Charles Cowden Clarke

“ That curious mixture of impertinence and good-nature, the German waiter, is taxed to his utmost; and the whole world, with nothing to do, is always behind hand, and always in a hurry. Frenchmen, Englishmen, Russians and Americans have taken the place by storm. There is a Babel of tongues; and he who talks most, so that it be in a dialect only comprehensible, will probably get what he wants soonest. Weather permitting, the life cannot be too al fresco to be enjoyable. A wet day at Baden I have never seen. ”

“ Like thousands of my fellows, I must rest—I must have thorough repose. If I expect to resume my labours at a future period, I must go up Mont Blanc, or walk over Tête Noire or the Col de Balme, or pull down the Rhine from Basle to Rotterdam in an University eight, after having been made sick in an Ostend steamer, or amidst the villanous smells of Cologne. Now this is the sort of attention that a man receives very readily. Nothing is so flattering as the assurance that our personal appearance is an object of solicitude to our friends ”

“ Benazet, Benazet, Benazet, is on every lip. M. Benazet built the theatre, decorated the rooms; is proprietor of the baths; engages singers; supplies the charities, and establishes the races. M. Benazet cures the sick, amuses the ennuyés, clothes the naked, and feeds the poor. The concert for twenty francs, places reservées, was for the benefit of the hospital! Truly, M. Benazet is a great man, and charity will have us say, a good man too. And M. Benazet is neither more nor less than the lessee of the gaming tables. Of course I went to the races—races in the Black Forest! ”

“ The fact is, holidays ought to come of themselves; but there is more exertion and forethought required to provide for our recreation than for our daily bread. Everything is overdone: Interlachen, Lucerne, Zurich, Baden, once so charmingly luxurious in their silence and magnificence, or voluptuous repose, have become huge caravanserais for the English, French, Austrian, Russian, and American peoples. ”

“ On entering the course the beauty of the scene, and the utter absence of noise or crowd, cannot fail to impress the Englishman most favourably. The flat on which the stands have been built, and the course formed, is most beautifully situated between fine woods of great extent on the one side, and lovely hills crowned with foliage, and sloping away gradually into the distant mountains of the Black Forest. ”

“ The glory of Heidelberg was its castle and its independence. The glory of Heidelberg is its Philistines and its Fuchs. To the lovers of the picturesque it presents attractions from the castle terraces too well known to require description here; to the curious in pipes, jewellery, caps, and student-life, it offers features, the study of which will scarcely be found to repay the trouble. As a peculiarity of the social life of Germany, student life has interest for some writers. ”

“ The magnificence of the building, in itself no mean pleasure, is enhanced by the solemn grandeur of one of Mozart’s masses; and the effect produced by the finest sacred music, as it floats through the lengthened aisles, through pillars, arches, and chapels, can be more easily conceived than described. ”

“ Baden has neither the one nor the other. It is a small Goodwood, without the necessary disadvantages of every English course. In one thing alone we beat them—in the surpassing loveliness of our English women. We cannot have their climate. The innocence of racing in its integrity is gone from us for ever; but the beauty, the charm, the unconscious loveliness of an English girl, I have never seen equalled ”

“ Whether any of his efforts made more than a passing impression in Baden is at least open to discussion. There are the extensive beauties of Eberstein; the fantastic architectural adornments of La Favorite; its rare porcelain and Chinese treasures, worthy of a place in the South Kensington Museum; and the Valley of the Mourg, not far behind the valleys of many parts of Switzerland in loveliness. These are within reach of the active pedestrian, and are the almost daily promenades of handsome equipages of every description. ”

“ London was triste, dirty, expensive, with nothing to see, nothing to eat, and nothing but portière bière to drink. At night there was nowhere to go. On Sunday there was nothing to do; not even in Feenesbewrie Squarrre. My suggestion that Finsbury Square was not the only aristocratic faubourg in London, and that an abonnement of half a guinea a day was not calculated to beget the luxuries of the Hôtel des Princes, or the ménage of the Trois Frères, was treated with contempt. ”

“ But as if the ordinary attractions of this charming place had been found insufficient, the energetic management of M. Benazet, and above all of his coadjutor and secretary, M. Whei, determined upon making their favourite watering-place the Newmarket of the Continent. They have succeeded with this difference, that while an English race-course invariably bears about it the marks of business in its pleasures, whatever they may be, the Continental idea of a day’s racing is pre-eminently an absence of anything connected with mental labour. ”

“ The following morning I woke happily; for I was really on my way to the long-anticipated pleasures of Baden-Baden. I was in Antwerp. London was behind me, and Cologne and Heidelberg in front. Courage, mon ami, “le diable est mort.”
Everybody has been at Cologne: most persons many times. No less than two-and-twenty churches open their portals for the gratification of your curiosity. ”

“ Having perfectly satisfied the reader as to the great water-question, it is worth while to inquire the particular end for which men leave their homes for the comforts and economy of hotel life in Germany. We have an answer at once. Fearful of letting down the system by too rapid a fall, the pleasures of Baden serve to arrest the traveller on his downward course; and to fill up a vacancy between a London season and a winter at Melton. Nothing can be more charming than its situation. ”

“ The ordinary pleasures of Baden life I pass without further comment. It is a very old story. The racing is now three years old; a new feature in the programme of Black Forest attractions. It is so well done—so honestly and purely intended for a jour de fête, to the exclusion of the objectionable parts of our own turf, that I hope, year by year, to see it increasing in the value of its stakes, and by consequence in the character of its horses. At present the French turf is near enough to exhibit the efficiency of its stable, without any strong rivalry ”

“ I saw an enormous and heterogeneous mass of people all hustling and pushing for a place, miserable outsiders waiting with longing eyes for the moment when the front rank should be cleaned out, and a vacant seat left for a trial of their own system. ”

“ Why do we submit to the imposition of guides who are useless, slip and slide up one hill and down another, carry a bundle on our backs, which only contains sufficient to remind us what a comfortable thing a really clean shirt is, go without shaving, pack and unpack every twenty-four hours, carry our own soap from house to house, and put up with every conceivable want and necessity? ”

“ We know his vigorous grasp of the sentimental, even at the end of eight lustra, and can only account for the declaration of so exceptional a case in the form of a general proposition, by supposing him to have been an unwilling slave of the tender passion. When does a man leave these shores, which are redolent of professional duties, without shaking off old habits of thought, and clothing himself in a new suit fitted for the occasion? ”

“ Surrounded by the hills and mountains of the Black Forest, itself on a rising ground, and sloping into the valley of the Oos, it looks, at the first glance, peculiarly adapted for pleasure or repose. Permit me to suggest that if the pleasures be great, the repose is nil. From morning to night there is something to do. Everybody promenades, or rides, or drives. ”

“ Concerts, balls, and a French company in one of the most beautiful theatres in the world, present increased attractions for other hours of the day or night: and the tables, a fruitful source of revenue, have votaries, whose constancy and perseverance appear to chide the indifference of every respectable passion under the sun. ”

“ It allows the visitor to satisfy his curiosity by a day at the course, and two in the town, if he pleases; after which he may make way for others, whose longings may be gratified in a similar manner. Or, if the traveller be so enamoured of his first day’s racing, which is not impossible, it will compel him, in return, to participate in the other excitements of Baden, until the course is complete. ”

“ There is a lovely country all round you, in parts approaching the sublime: a pulpit, on the road to Stauffenberg, from which Satan is said to have held forth, at first to a scattered auditory, until the seductive nature of his doctrines and his eloquence, extended his reputation. ”

“ It’s a comfort to see a race where there’s neither the one nor the other. Naturally, in this country, four days’ racing is a question of four days’ business, and no more. Not so at Baden-Baden. Four days’ racing includes fourteen days’ pleasure. ”

“ The brain wants refreshment and recreation, but not rest: it gets the former by a continental ramble, and a balance of fatigue is afforded to the material part of man, at the same time, after its unhealthy repose. ”

“ If I have a weakness it is to see a foreigner ride a steeplechase; and here was an opportunity. I at once made up my mind, no inconsiderable parcel, and determined to see the thing out. This must be a great satisfaction to your readers, Mr. ”