Vienna

“ Although erected in the twelfth century, it has survived all the sieges to which Vienna has been subject and is still, after seven centuries, the most conspicuous of the many grandiose structures of Austria’s superb capital. As I examined the exquisite carvings of portal and window and delicate crocketed spire of this stupendous fane I realized as never before how the builders of the Ages of Faith wrought the parts unseen by men with the same care as those which were exposed to the gaze of all. For they labored for God, and God sees everything and everywhere. ”

“ Undoubtedly Vienna is the finest city on the European continent next to Paris, and it is often called the Northern Paris. It resembles the French capital both in its social life and its architecture. The style of the modern buildings is very attractive, displaying great richness and beauty of outline, while the charming perfection of detail is by no means neglected. At least one-quarter of Vienna is new, presenting broad streets lined with noble edifices. ”

“ Vienna, the capital of Austria, heart and centre of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The city is surrounded by the Danube and its canals, and has several parks and numerous shady avenues of trees, beneath which the gay Viennese love to stroll or sit at the tables of outdoor cafés listening to the bands. You can scarcely walk half a mile in Vienna without hearing music. The gipsy bands which are often heard in Vienna play their national airs with a dash and fire that sets even the most sluggish pulse dancing. ”

“ Every capital town in the continent of Europe has, within the last 20 or 30 years, been beautified with spacious streets Vienna.and fine houses after the fashion of Paris, but the improvements made in Vienna are perhaps unique even in Europe. New streets and squares and gardens have been laid out, and palatial buildings constructed with a rapidity which is marvellous. Fine rows of houses,—palaces to all appearance,—line the spacious streets in every direction, and the visitor is bewildered in the midst of this forest of fine architecture, which is modern Vienna! ”

“ The mountains of the Vienna Forest bound the view, with here and there a stately castle on their woody summits. I was reminded of London as seen from Regent's Park, and truly this part of Vienna can well compare with it. On penetrating into the suburbs, the resemblance is at an end. Many of the public thoroughfares are still unpaved, and in dry weather one is almost choked by the clouds of fine dust. A furious wind blows from the mountains, sweeping the streets almost constantly and filling the eyes and ears with it, making the city an unhealthy residence for strangers. ”

“ From Warsaw to Vienna I travelled like a railway Nana in a luxurious compartment of the “Societe Internationale des Wagons-Lits.” Beds, looking-glasses, huge windows, rugs, and so on.
Ah, my dears, if you only knew how nice Vienna is! It can’t be compared with any of the towns I have seen in my life. The streets are broad and elegantly paved, there are numbers of boulevards and squares, the houses have always six or seven storeys, and shops—they are not shops, but a perfect delirium, a dream! There are myriads of neckties alone in the windows! ”

“ Vienna, a city of two and a half million souls, once the capital of a great empire, for centuries a rendezvous of gayety and genius, the greatest school of medicine in the world, the birthplace and home of many great musicians, and the dwelling-place of a happy, careless, and luxurious people, was now delivered over to beggary and lingering death. ”

“ Vienna was the city of her heart as well as of her future exploits. She would buy the old Zattiany palace from her widowed niece-in-law and make it the most famous rendezvous in Europe. But of all this nothing to Clavering until they were in the Dolomites.
She rang for her maid and exchanged her tweed walking suit for a tea gown of violet velvet and snow white chiffon, with stockings and slippers to match. She expected no one but it was always a delight to her to be exquisitely and becomingly dressed. ”

“ Vienna was emphatically the city of heraldry, and a tendency towards Oriental taste in noble and burgher produced a fantastic architecture of gables and minarets, breaking the massive lines of fortress-like mediæval palace and hôtel. Here and there a carriage was standing in the quiet street, and servants in gaudy liveries stood in the sunshine about the steps and gates.
The next morning the Prince was seated at his toilette, in the hands of his dresser, who was frizzling and powdering his hair. ”

“ Old men and children would fight the arch-enemy in Tyrol, but if the Italians were to enter Vienna and bring bread with them they would be received with shouts of enthusiasm. And yet Berlin and Innsbruck were just as hungry as Vienna. C'est une ville sans âme.
My visitor compared the Viennese to a pretty, gay, and frivolous woman, whose aim in life is pleasure and only pleasure. She must dance, sing, and enjoy life, and will do so under any circumstances—sans âme. ”

“ In Paris dressing is a luxury, in London it is a mistake, in Berlin an impoliteness, but in Vienna it is a fine art. Ah, the Viennese women! You must admire them, whether you see the fashionable ladies parading in their carriages on a May day in the principal Avenue of the Prater, or the jolly, boisterous girls whirling about in October in the dancing room of one of the village style inns where the new wine is sold. ”

“ Every one of the three hundred thousand inhabitants who crowd Vienna and its interminable suburbs seems to reckon it a duty to make his life a commentary. They are more devoted friends of joviality, pleasure, and good living, and more bitter enemies of everything like care or thinking,—a more eating, drinking, good-natured, ill-educated, hospitable, and laughing people,—than any other of Germany, or, perhaps, of Europe. Their climate and soil, the corn and wine with which Heaven has blessed them, exempt them from any very anxious degree of thought about their own wants ”

“ I shall never think again of Vienna without picturing that stranded girl, sipping at her reddish drink in the Amerikan-bar in the Kaisergarten. But her case is typical. The Viennese are not hospitable to strangers. They are an intimate, self-sufficient people.
Let us turn, however, from the little Gabrielle to a more fascinating and exquisite creature, to a happier and more buoyant denizen of Viennese night life, to a lady of more elegant attire.56 In short, behold Fräulein Bianca Weise. In her are the alkaloids of gaiety. She irradiates the joyfulness of the city. ”

“ Vienna is a fine and wealthy city, the fourth in Europe, and, like Berlin, is full of centres of human civilisation, science and art. Here are found relics of ancient times beside the grand palaces of the present day, the "Ring" is one of the finest streets in the world, and the tower of St. Stephen's Church rises up to the sky above the two million inhabitants of the town. Vienna to a greater extent than Berlin is a town of pleasure and merry genial life, a grand old aristocratic town, a town of theatres, concerts, balls, and cafés. ”

“ Life in the Austrian capital, sunk apparently in sensuousness, had, like a reflection of the ever brightening and warming sun, in its depths, that German, joyous good-nature, that deutsche Gemueth, that leveling peace, and that beautiful disposition [132] which allow every living creature to do what pleases him best and go his own way. Added to this was the high degree of education which distinguished Vienna at the time, and which was influenced, in part, by direct contact with the period of the highest Italian culture, the renaissance. ”

“ Vienna was the high-water mark at which the progress of the Turkish flood was stayed. The Turks beat upon its ramparts in vain; they were flung back from its walls like ocean waves from the cliffs of a rocky coast. In the old cathedral you may see a huge bell cast out of cannon captured from the Turks in the last of their sieges. For centuries Vienna has been the frontier city between the Eastern and Western peoples of Europe.
On the very day of the murders at Sarajevo the Emperor Franz Josef left Vienna for his summer holiday at the beautiful watering-place of Ischl, [23] in Upper Austria. ”

“ The sun went down, the lamps were lit, the alleys were illuminated, the crowd increased, and the emperor himself could not have given a gayer evening’s entertainment.
Vienna has the reputation of being the most profligate capital in Europe. Perhaps it is so. There is certainly, even to a stranger, no lack of temptation to every species of pleasure. But there is, besides, a degree of simplicity and confidence in the manners of the Viennese which I had believed peculiar to America, and inconsistent with the state of society in Europe. ”

“ And everywhere amongst the busy groups were seen the beautiful and graceful ladies of Vienna, especially the ladies of the higher aristocracy, offering the sick refreshments, handing the surgeons linen bandages, and calling up a smile upon some sad suffering face. ”

“ You are, therefore agreeably surprised to find the wheels of modern civilization running smoothly—a well-dressed, easy-going people on the streets and in the cafés, every business house working to full capacity, and all at first glance going well. The children, and especially those of the working class, look healthy and full of life. Starving Vienna seems somewhat of a myth.
Vienna is not like Petrograd where the thousands of eyes of the Nevski Prospect have been put out and squads of dead shops stare at one from smashed windows and gutted interiors. ”

“ CHAPTER XV. THE DREAM OF LOVE. The wedding-festival was over, and Vienna was resting from the fatigue of the brilliant entertainments by which the marriage of the archduke had been followed, both in court and city. And indeed the rejoicings had been conducted with imperial magnificence. For eight days, the people of Vienna, without respect of rank, had been admitted to the palace, to witness the court festivities; while in the city and at Schonbrunn, nightly balls were given at the expense of the empress, where the happy Viennese danced and feasted to their hearts' content. ”

“ Forward each man set,
Pibroch o' Donuil Dhu,
Knell for the onset!
I wonder. How does it happen that they are playing my march here? I do not even remember whether I left the score in Vienna or took it with me.
Now they play other music, the overture of Poet and Peasant, of course, and the waltz from the Merry Widow and other things—all [110] Viennese, my God!—as if to make it still harder to me, to think that these days of Vienna, these beautiful days of mirth and sorrow, should be gone for ever, for ever!—And then, then they play the "Pibroch o' Donuil Dhu" once more, and then nothing else. ”

“ During the period of the Congress the Prater became more brilliant than it had ever been before. Vienna was so full of strangers, coming from all countries to be the eyewitnesses of an assembly supposed to be the fitting termination to an epoch replete with prodigious events, that the number of carriages had incredibly increased. There was an infinite variety of dresses, Hungarian, Polish, and Oriental, an infinite number of uniforms whose wearers hailed from every part of Europe, and who dazzled the sight with their splendour. ”

“ In the hotels and restaurants and café concerts, foreigners were gathering like vampires to feed on the mortality of that old centre of civilisation. Austrian Jews and international gamblers, making paper fortunes out of the fluctuations of paper money, guzzled and gorged in an orgy of vice with girls who sold their smiles for the sake of a meal or an evening’s warmth.
The old palaces of Vienna still stood, the great mansions and cathedrals and churches and art galleries and museums remained as the heritage of a splendid past, but the life that made them had gone. ”

“ As we read her letters we seem to live with her in the great, gay, gloomy life of Vienna, to hear once more the foolish squabbles of Ratisbon society as to who should and should not be styled Excellency, and to smile at the loyal crowds of English thronging the wretched inns of Hanover. But the fidelity of her descriptions may best be judged from her accounts of life in Constantinople. The Vienna of to-day is very different from the ill-built, high-storied city of Maria Theresa ”

“ Austria and Hungary strike the casual visitor as very like any other European country, and so long as he remains on the beaten path he finds no reason to revise his judgment. Vienna, Budapesth, Prague, are very like Milan or Berlin. There is plenty of ready money, and every indication of a somewhat too advanced civilisation. In fact, decadence is suggested rather than under-cultivation. The ease with which the city people have adopted every new invention, and the facility with which they adapt themselves to modern appliances and conveniences, quite deceives the stranger. ”

“ I do not mean to say that there are no handsome women here, as I saw a goodly number of pretty faces, but they are not more numerous than in other cities. I have read about the great beauty of the women, and know several men who have raved about Vienna as the centre of the earth in this respect, but I cannot understand it. Among the women that are seen in public places, such as the music gardens, restaurants, and cafés, there are no more pretty faces than you would see in Berlin or Paris, and the chances are more than even that those you do see are not Viennese. ”