The
summer days passed pleasantly in Heidelberg. We had a skilled trainer,
and under his instructions we were getting our legs in the right condition
for the contemplated pedestrian tours; we were well satisfied with the
progress which we had made in the German language,
and more than satisfied with what we had accomplished in art. We had had
the best instructors in drawing and painting in Germany— Haemmerling,
Vogel, Mueller, Dietz, and Schumann. Haemmerling taught us landscape-painting.
Vogel taught us figure-drawing, Mueller taught us to do still-life, and
Dietz and Schumann gave us a finishing course in two specialties —
battle-pieces and shipwrecks. Whatever I am in Art I owe to these men.
I have something of the manner of each and all of them; but they all said
that I had also a manner of my own, and that it was conspicuous. They
said there was a marked individuality about my style— insomuch that
if I ever painted the commonest type of a dog, I should be sure to throw
a something into the aspect of that dog which would keep him from being
mistaken for the creation of any other artist. Secretly I wanted to believe
all these kind sayings, but I could not; I was afraid that my masters'
partiality for me, and pride in me, biased their judgment. So I resolved
to make a test. Privately, and unknown to any one, I painted my
great picture, "Heidelberg Castle Illuminated"—
my first really important work in oils — and had it hung up in the
midst of a wilderness of oil-pictures in the Art Exhibition, with no name
attached to it. To my great gratification it was instantly recognized
as mine. All the town flocked to see it, and people even came from neighboring
localities to visit it. It made more stir than any other work in the Exhibition.
But the most gratifying thing of all was, that chance strangers, passing
through, who had not heard of my picture, were not only drawn to it, as
by a lodestone, the moment they entered the gallery, but always took it
for a "Turner."
Illustration: PAINTING MY GREAT PICTURE.Mr.
Harris was graduated in Art about the same time with myself, and we took
a studio together. We waited a while for some orders; then as time began
to drag a little , we concluded to make a pedestrian tour. After much
consideration we determined on a trip up the shores of the beautiful
Neckar. Apparently nobody had ever done that. There were ruined
castles on the overhanging cliffs and crags all the way; these were said
to have their legends, like those on the Rhine, and what was better still,
they had never been in print. There was nothing in the books about that
lovely region; it had been neglected by the tourist, it was virgin soil
for the literary pioneer.
Am schoenen
NeckarMeantime
the knapsacks, the rough walking-suits and the stout walking-shoes which
we had ordered, were finished and brought to us. A Mr. X and a young Mr.
Z had agreed to go with us. We went around one evening and bade good-by
to our friends, and afterward had a little farewell banquet at the hotel.
We got to bed early, for we wanted to make an early start, so as to take
advantage of the cool of the morning.
We were out of bed at break of day, feeling fresh and vigorous, and took
a hearty breakfast, then plunged down through the leafy
arcades of the Castle grounds, toward the town. What a glorious summer
morning it was, and how the flowers did pour out their fragrance, and
how the birds did sing! It was just the time for a tramp through the woods
and mountains.
Illustration:
OUR START. (BY HARRIS) We
were all dressed alike: broad slouch hats, to keep the sun off; gray knapsacks;
blue army shirts; blue overalls; leathern gaiters buttoned tight from
knee down to ankle; high-quarter coarse shoes snugly laced. Each man had
an opera-glass, a canteen, and a guide-book case slung over his shoulder,
and carried an alpenstock in one hand and a sun-umbrella in the other.
Around our hats were wound many folds of soft white muslin, with the ends
hanging and flapping down our backs — an idea brought from the Orient
and used by tourists all over Europe. Harris carried the little watch-like
machine called a "pedometer," whose office is to keep count
of a man's steps and tell how far he has walked. Everybody stopped to
admire our costumes and give us a hearty "Pleasant march to you!"When
we got downtown I found that we could go by rail to within five miles
of Heilbronn. The train was just starting, so we jumped aboard and went
tearing away in splendid spirits. It was agreed all around that we had
done wisely, because it would be just as enjoyable to walk down
the Neckar as up it, and it could not be needful to walk both ways. There
were some nice German people in our compartment. I got to talking some
pretty private matters presently, and Harris became nervous; so he nudged
me and said:"Speak
in German — these Germans may understand English."I
did so, it was well I did; for it turned out that there was not a German
in that party who did not understand English perfectly. It is curious
how widespread our language is in Germany. After a while some of those
folks got out and a German gentleman and his two young daughters got in.
I spoke in German of one of the latter several times, but without result.
Finally she said:"Ich
verstehe nur Deutsch und Englisch" — or words to that effect.
That is, "I don't understand any language but German and English."
And
sure enough, not only she but her father and sister spoke English. So
after that we had all the talk we wanted; and we wanted a good deal, for
they were agreeable people. They were greatly interested in our
customs; especially the alpenstocks, for they had not seen any
before. They said that the Neckar road was perfectly level, so we must
be going to Switzerland or some other rugged country; and asked us if
we did not find the walking pretty fatiguing in such warm weather. But
we said no.
Illustration: AN UNKNOWN COSTUME.We
reached Wimpfen — I think it was Wimpfen — in about three
hours, and got out, not the least tired; found a good hotel and ordered
beer and dinner — then took a stroll through the venerable old village.
It was very picturesque and tumble-down, and dirty and interesting. It
had queer houses five hundred years old in it, and a military
tower 115 feet high, which had stood there more than ten centuries.
I made a little sketch of it. I kept a copy, but gave
the original to the Burgomaster.I
think the original was better than the copy, because it had more windows
in it and the grass stood up better and had a brisker look. There was
none around the tower, though; I composed the grass myself, from studies
I made in a field by Heidelberg in Haemmerling's time. The man on top,
looking at the view, is apparently too large, but I found he could not
be made smaller, conveniently. I wanted him there, and I wanted him visible,
so I thought out a way to manage it; I composed the picture from two points
of view; the spectator is to observe the man from bout where that flag
is, and he must observe the tower itself from the ground. This harmonizes
the seeming discrepancy.
Roter Turmlittle sketch
Illustration:
THE TOWER.Near
an old cathedral, under a shed, were three crosses of stone —
moldy and damaged things, bearing life-size stone figures. The two thieves
were dressed in the fanciful court costumes of the middle of the sixteenth
century, while the Saviour was nude, with the exception of a cloth around
the loins.
KreuzigungsgruppeWe
had dinner under the green trees in a garden belonging to the hotel and
overlooking the Neckar; then, after a smoke, we went to bed. We had a
refreshing nap, then got up about three in the afternoon and put on our
panoply. As we tramped gaily out at the gate of the town, we overtook
a peasant's cart, partly laden with odds and ends of
cabbages and similar vegetable rubbish, and drawn by a small cow and a
smaller donkey yoked together. It was a pretty slow concern, but it got
us into Heilbronn before dark — five miles, or possibly it was seven.
Illustration: SLOW BUT SURE.We
stopped at the very same inn which the famous old robber-knight
and rough fighter Goetz von Berlichingen, abode in after he got out
of captivity in the Square Tower of Heilbronn between three hundred
and fifty and four hundred years ago. Harris and I occupied the same
room which he had occupied and the same paper had not quite peeled off
the walls yet. The furniture was quaint old carved stuff, full four
hundred years old, and some of the smells were over a thousand. There
was a hook in the wall, which the landlord said the terrific old Goetz
used to hang his iron hand on when he took it off to go to bed. This
room was very large — it might be called immense — and it
was on the first floor; which means it was in the second story, for
in Europe the houses are so high that they do not count the first story,
else they would get tired climbing before they got to the top. The wallpaper
was a fiery red, with huge gold figures in it, well smirched by time,
and it covered all the doors. These doors fitted so snugly and continued
the figures of the paper so unbrokenly, that when they were closed one
had to go feeling and searching along the wall to find them. There was
a stove in the corner — one of those tall, square, stately white
porcelain things that looks like a monument and keeps you thinking of
death when you ought to be enjoying your travels. The windows looked
out on a little alley, and over that into a stable and some poultry
and pig yards in the rear of some tenement-houses. There were the customary
two beds in the room, one in one end, the other in the other, about
an old-fashioned brass-mounted, single-barreled pistol-shot apart. They
were fully as narrow as the usual German bed, too, and had the German
bed's ineradicable habit of spilling the blankets on the floor every
time you forgot yourself and went to sleep.
A
round table as large as King Arthur's stood in the center of the room;
while the waiters were getting ready to serve our dinner on it we all
went out to see the renowned clock on the front of the municipal buildings.
See
Appendix D for information concerning this fearful tongue.
Heilbronn a./N.
Marktplatz (1928)
Marktplatz 1929:
Rathaus und Hotel
