Vanity Fair (109 page)

My lord nearly sent Jos off his legs with the most fascinating
smile. "Are you going to stop in Pumpernickel?" he said. "It is a
dull place, but we want some nice people, and we would try and make
it SO agreeable to you. Mr.—Ahum—Mrs.—Oho. I shall do myself
the honour of calling upon you to-morrow at your inn." And he went
away with a Parthian grin and glance which he thought must finish
Mrs. Osborne completely.

The performance over, the young fellows lounged about the lobbies,
and we saw the society take its departure. The Duchess Dowager went
off in her jingling old coach, attended by two faithful and withered
old maids of honour, and a little snuffy spindle-shanked gentleman
in waiting, in a brown jasey and a green coat covered with orders—
of which the star and the grand yellow cordon of the order of St.
Michael of Pumpernickel were most conspicuous. The drums rolled,
the guards saluted, and the old carriage drove away.

Then came his Transparency the Duke and Transparent family, with his
great officers of state and household. He bowed serenely to
everybody. And amid the saluting of the guards and the flaring of
the torches of the running footmen, clad in scarlet, the Transparent
carriages drove away to the old Ducal schloss, with its towers and
pinacles standing on the schlossberg. Everybody in Pumpernickel
knew everybody. No sooner was a foreigner seen there than the
Minister of Foreign Affairs, or some other great or small officer of
state, went round to the Erbprinz and found out the name of the new
arrival.

We watched them, too, out of the theatre. Tapeworm had just walked
off, enveloped in his cloak, with which his gigantic chasseur was
always in attendance, and looking as much as possible like Don Juan.
The Prime Minister's lady had just squeezed herself into her sedan,
and her daughter, the charming Ida, had put on her calash and clogs;
when the English party came out, the boy yawning drearily, the Major
taking great pains in keeping the shawl over Mrs. Osborne's head,
and Mr. Sedley looking grand, with a crush opera-hat on one side of
his head and his hand in the stomach of a voluminous white
waistcoat. We took off our hats to our acquaintances of the table
d'hote, and the lady, in return, presented us with a little smile
and a curtsey, for which everybody might be thankful.

The carriage from the inn, under the superintendence of the bustling
Mr. Kirsch, was in waiting to convey the party; but the fat man said
he would walk and smoke his cigar on his way homewards, so the other
three, with nods and smiles to us, went without Mr. Sedley, Kirsch,
with the cigar case, following in his master's wake.

We all walked together and talked to the stout gentleman about the
agremens of the place. It was very agreeable for the English.
There were shooting-parties and battues; there was a plenty of balls
and entertainments at the hospitable Court; the society was
generally good; the theatre excellent; and the living cheap.

"And our Minister seems a most delightful and affable person," our
new friend said. "With such a representative, and—and a good
medical man, I can fancy the place to be most eligible. Good-night,
gentlemen." And Jos creaked up the stairs to bedward, followed by
Kirsch with a flambeau. We rather hoped that nice-looking woman
would be induced to stay some time in the town.

In Which We Meet an Old Acquaintance

Such polite behaviour as that of Lord Tapeworm did not fail to have
the most favourable effect upon Mr. Sedley's mind, and the very next
morning, at breakfast, he pronounced his opinion that Pumpernickel
was the pleasantest little place of any which he had visited on
their tour. Jos's motives and artifices were not very difficult of
comprehension, and Dobbin laughed in his sleeve, like a hypocrite as
he was, when he found, by the knowing air of the civilian and the
offhand manner in which the latter talked about Tapeworm Castle and
the other members of the family, that Jos had been up already in the
morning, consulting his travelling Peerage. Yes, he had seen the
Right Honourable the Earl of Bagwig, his lordship's father; he was
sure he had, he had met him at—at the Levee—didn't Dob remember?
and when the Diplomatist called on the party, faithful to his
promise, Jos received him with such a salute and honours as were
seldom accorded to the little Envoy. He winked at Kirsch on his
Excellency's arrival, and that emissary, instructed before-hand,
went out and superintended an entertainment of cold meats, jellies,
and other delicacies, brought in upon trays, and of which Mr. Jos
absolutely insisted that his noble guest should partake.

Tapeworm, so long as he could have an opportunity of admiring the
bright eyes of Mrs. Osborne (whose freshness of complexion bore
daylight remarkably well) was not ill pleased to accept any
invitation to stay in Mr. Sedley's lodgings; he put one or two
dexterous questions to him about India and the dancing-girls there;
asked Amelia about that beautiful boy who had been with her; and
complimented the astonished little woman upon the prodigious
sensation which she had made in the house; and tried to fascinate
Dobbin by talking of the late war and the exploits of the
Pumpernickel contingent under the command of the Hereditary Prince,
now Duke of Pumpernickel.

Lord Tapeworm inherited no little portion of the family gallantry,
and it was his happy belief that almost every woman upon whom he
himself cast friendly eyes was in love with him. He left Emmy under
the persuasion that she was slain by his wit and attractions and
went home to his lodgings to write a pretty little note to her. She
was not fascinated, only puzzled, by his grinning, his simpering,
his scented cambric handkerchief, and his high-heeled lacquered
boots. She did not understand one-half the compliments which he
paid; she had never, in her small experience of mankind, met a
professional ladies' man as yet, and looked upon my lord as
something curious rather than pleasant; and if she did not admire,
certainly wondered at him. Jos, on the contrary, was delighted.
"How very affable his Lordship is," he said; "How very kind of his
Lordship to say he would send his medical man! Kirsch, you will
carry our cards to the Count de Schlusselback directly; the Major
and I will have the greatest pleasure in paying our respects at
Court as soon as possible. Put out my uniform, Kirsch—both our
uniforms. It is a mark of politeness which every English gentleman
ought to show to the countries which he visits to pay his respects
to the sovereigns of those countries as to the representatives of
his own."

When Tapeworm's doctor came, Doctor von Glauber, Body Physician to
H.S.H. the Duke, he speedily convinced Jos that the Pumpernickel
mineral springs and the Doctor's particular treatment would
infallibly restore the Bengalee to youth and slimness. "Dere came
here last year," he said, "Sheneral Bulkeley, an English Sheneral,
tvice so pic as you, sir. I sent him back qvite tin after tree
months, and he danced vid Baroness Glauber at the end of two."

Jos's mind was made up; the springs, the Doctor, the Court, and the
Charge d'Affaires convinced him, and he proposed to spend the autumn
in these delightful quarters. And punctual to his word, on the next
day the Charge d'Affaires presented Jos and the Major to Victor
Aurelius XVII, being conducted to their audience with that sovereign
by the Count de Schlusselback, Marshal of the Court.

They were straightway invited to dinner at Court, and their
intention of staying in the town being announced, the politest
ladies of the whole town instantly called upon Mrs. Osborne; and as
not one of these, however poor they might be, was under the rank of
a Baroness, Jos's delight was beyond expression. He wrote off to
Chutney at the Club to say that the Service was highly appreciated
in Germany, that he was going to show his friend, the Count de
Schlusselback, how to stick a pig in the Indian fashion, and that
his august friends, the Duke and Duchess, were everything that was
kind and civil.

Emmy, too, was presented to the august family, and as mourning is
not admitted in Court on certain days, she appeared in a pink crape
dress with a diamond ornament in the corsage, presented to her by
her brother, and she looked so pretty in this costume that the Duke
and Court (putting out of the question the Major, who had scarcely
ever seen her before in an evening dress, and vowed that she did not
look five-and-twenty) all admired her excessively.

In this dress she walked a Polonaise with Major Dobbin at a Court
ball, in which easy dance Mr. Jos had the honour of leading out the
Countess of Schlusselback, an old lady with a hump back, but with
sixteen good quarters of nobility and related to half the royal
houses of Germany.

Pumpernickel stands in the midst of a happy valley through which
sparkles—to mingle with the Rhine somewhere, but I have not the map
at hand to say exactly at what point—the fertilizing stream of the
Pump. In some places the river is big enough to support a ferry-
boat, in others to turn a mill; in Pumpernickel itself, the last
Transparency but three, the great and renowned Victor Aurelius XIV
built a magnificent bridge, on which his own statue rises,
surrounded by water-nymphs and emblems of victory, peace, and
plenty; he has his foot on the neck of a prostrate Turk—history
says he engaged and ran a Janissary through the body at the relief
of Vienna by Sobieski—but, quite undisturbed by the agonies of that
prostrate Mahometan, who writhes at his feet in the most ghastly
manner, the Prince smiles blandly and points with his truncheon in
the direction of the Aurelius Platz, where he began to erect a new
palace that would have been the wonder of his age had the great-
souled Prince but had funds to complete it. But the completion of
Monplaisir (Monblaisir the honest German folks call it) was stopped
for lack of ready money, and it and its park and garden are now in
rather a faded condition, and not more than ten times big enough to
accommodate the Court of the reigning Sovereign.

The gardens were arranged to emulate those of Versailles, and amidst
the terraces and groves there are some huge allegorical waterworks
still, which spout and froth stupendously upon fete-days, and
frighten one with their enormous aquatic insurrections. There is
the Trophonius' cave in which, by some artifice, the leaden Tritons
are made not only to spout water, but to play the most dreadful
groans out of their lead conchs—there is the nymphbath and the
Niagara cataract, which the people of the neighbourhood admire
beyond expression, when they come to the yearly fair at the opening
of the Chamber, or to the fetes with which the happy little nation
still celebrates the birthdays and marriage-days of its princely
governors.

Then from all the towns of the Duchy, which stretches for nearly ten
mile—from Bolkum, which lies on its western frontier bidding
defiance to Prussia, from Grogwitz, where the Prince has a hunting-
lodge, and where his dominions are separated by the Pump River from
those of the neighbouring Prince of Potzenthal; from all the little
villages, which besides these three great cities, dot over the happy
principality—from the farms and the mills along the Pump come
troops of people in red petticoats and velvet head-dresses, or with
three-cornered hats and pipes in their mouths, who flock to the
Residenz and share in the pleasures of the fair and the festivities
there. Then the theatre is open for nothing, then the waters of
Monblaisir begin to play (it is lucky that there is company to
behold them, for one would be afraid to see them alone)—then there
come mountebanks and riding troops (the way in which his
Transparency was fascinated by one of the horse-riders is well
known, and it is believed that La Petite Vivandiere, as she was
called, was a spy in the French interest), and the delighted people
are permitted to march through room after room of the Grand Ducal
palace and admire the slippery floor, the rich hangings, and the
spittoons at the doors of all the innumerable chambers. There is
one Pavilion at Monblaisir which Aurelius Victor XV had arranged—a
great Prince but too fond of pleasure—and which I am told is a
perfect wonder of licentious elegance. It is painted with the story
of Bacchus and Ariadne, and the table works in and out of the room
by means of a windlass, so that the company was served without any
intervention of domestics. But the place was shut up by Barbara,
Aurelius XV's widow, a severe and devout Princess of the House of
Bolkum and Regent of the Duchy during her son's glorious minority,
and after the death of her husband, cut off in the pride of his
pleasures.

The theatre of Pumpernickel is known and famous in that quarter of
Germany. It languished a little when the present Duke in his youth
insisted upon having his own operas played there, and it is said one
day, in a fury, from his place in the orchestra, when he attended a
rehearsal, broke a bassoon on the head of the Chapel Master, who was
conducting, and led too slow; and during which time the Duchess
Sophia wrote domestic comedies, which must have been very dreary to
witness. But the Prince executes his music in private now, and the
Duchess only gives away her plays to the foreigners of distinction
who visit her kind little Court.

It is conducted with no small comfort and splendour. When there are
balls, though there may be four hundred people at supper, there is a
servant in scarlet and lace to attend upon every four, and every one
is served on silver. There are festivals and entertainments going
continually on, and the Duke has his chamberlains and equerries, and
the Duchess her mistress of the wardrobe and ladies of honour, just
like any other and more potent potentates.

The Constitution is or was a moderate despotism, tempered by a
Chamber that might or might not be elected. I never certainly could
hear of its sitting in my time at Pumpernickel. The Prime Minister
had lodgings in a second floor, and the Foreign Secretary occupied
the comfortable lodgings over Zwieback's Conditorey. The army
consisted of a magnificent band that also did duty on the stage,
where it was quite pleasant to see the worthy fellows marching in
Turkish dresses with rouge on and wooden scimitars, or as Roman
warriors with ophicleides and trombones—to see them again, I say,
at night, after one had listened to them all the morning in the
Aurelius Platz, where they performed opposite the cafe where we
breakfasted. Besides the band, there was a rich and numerous staff
of officers, and, I believe, a few men. Besides the regular
sentries, three or four men, habited as hussars, used to do duty at
the Palace, but I never saw them on horseback, and au fait, what was
the use of cavalry in a time of profound peace?—and whither the
deuce should the hussars ride?