EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INNS
without stopping any longer than was necessary to change horses."[1]
As for the neighboring Poland, "The duke of York, bishop of Osnabruck, and uncle to his present Majesty King George, said a very pertinent thing. … 'That he did not know a country where travellers were more at home than in Poland, because they were always making use of their own furniture.'"[2] One hardly found a chair to sit down upon.
The comments of most tourists in Germany are amply confirmed by Nugent. Of travel in Germany he says that it "is cheaper than in most parts of Europe." But, he adds, "The accommodations in general are very indifferent upon the road, as well in respect to provisions as lodging;[3] very few public houses (except in some provinces, as Saxony and Austria) being provided with regular entertainment for passengers. … In their houses one seldom sees a fire,[4] except in the kitchen; but their rooms are heated by a stove or oven to what degree they desire. There is one thing very particular to them, that they do not cover themselves with bed-clothes, but lay one feather-bed over, and another under. This is comfortable enough in winter, but how they can bear the feather-beds over them in summer, as is generally practised, I cannot conceive."[5]
The German feather bed occasionally puzzled foreign tourists. "Some poor Frenchmen being conducted to their bedchamber, one of them espying a feather-bed over, and another under, imagined that there was a design to make them lie one upon another for want of room. Upon which he addressed himself to the servant, and desired him to choose one of his lightest companions to put over him, alledging that he was not accustomed to lie in this manner."[6]
Nor did Englishmen take kindly to the German type of bed. All readers of Hood's "Up the Rhine" will recall the picture of the "worthy uncle" of one of the party found in the morning "lying broad awake, on his back, in a true German bedstead — a sort of wooden box or trough, so much too short for him, that his legs extended half-a-
98
- ↑ View of Society and Manners in Italy, i, 3.
- ↑ Nugent, Grand Tour, ii, 419.
- ↑ All the road from Heidelberg to Nuremberg "straw was commonly our bed." Misson, New Voyage to Italy, i1, 126.
- ↑ "Invalids who travel through Germany should take a small warming-pan with them." Starke, Letters from Italy, ii, 188.
- ↑ Nugent, Grand Tour, ii, 67.
- ↑ Ibid., ii, 67.
