CHAPTER XI VIENNA IN 1856 No European capital, not even excepting Haussmanised Paris, has undergone such thorough transformation as Vienna. "S gibt nur a Kaiserstadt, 's gibt nur a Wean!" But the present brand-new Austrian metropolis, with its magnificent Ringstrasse, its sumptuous rows of public buildings, its beautiful Votiv Kirche, its splendid Opera-house and Burgtheater, is a very different place from the tangled coil of narrow, dark, crooked streets and lanes, broken here and there by half-a-dozen quaint, irregular places, with stately, old palaces dotted about it, poky theatres, dingy inns, and the gayest of shop windows-the wondrous spire of St. Stephen's rising high above all the noise, and bustle, and dirt-in which some 50,000 Viennese were pent up "to stew in their own broth"-as Bismarck would have it-by the same old bastions that had withstood the Turk. For this inner town alone was true Vienna, and the great, straggling suburbs of Mariahilf, Landstrasse, Wieden, Leopoldstadt, and others, with their hundred thousands, although they laid claim to being 240 ALT UND NEU WIEN 241 part and parcel of the Kaiserstadt-a claim allowed by ignorant geographers and hand-book writerswere not really esteemed pure Viennese, but were looked upon somewhat in the light of country cousins, and kept at a respectful distance by the broad belt of glacis that surrounded the venerable ramparts aforesaid. To this peculiar arrangement old Vienna owed a cachet of its own, which it has entirely lost by the kernel city being merged into the great mass of Neu- Wien. No town of its size could show so striking and picturesque a promenade as that afforded by the ancient bastions, whence the eye ranged over the green, park-like foreground of the glacis, laid out in avenues and public gardens, and fringed in the distance by the white masonry of the faubourgs, which stretched all round like the countless battalions of some rebellious army in the national equipment,' drawn up for assault on the Imperial city and turned to stone in the midst of its impious design. It is true that to this same arrangement Vienna likewise owed its being as over-crowded, ill-ventilated, unhealthy a place of residence as could well be found in this age of sanitary science. Providentially the great draught of air through the valley of the Danube, which caused it to be a very temple of the winds, in some measure preserved it from grave 1 The white uniforms of the infantry and of many of the cavalry regiments-alas! too, a thing of the past. VOL. I. epidemics, while making it highly dangerous in all pulmonary complaints. Rents were enormous, and lodgings-bad out of all proportion to their costmost difficult to procure. Add to this the din and clatter of the streets; the risk to life and limb, which, but for the extreme dexterity of the drivers, would have been considerable; the damp, and cold, and gloom of well-like houses to which the sun had scarcely any access; and it will be seen that there were serious drawbacks to the enjoyment of this gayest and most fascinating of cities. It was a dreary November morning when I reached the old-fashioned Römische Kaiser, after a day and night passed in the train from Dresden, and the look-out from my bedroom window over the Freiung, ankle-deep in slush from the first winter's snow-fall, with the big façade of the Palais Harrach opposite just visible through the murky fog, was not precisely cheerful or enlivening. Having ascertained that the Legation was but a short distance off, in the Palais Clary in the Herrngasse, I presently proceeded to report myself to my new chief. I was already prepared to respect and look up to him for the decision and frankness he had shown in his dealings with the Emperor Nicholas at the time of the celebrated conversations about the sick man's inheritance, but my service under him more than confirmed the judgment I had already formed of him. Sir Hamilton Seymour was a diplomate pur sang of what is commonly, and rather disparagingly, termed SIR HAMILTON SEYMOUR 243 "the old school." Which amounts to saying that he was a keen, observant man of the world, rather than an homme de cabinet-still less a crammer or compiler of Blue Books. A true patrician by birth and temper, and of that purest shade of Whiggery which is really the quintessence of exclusive Conservatism, he inclined to cynical and contemptuous views of the world that was fast outstripping him. For the rest, a master of his craft when truly it still was one. Himself the soul of compromise and conciliation; a delightful causeur, with an inexhaustible fund of anecdote set off by great powers of mimicry; a favourite with womankind, and skilled in all the arts which were the stock-in-trade of that bygone epoch of diplomacy when war was declared in boudoirs and peace signed in alcoves, when great events were shaken out of the folds of a silk petticoat and the fate of Cabinets sometimes turned on the flutter of a lace-trimmed bodice. He had few strong convictions, and fewer prejudices, and was at times not over-scrupulous in the choice of a means to a right end. He had broken open a despatch-box to save a dynasty.1 At the same time, he held somewhat obsolete views as to there being but one code of honour for both public and private transactions. He believed in the sanctity of international obligations and the policy 1 Sir Hamilton Seymour was our Minister at Lisbon in 1847 at the time of the Miguelite conspiracy against the Queen Donna Maria da Gloria. He obtained access in the manner above described (he told me the story himself) to some papers disclosing the plans of the Miguelites, which he was thus enabled to defeat. of enforcing them. He was incapable, I fear, of sympathising with the more advanced public opinion which condones the breach of treaty engagements and warns defaulters off a race-course. Although the most peaceable of men, he would argue in favour of duelling, as purifying society of its worst braggarts and bullies, and preserving to it certain amenities of intercourse thought little of in these non-fighting days. Very good-humoured and very firm; blasé at heart possibly, and cold in manner, but with warm spots about him, and in his domestic circle the kindest and best of husbands and fathers. When I first knew Sir Hamilton he was a man verging upon sixty, who had been charming at Carlton House and would have been still more at home at Versailles. I can see him now in a blue dresscoat, with gilt Queen's buttons and high collar of ancient cut, and fancy velvet waistcoat. His countenance would have shown little power, except for marked lines of determination about the mouth; but it was incomparable for its air of finesse; and a bird-like trick he had of cocking his head on one side, and looking at you with a merry twinkle in his eye, was irresistibly humorous, and must have tried the solemnity of foreign negotiators. I need hardly say that he was the pleasantest as well as the most instructive of chiefs; indeed, he had but the one defect of being too indefatigable a writer. Thanks to a curiously retentive memory, his despatches were models of accurate narration, but |