Journals by Herman Melville

Author:Herman Melville
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: test
Publisher: test
Published: 2010-08-27T03:00:00+00:00

Page 350

Panorama of the Rhine: Cologne

Page 351

36.13 Rubens] Rubens was baptized in St. Peter’s, and he presented to it the painting M saw, one of his best known from his last years. The painting actually portrays the martyrdom of Peter— not the removal of Christ from the cross that is traditionally meant by “Descent from the Cross”; a copy was exhibited free, while to see the original required a fee, fifteen groschen, to the sacristan.

36.15 purchased some books] On M’s book list are two items obtained in Cologne: “Up the Rhine” and “Panorama of the Rhine” (146.9–10). Sealts identifies the first (280) as some edition (London or Frankfort? 1840?) of Thomas Hood’s Up the Rhine; he leaves the second (396a) unidentified; a computer search done through the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) indicates that there were several nineteenth-century works with the title Panorama of the Rhine, including a pictorial one done by Friedrich Wilhelm Delkeskamp (Frankfurt-am-Main: Borniger & Collin, [1837]), the illustration opposite is from a copy in The Newberry Library.

36.17 German dinner] Murray advised that in northern Germany the best dinner was table d’hôte; it was customarily served at one or two o’clock. The noted sociological journalist Henry Mayhew described one satirically: the room “spacious as a music-hall’’; fountains, mirrors, diorama paintings of Rhine scenery; a musicianss’ gallery; “tables, which strike one as being as long as a railway platform, [that] reach two and three times up and down the room, … generally lined all the way with fresh faces every day”; a babel of French, English, and Germans who assembled at the loud sound of a bell. The menu was lengthy: a thick soup; a roast or bouilli served sliced with gravy or sauce, pickle, and potato; then one of a variety of specialty meats, like raw salmon, or sausage, with vegetables like red cabbage or sauerkraut; an entrée, as of fish or calf’s head; a pudding or other sweet; then a substantial baked meat, veal or mutton, with stewed or preserved fruit; salad and fowl or field birds; and finally a dessert of fruit, cakes, and nuts. Mayhew commends the multilingual young waiterss’ great skill but was astonished at the price: “English readers … will marvel when they hear that a dinner, consisting of eight courses, is put upon the table at a charge which varies between eighteen pence and two shillings per head” (The Rhine and Its Picturesque Scenery [London: Bogue, 1856], pp. 235–40).

36.25 bridge of boats] Until the next decade, a long, floating causeway resting on a string of barges crossed the Rhine from Cologne to the fortified suburb of Deutz (see the illustration opposite). From it one got the best view of the city. Mayhew’s Rhine has a picture of the waterfront from it, and a lengthy description of the bridge and view at dusk (pp. 46–50).

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