CHAP. I - THE JOURNEY AND THE REHEARSAL

Summary

I am not such a hardened traveller as to have ceased to find the first half hour of a solitary journey in a strange country a trifle dreary. If even, moreover, the banks of the Elbe betwixt Hamburg and Haarburg rivalled those of the same river above Dresden in beauty and variety, they must have looked dismal on the fourth of September, 1839, after a night's storm, which had scattered all the first yellow leaves of the linden trees on the Jungfernstieg, and under clouds hanging low, which presently discharged themselves in a dense chill rain. The deck of the steamer was made untenable by a drove of horses, on their way from the Lubeck fair to Italy; the little close cabin reeked with tobacco-smoke. I had before me a day and a night's journey through this forbidding weather ' Autumn threatening to be as severe in Hanover as Lord Eglintoun found it at Castle Montgomerie — and across the dreariest country in the world, with only Patience and Pantomime to stand my purveyors and interpreters. “What a fool have I been,” said I, wistfully calling to mind my own easy chair at home, “ever to think of this Musical Festival at Brunswick!”

But the people of North Germany have a good-natured way with them, which must put the most pertinacious feelings of strangeness and solitude to flight in a wonderfully short time.