"Quarum virtutum laude hominum animas, dum in hac urbe morabaris, mirifice Tibi devinxisti."—Address of the Senate of Bonn to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, January, 28, 1840.
There are incidents in a man's life—sometimes important, sometimes insignificant—which impress themselves upon his mind as if graven in "with a pen of iron." Thirty-two years have now passed away, but I remember, as if it had happened only a few weeks ago, old "Senius" putting his weather-worn face into my bedroom at Bonn, on the memorable grey morning of mid-December, 1861, to make the melancholy announcement: "Uür Prinz is doht." "Dat war 'ne johde Heer," he added rather impressively.
"Senius" was our "Stiefelfuchs"—which means a great deal more than having to "polish our boots." And in some capacity or other—it must have been a subordinate one—it had been his fate to be employed in the Prince Consort's household while the latter was a student at Bonn. What qualified him for either of these positions I am at a loss to conjecture. He was nothing of a valet. We used to beg him, for mercy's sake, not to attempt to remove stains from our clothes, inasmuch as in doing so (in the only way which seemed to suggest itself to his untutored mind) he invariably made two smudges out of one by spitting just a little wide of the mark. At least that was the tradition. For any delicate mission, such as smuggling liquor into the "Carcer," he was absolutely useless. He knew well enough how to bandage a man for a "Mensur." And on the bitter cold days of a North-German winter the huge bowl of his ever-smoking pipe would be very acceptable as a hand-warmer to those gloved for the fight. He was honest, no doubt, and strictly faithful, and that must have helped to ingratiate him with the Prince. But his main recommendation appears to have been his curious capacity for saying odd things in an odd way, and in the quaintest of broad Rhenish patois, which made them sound doubly droll. What with quaint habits and quaint sayings, he had become a "character" at Bonn, generally popular as such, known to every man, woman and child in the place, and allowed almost any latitude of speech. The Prince, whose relish for humour was, in his student days, fully as keen as ever in after-life, appears to have been tickled with the man's unintended drollery; for, according to "Senius's" own naïvely frank account, he made it his amusement to "draw" him, eliciting odd answers by inoffensively unmerciful chaff. And this may account for "Senius" remaining in the princely household, and experiencing much kindness at his master's hands. If gratitude be a return, the Prince had it in ample measure. That "dat war 'ne johde Heer" was spoken with unmistakable feeling, and it proved the prelude to a whole string of little anecdotes which—though not perhaps in themselves particularly remarkable or worth repeating—were poured forth with such simple earnestness as sufficiently testified, how firmly a sense of regard and affection had taken root in the old man's heart, to live there through many years of separation.
"Senius" was not the only person in Bonn who could grow warm upon this subject. The Prince's death, indeed, set loose in the University town a whole flood of anecdotes and reminiscences, some very trivial and commonplace, but all of them evidencing a lively interest and abiding regard. It is strange what power some persons possess of impressing men's minds. There have been scores of princes students at Bonn since, some of them spending more money and making much more of a show; but memory has closed over them like water over a ripple. There is none remembered like the then Prince of Coburg—down to the days of his grandson, the present Emperor, who, of course, conquered local hearts by identifying himself rather demonstratively with the place.
At my time people spoke frequently of "der Prinz Albehrt." All the older townsfolk remembered the "bildschöne junge Mann," who sat his horse like a born cavalier, and whose mere appearance was calculated to prepossess people in his favour. Two friends of mine—the brothers von C—— (one of them is now a retired general who has covered himself with glory in the wars in 1866 and 1870)—used as boys to make a point of watching for the Coburg Princes when about to mount horse, from the house of their neighbour, Landrath von Hymmen, who lived just opposite. They would rush out eagerly at the proper moment to hold the Princes' stirrups, and consider themselves amply rewarded with a kind word or a genial smile. Travelling Englishmen have afterwards made it a matter of duty, Murray or Baedecker in hand, to "do" the simple house "in which Prince Albert lived," as they "did" the Münster and the Alte Zoll. To the people of Bonn the Prince's doings were a living memory. Only eighteen months ago I was surprised, while accidentally alluding to the subject in conversation with an old resident, since dead, to find that gentleman at once pulling out of his pocket a photograph of the Prince's house, which he seemed to carry about with him habitually. He knew all the windows, and the gateway, and answered questions about the Prince's habits of life as if they had referred to matters of yesterday.
In truth, Bonn owes a great deal to the Prince Consort—more than most people are aware. If the University has grown great and popular, a favourite with reigning houses, a High School in which every King of Prussia is expected to have pursued his studies, something like a "Christ Church" among German Universities; if the town has grown rich and flourishing, a favourite residence with wealth and position en retraite, the merit is in no small measure due to the Prince who, practically speaking, first set the fashion among illustrious folk. No scion of a reigning house, to speak of—none, certainly, to make a mark—had been at Bonn before. Indeed, Bonn, with its associations of the Burschenschaft, of disaffection and of ecclesiastical strife, did not stand in the best of odours. Hence, when a Prince came to break the ice, of more than ordinary promise, and already connected by rumour with a high destiny, very naturally, all eyes were turned upon him. His subsequent marriage with the Queen—at that time certainly the most powerful sovereign in Christendom—following almost immediately upon his studentship, no doubt emphasised the effect and added force to the example. We see at once princes flocking to the Fridericia Guilelmia Rhenana—Schaumburgs, and Mecklenburgs, and Schleswig-Holsteins, and Meiningens. Twelve years after we have the heir to the Prussian Crown matriculating as a student. We find the roll of students growing at a bound from 650 to 731—to increase since to above 1,200. In short, we see Bonn developing into a different place. English folk—as the Prince's friend, Professor Loebell, puts it, rather uncomplimentarily, in one of his Belgian letters—send their "young bears" to Bonn in whole batches, "to be licked." Then the parents come themselves, bringing their families with them, to settle there. German rank and fashion follow in their wake, quintupling the population in less than sixty years—and the reputation and position of the town are made.
Bonn was a very different place from the fashionable town that it is now, when, on May 3, 1837, Professor Wutzer, as Rector Magnificus, pledged "Prinz Albrecht Franz, Herzog von Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha", "by pressure of hand in place of oath," to be a faithful "citizen" of the University. Prince Ernest, the Prince's elder brother, matriculated at the same time. There was also a Prince of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, of whom little was seen or heard; moreover, Prince William of Löwenstein, who grew to be the Prince's intimate friend; and two Hohenlohes. (Prince Erbach is not in the University Register included among persons of illustrious birth.) All the wide belt of spruce and tidy villas set up amid laughing gardens, which now make Bonn so charming and attractive, and impart to it so pleasing a look of prosperity and comfort, were still a thing to come. The little town, having only about 12,000 inhabitants, still lay hemmed in within the lines of its old walls, the gates of which were carefully closed for security every night. There was an air of "smallness" about everything, except the handsome "Schloss," which Archbishop Clemens August had built (with money received from France) as a sumptuous residence for himself, but which King Frederick William III. in 1818, without much regard for Roman Catholic susceptibilities, converted into a "double-denomination" University. Lutheran divines now taught where the most orthodox of Catholic princes had held court. A non-denominational Senate conferred degrees where the last Archbishop-Elector, the Austrian Archduke Max Franz—"Abbé Sacrebleu," as he was popularly called—had danced with most unepiscopal perseverance and vigour. And at Poppelsdorf learned professors made the air malodorous with chemical stenches in the same palace in which that most courtly of all archbishops, Clemens August, had entertained those beautiful ladies who got him into rather serious trouble at Rome. But, apart from these costly buildings, all was country-townish. There was no Coblenzer Strasse as yet—only a small cluster of houses, among which the Vinca Domini—whilom the winepress of the local lord—and the villa of the patriot Arndt, were alone conspicuous. Inside the walls the students were much in evidence, rough in their uncouth costume of those days, very "Guys" in embroidered "pikesches" and wide petticoat-trousers, having long curls dangling from their heads and heavy rapiers from their waists. However, opinion in high quarters was not altogether favourable to them. The revolutionary "Burschenschaft" had been strong in Bonn, numbering Heinrich Heine among its members. Rhineland was, moreover, at that time still wholly unreconciled to Prussian rule. Its seventeen years of incorporation with France had raised a crop of free and anti-Prussian ideas which were not soon to be eradicated. And with Austria so powerful, and Austrian sympathies so widely diffused, thanks to Max Franz, the authorities had still to deal gingerly with their new subjects. It made them wince to hear the words "'ne Prüss" commonly and openly used as a term of reproach and contempt—they were so to down in the fifties. But they could not interfere too rigorously. Then there was the ecclesiastical squabble, foreshadowing Prince Bismarck's "Culturkampf," and every bit as serious and as violent. Only incapacity like that of a Schmedding, and infatuation like that of a Bunsen, could have created such a hopeless dilemma. "Is your Government mad?" Cardinal Lambruschini is reported to have asked, when Bunsen communicated to him the appointment of Droste von Vischering to be Archbishop of Cologne, as a supposed "angel of peace." The Crown Prince, subsequently Frederick William IV., favoured the appointment. The "angel of peace" proved a very demon of war. What with the dispute over mixed marriages, the Episcopal protest against State interference in Church matters, the Anathema pronounced by the new prelate against the latitudinarian school of the followers of Hermes, particularly favoured by the Government and deliberately installed at Bonn, and the Archbishop's uncompromising ban upon the University Convictorium, there was war along the whole line. All Rhineland, be it remembered, was then still staunchly Romanist. Bonn contained but a handful of Protestants. The "concurrently endowed" University, planted in the midst of a Catholic country, was a standing abomination and a perpetual taunt to the native population. The Prince's letters of that time show how fully he appreciated the grave significance of the struggle even at his early age. It was while he was at Bonn that the refractory Archbishop was carried off by force, to be "interned" at Minden.
Under such circumstances it required some resolution for a young Protestant Prince to settle amid an excited Romanist population. If to be "'ne Prüss" was a reproach, to be "'ne Jüss"—that is "Gueux," or Protestant—meant downright anathema. And Prince Albert settled right in what may be called a little Protestant colony, saucily set up under the very shadow of the beautiful east-end of that splendid old "Münster," which traces its foundation to Constantine, and has been the scene of Councils and Imperial coronations from the tenth century downwards.
The Empress Frederick, a few years ago, when in Bonn, very naturally asked to be shown the house in which her father had lived. By that time every vestige of it had disappeared, and she could only be pointed out the site—a garden it is now, fronting an entirely new building in the Martinsplatz, close to where, up to the beginning of the century, stood the church which gave the square its name. But I can perfectly recall the unpretending structure, a three-storied, flat-gabled house, with a two-storied wing—the old-fashioned windows set off by dark-green shutters—lying rather in a hollow, within a yard enclosed in a stone wall pierced by a gate, but generally open in situation and yet, thanks to the enclosure, pretty private. It commanded very fair views of the Poppelsdorfer Allee—the favourite strolling-ground, ever since it was planted, for fashionable and unfashionable Bonn—of the Kreuzberg, and sideways of the more distant Seven Mountains. It seemed a small house to harbour two Princes and their suite, more especially when one was told that what seemed the main portion was reserved for the use of the owner. But it was a building of considerable depth, and so afforded sufficient room for the illustrious inmates and all their not very numerous household, which included, of course, the "excellent" Doctor Florschütz as tutor, the rather starchy martinet-soldier Herr von Wiechmann, who acted as governor, the Prince's favourite valet, and some more. All about the household, as about the Prince's doings generally, was marked by extreme simplicity, which could not, however, in any particular have suggested anything like niggardliness, but merely the voluntary plain living of a gentleman who had no taste for sumptuous habits. Meals, appointments, entertainments, everything indicated a dislike of display. The Prince's trap was such as an innkeeper living opposite could, on its original owner's departure, purchase and use for his business-drives without occasioning remark. If there was one material thing in respect of which the Prince practised luxury, it was his little stud, which was small, but generally admired as choice, and which was, it need scarcely be added, much prized by its owner. The hours kept in the little green-shuttered house were probably the most regular in all the town. Everything in the illustrious student's life was subordinated to the purposes of study. Every hour had its allotted task. He must have been an early riser who could have seen the blinds down of a morning; and long before lights went out in some of the adjoining houses, all was darkness and rest in the Prince's home, which was a veritable temple of method and punctuality.
The quarters had been selected because the Duke of Saxe-Coburg wished his sons to be lodged with a professor. There were not many such with sufficiently large dwellings to select from, and possibly on that ground the choice had fallen upon a Professor of Medicine, who could have been of little service to the Princes in the prosecution of their studies. He was popularly known as "Gamaschenbischof"—"Gaiter-Bishop"—to distinguish him from the other Geheimrath Bischoff who became better known as a great professor of chemistry, but who wore no gaiters. I quite forget whether "Gamaschenbischof" was a Roman Catholic or a Protestant. But his next-door neighbour on the side of the old Neuthor—then still an old-fashioned arched gateway with a substantial gate to keep out bad characters at night—was the acknowledged head of the Lutheran congregation, then a mere handful, the sparing growth of twenty years of Prussian rule. The little community did not yet possess a church of their own as they do now. Indeed, for many years after they had to content themselves with the use of the bald but lofty University chapel, which for many decades they have shared with their English fellow-Christians, often enough keeping the latter waiting when their sermon happened to be long, and considerately leaving a crucifix as a fixture for rigid Evangelicals to chafe at and write letters about to successive chaplains. But the proper stronghold of local Protestantism was to be found in that turreted little Château Gaillard facing the Münster, in which Pusey's friend, Professor Sack, Schleiermacher's least heterodox pupil, had at the Prince's time his official residence. The Coburg Princes, who loyally upheld their own Protestant church, were not infrequent visitors in the house of this pastor, who was well-informed and sociable, and by no means an unacceptable neighbour. Beyond the parsonage, directly abutting upon the Neuthor, was another Protestant institution—the Lutheran school—which, some years later, became a noted centre of attraction to males of all creeds, by reason of the residence in it of "The Three Graces," the Küster's—that is, the clerk and schoolmaster's—remarkably handsome daughters. But in 1837 and 1838 those ladies were still too young to do much mischief, even to so impressionable a cavalier as Prince Ernest. All these buildings spoken of, which still stood at my time, have long since been pulled down and made to give place to houses of a more modern type.
All things considered, it would have been difficult for the Duke of Coburg to make a better choice of a University in which to give his sons the last finishing touch of education. Bonn has always stood high as a home of learning. King Frederick William III. was careful, with the most luxurious buildings and what was at that time considered a truly princely endowment, to bestow upon his own peculiar "pet child" as competent a teaching staff as money and favour could procure. And in 1837, though Niebuhr was gone, and Arndt was suspended—for preaching too vigorously the gospel of German union, which was then reputed rank heresy—and though Dahlmann, who would have been a professor after Prince Albert's own heart, had not yet come, the teaching staff could compare with that of any period. But apart from that, there was a tone of freedom and geniality prevailing at Bonn which distinguished that place from all other German universities. It was the least Prussian of all Prussian High Schools—far more in the world and in touch with the world than all its sisters. Set up on "Frankish" soil, which used to give Germany its Emperors; the chosen residence, until recently, of prelates of an ancient See, who had entertained relations from time immemorial with all great Courts, and who had been recruited from princely houses; and, last, but not least, only a generation before an integral portion of the Republic, "one and indivisible," which planted its tricolor nowhere without leaving its free spirit behind, even after the outward ensign was gone—Bonn nourished a more independent habit of thought and encouraged wider and larger views than did the "zopf"-ruled universities of the East. It was here, doubtless, among the patriotic aspirations of a "Young Germany" unchilled by Carlsbad and Laibach, under the inspiring teaching of Arndt, that Duke Ernest, prophetically styled Spes patriæ in an address presented by the Academical Senate, conceived that liberal, high-minded and unselfish policy which paved the way as much as anything else for the Union of 1871. And to Prince Albert, likewise, this must have seemed a wider world than that of Coburg; and, in a period of life more formative of character than any other, it must have served to prepare him better for that freer sphere of action into which he was destined shortly to be called.
Niebuhr, as observed, was gone from Bonn. Arndt was removed from his "chair" for saying too freely in 1820 what Princes had openly proclaimed in 1813. Dahlmann was, in truth, still one of "the Seven of Göttingen," inasmuch as Ernest Augustus had not yet made his Hanoverians to regret that they were governed by the Salic law. But there was Welcker, the great historian of art, and the brilliant elocutionist, from whom the Prince must have learnt much of that close knowledge and warm appreciation of art which afterwards made him so efficient a furtherer of culture in this kingdom. There were Loebell and Perthes, von Alten, Bethmann-Hollweg, Walter, Brandis, Nitzsch, Deiters, Bleek, Breidenstein, Nöggerath, Argelander, Schlegel, Fichte, Plücker, Böcking, and many more—not a few of whom I can perfectly remember from my own days. The two Princes, and more particularly Prince Albert, knew how to turn the opportunities at their command to admirable account, not merely by attending the public lectures with exemplary regularity, but, in addition, by seeking out learning, so to speak, en déshabillé, and drawing from it in the easy way of conversation and chat probably more information than it dispensed on more formal occasions. Prince Albert was on excellent terms with the most able of these men—Schlegel, Perthes, Bethmann-Hollweg, Walter and some more—and was frequently to be seen walking with one or other of them in the Poppelsdorfer Allee, or else on the Venusberg, or along the Rhine, keeping up an animated conversation. And often would he ask some one or two to his house, or else drop in—sometimes on his own invitation—to that peculiarly German repast of evening "tea," further to prosecute his cross-questioning. "Tea," of course, does not in this application mean anything like our own "five o'clock," nor yet quite so substantial a meal as our middle-class "high tea," but a light evening repast, such as is usual (viz., after a good mid-day dinner) among the cultivated classes in Germany, when en famille, from the Imperial Court downward. Taxing the stomach but little, such a meal leaves the head all the more free for intellectual occupation, and is, in truth, dependent for its best relish on the Attic salt supplied by the company. (The "tea" itself is, unfortunately, as a rule, indifferent in quality.) At Bonn these "teas" became little feasts of reason, and used to be, I am told, one of the Prince's particular delights. He was in the habit of discussing questions of learning and politics and statesmanship very freely with his own chosen little set, Prince Löwenstein and others. But he knew the difference between this and putting Professors (who in Bonn were then not merely men of the lamp) into the witness-box and pleasurably pumping them dry over their own tea-table. Nobody relished this treatment more than the Professors themselves, who in after-time often spoke of the enjoyable evenings which they had spent, and the pleasure of discussing matters on which they were masters with so apt a pupil, who knew how to put brightness and stimulating interest into the conversation. The Prince's enjoyment, it is to be suspected, went even a little further. For, men of great learning as these Professors were, more than one of them had contracted odd habits of speech and manner, which no man was more quick to note and more apt inoffensively to caricature—in mien and with pencil—than the Prince. We know that he could use pen and brush deftly enough. And more particularly of his artist's work completed at Bonn several specimens survive—for instance, the Queen's "Savoyard Boy." Some of the caricature sketches referred to are said to have been admirable, and no less so the mimicry which, without malice or guile, brought out tellingly the little oddities of these learned gentry, to the intense amusement of a privileged and very select audience. There was, as it happened, ample material. Schlegel, the great and the witty—there could have been no pleasanter companion than he who first made the Germans understand Shakespeare—was, with all his merits, vain and conceited, and foolishly insisted upon parading his conceit before the world. He was old at that time, and lectured only at rare intervals, but every now and then some of that old impetuosity would break out, which in earlier days had made him, without regard for conventionalities, pull off his coat and waistcoat in the midst of an evening party, in order to fling to his brother Frederick the smaller garment, for which in a rash moment he had bartered away a good story. Then there was Loebell, the friend of Tieck, the uncompromising Protestant, full of historic lore as an egg is of meat, and of truly magnetic attractiveness to his pupils, but ugly as a monkey, diffident and gauche, and, thanks to his habitual absence of mind, a source of the oddest and never-failing anecdote. Perthes and Fichte laid themselves equally open to ridicule. The "University Judge" (Proctor) von Salomon, commonly nicknamed "the Salamander," was made more than once to sit for a comic portrait; and Oberberghauptmann Count Beust—the Prince's own countryman, a native of Saxe-Coburg, with whom the Prince was on terms of comparative intimacy—provided at times irresistible food for laughter, not only by his curious squat little figure, but even more by that genuinely Saxon sing-song accent, which seems to be a common feature of all Beusts who have not remained in their old Brandenburg home. The statesman of the same name, whom we have seen in our midst, shared this same family defect, and was accordingly known in Saxony as "Beist;" and one of the Ministries of which he formed a member was currently spoken of, by way of joke, as "Behr beisst Rabenhorst." As droll as any was Professor Kaufmann, from whom, long before I listened to the curious cadences of his speech, the Prince Consort learnt very orthodox political economy conveyed in the prosiest of ways, fortunately relieved by the quaintest illustrations of economic truths which could ever have issued from the brain of man. He looked like one of Cruikshank's figures come to life, and it was really difficult not to laugh at him.
The Prince's shafts of wit never wanted point, but at the same time they never struck painfully home. There was no mimicry or jest which even its victims could not readily forgive. Years after the Prince had left Bonn, the very men whom he had amused himself by taking off most mercilessly looked back, not only without resentment, but with absolute satisfaction, on all this intercourse. And when, on the approach of the Prince's marriage, it was proposed to send him a Latin address of congratulation, and to bestow upon him—as the fittest offering for the occasion that the Senate could think of—the Degree of Doctor utriusque juris, the motion was carried by acclamation, and the learned Professor Ritschl was at once commissioned to compose a Latin ode, which turned out perfect in grammar and prosody, but which is a trifle too long to be here quoted.
With the students, generally speaking—apart from his own little princely set—the Prince was less intimate. He would mingle with them in the quadrangle, the lecture-hall, and the fencing-room, and he would invite them periodically, in batches, to his hospitable table, where, of course, he made a most genial host. But I have heard complaints of his supposed reserve and coldness, and his keeping people at a distance, contrasting just a little with the engouement with which Prince Ernest was ready to take part in the fun and frolic of German student life. It was said that the coming engagement with the Queen, which rumour considerably ante-dated, had chilled Prince Albert's young blood, and led him to stand a little on his dignity. Probably this was to some extent a question of manner. But, moreover, it ought to be borne in mind, that student life was in those days just a trifle rough, and, knowing what it was, one can readily understand the Prince's disinclination to identify himself altogether with habits not by any means congenial to himself. He could grow sociable enough with students on proper occasions. He is known to have been a regular attendant at the Fechtboden—where, however, he practised rather with the broad-sword than with the student's rapier—ready to accept the challenge of any competent opponent; and he would occasionally look on with interest at a real Mensur, whenever good fencers were put forward to fight. We know that at a great fencing match he carried off the first prize.[11] Even beyond this, from time to time he would visit a students' Kneipe—having duly prepared himself for the short nocturnal dissipation with a little snooze—and join very readily in the fun and the mirth, more particularly in such amusements as allowed play for the intellectual faculties. He was fond of German melodies, and knew how to delight his audience with a song. And when it came to some serio-comic diversion—such as the mock-trial know as a Bierconvent, a travesty of legal proceedings, conceived, when ably led, in the spirit of Demosthenes' hypothetical lawsuit about "the shadow of an ass"—he is said to have been excellent. But mere beer-drinking and shouting were not in his line. At home he was wont to cultivate the Muses, People still talk of a little volume of poetry which the two brothers are said to have brought out conjointly in support of a local charity, and to which Prince Albert is supposed to have contributed the verse, and Prince Ernest the tunes. I should not be surprised to learn that Prince Albert had as much to do with the music as with the text. So far as there was poetry and music and geniality to be found under the rough mask of student life, the Prince was very ready to take part in it. And during the sixteen months of his studentship he grew sufficiently familiar with some of his fellow-students even to tutoyer. My friend, E. von C——, who was then a boy, distinctly remembers meeting him walking towards the Rhine, and hearing him accosted by two burly "Westphalians": "Wo gehst du hin, Albert?" "Ich gehe ins Schiff," was his reply; "ich reise nach England." The Westphalians at once turned round to see him off. That was an eventful journey "to England."
How little hauteur really had to do with the Prince's intercourse with his fellow-men is testified by the friendly acquaintanceship which grew up at Bonn between him and persons of an entirely different class, and which has still left its honourable memories behind.
Pretty well opposite his own quarters, cornering the Martinsplatz—where now are two much-frequented shops—in those days stood a middle-sized house, over the door of which might be read the inscription "Weinwirthschaft von Peter Stamm." In later days, under a new proprietor, the house came to be more ambitiously christened "Gasthaus zum Deutschen Hof." In this establishment both Princes were frequent visitors, perhaps Prince Albert more so than his brother. It was at this corner generally that they mounted horse for a ride—I believe that some of their horses were put up in the "Weinwirthschaft"—and here accordingly my friend, von C——, used to watch for them, in order to hold their stirrups. In a University town, in which
Bibit hera, bibit herus,
Bibit miles, bibit clerus,
Bibit ille, bibit illa,
Bibit servus cum ancilla,
Bibit velox, bibit piger,
Bibit albus, bibit niger,
Bibit constans, bibit vagus,
Bibit rudis, bibit magus,
Bibit pauper et aegrotus,
Bibit exul et ignotus,
Bibit puer, bibit canus,
Bibit praesul et decanus,
Bibit soror, bibit frater,
Bibit anus, bibit mater,
Bibit iste, bibit ille,
Bibunt centum, bibunt mille:
Tam pro Papa, tam pro rege
Bibunt omnes sine lege,
of course there are wine-shops many, and beer-shops many; and neither student nor "Philistine" need ever be in any fear of having to remain "dry" for want of liquor. But there has always been some one or other wine-house raised a little above the common run, not by any pretentious architecture or outfit—as a rule it was in external features one of the most unpretending in the town—but by the superior quality of the liquor served. Here would meet—as is doubtless the case now—the honoratiores of the town, and some other blithe spirits, admitted almost by favour, a select clientèle, to sip down, to the accompaniment of fluent conversation, not the vulgar "schoppen" of the multitude, but the capitalist "special"—a half-pint held in a massive goblet-shaped glass. In my time the "select" wine-house of this sort was that of "Schmitzköbes"—which means "James Schmitz"—in the market-place. In the Prince's time it was the house of Peter Stamm. However, it was not for the wine that the Prince came to this house—though in moderation he appreciated a glass of good Rhenish, or Walporzheim. In our aristocratically organised country, where, moreover, sportsmanship is held to be public property, as accessible to the stockbroker as to the squire, we have no idea of the fast link which in Germany—altogether differently constituted, at any rate, then—the love of sport will bind between persons of totally different classes. It holds them together like a bracket. Prince and farmer, noble and tradesman—it is all alike quoad sport; for that purpose genuine comradeship is established, on altogether equal terms. There is no giving one's self away in this, nor yet any undue presumption. The tradesman remains a tradesman, the prince no less a prince; social differences are merely put aside. Now Peter Stamm was a most zealous sportsman, who knew where to find a hare or a bird for many miles round, and could spend whole nights and days with his dog and with his gun—more particularly if there were some like-minded companion to share the sport. And what was more for the present purpose, he was an ardent horse-fancier, and a connaisseur of horse-flesh. His brother, "Stamm-hannes"—that is, "John Stamm"—was a noted horse-dealer and horse-breaker, who always had some good cattle on hand. And, moreover, Peter Stamm was a great dog-fancier, and known for having the best dogs in all Bonn. From him, I believe, it was that the Prince purchased that handsome favourite of his, Eôs, whom he brought over with him to England, his constant companion then on walks and drives and travels. So here was a threefold cord which bound together these two neighbours, living within a stone's throw of one another—a link which never broke in after-life. Long after the Prince had left Bonn, there used to be messages going backwards and forwards. When Peter was gone, Stamm-hannes kept up the intercourse, and on one of his travels to England even visited the Prince as an old friend. They are both dead now—and so is Nicolas, the third brother, who kept the Bellevue Hotel on the Rhine. But to the present day old Fräulein Stamm, now eighty-three years of age, carefully preserves and affectionately cherishes the few keepsakes which still remain of the Prince's giving—originally to Peter—and there is nothing that the old lady is more fond of talking about than those old days, when the Prince and Peter used to drive out to the Kottenforst together, and Peter would come home and tell her of their common, not overexciting, adventures. The keepsakes have dwindled down to three pictures and two porcelain cups, the latter rather rudely painted, as was the fashion in those days, with views of the Drachenfels and Rolandseck. Of the pictures, two are portraits of the young Princes taken at Brussels before they repaired to Bonn, and showing their boyish faces flanked by two heavy pairs of epaulettes. The third, a woodcut, represents some unknown sportsman going a-stalking. There used to be other small articles, such as sportsman friends are in the habit of presenting to one another; but time has, one after the other, disposed of them.
The Prince, we know, was always particularly fond of bodily exercise. At Bonn he would fence regularly. And he would swim with as much zest, and think nothing of mixing with the common crowd in those rough-and-ready swimming-baths which I well remember; for in my time they were still all the convenience for river bathing that Bonn had to offer—a rude concern on the other bank of the Rhine, knocked together out of a raft and a few sheds. In those baths the Prince did not seem to mind whom he rubbed shoulders with. In this respect he closely resembled his son-in-law, the Emperor Frederick, whose popularity in Berlin was not a little enhanced by the sans gêne with which he would, while in the water, join in the splashing and larking of his future subjects, to whom it never on such occasions occurred to forget themselves. A simple "Na, Jungens, jetzt ist genug" from the Prince would at once warn them back into proper distance. The Prince Consort became just as popular among the swimmers at Bonn. The Rhine is really a troublesome river to swim in, on account of the force of its current. The Prince would have himself rowed up a pretty long distance, to swim back. I once or twice swam the same distance, in company with Count H——, of the "Borussians," and we both found it quite long enough. A very favourite sport with the Prince was, to tumble little boys into the water—the swimming-master being by for safety—and then dive after them to bring them up. He would select such as were not likely to be frightened. And they came to like the fun.
But the Prince's favourite recreation of all was going a-shooting. In the near neighbourhood of Bonn there is no very ambitious sport. The more venturesome spirits go as far as the Eifel Mountains, there to kill wild-boar and red-deer. For this the Prince grudged the time. So he had to be content with hares and birds, an occasional roebuck—and, I dare say, in those, early days he now and then brought down a fox, which in Germany is reckoned rather good sport. When, in 1858, the Crown Prince, Emperor Frederick, came back from his wedding, and found the officers of the Deutz Cuirassiers drawn up in line at the Cologne station to salute him, he singled out Count F——, of M—dorf, to present more especially to his bride. "I must present Count F—— to you," he said; "it was on his estate that I shot my first fox." Either Count F——'s conscience stung him, or else he realised better than the Crown Prince in what light vulpicide is regarded in the Princess's country: "It was not really a fox, Sir," he explained with some embarrassment; "it was a wild cat."
There were water-fowl near Brühl; there used to be a heronry there. But I do not think the Prince went in that direction. His ordinary shooting-ground was near Bergheim, on the other side of the Rhine and, beyond the Venusberg, in the Kottenforst, a long stretch of forest, not everywhere well-timbered, in which Peter Stamm had a "Jagd," to which of course the Prince was welcome. Wherever the forest was a little ragged there were, of course, black game. And then, in spring, to the Prince's great delight, there was woodcock shooting. The "Schnepfenstrich" was his pet sport, and never was he to be seen more regularly driving his plain little trap out to Röttgen—where Stamm had his shooting—the faithful Peter always by his side—than in the four weeks which precede Palm Sunday, the season of all others sacred in Germany to woodcock shooting, for
Oculi, da kommen sie;
Laetare, das ist das wahre;
Judica, sind sie auch noch da;
Palmarum, Trallarum.
The Latin words are the Lutheran calendar names for the four Sundays next before Easter.
Often Stamm-hannes would be of the party—often also Everard Sator, another local Nimrod and horse-fancier, of Stamm's peculiar set, and acceptable to the Prince. And some of the Prince's more aristocratic companions would likewise occasionally join. But the Prince and Peter were in this matter inseparables, roughing it out on the wooded heights from sheer love of sport; and after that they would meet in the "Weinwirthschaft" and talk over their common experiences, being attentively overheard by a small company who reckoned it a privilege, however little they might know about shooting, to listen to these sportmen's tales, and bottle them up to retail to others after the Prince was gone.
There was another very faithful friend, of humbler station still, whose heart the Prince managed to capture by his genial affability and the kind interest which it was his wont to manifest in others. Nobody could have stayed any time in Bonn at that particular period without becoming acquainted with "Appeltring"—or, as she was more ceremoniously called to her face, "Frau Gevatterin." She was, without question, the most popular "character" in Bonn, and there was no man who had not a kind word for her, and was not ready to test her well-known power of repartee by a little joke. "Appeltring," of course, means "Apple-kate"—"Tring" standing for Katherine by one of those extraordinary transformations of names which, probably, not even Grimm could explain, and which in the Rhenish dialect convert "Heinrich" into "Drickes," and "Reinhard" into "Nieres." She was an apple-woman, as her name implies, or, rather, a seller of fruit generally, and had her stall or tent just outside the Neuthor, close to the Prince's quarters, and on a spot which he must pass several times almost every day—a coign of vantage, moreover, from which all the fashionable and unfashionable world taking the air in the Poppelsdorfer Allee, might be surveyed, as can all the fine folk passing in and out of Hyde Park from Hyde Park Corner. She was on that spot still when I was at Bonn twenty-three years later, and she was there for some time after—a weather-bronzed, wrinkled old woman then, but still full of chat and lively talk, humour and repartee, and endowed with a truly encyclopædic knowledge of everyone who had been anyone at Bonn, and of his life, and failings, and little adventures. Even in the Prince's day she was decidedly past her first youth, and devoid of personal attractions; but she had still something of the halo about her then of a not very distant serio-comic little love affair, about which she was made to hear no end of chaff—with a trumpeter (named Bengler, if I recollect right) who lost his life in that Russian war in which the great Moltke won his first spurs. During all the time that she offered her wares outside the Neuthor her stall was a favourite resort with folk who had a spare quarter of an hour on their hands, some of them of the best blood. The Emperor Frederick has sat on that spot many a time, watching the passers-by, and exchanging chat with "Tring," while eating cherries from one of the shallow flat-bottomed baskets in which "Frau Gevatterin," or her younger assistant, served them from the tent; and so have the Coburg Princes, more particularly Prince Albert, who had a peculiar liking for "Appeltring" and her quaint ways, her good temper, and her ready answers. Barring the Princes, "Tring's" customers were not always prompt paymasters. This necessitated the keeping of accounts, which, as "Tring" was nothing of a penwoman, resulted in a description of bookkeeping so curious as to induce a learned archæological society of Bonn afterwards to publish her records in facsimile. There were no names, but rude imitations of a beard, or a tassel, or big top-boots, or else a peculiar nose, or a pair of spectacles, or some other distinguishing feature about the particular debtor.
The habit of almost daily chat begot a peculiar familiarity and interest in one another's affairs between these two people at opposite poles of society, and inspired "Tring" with a devotion to the Prince which has just a touch of romance about it. To her simple but honest mind the Prince was the noblest creature that walked the earth. Whenever he failed to pass to bid her good-day, she seemed to feel as if deprived of a substantial pleasure. For years and decades after he had gone she would relate with striking animation little stories of his life in Bonn, and tell of his kindness to her. She was indefatigable in inquiries about him, and would draw in every word of information received with eager curiosity. Nor did she ever hear of anyone going to England without commissioning him—"Jrüsse Se den Prinzen Albehrt." It sounded very ridiculous to some, no doubt. But I venture to surmise, that to the Prince himself that broadly Rhenish "Jrüsse Se den Prinzen Albehrt" would have been a not unwelcome greeting.
Most of the good people here spoken of, with whom the Prince exchanged jokes and more serious intercourse, whom he charmed with his happy temper or edified with graver talk, are now dead and gone. Bonn has grown a town of 50,000 or 60,000 inhabitants, well-to-do, bright and attractive, adding to its population year by year. The University has throughout its history maintained its old high rank. As a new generation rises up old reminiscences are dying out. Stories which thirty years ago passed current from mouth to mouth are gradually being forgotten. There is so much more that used to be told of the Prince, when memories were fresh; indeed, there is much that might be told still, only the incidents seem trivial in themselves, and memorable only as demonstrating what singular power their hero possessed of riveting men's affections, and as concurring in impressing a stamp of noble principle, unselfish consideration for others, of a genial and happy disposition, and laborious devotion to study upon his student life of sixteen months. There was, there is reason to believe, very much good done in private, of which the outside world never heard. To Bonn the Prince's stay was a turning-point in its history; and, since elsewhere scarcely anything has been said about that particular epoch in the Prince's life, it may not be unmeet to gather together the fragments of traditions and reminiscences surviving, before they pass finally out of men's minds, and thus to fill a gap hitherto left in the memorials of a life which has in its later periods amply realized the promise given in the early days of youth here spoken of.
When Judas Iscariot, as the legend has it, prompted by a presumptuous ambition to emulate Our Saviour in the performance of a miracle similar to that of Cana, spoke his cabalistic words over the water which he desired to make potable, it may be argued that a worse product might have resulted from the process than beer—at any rate from a non-teetotal point of view. According to another legend, of wider currency, the inventor of beer was not the apostate apostle, but a more or less mythical king of Brabant, named Gambrinus. His bine-crowned visage may be seen beaming from the walls of most tap-rooms in Germany and in those more or less German provinces which once formed, or should have formed, or still form, that political desideratum, the "Middle Kingdom." This is a case of ex vocabulo fabula. For Gambrivium is Cambray—the Cambray of the League and also of early brewing. And "Gambrinus" is either John the Victorious of Brabant, who fell in a tournament held at Bar-le-Duc on the occasion of the marriage of Henri, count of that country, with Eleanor, daughter of our King Edward I., or else—and more probably—it is Jean Sans-Peur of Burgundy, who, to ingratiate himself with his Flemish subjects, had a dollar coined, showing a wreath of hop-bine encircling his head—and also instituted the order of the Houblon, giving no little offence thereby to his loyal clergy. Not that there was anything at all heretical in his act. No; but the case was really much worse. For the clergy, it turned out, in those days had a vested interest in beer. That was in the fourteenth century, when the liquor was still generally brewed without hops, a mixture of aromatic herbs being used instead, which was in most cases supplied from episcopal forests. So it was in Brabant. The Bishop of Liége possessed virtually a monopoly of the trade in gruyt, and when Duke John favoured the cultivation of hops, the bishop's income suffered a serious diminution. Accordingly, his Eminence remonstrated—just as in our country, about 1400, and again in 1442, complaint was made to Parliament of the introduction of that "wicked weed, that would spoil the taste of drink and endanger the people." In the dioceses of Utrecht and Cologne it was just the same thing. The bishops fought hard for their gruyt or krüt, using their crosiers as a defensive weapon, but had eventually to give in. From this it would appear that what King Gambrinus really did introduce was not beer, but the use in the brewing of it of hops, the ingredient over which that eminent saint, Abbess Hildegardis of Rupertusberg, had already pronounced her benediction. St. Hildegardis was a saint of unquestionable authority, having been specially recognised at the Council of Trèves as a prophetess by St. Bernard and Pope Eugenius IV. She recommended hops on the ground that, though "heating and drying," and productive of "a certain melancholy and sadness" (she must have been thinking of the effects next day), they possess the sovereign virtues of preventing noxious fermentation and also of preserving the beer. (Burton, in partial opposition to the saint, asserts that beer—hopped, of course—"hath an especial virtue against melancholy, as our herbalists confess.") St. Hildegardis' opinion was given in the twelfth century. That was not by any means the earliest age of beer; for we find it referred to in history some centuries before. Whether the inhabitants of Chalcedon, when they shouted in derision after the Emperor Valens, "Sabajarius! Sabajarius!"—which has been translated, "drinker of beer"—really referred to beer, as we now understand it, must appear doubtful. In the same way, the reputed "beer" of the early Egyptians and Hebrews—alluded to by Xenophon, Herodotus, and other ancient writers—may or may not have been beer in our sense. But in the eighth century we find Charlemagne enjoining brewing in his dominions. In 862 we have Charles the Bald making to the monks of St. Denis a grant of ninety boisseaux d'épeautre a year pour faire de la cervoise. In 1042 we have Henri I. conferring on the monks of Montreuil-sur-Marne the valuable right of brewing, and in 1268 St. Louis laying down rules for the guidance of brewers in Paris. Paris was then, as it now is becoming again—I cannot say that I like the idea—a very "beery" place. Its brewers, even at a very remote time, formed a highly respected corporation, using as their insignia and trade-mark an image of the Holy Virgin—their patron saint—incongruously enough grouped together with Ceres, both being encircled by the legend:—Bacchi Ceres aemula. No modern Pope would allow such crossing of the two religions. Ceres was of course in olden time looked upon as the especial goddess of beer, made of barley, which was after her named Cerevisia. Juvenal mentions Demetrius as its name, derived of course from Demeter. However, Fischart, a notable German poet, who lived in the sixteenth century, ascribes its invention to Bacchus, as an intended substitute for wine wherever there are no grapes. Modern Germany has produced a very pretty song, which represents Wine as a wonder-working nobleman, making a triumphal progress in grand style, clad in silk and gold, and Beer crossing his path as a sturdy but rather perky peasant, in a frieze jacket and top-boots, challenging him to a thaumaturgic tourney, as Jannes and Jambres challenged Moses. After an amusing little squabble the two make friends, and henceforth rule the world in joint sovereignty and happy unity. At Paris, in the reign of Charles V., we find the local brewers, twenty-one in number, so wealthy as to be able to pay a million écus d'or for their licenses. Under Charles VI., beer had become a regulation drink at the French court, and we have our own Richard II. presenting the French king with a "vaisseau à boire cervoise." From this it may be inferred that the famous verselet—
Hops and turkeys, carps and beer,
or, as some rigid Anglican has improved it—
Hops, reformation, bays, and beer
Came to England all in one year—
to wit, the year 1525—is a little wrong in its date, and that beer was known earlier. After the date named, we know that it soon made its way into the highest circles. As proof of this we have the one shoe which Queen Bess carelessly left behind after that lunch, of which beer formed an item, with which she was regaled on her progress through Sussex, under the spreading oak still shown in that pretty village of Northiam—
O fair Norjem! thou dost far exceed
Beckley, Peasmarsh, Udimore, and Brede—
which shoe may still be seen, by favour, in the private archæological collection at Brickwall House, in company with Accepted Frewen's toasting-fork.
Saxon descent may have had much to do with the development of our own peculiar cerevisial taste—taste, that is, for beer with some body and a good strong flavour of malt. There can be no doubt that, compared with the produce of other countries, our beer is still the best—if only one's liver will stand it—the most tasty, the most nourishing—"meat, drink and cloth," as Sir John Linger puts it—beer which will occasionally "make a cat speak and a wise man dumb." The Saxons always had a liking for beer with something in it—not merely "strong water," as Sir Richard l'Estrange calls the small stuff. The ancient Teutons, we know, were all of them furious drinkers. Accordingly, not a few of the modern generation hold, with Luther's Elector of Saxony, that a custom of such very venerable antiquity ought not to be lightly abandoned. Tacitus writes that the Germans think it no shame to spend a whole day and night a-drinking. The Greek Emperor Nicephoras Phorcas told the ambassador of Emperor Otho that his master's soldiers had no other proficiency but in getting drunk. Rudolph of Hapsburgh grew vociferous over the discovery of good beer. "Walk in, walk in!" he shouted, standing at a tavern door in Erfurt, wholly oblivious of his imperial dignity; "there is excellent beer to be had inside." And "good King Wenceslas" of our Christmas carol—described as "good" nowhere else—was an habitual toper, and was "done" accordingly by the French at Rheims, where he thought more of the wine than of the treaty which he was negotiating. Henri Quatre would on no account marry a German wife. "Je croirais," he said, "toujours avoir un pot de vin auprès de moi." A modern writer, Charles Monselet, says that in Strassburg—in this respect a typically German town—"tout se ressent de la domination de la bière." Beer lends its colour to the faces of the inhabitants, to their hair, to their clothes; to the soil and the houses; and the very women seem nothing but "walking chopes." But the Saxons in particular—not the modern ones, but those of the North, some of whom found their way into England—always loved good stout nutritious drink, such as that to which the German composer Von Flotow ascribes our sturdy robustness:
Das ist das treffliche Elixir,
Das ist das kräftige Porterbier.
Obsopæus says of the ancient Saxons:
Coctam Cererem potant crassosque liquores.
And an old rhyme, still quoted with gusto, goes to this effect:
Ein echter Sachse wird, wie alle Völker sagen,
Nie schmal in Schultern sein, noch schlaffe Lenden tragen.
Fragt Einer, welches denn die Ursach' sei:
Er isset Speck und Wurst, und trinket Mumm dabei.
"Mumm" is our own good old "mum," about the meaning of which in an Act of Parliament there was recently some controversy, when even Mr. Gladstone did not quite know how to explain it. It is the good, thick, stout, nourishing beer—nil spissius illo—which makes blood and flesh, and gives strength—"vires præstat et augmentat carnem, generatque cruorem," says the school of Salerno. Very presumably it is such beer as this, too, of which the unnamed witty poet quoted in Percy's "Reliques" writes:
nobilis ale-a
Efficit heroas dignamque heroe puellam.
No doubt beer has had a good many nasty things said about it. The same school of Salerno lays it down that "crassos humores nutrit cerevisia, ventrem quoque mollit et inflat." It also affirms that ebriety resulting from beer is more hurtful than that produced by wine. But, notwithstanding this, it endorses the advice given by Matthew de Gradibus, which is, to drink it in preference to wine at the beginning of, or even throughout, meals, and above all things after any great exertion. "Cerevisia vero utpote crassior, et ad concoctionem pertinacior, non tam avide rapitur: quare ab ea potus in principio prandii vel cœnae utilius inchoatur. Cerevisia humores etiam orificio stomachi insidentes abluit, et sitim, quæ ex nimia vini potatione timetur, praeterea et quamlibet aliam mendosam coercet ac reprimit." To say nothing of the censure pronounced by Crato, Henry of Avranches, and Wolfram von Eschenbach—that pillar of the Roman Church, Cardinal Chigi, charitably suggests that if beer had but a little sulphur added, it would become a right infernal drink. And Moscherosch, joking on the admixture of pitch with beer, common in his time—possibly copied from a similar practice applied to wine in the days of ancient Greece—speaks of "la bière poissée qui habitue au feu de l'enfer." "Pix intrantibus" used to be a familiar superscription placed for a joke over tavern doors. Then, again, we have Luther barely qualifying the old German rhyme—
Gott machte Gutes, Böses wir:
Er braute Wein, wir brauen Bier—
by laying it down that "Vinum est donatio Dei, cerevisia traditio humana." And he went so far as to pronounce the leading brewer of his time "Pestis Germaniae." But this same Luther was himself a zealous beer-toper. He drank beer, it is on record, when plotting the Reformation with Melanchthon at Torgau. He called for Bierseidel when Carlstadt came to the "Bear" at Jena to discuss with him the subject of consubstantiation. And the two divines used their pewters very freely by way of accentuating their theological arguments, and, towards the close of the sitting, even in substitution of them. Luther records with satisfaction, in his "Table Talk," that many presents reached him from France, Prussia, and Russia, of "wormwood-beer." And at Worms, where he was pleading the cause of the reformed faith before a hostile Diet, the one ray of comfort which pierced through the gloom of his imprisonment was the arrival, particularly mentioned in his letters, of a small cask of "Eimbeck" beer from one of the friendly princes. Like our modern M.P.'s annually exercised about the matter, the German reformer had a fervent zeal for the "purity of beer"—so fervent, that he actually threatened adulterating brewers with Divine wrath. He wrote these lines:
Am jüngsten Tage wird geschaut
Was jeder für ein Bier gebraut.
On the other hand, Cardinal Chigi's Roman anathema is more than neutralised by any number of benedictions, expressed or implied, from holy men of his Church. There are the regulations of St. Louis, of St. Hildegardis, the enlisted interest of the Bishops of Cologne, Utrecht, and Liége, the patron-saintship of St. Amandus, St. Leonard, St. Adrian, and the Irish St. Florentius, and, moreover, the very close connection which from time immemorial monks and religious houses have maintained with brewing. In olden days they were the brewers par excellence. In Lorraine our English Benedictines of Dieulouard, who maintained themselves in their monastery near Pont-à-Mousson down to the time of the Revolution, long possessed an absolute monopoly of brewing, and were famed for their produce. And M. Reiber will have it that there are still in Germany, at the present day, des congrégations de moines brasseurs. Then there is St. Chrodegang, a near relative of Charlemagne, the great reformer of monastic orders, who particularly directed—and the rule is still observed—that monks should be allowed the option of either beer or wine. And sensible monks, a communicative Carthusian confided to me the other day, prefer good beer any day to bad wine.
If, in face of all this, neither Romanists nor Protestants can say anything against beer, much less are Mussulmans in a position to do so. For Mahomet actually, though he expressly forbids wine, never says a word in prohibition of beer—thus leaving a convenient loophole to thirsty Mahommedans, of which French writers tell us that bibulous Algerians eagerly avail themselves.
From all this it will be seen that, despite teetotal disparagement, beer comes before the world, so to speak, with very respectable credentials, entitling it to a fairly good reception. Brillat-Savarin, it is true, admits to its detriment that "l'eau est la seule boisson qui apaise véritablement la soif." But "l'eau," says another French writer, M. Reiber, "est la prose des liquides, l'alcool en est la poésie." Speaking more particularly of beer, among alcoholic drinks, M. Dubrunfaut writes: "La bière occupe incontestablement le premier rang parmi les boissons hygiéniques connues." And he goes on to say that among the beer-drinking nations one finds, as a rule, manly qualities most developed—as among the English, the Germans, the Dutch, the Belgians, and the Northern French. Brillat-Savarin only objects that beer makes people stout.
Of course there is beer and beer. The wise doctors of Salerno very rightly gave particular attention to this subject—as well they might, for beer was adulterated in their days with no more scruple than it is in ours. The Minnesinger Marner, in the thirteenth century, bitterly complains that brewers make beer even without malt. There was no minnesinging to be done on such drink. Then there was the manufacture of the aroma. Before there were hops—and even after—people had a violent fancy for spices, the indulgence in which was carried to such a point that the Church, meeting in Council at Worms in 868, and at Trèves in 895, felt bound to take notice of the matter, and in a special canon laid down the rule that beer spiced after the manner then prevalent should be allowed, as a luxury, only on Sundays and saints' days. What those spices were may be gathered from the following recipe for making beer, which appears to have been first published at Strassburg (from early days a cerevisian city) in 1512, and which was twice re-issued, under special approbation—namely, in 1552 and 1679. "To one pound of coloured 'sweet-root' (probably liquorice) add seven ounces of good cinnamon, four ounces of the best ginger, one ounce each of cloves, 'long' pepper, galanga, and nutmeg, half an ounce each of mace and of cardamom, and two ounces of genuine Italian saffron." Whatever might be added in the shape of malt, who would recognise in this decoction anything remotely worthy of the name of beer? It is of such stuff that Cardinal Chigi must have been thinking when he pronounced beer "infernal drink." For brewing beer the school of Salerno give the following good advice:
Non acidum sapiat cerevisia, sit bene clara.
Ex granis sit cocta bonis satis, ac veterata.
It must not, above all things, be sour. For acidity "ventriculo inimica est. Acetus nervosas offendit partes." As the Germans have it—and they ought to know—
Ein böses Weib und sauer Bier
Behüt' der Himmel dich dafür!
It should be clear, because "turbida impinguat, flatus gignit, atque brevem spiritum efficit." "Bene cocta" it should be, for "male cocta ventris inflationes, tormina et colicos cruciatos generat"—which Latin speaks for itself. As for good grain, the doctors appear to prefer a mixture of barley and oats. They allow either wheat, barley, or oats. Wheat, they say, makes the most nourishing beer, but heating and astringent. Barley alone makes the beer cold and dry. A mixture of barley and oats renders it less nourishing, but also lighter on the stomach, and less confining and distending. The Germans nowadays brew beer of every conceivable grain and no-grain, even potatoes. But according to the material so is the product. Lastly, say the doctors, beer, like wine, should be old, or you will feel the effects in your stomach.
We cannot at the present period dissociate from beer the idea of hops. But it was comparatively late in history before hops were regarded as an indispensable ingredient. The Sclav nations are reported to have had them early; also the Mahommedans of the East. Haroun-al-Rashid's physician states that in his day they were given as medicine. In France, the first record of their cultivation is of the year 768, when Pepin le Bref gave some directions as to the hop-grounds belonging to the monastery of St. Denis. In Germany they are known to have been successfully cultivated about Magdeburg in 1070. We are supposed to have received them over here in 1525. In Alsace, beer-drinking country as it is, they were not cultivated till 1802. The soil being very suitable, they then made way with such rapidity that they soon crowded out completely madder and woad, which had previously been considered the most profitable crops—so profitable, that from the coques de pastel (woad), which were looked upon as the emblem of prosperity and well-being, the Lauraguais, and indeed the whole country round Toulouse, came to be christened le pays de Cocagne. Hence our own word of "Cockaigne," about the derivation of which so many contradictory guesses have been made. It may be interesting to note that in Strassburg the bakers at one time used to put hops into their yeast, and that in some foreign countries the young shoots of the hop-bine furnish a favourite vegetable, dressed like asparagus.
Drinking habits are of course by far the most developed in Germany, where beer has really become the object of a cult. Blessed with a healthy thirst, which made our own poet Owen exclaim—
Si latet in vino verum, ut proverbia dicunt,
Invenit verum Teuto, vel inveniet—
the nation has seized upon beer as a second faith, "outside which there is no salvation." Fischart, indeed, in his verses bade people who must drink beer, and would not be satisfied with German wine, "go to Copenhagen; there they would find beer enough." Denmark truly was of old—we know from "Hamlet"—a grand country for drinking. But in respect of beer, in the present day, it is not "in it" with Germany. Tacitus wrote about German drinking. Emperor Charlemagne felt bound to pass a law against it. The earlier Popes, before consenting to crown a German emperor, exacted from him an affirmative reply to the standing question: "Vis sobrietatem cum Dei auxilio custodire?" Of the old Palsgraves it used to be said: "Potatores sub cœlo non meliores;" and "bibere more palatino" became a byword. Maximilian I. felt called upon to pass stringent laws. In the sixteenth century Germany went by the name of "Die grossen Trinklande." And Luther, when resting from his seidels accompanying theological disputations, expressed a fear "lest this devil (of thirst) should go on tormenting Germany till the day of judgment." The modern Germans have remained true to the custom of their forefathers, and have developed it scientifically.
Um den Gerstensaft, geliebte Seelen,
Dreht sich unser ganzer Staat herum.
The whole commonwealth literally "hinges" upon beer. The Emperor has drunk it as a student at Bonn, and presumably still drinks it—in moderation. The German Chancellor, instead of the parliamentary full-dress dinners customary among ourselves, invites the members of the Diet to "beer-evenings." If a learned professor discover a new bacillus or antidotal lymph; if an African traveller annex a new province; if a statesman attain his jubilee—there is but one form of public recognition for all varieties of merit and distinction, and that is a biercommers. No doubt the great extension of university education has a great deal to do with the spread of regulated beer-drinking. The learned classes set the tone, and the many follow it.
Cerevisiam bibunt homines, animalia cætera fontes.
That has become the general motto. It sounds very filthy to hear of the astounding quantities of liquor consumed. But, in the first place, where much is drunk, it is only very light stuff. And, to make it less trying, the drinkers adopt the Socratic maxim of "small cups and many," by frothing the beer up incredibly. Altogether they follow good classical rules, which it is curious to trace, and which make their symposia rather interesting. Drinking is not the end, but only the natural means for attaining hilarity. And there is a good deal of rough geniality about it. Like the ancient Greeks, these organised drinkers fix a well-recognised τρόπος τῆς πόσεως. They have their absolute ruler, the symposiarch, their accepted order of drinking, their proper scale of fines. And also, as in Greece, only too often drinking is not a voluntary act, but ἀναγκάζεσθαι, and it is made to be ἀπνευστὶ πίνειν—drinking without taking breath. There is the προπίνειν φιλοτησίας—drinking to one another—which must be answered. There are songs and jokes—though no tæniæ and, fortunately, no kisses. And the small cups are duly followed up with the large horns, the κέρατα, and the huge vessels which the Greeks called φρέατα. Nay, these modern classics even imitate the Greeks in respect of the ἅλες καὶ κύμινον. For in many places the well-salted and carawayed ἐπίπαστα forms a standing accompaniment to the liquor. And next day, if they are a trifle "foxed," they copy the Greeks in κραιπάλην κραιπάλη ἐξελαύνειν, or, as Sir John Linger calls it in better "understanded" language, they take "a hair of the same dog," with a pickled herring covered with raw onions for a companion, which is supposed to set all things right. There are beer-courts to adjudge upon disputes, there are indeterminate beer-minutes to settle the time—everything is "beer." In all this joking there is no harm. As little harm is meant to be in the missœ cerevisiales which tradition has handed down from the time when monks were both the greatest brewers and also the greatest drinkers, and, probably, in their refectories and misericords made as much fun of the service over their cups as do now—or did until lately—German students. There is the genuine chanting of versicles and responses, but the words have reference to beer. This practice, I am glad to say, is now very much on the decline.
All this is scarcely surprising. We all knew it of the Germans long ago. But it is a little strange to find France once more—few people know about the first time—taking her place among beer-drinking countries and placing the honestas chopinandi among the precepts of the modern decalogue. The French are good enough to explain that they do this, not for their own gratification, but as a public service, as "saviours of society," to "rendre les mœurs gambrinales plus aimables." That may be. But the fact remains, that the annual consumption of beer per head of the population in France has now risen to 21 litres (about 14 quarts), which on the top of 119 litres of wine (however light), 20 litres of cider, and 4 litres of spirits, is a respectable allowance enough. For Germany the figures are said to be—93 litres of beer, 6 of wine, and 10 of spirits—and such spirits! France brews every year more than eight millions of hectolitres of beer, and consumes considerably more. To do this, of course it must import from abroad. And very rightly too, I should say. For though French beer may no longer deserve the description given of it by the Emperor Julian, who condemned it as "smelling strongly of the goat," there is still little enough that is really good. And it is drunk out of such tiny thimbles! I suspect that there is a dodge in this. The "bocks" have grown smaller and smaller, till in some places they are mere tea-cups. But then out come the restaurateurs with their old disused "bocks," now re-christened bocks sérieux, and charge double price. That promises to make France a real brewers' paradise. But, large glasses or small, there is something about the beer which you must first get used to. Accordingly, many of those gorgeous brasseries, of genuinely German type, which seem so out of place in the Paris boulevards, are supplied, not from Tantonville or Xertigny, but from Munich or Vienna, or else from Strassburg. For, of course, the attachment which Frenchmen feel for their lost provinces had a great deal to do with their new departure in the way of a liking for beer. France, as it happens, owes some reparation to Strassburg, and more particularly to its brewers. For at various times it has treated the latter most unkindly. In the first place, the Second Empire unmercifully hastened on the hour of "Bruce," making it eleven "sharp," instead of the quarter past which had been previously allowed. This threatens never to be forgotten or forgiven. In the second place, the First Republic, though it honoured hops by assigning to them, in the place of the calendar saint, St. Omer, the patronship of the 9th of September, inflicted a very grievous injury when, in the An II. of its era, its tribunal révolutionnaire imposed a fine of 255,000 livres upon the brewing trade, as is stated in the official Livre Bleu, "pour les abus qu'ils ont pu se permettre sur leur comestibilité." The mulct is explained in this wise:—"Considérant que la soif de l'or a constamment guidé les brasseurs, il les condamne à deux cents cinquante-cinq mille livres d'amende, qu'ils doivent payer dans trois jours, sous peine d'être déclarés rebelles à la loi et de voir leurs biens confisqués." There is no talk of "compensation," as among ourselves. To be sure, the bakers, with nothing against them—except it be on the score of weight—fared worse. For they were declared hostes generis humani, and fined 300,000 livres. The brewers really paid only 188,000 livres. But that was considered heavy enough. In spite of this imposition, the brewing trade in Strassburg has made tremendous strides, and continues flourishing. And very much more beer is now consumed in the city than wine. For 1878 the figures were: 121,345 hectolitres of beer and 36,583 of wine. Paris in 1881 consumed 300,000 hectolitres of beer; in 1853 only 7,000 and in 1864 still only 40,000 hectolitres. (All this beer-drinking, it will be seen, dates from 1870.) In Paris, in spite of protection, the brewing interest appears to find foreign competition rather formidable. At the time of the first revolution, a French general (Santerre), with the assistance of government subsidies, tried very hard to oust us from the market by brewing "ale" and "porter." This earned the veteran the nickname of "Le Général Mousseux." But the speculation did not pay, and had to be abandoned. Having become so popular, beer has, of course, found many fervid apologists in France. "La bière fait en ce moment le tour du monde. Mieux que tous les raisonnements et quoi qu'en disent les esprits chagrins, sa vogue prouve que la boisson en houblon est utile, que l'humanité l'apprécie et en a besoin." So says M. Reiber. "La bonne bière n'est pas une boisson malsaine; elle est tonique et nourrissante." So says Dr. Tourdes.