Great Cities Through Travelers' Eyes

by Peter Furtado

  At some houses the tree is exhibited on Christmas Eve, which is tonight; and in others the fete is held tomorrow. For the first we are invited by the Princess Metternich, who means to make a set of little princes and princesses superlatively happy. From thence we go to a later party of the same kind given to children of a larger growth; and tomorrow we are engaged for a repetition of the tree fete at the house of another kind friend.

  On New Year’s Eve, too, a concert and supper are to welcome in the new year for us; and on the evening of New Year’s Day there is to be a full-dress reception at Prince Metternich’s, which is to be as splendid as diamonds and Hungarian costumes can make it.

  All this, however, is but the foretaste of Vienna gaiety; the Carnival is to follow, and, if report say true, the dissipation that it brings will continue without interval or interruption till it is over.

  1891 ANTON CHEKHOV

  On Chekhov’s two-month European tour by train from St Petersburg (see page 243), he was struck by the freedom of speech under the Dual Monarchy and in France, in comparison with what he was used to in Russia. This letter was sent to his family (Chekhov is punning on the family name).

  20 March

  Dear Czech friends

  I’m writing to you from Vienna. I arrived yesterday at four in the afternoon. The trip went very well. From Warsaw to Vienna I travelled like a railroad Nana in a luxurious car of the ‘International Society of Sleeping Cars’: beds, mirrors, gigantic windows, carpets and so on.

  O my Tungus friends! If only you knew how lovely Vienna is! It is not to be compared with any city I have seen in my entire life. The streets are broad and elegantly paved, there are lots of boulevards and public gardens, six- and seven-storey houses, and stores – stores that are sheer vertigo, sheer mirage! The store windows have billions of neckties alone! And what amazing bronze, china and leather objects! The churches are gigantic, but their size is not oppressive; it caresses the eyes because it seems as though they are spun of lace. St Stephen’s Cathedral and the Votiv-Kirche are especially lovely. They are more like pastries than buildings. The parliament, the town hall, the university are all magnificent. Everything is magnificent, and it wasn’t until yesterday and today that I fully realized that architecture is indeed an art. And here that art is not scattered in bits and pieces as it is in our country; it extends for verst after verst [kilometre after kilometre]. There are many monuments. No side street is without its own bookshop. Some of the bookshops even display Russian books, but alas they are the works of all sorts of anonymous writers who write and publish abroad, not of Albov, Barantsevich or Chekhov. I’ve seen Renan, [Grimm’s] Secrets of the Winter Palace etc. It’s odd that here you may read anything you like and say whatever you please.

  Harken, o ye nations, unto what the goddamn cabbies here are like. Instead of droshkies they have stunning, brand-new carriages with one, or more often two, horses. The horses are excellent. The drivers’ seats are occupied by dandies in jackets and top hats, reading newspapers. They are courteous and obliging.

  The dinners are fine. There’s no vodka; they drink beer and fairly good wine instead. There’s only one bad point: they charge for bread. When they bring you the check, they ask you ‘Wieviel Brötchen?’, that is, how many rolls did you polish off? And they charge you for each roll.

  The woman are beautiful and elegant. When you get down to it, everything is pretty damn elegant.

  I haven’t completely forgotten my German. I understand them and they understand me.

  It was snowing as we crossed the border, and though there’s no snow in Vienna, it’s cold all the same….

  Your loving

  A Chekhov

  Everyone we meet recognizes us as Russians. No one looks me in the face; they all stare at my grizzled cap. Looking at my cap probably makes them think I’m a very rich Russian count.

  1933 PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR

  British travel writer Patrick (‘Paddy’) Leigh Fermor (1915–2011) is famous for having walked from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul as an eighteen-year-old, setting out in the winter of 1933, a journey he recounted in a three-volume memoir, starting with The Time of Gifts (1977), which showcases his cultural sensitivity together with a special ability to make friends wherever he went. During the Second World War he was involved in Special Operations Executive (SOE) activities with partisans in occupied Crete.

  Meanwhile, there was Vienna.…

  Few delights could compare with these wintry days: the snow outside, the bare trees outlined by the frost, the muted light and, indoors, the rooms following each other filled with the spoils, the heirlooms and the dowries of a golden age. The galleries of the hibernating city retreated and grew smaller in the distance like vistas along dim rectangular telescopes. I had heard someone say that Vienna combined the splendour of a capital with the familiarity of a village. In the Inner City, where crooked lanes opened on gold and marble outbursts of Baroque, it was true and, in the Kärntnerstrasse or the Graben, after I had bumped into three brand-new acquaintances within a quarter of an hour, it seemed truer still, and parts of the town suggested an even narrower focus. There were squares as small and complete and as carefully furnished as rooms. Facades of broken pediment and tiered shutter enclosed hushed rectangles of cobble; the drip of icicles eroded gaps in the frozen scallops of the fountains; the statues of archdukes or composers presided with pensive nonchalance; and all at once as I loitered there, the silence would fly in pieces when the initial clang from a tower routed a hundred pigeons crowding a Palladian cornice and scattered avalanches of snow and filled the geometric sky with wings. Palace succeeded palace, casemented arches sailed across the streets, pillars lifted their statues; ice-fettered in their pools, tritons floundered beneath a cloudy heaven amid ribbed cupolas expanded by the score. The greatest of these, the dome of the Karlskirche, floated with a balloon’s lightness in its enclosing hemisphere and the friezes that spiralled the shafts of the two statue-crowned guardian columns – free-standing and as heavily wrought as Trajan’s – gained an added impromptu spin when they vanished halfway up in a gyre of flakes.

  A hint of touchy Counter-Reformation aggression accompanies some ecclesiastical Baroque. There is a dash of it here and there in Vienna, and St Stephen’s – steep and streamlined and Gothic – springs up unchallenged in the heart of it as though the balance needed redress. Bristling with finials and unloosing its gargoyles, the cathedral lifts a solitary and warning steeple which dominates every dome and cupola and bell-tower in the city…. In the rank of fiacres outside the south door of St Stephen’s, cabbies in bowlers conversed in the Viennese dialect while they straightened the blankets on their horse’s quarters and gave them their feed in buckets. Some of these were as heavily whiskered as their masters. They steamed and fidgeted between the shafts, scattering their oats over the caked snow and the cobbles and sending an agreeable stable-yard whiff across the fumes of the hot coffee and the fresh cakes in the pastry-cooks’ shops. Joining in my memory with the cold edge of the frost, the combination of these scents conjure up the city in a second.

  WASHINGTON D.C.

  Washington D.C. was created as the seat of government of the United States of America from the 1790s, and was planned by engineer and designer Pierre Charles L’Enfant as a new city of grand vistas that would reflect the ambition of the young state. As the location of the White House and Congress, as well as many national monuments and museums, it has always attracted visitors from across the United States and the world.

  1819 ADLARD WELBY

  Adlard Welby (see page 226) visited Washington in 1819 while much of the city remained under construction, seven years after a British force had invaded and burned the White House (1812).

  These American stages or caravans carry all the passengers withinside, an arrangement which renders travelling with servants expensive: we were eleven young and old, closely packed, and jumbled away at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour, without interest; for we could only catc
h a glimpse of the country now and then by lifting up the side leather. Soon after noon we came in sight of the Capitol, and were set down at a large tavern near to it.

  The dirt, ill-arrangement and absence of common comforts in an American tavern or hotel have already been expatiated upon amply; but to meet with such things under the walls of the Capitol, at the very seat of government, I was not prepared. On entering the hotel, a poor lad, whose dishabille of dirt and rags defies description, came with a brush, which he was making less fit for use by rubbing its bristles upon his dirtier hand, to ask if he should brush our coats. We enquired for a room upstairs to shave, &c., and though past one o’clock not a bed had been made, or a breath of acceptable fresh air permitted to blow into these chambers of contamination! Having finished the toilette as well as we were able, our first visit was to the Capitol.

  It stands finely upon the edge of a high commanding ridge, from whence with one sweeping glance one views the subjacent ground down to the Potomac River, and the elevated country beyond; to the right is seen George Town and the most populous part of Washington, the President’s House, the Post Office, &c. but alas! excepting these and a few other mostly dispersed buildings, the horse, the cow and the swine still graze quietly around the Capitol of Washington. Viewing however the beautiful site of this city with the eye of its venerable founder, and with him letting imagination cover it with houses and ‘the busy hum of men’, if we then look round for the attractions of support for this multitude, the illusion vanishes. Commerce cannot but with difficulty flourish upon the shallow bed of the river, and agriculture may long strive for success in vain, with the surrounding sterility. Wherein then must the motive of the statesman be sought for founding a city in a place favourable alone to the eye? Could he make a mistake? That is not probable. Could it be to favour his native State, or to gratify a whim? This is not consonant to the character of his great mind. A despot of Russia might build a city upon piles vainly to show posterity his power: Frederick of Prussia might have his Potsdam; but Washington ever kept utility in view, and never aimed to gratify a vain wish at the expense of his fellow creatures. It is then suggested, that, impressed with the importance of quiet deliberation, he fixed the seat of government upon a spot so unattractive to the multitude that their representatives might be unbiased by faction.

  Of the Capitol the centre is yet to rear its head, the wings alone are finished; these contain the Hall of Representatives and that of the Senate – a Library – a Post Office for the Members – Committee Rooms, &c.

  The Hall of Representatives is of semicircular form; a beautiful colonnade of native with capitals of Italian, marble, ranges along within the semicircle and its base, with rich crimson and fringed curtain drapery between the columns. The President’s throne is placed on the centre of the base and fronting the semicircle, the seats and desks for the Members ranged so as to radiate from it; the whole area is covered with a rich and rather gaudy carpet.

  The Hall of the Senate is as studiously plain as that of the Representatives is gaudy; in the same form, but upon a much smaller scale, and the gallery is only upon the base of the semicircle, so that a spectator here fronts the Members; the style of decoration throughout is far preferable to the other.

  Of the debates on the tapis I can say but little, not having had time sufficient to give them much attention – they were apparently carried on however with more decorum than from report I had reason to expect, except that the exercise of spitting upon the beautiful carpet was continued as everywhere else; the walls of the stairs and the stairs themselves also were covered with the saliva of tobacco chewers.

  It being an expected compliment from strangers coming to the Seat of Government to pay their respects to its head, we drove down to the President’s house, at the hour appointed; it is a handsome stone building, which has now been restored and repaired since the shock given to it by the English; but the gardens and pleasure grounds, reaching down to the banks of the Potomac, and extending again up to the Capitol, are as yet only be seen upon paper; rude nature still rules absolute over the tract. Remains of the late snow yet lay in the shade, and negligence, studied or accidental, had left it upon the flight of steps to the President’s house, an old plank being laid upon the landing that visitors might get dry to the door.

  A servant, not a man of show, admitted us into a plain hall, and ushered us upstairs to the private apartment in which we found Mr Munroe [sic] seated alone at his bureau with various papers before him; he arose at our entrance, and himself placed chairs for us, which his independent servant had left the room without doing. Mr Munroe appeared a plain quiet man in dress and manners, the English country gentleman with a physiognomy which bore marks of deep reflection: a conversation of ten minutes on indifferent subjects terminated our visit, when, instead of formal etiquette he gave me a friendly shake of the hand with a ‘God bless you’, spoken in a pleasing tone, which left upon me a very favourable impression.

  1848 THEODORE DWIGHT

  Theodore Dwight (1796–1866) came from a prominent Connecticut family. He wrote several popular tourist guides to the United States, and in 1848 he undertook a journey down the East Coast, which he recorded in Travels in America (1848).

  Some of the inhabitants of Washington have had intelligence and observation enough to afford much interesting information in relation to public men and national affairs. What we receive through the newspapers, or other channels little more correct, passes under their own eyes. And indeed, perhaps, no part of the country is left so much alone to form unbiased opinions. While speeches are made in Congress, written out, amended and published by thousands to influence some county, state or number of states, nobody tries to discover things to the Washingtonians, knowing that it would be in vain. Everything is therefore left to be seen by them without disguise; and the consequence is, they often form correct opinions, and speak with becoming frankness. It is gratifying also to reflect, that local interests and influences are not likely to engross and control the attention of the government in so great a degree as they have often done in large cities; and there is no mob to overawe or even to threaten their freedom.

  To an American who has seen any of the capitals of Europe, the absence of military display is one of the most agreeable features in view, wherever he turns. There is not a soldier to guard gates or doors in Washington, with the single exception of those at the navy-yard, a mile or more from the capitol. The total want of every sign of military preparation is also very accordant with one’s feelings. After the last war with England, a felon imprisoned for some crime confessed, as I recollect, that during his career of iniquity he had entered into a conspiracy to seize President Madison, and deliver him to the British ships then lying in the Potomac, while he was a sentinel to guard the President’s house. As there was not even a wall of sufficient height to prevent an approach to the doors, and no other obstacle, such a plan might have been easily accomplished, I suppose, under favourable circumstances, by mere surprise. Though danger was thus in one instance incurred by the neglect to take military precautions, how much better it is than to have the display of paid soldiers at every turn, and to become familiar with the music and the weapons of death! From some acquaintance with the feelings and habits of foreigners, I can say with great confidence, that probably a large proportion of the intelligent men of Europe would learn with surprise that there is not a soldier on guard in the capital of the United States, even during the sessions of Congress, although the familiar fact excites not a thought in our minds.…

  With abundant materials for thought, I took my seat in a stage coach for Baltimore, and revived many a recollection of strolls through European palaces and prisons, and events in the history of courts. Washington, thought I, is a metropolis of nuisances, a capital of intrigues, and ever must be. But yet how different it is, in some respects, from the seat of an European court! The profession of a courtier requires a long apprenticeship, which it is almost impossible to obtain in this country, amo
ng the frequent changes to which our system subjects us. Though the growth of bad men may be rapid, their career must generally be short. But what results might not be produced, if such characters as may be conceived, were allowed to prosecute their operations for ten, twenty or thirty years, without fear of interruption, and under the shelter of an unchanging dynasty? Who would ever think of studying diplomacy in the United States, as it is regularly studied in some European countries? So preposterous a thing would be undertaken only by a madman. On the other side of the Atlantic, a man well trained in the forms of international business may expect to be gratified with the substantial rewards awaiting its performance: but here, selections of ministers, secretaries &c. may be next year on grounds which cannot now be conjectured: and as for five or ten years hence, no one pretends to foresee who may be in a foreign embassy, or why. The only offices in Washington which can be looked on as permanent, are a few clerkships in the departments and the keepers of certain hotels; the very stage-horses must stare at the new faces they annually behold among the legislators, and wonder why there are so frequent changes in that line.…