Part 15
One does not in these countries look out particularly for the works of Roman or Bolognese masters; but I remember a wonderful Caracci at Munich, worthy a first place even in the Zampieri palace; the subject, Venus sitting under a great tree diverting herself with seeing a scuffle between the two boys Cupid and Anteros.
In the gallery here at Vienna, many of the pictures have been handled a good deal; one is dazzled with the brilliancy of these powerful colourists: and here is a David Teniers surprisingly natural, of Abraham offering up Isaac; a glorious Pordenone representing Santa Justina, reminded me of her fine church at Padua, and _his_ centurion at Cremona, which I know not who could excel; and here is Furino’s Sigismunda to be seen, the same or a duplicate of that sold at Sir Luke Schaub’s sale in London about thirty years ago, and called Correggio. I have seen it at Merriworth too, if not greatly mistaken. The price it went for in Langford’s auction-room I cannot surely forget, it was three thousand pounds, _or they said so_. I will only add a word of a Dutch girl representing Herodias, and so lively in its colouring, that I think the king would have denied her who resembled it nothing, had he been a native of Amsterdam. A Mount Calvary painted by the same hand is very striking, with a crowd of people gathered about the cross, and men selling cakes to the mob, as if at a fair or horse-race: two young peasants at fisty-cuffs upon the fore ground quarrelling, as it should seem, about the propriety of our Saviour’s execution.
But I have this day heard so many and such interesting particulars concerning the emperor, that I should not forgive myself if I failed to record and relate them, the less because my authority was particularly good, and the anecdotes singular and pleasing.
He rises then at five o’clock every morning, even at this sharp season, writes in private till nine, takes some refreshment then, and immediately after calls his ministers, and employs the time till one professedly in state affairs, rides out till three, returns and studies alone, letting the people bring his dinner at the appointed hour, chuses out of all the things they bring him one dish, and sets it on the stove to keep hot, eating it when nature calls for food, but never detaining a servant in the room to wait; at five he goes to the Corridor just near his own apartment, where poor and rich, small and great, have access to his person at pleasure, and often get him to arbitrate their law-suits, and decide their domestic differences, as nothing is more agreeable to him than finding himself considered by his people as their father, and dispenser of justice over all his extensive dominions. His attention to the duties he has imposed upon himself is so great, that, in order to maintain a pure impartiality in his mind towards every claimant, he suffers no man or woman to have any influence over him, and forbears even the slight gratification of fondling a dog, lest it should take up too much of his time. The emperor is a stranger upon principle to the joys of confidence and friendship, but cultivates the acquaintance of many ladies and gentlemen, at whose houses (when they see company) he drops in, and spends the evening cheerfully in cards or conversation, putting no man under the least restraint; and if he sees a new comer in look disconcerted, goes up to him and says kindly, “Divert yourself your own way, good Sir; and do not let me disturb you.” His coach is like the commonest gentleman’s of Vienna; his servants distinguished only by the plainness of their liveries; and, lest their insolence might make his company troublesome to the houses where he visits, he leaves the carriage in the street, and will not even be driven into the court-yard, where other equipages and footmen wait. A large dish of hot chocolate thickened with bread and cream is a common afternoon’s regale here, and the emperor often takes one, observing to the mistress of the house how acceptable such a meal is to him after so wretched a dinner.
A few mornings ago showed his character in a strong light. Some poor women were coming down the Danube on a float, the planks separated, and they were in danger of drowning; as it was very early in the day, and no one awake upon the shore except a sawyer that was cutting wood; who, not being able to obtain from his phlegmatic neighbours that assistance their case immediately required, ran directly to call the emperor who he knew would be stirring, and who came flying to give that help which from some happy accident was no longer wanted: but Joseph lost no good humour on the occasion; on the contrary, he congratulated the women on their deliverance, praising at the same time and rewarding the fellow for having disturbed him.
My informer told me likewise, that if two men dispute about any matter till mischief is expected, the wife of one of them will often cry out, “Come, have done, have done directly, or I’ll call our master, and he’ll make you have done.” Now is it fair not to do every thing but adore a sovereign like this? when we know that if such tales were told us of Marcus Aurelius, or Titus Vespasian, it would be our delight to repeat, our favourite learning to read of them. Such conduct would serve succeeding princes for models, nor could the weight of a dozen centuries smother their still rising fame. Yet is not my heart persuaded that the reputation of Joseph the Second will be consigned immaculate from age to age, like that of these immortal worthies, though dearly purchased by the loss of ease and pleasure; while neither the mitred prelate nor the blameless puritan pursue with blessings a heart unawed by splendour, unsoftened by simplicity; a hand stretched forth rather to dispense justice, than opening spontaneously to distribute charity. To speak less solemnly, if men were nearer than they are to perfect creatures, absolute monarchy would be the most perfect form of government, for the will of the prince could never deviate from propriety; but if one king can see all with his own eyes, and hear all with his own ears, no successor will ever be able to do the same; and it is like giving Harrison 10,000 l. for finding the longitude, to commend a person for having hit on the right way of governing a great nation, while his science is incommunicable, and his powers of execution must end with his life.
The society here is charming; Sherlock says, that he who does not like Vienna is his own satirist; I shall leave others to be mine. The ladies here seem very highly accomplished, and speak a great variety of languages with facility, studying to adorn the conversation with every ornament that literature can bestow; nor do they appear terrified as in London, lest pedantry should be imputed to them, for venturing sometimes to use in company that knowledge they have acquired in private by diligent application. Here also are to be seen young unmarried women once again: misses, who wink at each other, and titter in corners at what is passing in the rooms, public or private: I had lived so long away from _them_, that I had half forgotten their existence.
The horses here are trimmed at the heels, and led about in body clothes like ours in England; but their drawing is ill managed, no shafts somehow but a pole, which, when there is one horse only, looks awkward and badly contrived. Beasts of various kinds plowing together has a strange look, and the ox harnessed up like a hunter in a phaeton cuts a comical figure enough. One need no longer say, _Optat ephippia bos piger_[49]; but it is very silly, as no use can be thus made of that strength which lies only in his head and horns. Plenty of wood makes the Germans profusely elegant in their pales, hurdles, &c. which give an air of comfort and opulence, and make the best compensation a cold climate can make for the hedges of jessamine and medlar flowers, which I shall see no more.
Our architecture here can hardly be expected to please an eye made fastidious from the contemplation of Michael Angelo’s works at Rome, or Palladio’s at Venice; nor will German music much delight those who have been long accustomed to more simple melody, though intrinsic merit and complicated excellence will always deserve the highest note of praise. Whoever takes upon him to under-rate that which no one can obtain without infinite labour and study, will ever be censured, and justly, for refusing the reward due to deep research; but if a man’s taste leads him to like _Cyprus_ wine, let him drink _that_, and content himself with commending the _old hock_.
Apropos, we hear that _Sacchini_, the Metastasio of musical composers, is dead; but nobody at Vienna cares about his compositions. Our Italian friends are more candid; they are always talking in favour of Bach and Brughuel, Handel and Rubens.
The cabinet of natural history is exceedingly fine, and the rooms singularly well disposed. There are more cameos at Bologna, and one superior specimen of native gold: every thing else I believe is better here, and such opals did I never see before, no not at Loretto: the petrified lemon and artichoke have no equals, and a brown diamond was new to me to-day. A specimen of sea-salt filled with air bubbles like the rings one buys at Vicenza, is worth going a long way to look at; but the gentleman at Munich, who shewed us the Virgin Mary in a cobweb, had a piece of red silver shot out into a ruby like crystal, more extraordinary than any mineral production I have seen. Our attention was caught by Maria Theresa’s bouquet, but one cannot forget the pearls belonging to the electress of Bavaria.
What seemed, however, most to charm the people who shewed the cabinet, was a snuff-box consisting of various gems, none bigger than a barley-corn, each of prodigious value, and the workmanship of more, every square being inlaid so neatly, and no precious stone repeated, though the number is no less than one hundred and eighty-three; a false bottom besides of gold, opening with a spring touch, and discovering a written catalogue of the jewels in the finest hand-writing, and the smallest possible. This was to me a real curiosity, afforded a new and singular proof of that astonishing power of eye, and delicacy of manual operation, seconded by a patient and persevering attention to things frivolous in themselves, which will be for ever alike neglected by the fire of Italian genius, and disdained by the dignity of British science.
We have seen other sort of things to-day however. The Hungarian and Bohemian robes pleased me best, and the wild unset jewels in the diadem of Transylvania impressed me with a valuable idea of Gothic greatness. The service of gold plate too is very grand from its old-fashioned solidity. I liked it better than I did the snuff-box; and here is a dish in ivory puts one in mind of nothing but Achilles’s shield, so worked is its broad margin with miniature representations of battles, landscapes, &c. three dozen different stories round the dish, one might have looked at it with microscopes for a week together. The porcelane plates have been painted to ridicule Raphael’s pots at Loretto I fancy; Julio Romano’s manner is comically parodied upon one of them.
Prince Lichtenstein’s pictures are charming; a Salmacis in the water by Albano is the best work of that master I ever saw, not diffused as his works commonly are, but all collected somehow, and fine in a way I cannot express for want of more knowledge; _very, very_ fine it is however, and full of expression and character. The Caracci school again.--Here is the whole history of Decius by Rubens too, wonderfully learned; and an assumption of the Virgin so like Mrs. Pritchard our famous actress, no portrait ever represented her so well. A St. Sebastian divinely beautiful, by Vandyke; and a girl playing on the guitar, which you may run round almost, by the coarse but natural hand of Caravagio.
The library is new and splendid, and they buy books for it very liberally. The learned and amiable Abbé Denys shewed me a thousand unmerited civilities, was charmed with the character of Dr. Johnson, and delighted with the story of his conversation at Rouen with Mons. l’Abbé Rossette. This gentleman seems to love England very much, and English literature; spoke of Humphry Prideaux with respect, and has his head full of Ossian’s poetry, of which he can repeat whole pages. He shewed me a fragment of Livy written in the fifth century, a psalter and creed beautifully illuminated of the year nine hundred, and a large portion of St. Mark’s gospel on blue paper of the year three hundred and seven. A Bibbia de Poveri too, as the Italians call it, curious enough; the figures all engraved on wood, and only a text at bottom to explain them.
Winceslaus marked every book he ever possessed, it seems, with the five vowels on the back; and almost every one with some little miniature made by himself, recording his escape from confinement at Prague in Bohemia, where the washer-woman having assisted him to get out of prison under pretence of bathing, he has been very studious to register the event; so much so that even on the margins of his bible he has been tempted to paint past scenes that had better have been blotted from his memory.
The Livy which learned men have hoped to find safe in the seraglio of Constantinople, was burned by their late sultan Amurath, our Abbé Denys tells me; the motive sprung from mistaken piety, but the effect is to be lamented. He shewed me an Alcoran in extremely small characters, surprisingly so indeed, taken out of a Turkish officer’s pocket when John Sobiesky raised the siege of this city in the year 1590, and a preacher took for his text the Sunday after, “_There was a man sent from God whose name was_ John.” I was much amused with a sight of the Mexican MSS and Peruvian quipos; nor are the Turkish figures of Adam and Eve, our Saviour and his mother, less remarkable; but Mahomet surrounded by a glory about his head, a veil concealing his face as too bright for inspection, exceeded all the rest.
Here are many ladies of fashion in this town very eminent for their musical abilities, particularly Mesdemoiselles de Martinas, one of whom is member of the Academies of Berlin and Bologna: the celebrated Metastasio died in their house, after having lived with the family sixty-five years more or less. They set his poetry and sing it very finely, appearing to recollect his conversation and friendship, with infinite tenderness and delight. He was to have been presented to the Pope the very day he died, I understand, and in the delirium which immediately preceded dissolution he raved much of the supposed interview. Unwilling to hear of death, no one was ever permitted even to mention it before him; and nothing put him so certainly out of humour, as finding that rule transgressed even by his nearest friends. Even the small-pox was not to be named in his presence, and whoever _did_ name that disorder, though unconscious of the offence he had given, Metastasio would see him no more. The other peculiarities I could gather from Miss Martinas were these: That he had contentedly lived half a century at Vienna, without ever even wishing to learn its language; that he had never given more than five guineas English money in all that time to the poor; that he always sat in the same seat at church, but never paid for it, and that nobody dared ask him for the trifling sum; that he was grateful and beneficent to the friends who began by being his protectors, but ended much his debtors, for solid benefits as well as for elegant presents, which it was his delight to be perpetually making them, leaving to them at last all he had ever gained without the charge even of a single legacy; observing in his will that it was to them he owed it, and other conduct would in him have been injustice. Such were the sentiments, and such the conduct of this great poet, of whom it is of little consequence to tell, that he never changed the fashion of his wig, the cut or colour of his coat, so that his portrait taken not very long ago looks like those of Boileau or Moliere at the head of their works. His life was arranged with such methodical exactness, that he rose, studied, chatted, slept, and dined at the same hours for fifty years together, enjoying uninterrupted health, which probably gave him that happy sweetness of temper, or habitual gentleness of manners, which never suffered itself to be ruffled, but when his sole injunction was forgotten, and the death of any person whatever was unwittingly mentioned before him. No solicitation had ever prevailed on him to dine from home, nor had his nearest intimates ever seen him _eat_ more than a biscuit with his lemonade, every meal being performed with even mysterious privacy to the last. When his end approached by steps so very rapid, he did not in the least suspect that it was coming; and Mademoiselle Martinas has scarcely yet done rejoicing in the thought that he escaped the preparations he so dreaded. His early passion for a celebrated singer is well known upon the continent; since that affair finished, all his pleasures have been confined to music and conversation. He had the satisfaction of seeing the seventieth edition of his works I think they said, but am ashamed to copy out the number from my own notes, it seems so _very_ strange; and the delight he took in hearing the lady he lived with sing his songs, was visible to every one. An Italian Abate here said, comically enough, “Oh! he looked like a man in the state of beatification always when Mademoiselle de Martinas accompanied his verses with her fine voice and brilliant finger.” The father of Metastasio was a goldsmith at Rome, but his son had so devoted himself to the family he lived with, that he refused to hear, and took pains not to know, whether he had in his latter days any one relation left in the world. On a character so singular I leave my readers to make their own _observations and reflections_.
_Au reste_, as the French say; I have no notion that Vienna, _sempre ventoso o velenoso_[50], can be a very wholesome place to live in; the double windows, double feather-beds, &c. in a room without a chimney, is surely ill contrived; and sleeping smothered up in down so, like a hydrophobous patient in some parts of Ireland, is not _particularly_ agreeable, though I begin to like it better than I did. All external air is shut out in such a manner that I am frighted lest, after a certain time, the room should become like an exhausted receiver, while the wind whirls one about the street in such a manner that it is displeasing to put out one’s head; and a physician from Ragusa settled here told me, that wounded lungs are a common consequence of the triturated stone blown about here; and in fact asthmas and consumptions are their reigning diseases.
Apropos, the plague is now raging in Transylvania; how little safe should we think ourselves at London, were a disorder so contagious known to be no farther distant than Derby? The distance is scarcely greater now from Vienna to the place of distress; yet I will not say we are in much danger to be sure, for that perpetual connection kept up between all the towns and counties of Great Britain is unknown in other nations, and we should be as many days going to Transylvania from here perhaps, as we should be _hours_ running from Toddenham-court road to Derby.
Sheenburn is pretty, but it is no season for seeing pretty places. The streets of Vienna are not pretty at all, God knows; so narrow, so ill built, so crowded, many wares placed upon the ground where there is a little opening, seems a strange awkward disposition of things for sale; and the people cutting wood in the street makes one half wild when walking; it is hardly possible to pass another strange custom, borrowed from Italy I trust, of shutting up their shops in the middle of the day; it must tend, one would think, but little to the promotion of that commerce which the sovereign professes to encourage, and I see no excuse for it _here_ which can be made from heat, gaiety, or devotion. Many families living in the same house, and at the entrance of the apartments belonging to each, a strong iron gate to separate the residence of one set from that of another, has likewise an odd melancholy look, like that of a prison or a nunnery. Nunneries, however, here are none; and if the old women turned out of those they have long dwelt in, are not provided with decent pensions, it must surely distress even the Emperor’s cold heart to see age driven from the refuges of disappointment, and forced to wander through the world with inexperience for its guide, while youth is no longer _led_, but _thrust_ into temptation by such a sudden transition from utter retirement to open and busy life.
We have been this morning to look over his academy of painting, &c. His exhibition-room is neatly kept, and I dare say will prosper: the students are zealous and laborious, and earnestly desire the promulgation of science: their collection of models is meagre, but it will mend by degrees. Perhaps Joseph the IId. is the first European sovereign who, establishing a school for painting and sculpture, has insisted on the artists never exercising their skill upon any subject which could hurt any person’s delicacy;--an example well worthy honest praise and speedy imitation.
The very few charitable foundations established at Vienna by Imperial munificence are well managed; their paucity is accounted for by the recollection of many abuses consequent on the late Empress’s bounty; her son therefore took all the annuities away, which he thought her tenderness had been duped out of; but let it be remembered that when he rides or walks in a morning, he always takes with him a hundred ducats, out of which he never brings any home, but gives in private donations what he knows to be well bestowed, without the ostentation of affected generosity: it is not in rewards for past services perhaps, nor in public and stately institutions, as I am told here, that this prince’s liberalities are to be looked for; yet--
In Mis’ry’s darkest caverns known, His useful care is ever nigh; Where hopeless Anguish pours her groan, And lonely Want retires to die.
To-morrow (23d of November) we venture to leave Vienna and proceed northwards, as I long to see the Dresden gallery. Here every thing appears to me a caricatura of London; the language like ours, but coarser; the plays like ours, but duller; the streets at night lighted up, not like ours now, but very like what they were thirty or forty years ago.
Among the people I have seen here, Mademoiselle Paradies, the blind performer on the harpsichord, interested me very much;--and she liked England so, and the King and Queen were so kind to her, and she was _so_ happy, she said!--While life and its vexations seem to oppress such numbers of hearts, and cloud such variety of otherwise agreeable faces, one must go to a blind girl to hear of happiness, it seems! But she has wonderful talents for languages as well as music, and has learned the English pronunciation most surprisingly. It is a soothing sight when one finds the mind compensate for the body’s defects: I took great delight in the conversation of Mademoiselle Paradies.
The collection of rarities, particularly an Alexander’s head worthy of Capo di Monte, now in the possession of Madame de Hesse, became daily more my study, as I received more and more civilities from the charming family at whose house it resides: there are some very fine cameos in it, and a great variety of miscellaneous curiosities.