Such is the curious ethnological assembly at the “Halbe Mond” dinner, at the primitive hour of one, in the holiday aeason of the year; and, though, in the winter time, when the villages in the neighbourhood of the town are many of them snowed up, so that the provisions of the peasantry have to be hoisted in at the dormer-windows in the roofs, and when the starved and frozen-out deer come down to the cities to be fed, and the market-carts are all taken off their wheels, and the vegetables, butter, and cheese have to be brought to the “Stadt” upon sledges—though, at such a time, but few travellers can naturally be expected to dine there, nevertheless there is always a goodly muster of townsfolk who make a practice of taking their “mid-day meal” at the hotel; for when the coat of regaling oneself with some dozen courses and a dessert is but eightpence a head to regular subscribers (for it is the custom with residents to take a given number of “billets,” as if one was contracting for so many dips at the sea-side, instead of so many tickets for soup, poultry, meat, fish, pastry, or d’œuvres, entremets, dessert, and heaven knows how many other dishes besides), and when we add that the cooking moreover is by no means unpalatable, the London epicure upon a moderate income will readily understand that the attractions are sufficient to draw “good houses,” the entertainment being generally excellent, the performers mostly respectable, and the prices extremely moderate.
True, the lover of English fare will be occasionally offended with the sight of such dishes as boiled beef and cherries, roast pork and preserved oranges, stewed mutton and pickled “sticklebacks,” carp and horse-radish sauce, fieldfares and juniper-berries, and raw herrings served with cream, raw onions, capers, and sliced apples. True, again, the meat, owing to its having been all boiled for soup before being baked to do duty as a roast joint, has no more flavour left in it than in a mouthful of papermaker’s pulp, so that one really has to inquire whether it be stag or roebuck, or goose, pork, beef, or veal that we are eating; nevertheless, the sauces with which they are smothered are sufficiently savoury to make them toothsome, so that for a month or two the mere novelty of the fare is enough to give it a zest to the hungry and smoke-dried traveller.
At this hotel, in the winter time, the company, if not numerous, is, at least, select. At the head of the table is invariably to be seen the little round figure of Professor M., the teacher of painting at the principal public school of the town, who has eaten his twelve courses there day after day for seven and thirty years, and whose bulky little body and fat round checks are glowing results at once of the excellence and nutritive qualities of the food,—for, good cheery little soul, his face is as pleasant and as ruddy as the sun in the winter time,—and who, though numbering nearly sixty years, is as full of hope as a young poet, for it was only last year that he was busy covering an acre of canvas that he had to mount a ladder to paint, for his 999th grand tableau of “Christ and his Apostles.” Then there is the young and sharp-witted Professor H., whose features remind one somewhat of Louis Napoleon, and who, like the French Emperor, has been the architect of his own fortunes, for, though not a man of the schools, he has taught himself to make what he delights to call the finest microscopes in Europe, and is famed all over Germany for his splendid illustrations of the polarisation of light by means of the oxyhydrogen apparatus. Besides these is a group of Saxon officers, good-humoured jolly fellows, who every year believe that there is a chance of war breaking out with France, and are longing for another brush with the imperial army, or else as anxiously awaiting the festivities of the next ball at the Klemda, or arranging the details of their next grand sledging party with the band of music to Ruhla. Moreover, here may be found the polite silver-headed old courtier, the Baron von H., who is the head forester of the Duchy, and is ever pleased to point out to strangers where the choicest beauties of the forest scenery lie. Again, the lively and kindly-natured commandant of the Wartburg, the Major von A., occasionally forms one of the party: and then how merrily the time passes, and how the glasses are sure to clink! For he is “the best of all good company,” and has always a good tale to tell, either of the ghosts he has himself seen up at the Wartburg, or else some pretty Thuringian legend to narrate, or one of his last clever little sketches to show; for the Major paints as tastily as he sings, and his old Thuringian songs, when accompanied by himself on the “zitter,” the national instrument of the country, are things quite unique, as well for the gracefulness of the execution as for the quaintness of the simple ditties. Nor are ladies, at such a time, entirely absent from the company; for here dines daily the Fraulein K., who was formerly the head governess to the young princesses of Saxe Weimar, but who is now the principal teacher at what is termed the “higher daughters’ school” in the town, and who still delights in all the manners of the Court, and sits at home apparelled in black velvet, waiting to receive her friends on the nights of her receptions. How fluently she passes from one language to another! Now she is speaking French, and excellent French, too, with the accomplished Commandant; now she is talking English with the two worthy Scotch ladies next her, and now she converses in German with the Baron von H. concerning the studies and quickness of his little grandchildren. There is also a slight sprinkling of English ladies at the table, for, though the British inhabitants in the town hardly exceed half a dozen, the greater part of these meet regularly at the table d’hôte. It would be unfair, however, to speak more particularly of them in a paper intended for English eyes; suffice it, the two Scotch ladies, above alluded to, were a couple of the best and most graceful-minded women it has ever been the writer’s lot to meet with—the one as wise as she was pleasant, and as pleasant as she was kindly; and the other, clever in all things, clever in painting, clever in music, aye, and we have a shrewd suspicion, clever at writing too.
Of the other Englanderinns (as the Germans call