. Another law, not repealed until 1834, restricted the number of marriages among the Hebrews in the town to 13 yearly. The Synagogue, an old and curious Gothic building, is situated in the Judengasse. The Jews are no longer compelled to live in this street, but may hire or purchase houses in other quarters.’

An excursion to Saarlouis would reveal the curious fact that its 7000 inhabitants ‘are partly descended from English prisoners placed here by Louis XIV’. The town was a frontier fortress of Prussia, ‘with a long stone bridge over the Saar, which flows half round the town, and sometimes during the winter lays part of it under water’, a circumstance which may have made the English feel very much at home.

Between Frankfurt and Cassel lies the village of Butzbach, which prompts the story from Murray that ‘German vagrants, known in London as Bavarian broom-girls, come from this neighbourhood’. Several villages were said to have sent forth, for the last twenty years, ‘crowds of them annually. At first they were taken over by the broom-makers, ready to sell their brooms; but in a short time they discovered other and less moral modes of earning money. The speculators, perceiving this, enticed from their homes many young girls, under pretence of hiring them as servants. Some of these poor creatures have never been heard of by their parents; others have returned ruined and broken in constitution; and innumberable actions have been brought against the planners of this disgraceful traffic. The magistrates of these towns have at length interfered, and any person discovered taking away a child, or any female but a wife, is subject to heavy penalties.’

Towns along the Rhine led a precarious existence over the centuries due to the proximity of France. Speyer, one of the oldest cities of Germany, on the left bank of the river, had a particularly violent history. In the Middle Ages its citizens were ‘as well versed in the use of arms as in the arts of trade. At one time they were called upon to issue from their walls in order to chastise the lawless rapacity of some feudal baron, who had waylaid their merchants and pillaged their property, by having his castle burnt about his ears and levelled with the ground.’

Such incidents were as nothing compared to its fate in the seventeenth century, when the greatest injury was inflicted on it by the French. After its capture by them in 1689 a proclamation was issued to its citizens ‘commanding them to quit it, with their wives and children, within the space of 6 days, and to betake themselves into Alsace, Lorraine, or Burgundy, but upon pain of death not to cross the Rhine. To carry into execution this tyrannic edict, a provost-marshal, at the head of 40 assistant executioners, marched into the town; they bore about them the emblems of their profession, in the shape of a gallows and wheel, embroidered on their dress. On the appointed day the miserable inhabitants were driven out by the beat of drums, like a flock of sheep. The French soldiers followed them, after having plundered everything in the deserted town, which was then left to the tender mercies of executioners and incendiaries. In obedience to the commands of the French commander, trains of combustibles were laid in the houses and lighted, and in a few hours the seven-and-forty streets of Speyer were in a blaze. The conflagration lasted 3 days and 3 nights; but the destruction of the town did not cease even with this. Miners were incessantly employed in blowing up the houses, walls, fountains, and convents, so that the whole might be levelled with the dust and rendered uninhabitable. The Cathedral was dismantled, the graves of the Emperors burst open and their remains scattered. For many years Speyer lay a desolate heap of rubbish, until at last the impoverished inhabitants returned gradually to seek out the sites of their ancient dwellings.’

Such a taste of ‘history’ should have lasted till the end of Time, but a hundred years later the Revolutionary army under Custine captured the town after six assaults, and repeated ‘all the wanton acts of atrocity and cruelty which their predecessors had enacted a century before’.

If our traveller is rich (and on this journey he needs to be) he will want to experience the various spas and bathing establishments in the Rhineland and the Black Forest, paying particular attention to those described in his handbook, which tells him that for the Germans ‘an excursion to a watering-place in the summer is essential to existence, and the necessity of such a visit is confined to no one class in particular, but pervades all, from emperors and princes down to tradesmen and citizens’ wives.’

The number of bathing-places and mineral springs in Germany alone now amounts to several hundred: and every year adds to the list names which, though seldom heard in England, are not without their little sets and coteries. The royal and imperial guests repair to them not merely to get rid of the trammels and pomp of sovereignty, though it is universally the case that they move about with no more show than private individuals, but they also seek such occasions for holding private congresses, for forming secret treaties, alliances etc.; family arrangements and matrimonial connections are also not unfrequently there concocted. The minister repairs thither to refresh himself from the toils of office, but usually brings his portfolio in his travelling carriage, nor does he altogether even here bid adieu to intrigue and politics. The invalid comes to recruit his strength — the debauchee to wash himself inside and out, and string his nerves for a fresh campaign of dissipation — the shopkeeper and the merchant come to spend their money and gaze on their betters — and the sharper and black-leg, who swarm at all the baths, to enrich themselves at the gaming-tables at the expense of their fellow guests.

Every amusement was to be found at such places, as well as ‘all the artists, and artificers that contribute to the enjoyments and the follies of indulgence — actors from Vienna — gaming-table keepers and cooks from Paris — money-lenders from Frankfurt — singers from Berlin — shopkeepers, voituriers, pastry-cooks, mountebanks, dancing-masters, donkey-lenders, blacklegs, mistresses, lacqueys — all bustling and contriving in their several vocations to reap the short harvest of profit which the season affords.’

In short, if you were financially sound, it seemed a wonderful place to be, and Murray’s disapproval was unlikely to deter the rakish sensibilities of our traveller, though Murray kept on trying:

The system of the day commences with a bath taken before breakfast. Afterwards follow excursions in the environs, walks in the gardens, visits to the cafés and billiard rooms, and, above all, the pleasures of the Grand Saloon, which occupy the gay world till dinner. This last-mentioned place of rendezvous is the greatest centre of attraction; and, with the exception of much more gaiety, more avowed vice, and the absence of all pretence at rational resources, acts the part of the library at an English watering-place. After depositing your hat and stick with the gendarmes at the door, you enter the grand saloon — invariably a splendid room. On one side of a crowd of motley but well-dressed and gay-looking persons (I regret to say of both sexes) are pressing over each other’s heads, round large banks of Rouge et Noir. An anxious silence reigns, only interrupted by the rattling of the roulette, the jingling of Napoleons and francs, and the titters and jokes of the few whose speculations are a matter of mere frolic. Pretty interesting women were putting down their Napoleons, and seeing them swept away, or drawing them in doubles, with a sang-froid which proved that they were no novices in that employment.

Having brought our traveller to the salivating state where temptation is impossible to resist, Murray comes down the heaviest of fathers: ‘The Licensed Gaming-Houses at the German watering-places are a disgrace and shame to the minor princes, who not only tolerate them, but derive revenue from granting the permission, to the destruction of morality and honesty among their own subjects, as well as among thousands of strangers. English travellers should be placed especially on their guard against the sharpers who haunt the continental watering-places. The chances of being robbed are much greater than was formerly the case in Paris, as none of the precautionary measures are taken to prevent cheating in Germany. The princes who tolerate such a system must be content to bear the reproach of avarice and cupidity.’

The primary purpose of the spas was, or ought to have been, the curing of the sick; those who go there solely for that reason should ‘consult their own physicians before leaving home. It is also prudent and customary to ask the advice of the physician resident at the baths as well before commencing a course of waters.’

Regarding the practical application of the treatment, Murray recommends that the water be drunk on an empty stomach, and a short walk taken between each draught, ‘but violent exercise is to be avoided. The bath also should never be taken after eating, and during bathing a strict attention to diet is advisable. Tea, pastry, acids, vegetables, fruit, and cheese should be avoided, and but little should be eaten at each meal. Wine, if light, may be sparingly used …’

The first point of either sin or pleasure (or both) at which our traveller might call could be Ems, ‘which seems essentially a ladies’ watering-place: it is much frequented by the fair sex, and its waters are considered particularly efficacious in the complaints of females. It is on the whole a quiet place, and little or no raking goes on here …’

Schlangenbad, in a delightful though at that time a somewhat remote situation, was so named because of ‘the great number of snakes and vipers, as well as the harmless kind, which not only abound in the neighbourhood, but even haunt the springs themselves, for the sake of the warmth yielded by the water, or for the frogs, the food of the viper. The old man who manages the baths will exhibit some of them.’

Such reptiles are not mentioned in Thomas Cook’s guidebook of a later date, but Baedeker seeks to reassure those who might fear them, saying that the place ‘takes its name from the harmless snake (coluber longissimus) which is occasionally found here but is really native to S. Europe’.

Even so, our traveller might linger a day or two because Murray says that the baths are one of the most ‘harmless and delicious luxuries of the sort I have ever enjoyed; and I really quite looked forward to the morning for the pleasure with which I paid my addresses to this delightful element. The effect it produces on the skin is very singular: it is about as warm as milk, but infinitely softer: and after dipping the hand into it, if the thumb be rubbed against the fingers, it is said by many to resemble satin.’

None of the hotels at Homburg are rated as any good; moreover: ‘The town consists of a long main street, chiefly of new houses, on one side of which are the wells and Kursaal, and on the other at the end the gloomy Schloss. The waters are very valuable in cases of disordered liver and stomach.’

After the usual fulmination against those who run the gaming-house, Murray concludes: ‘Let those who are disposed to risk their money inquire what is the character of the managers, and be on their guard. The expense of such an enormous and splendid establishment must be paid out of the pockets of travellers. About 50,000 florins are lost here annually by the public in play.’ The only manufacturing activity in Homburg was that of ‘black stockings; articles in very great request, no doubt, by the gentlemen who most numerously resort hither every summer’.

Those who behave sinfully have the opportunity of attending an English church service, which is given every Sunday. ‘The number of English visitors increased so much of late that the place assumes the appearance of a settlement of our countrymen. This influx has the effect of diminishing its advantages of cheapness and retirement, as within a few years the price of everything has been raised nearly one half. After October the soil and climate are extremely damp — the grassy banks are oozing with water, which the granitic substratum will not absorb, and the hotels and lodging-houses suffer greatly from moisture.’

Water from the hot springs, which is conveyed through the town in pipes to supply the different baths, ‘loses little of its warmth in the passage; but the supply greatly exceeds the demand, so that some of the sources are used by the townspeople to scald their pigs and poultry’.

At the other Baden, near Vienna, where the scenery is compared by Murray to that of Matlock, the warm springs were said to be even more attractive than those at the German spa. ‘Not a few, who though in perfect health, use the bath together, males and females mixed promiscuously, and sit, or move slowly about, for an hour or two, up to the neck in the steaming water. The ladies enter and depart by one side, and the gentlemen by another; but in the bath itself there is no separation: nay, politeness requires that a gentleman, when he sees a lady moving, or attempting to move, alone, shall offer himself as her supporter during the acquatic promenade.’

The Black Forest Baden was hyphenated to a second Baden, to remind people that it was the original bath, and to prevent any upstart watering-hole from claiming the honour. The Castle rose high above the town, but to Murray it was ‘only remarkable for its situation and the curious dungeons beneath …’

… originally the dungeons were only accessible from above, by a perpendicular shaft or chimney running through the centre of the building, and still in existence. The visitor, in passing under it, can barely discern the daylight at the top. According to tradition, prisoners, bound fast in an arm-chair and blindfolded, were let down by a windlass into these dark and mysterious vaults and winding passages, excavated out of the solid rock on which the castle is founded. The dungeons were closed, not with doors of wood or iron, but with solid slabs of stone, turning upon pivots, and ingeniously fitted. Several of them still remain; they are nearly a foot thick, and weight from 1200 to 2000 lbs. In one chamber, loftier than the rest, called the Rack Chamber, the instruments of torture stood; a row of iron rings, forming part of the fearful apparatus, still remains in the wall. In a passage adjoining there is a well or pit in the floor, now boarded over, originally covered with a trap-door. The prisoner upon whom doom had been passed was led into this passage, and desired to kiss an image of the Virgin placed at the opposite end; but no sooner did his feet rest on the trap-door than it gave way beneath his weight, and precipitated him to a great depth below, upon a machine composed of wheels, armed with lancets, by which he was torn to pieces. The secret of this terrible dungeon remained unknown until, as the story goes, an attempt to rescue a little dog, which had fallen through the planking above the pit, led to the discovery, at a depth of many yards, of fragments of ponderous wheels set around with rusty knives, with portions of bones, rags, and torn garments adhering to them.

As the nineteenth century progressed guidebook prose became less prolix, and Baedeker deals with the above in a single sentence: ‘The curious subterranean vaults with stone and iron doors were perhaps once used as dungeons’ — a far cry from the romantic horrors detailed in Murray fifty years before, and possibly coming from the notion that one could justifiably encourage forgetfulness of such sadistic vileness on the assumption that similar practices would never surface again, the Nazi period at that time impossible to imagine.

By 1914 80,000 people a year visited Baden-Baden. Public gambling had been suppressed in 1872 (though it was allowed again under the Nazis) when it became more of a health resort. Bradshaw’s Dictionary of Bathing Places said that the waters contained mineral properties for the cure of ‘uric acid diathesis, gout, catarrhal affections of the throat and larynx, dyspepsia, chronic catarrh of the stomach and intestines, and bladder diseases’, which made the waters of Baden-Baden ‘stand unrivalled’. The waters were chiefly taken in the morning from 7 to 8 o’clock, while the band was playing, and: ‘Special cabins were provided for the purpose of gargling.’

In spring and autumn ‘grand musical festivals are held; and in winter chamber music, symphony and vocal concerts’. The town orchestra had fifty-two members. The theatre, ‘a handsome and beautifully decorated building,’ says Thomas Cook’s guidebook, ‘was opened in 1862 and inaugurated by Hector Berlioz.’ The Hamburg Amerika Shipping Line Guide Through Europe, 1914, tells us that the theatre ‘has a memorial tablet to Berlioz, the composer whose setting of Faust has become so famous’.

Another feature just prior to the First World War was that ‘air trips may be taken in Zeppelin’s air-ships in the Municipal Flying Ground’.