Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/Up the Moselle - Part 4
UP THE MOSELLE.
PART IV.
As everybody knows, spring, and summer too, came a month earlier than usual this year 1863. The cold, wet, wineless summer of 1860 taught us that summer, even on the Continent, may turn out a miserable failure; and this is not a pleasant thought, for a wet summer is contrary to the course of nature, like grey hair in youth. Far worse than a white winter is what the Irish peasants call a black summer, and the fewer we get in the course of a life the better. In spite of its suspicious earliness, the year is not spoiled yet; the barometer is high; the distance from Boppard to Brodenbach is but about seven English miles across a hill, and the way had been performed last autumn in the contrary direction. Bædeker says in his guide-book that it must not be attempted without a guide; but it is only necessary to inquire where the footpath to Buchholz begins, just beyond the railway-station at Boppard, taking care in approaching Brodenbach not to miss the Castle of Ehrenburg, which lies to the left, and with which I concluded my account of last autumn’s ramble.[1] At the pretty little inn at Brodenbach, kept by “Probst,” I learn from a traveller “in the silk line” that there is a fine church at Münster-Maifeld, and decide on turning aside to see it. Münster-Maifeld is a little town about a couple of hours’ walk inland on the north side of the Moselle. It lies at the edge of a fertile table-land, and commands an immense prospect. The church and town is seen a long time before we reach it. The Maifelder Hof is the hotel generally mentioned in the guide-books, but “the Sun” is very good, and the landlord, as his sign denotes, an enlightened man, who has lived many years in Paris, and is now ready to throw light on the sights of his native town. The chief of these is the old collegiate church. It has a remarkable tower, shaped as if a round and square tower had grown together; part of this structure is believed to have been Roman, as the site of the church is undoubtedly the same as that of the original Castrum in the “Vicus Ambiativus.” This is one of the places which disputes the doubtful honour of having given birth to the Emperor Caligula. The present church was built probably towards the end of the thirteenth century, on the site of the older one built by Archbishop Modoald, who died in 656. The choir appears to be the oldest part. This is remarkable for its polygonal shape, and the crown-like appearance presented by its little gables. The lancet-shaped windows do not, however, harmonise well with the pure Byzantine character of the rest of the apsis; and they are, doubtless, more modern than the rest of the choir, the date of which must be placed shortly after the grant of Archbishop Baldwin to the chapter, A.D. 1333. Behind the church is to be seen what is said to be the oldest house in Münster, distinguished by its quaint beams and gables, and probably having belonged to the old conventual establishment in some character or other.
A walk to the lower part of the town discloses a singular stone conduit, like a long covered box with water spouting out of several openings, and crowded with women washing; and below this a considerable portion of the mediæval walls, with one ruinous tower, which slightly leans from the perpendicular.
The comparative height of the ground here, as compared with the vast depression to the westward, from which strange round and conical hills rise, is very striking. It is just one of those sites which the Romans loved for their winter camps, their dislike to being overlooked by a possible enemy overcoming any objection they might have to bracing air.
The origin of the name of the town is, as some antiquaries think, to be sought in the May-meetings held by the ancient deliberative assemblies of Germany under Charlemagne and his successors; but others only connect it with the town of Mayen. We saw a Maypole standing in a village below the town, showing that the ancient festival is not confined to Britain. In the town-ditch the cockchafers, or May-chafers, as they are called in Germany, have been holding a terrible orgy, as they hang as thick as the few leaves they have left on the devastated oaks. The ravages of this insect are said to have grown more alarming of late years in consequence of the great destruction of woods, which harboured their enemies—the birds.
From Münster-Maifeld it is easy to drop down on the valley of the Elz; and this is, in fact, the only approach for carriages to that Castle of Elz which is undoubtedly the most worth-seeing object with the exception of those in the city of Treves, on the whole course of the Moselle. The very considerable and steep hills in this region are thickly clad with oak and beech. A sudden turn in the road discloses close to us the remains of the dogged-looking Castle of Trutz-Elz, which was built by Archbishop Baldwin in order to reduce the stronghold, which he had attempted to storm in vain. The device of building a fortress over against an enemy’s city is one with which all classical scholars are familiar, as being that by which the Dorian immigrants reduced the Peloponnesus. It appears that in this case it was effectual to bring the lords of Elz into a full recognition of the supremacy of their doughty diocesan, and to transform them evermore into faithful vassals of the Church. There is an advantage in this approach to the Castle of Elz, that it is revealed suddenly like a stage-vision to one passing through the curtain of trees that screen it from the road. There it stands, on a rock, in the midst of a lovely glen, as if it were the completion of the rock itself—a most fairy-like structure, looking aërial and unsubstantial from its marvellous perpendicular elegance and its cluster of pinnacled turrrets. It so happens that most of our ideas connected with castles are associated with battlements and square topped towers, which is partly the result of castles in ruin having lost their pointed roofs, so that some might be inclined to think Ehrenburg more beautiful. But, associations apart, or, rather, it being conceded that ruinousness does not confer an exclusive title to the picturesque, it is impossible to conceive the lines of any building more beautiful than those of Schloss-Elz. It is not a ruin, but an ancient castle, not restored with questionable taste like Stolzenfels on the Rhine, but preserved by some wonderful good luck, or traditional good taste, inside and outside exactly as it was. The blood of its owners is shown by this instinct of beauty to have run marvellously pure from generation to generation.
Schloss-Elz.
By a bridge over the ravine, and a low gateway, an entrance is effected into the court of the castle, which is as grand as the exterior, and in many respects closely resembles that of the far-famed Wartburg in Thuringia. The interior is as intricate as a rabbit-warren may be supposed to be, containing rooms of all shapes and sizes, from the Rittersaals and reception-rooms to little cells in the turrets. The old black straight-backed furniture is still to be seen in its old places; amongst other things a four-post bed, such as one sees in Pre-Raphaelite pictures, grand and commodious rather than comfortable, and ascended by a ladder.
There are pictures of ancestry on the walls, more grim than artistic, from the times of rude chain-armour, through that period when plate-mail was crowned by a huge judge’s wig, to that when pigtails reigned supreme. The ancestresses are more remarkable for bloom and good case than for beauty, but doubtless this was the idea of a flattering likeness which suggested itself to the artists of those early times.
In the court there are heaps of round stone balls, which were either shot from the earliest cannon, or used from catapults in the preceding age. The vestibule is garnished with antlers, and the mouldering remains of birds of prey are gibbeted on a wall in the court. From the castle we drop down on the Brook Elz, one of those clear bubbling and babbling Welsh-like streams, so rare in Germany generally, though common about the Moselle, abounding in pebbly shallows and clear pools, called Diana-baths by painters, because, from their sylvan seclusion, they might tempt the goddess to bathe in them without fear of being overlooked by Actæon.
The gorge here is so very narrow, and the rocky hills so interlace their steep fingers, that the path to Moselkern crosses the brook on treacherous stepping-stones some thirteen or fourteen times before it reaches the bank of the Moselle. This path has awakened the maledictions of the compiler of Murray’s Handbook, who probably performed the distance in rather tight patent-leather boots. But, this inconvenience apart, the walk of three or four miles is one to be remembered for its beauty.
The woods are lovely, and at this season the wild flora most gorgeous. At intervals the shape of the hills affords room for vine-terraces, in one particular basin the vineyards forming a complete amphitheatre: yet they are generally so steep that we must fancy the vine-dresser’s feet furnished with clinging appliances like those by which flies stand on ceilings.
At Moselkern we came out into the open world again at nightfall, and were obliged to put up with roughish accommodation. Moselkern is full of those old gabled tumble-down houses in which painters delight, and the same may be said in a greater or less degree of all the villages we pass. On the opposite side of the river are some remarkable rocks. Our course lies direct through Müden to Carden. The church at Müden is remarkable for its queer steeple, which is a conspicuous object from the river. Whether it was so finished in default of funds or from sudden death of the architect, is uncertain. At Carden the beautiful Byzantine church arrests the attention in its restored state, but even more remarkable is an old round-arched house built of dark basaltic stone, evidently religious in origin, but now profaned into a barn. The church is said to have been built by Saint Castor in the sixth century on the ruins of a Roman castle. The Roman name of the place was Statio Caradaunum.
In the year 836, Archbishop Hatto caused the relics of St. Castor, which were deposited here, to be transferred to the church which bears his name in Coblentz. Carden, as well as Treis, which is opposite, produces a light clean red wine, remarkably pure and wholesome. An opportunity here presents itself of joining two Westphalian clergymen in a one-horse conveyance through Cochem to Alf and Bertrich, which was the proposed end of this excursion. The places on the way must be visited as we return. At Cochem we leave the river, which makes a great loop, and climb the hill by the road which leads over to Eller. The whole mountain seems covered with gold, so as to dazzle the eye; but the nuggets, when examined closely, take the shape of broom-blossoms.
- ↑ See Vol. vii., p. 334.