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Updated: July 6, 2025
I don't know why; he was one of the most attractive on view, but I have often noticed Turkish tendencies in Dicky where his country-women are concerned. We came away almost immediately after, so that rose will bloom in my memory, until I forget about it, among romances that might have been.
The country-women found the Neuer Markt transformed into a camp when they brought their baskets in the early morning, but they met with eager buyers, who haggled laughingly in half a dozen different tongues. There was no lack of money, however. Cartloads of it were on the road. The Neuer Markt in Konigsberg is a square, of which the lower side is a quay on the Pregel. The river is narrow here.
Headley, being an american, cannot be thought of having any bad feeling towards his country-women. However, though I am a stranger in America, I will give more justice to the american ladies, and heal their toe, since I see them created to cheer us with their charming Polka: waiting, in the mean time, until steam, and tourists will have rendered them better, and better.
He could not laugh at them; he wished he could; and his first impulse was to turn and escape from the Fine Arts Department, and keep what little faith in the artistic future of the country he had been able to get together during his long sojourn out of it. Since his return he had made sure of the feeling for color and form with which his country-women dressed themselves.
The chateau had been the retreat of the Maréchale after the death of her husband; and it was in its stately solitudes, and in the woods and wilds which surrounded it for many a league, that Clotilde had acquired those accomplished tastes, and that characteristic dignity and force of mind, which distinguished her from the frivolity of her country-women, however elegant and attractive, who had been trained in the salons of the court.
It was quite a common sight to see the great, clumsy country-women and girls going about their work dressed in costly silks and velvets, all of the richest character and most beautiful colouring, digging and ploughing, cooking and scrubbing with valuable jewellery on their great arms and their coarse red hands, sparkling gems in their ears, and very likely a tiara that would have made a queen envious, fastened round their untidy, unbrushed hair.
Five country-women of our own it was easy to know them by their dress and general aspect were standing in the middle of the room; and one of them, the centre of the group, the senior harpy of the lot, a maiden lady I could have sworn to that with a red nose, held in one hand a huge pair of scissors, and in the other the already devoted goods of my most unfortunate companion!
He had walked through the old market where the horses were bought and sold ... had even stroked a mare's muzzle while some men bargained over it ... and then had crossed the road to the new market where he smelt the odour of flowers and fruit and listened to the country-women chaffering over their butter and eggs.
Take the mass of your educated, accomplished, and lovely country-women, is it, or is it not, the fact that a lady who has a house in a fashionable quarter, a footman to open her door, a butler to wait at her table, and a carriage and horses to drive about in, is a lady who has gained four steps, in female estimation, at starting? Yes? or No?" "Come to the point," said Vendale.
Italians, by what I can observe, suffer their minds to be much under the dominion of the sky; and attribute every change in their health, or even humour, as seriously to its influence, as if there were no nearer causes of alteration than the state of the air, and as if no doubt remained of its immediate power, though they are willing enough here to poison it with the scent of wood-ashes within doors, while fires in the grate seem to run rather low, and a brazier full of that pernicious stuff is substituted in its place, and driven under the table during dinner. It is surprising how very elegant, not to say magnificent, those dinners are in gentlemen's or noblemen's houses; such numbers of dishes at once; not large joints, but infinite variety: and I think their cooking excellent. Fashion keeps most of the fine people out of town yet; we have therefore had leisure to establish our own household for the winter, and have done so as commodiously as if our habitation was fixed here for life. This I am delighted with, as one may chance to gain that insight into every day behaviour, and common occurrences, which can alone be called knowing something of a country: counting churches, pictures, palaces, may be done by those who run from town to town, with no impression made but on their bones. I ought to learn that which before us lies in daily life, if proper use were made of my demi-naturalization; yet impediments to knowledge spring up round the very tree itself for surely if there was much wrong, I would not tell it of those who seem inclined to find all right in me; nor can I think that a fame for minute observation, and skill to discern folly with a microscopic eye, is in any wise able to compensate for the corrosions of conscience, where such discoveries have been attained by breach of confidence, and treachery towards unguarded, because unsuspecting innocence of conduct. We are always laughing at one another for running over none but the visible objects in every city, and for avoiding the conversation of the natives, except on general subjects of literature returning home only to tell again what has already been told. By the candid inhabitants of Italian states, however, much honour is given to our British travellers, who, as they say, viaggiono con profitto[Footnote: Travel for improvement], and scarce ever fail to carry home with them from other nations, every thing which can benefit or adorn their own. Candour, and a good humoured willingness to receive and reciprocate pleasure, seems indeed one of the standing virtues of Italy; I have as yet seen no fastidious contempt, or affected rejection of any thing for being what we call low; and I have a notion there is much less of those distinctions at Milan than at London, where birth does so little for a man, that if he depends on that, and forbears other methods of distinguishing himself from his footman, he will stand a chance of being treated no better than him by the world. Here a person's rank is ascertained, and his society settled, at his immediate entrance into life; a gentleman and lady will always be regarded as such, let what will be their behaviour. It is therefore highly commendable when they seek to adorn their minds by culture, or pluck out those weeds, which in hot countries will spring up among the riches of the harvest, and afford a sure, but no immediately pleasing proof of the soil's natural fertility. But my country-women would rather hear a little of our interieur, or, as we call it, family management; which appears arranged in a manner totally new to me; who find the lady of every house as unacquainted with her own, and her husband's affairs, as I who apply to her for information. No house account, no weekly bills perplex her peace; if eight servants are kept, we will say, six of these are men, and two of those men out of livery. The pay of these principal figures in the family, when at the highest rate, is fifteen pence English a day, out of which they find clothes and eating for fifteen pence includes board-wages; and most of these fellows are married too, and have four or five children each. The dinners drest at home are, for this reason, more exactly contrived than in England to suit the number of guests, and there are always half a dozen; for dining alone or the master and mistress tête-
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