fair time at leipsic.

From Berlin to Leipsic by rail, in an open carriage, is not the most interesting journey in the world. Whirr, whizz, burr! away we hum through the keen Spring air, between pleasant banks and dark fir-woods, not very rapidly indeed, for we travel under government regulations, but pleasantly enough if it were not for the sparks and the dust. There are few objects of interest on our route, till we perceive the towers of Wittenberg rising out of the hollow on the left, and we are at once buried in a dream about the simple monk of Eisleben, who, in his struggle against the papal authority, grew into the gigantic proportions of a Luther.

At KÖthen we change carriages, for we are on the Saxon frontier. With a snort and a roar, we start upon our journey over the dull waste, which can be described in no better way than by the single word repeated: sand, sand, sand. And now it comes on to rain, and my thin blouse is but a sorry shred to withstand the cold, dead drizzle. By degrees the heavy night clouds wrap themselves round us, fold by fold, till we see the engine fire reflected on the ground like a flying meteor; and the forms of lonely trees on the roadside come upon us suddenly, like spectres out of the darkness.

“Have you a lodging for the night, friend?” inquires a kind voice near me, speaking to my very thoughts.

“No. I am a stranger in Leipsic.”

“And your herberge?”

“I know nothing of it.”

The inquirer is a little man with a thin face, and a voice which might be disagreeable, were it not mellowed by good nature. He tells me, then, that he is a jewel-case maker, and has no doubt that I shall find a ready shelter in the herberge of his trade till the morning, if I am willing to accept of it. It is in the Little Churchyard. In spite of this ominous direction I shake the good man heartily by the hand, and, although I lose him in the darkness and confusion of the railway-station, cling mentally to the Little Churchyard as a passport to peace and rest. I don’t know how it is that I escape interrogation by the police, but once out of the turmoil of the crowd, I find myself wandering by a deep ditch and the shadowy outline of a high wall, seeking in vain amid the drizzling mist for one of the gates of the city. When almost hopeless of success, a welcome voice inquires my destination; and, under the guidance of a worthy Saxon, I find myself in Kleine Kirche Hof at last. There is the herberge in question, but with no light—welcoming sign!—for it is already ten o’clock, and its guests are all in bed. Dripping with rain, and with a rueful aspect, I prefer my request for a lodging. The “vater” looks dubiously at me out of the corner of one eye, till, having inspected my passport, he brightens up a little, and thinks he can find me a bed, but cannot break through the rules of his house so far as to give me any supper. It is too late.

Lighting a small lantern he leads the way across a stone-paved yard, and, opening one leaf of the folding-doors of a stable at its upper end, inducts me at once into the interior. It also is paved with stones, is small, and is nearly choked up with five or six bedsteads. The vater points to one which happily is as yet untenanted, and says, “Now, make haste, will you? I can’t stop here all night.” Before I have time to scramble into bed we are already in darkness, and no sooner is the door closed than my bed-fellows, who seemed all fast asleep a moment before, open a rattling fire of inquiries as to my parentage, birthplace, trade, and general condition; and having satisfied all this amiable questioning we fall asleep.

We turn our waking eyes upon a miserable glimmering which finds its way through the wooden bars of our stable-door; but it tells us of morning, of life, and of hope, and we rise with a bound, and are as brisk as bees in our summary toilet. With a dry crust of bread and a cup of coffee, we are fortified for our morning’s work. I have a letter of introduction upon Herr Herzlich of the BrÜhl, at the sign of the Golden Horn, between the White Lamb and the Brass Candlestick. Every house in Leipsic has its sign, and the numbers run uninterruptedly through the whole city, as in most German towns; so that the clown’s old joke of “Number One, London,” if applied to them, would be no joke at all.

I leave the gloomy precincts of Little Churchyard, and descending a slight incline over a pebbly, irregular pavement, with scarcely a sign of footpath, arrive at the lower end of the BrÜhl. There is a murmur of business about the place, for this is the first week of the Easter Fair, but there are none of those common sounds usually associated with the name to English ears. No braying of trumpets, clashing of cymbals, or hoarse groaning of gongs; no roaring through broad-mouthed horns, smacking of canvass, or pattering of incompetent rifles. All these vulgar noises belonging to a fair, are banished out of the gates of the city: which is itself deeply occupied with sober, earnest trading.

Leipsic has the privilege of holding three markets in the year. The first, because the most important, is called the Ostermesse, or Easter Fair, and commences on Jubilee Sunday after Easter. It continues for three weeks, and is the great cloth market of the year. The second begins on the Sunday after St. Michael, and is called Michialismesse. It is the great Book Fair, is also of three weeks’ duration, and dates, as does the Easter Fair, from the end of the twelfth century. The New Year’s Fair commences on the First of January, and was established in fourteen hundred and fifty-eight. Curiously enough, the real business of the Fair is negotiated in the week preceding its actual proclamation; it is then that the great sales between manufacturers and merchants, and their busy agents from all parts of the continent, are effected, while the three weeks of the actual Fair are taken up in minor transactions. No sooner is the freedom of the Fair proclaimed than the hubbub begins; the booths, already planted in their allotted spaces—every inch of which must be paid for—are found to be choked up with stock of every description, from very distant countries: while every town and village, within a wide radius, finds itself represented by both wares and customers.

It is not, however, all freedom even at fair time. The guild laws of the different trades, exclusive and jealous as they are, are enforced with the utmost severity. Jews, in general, and certain trades in particular,—shoemakers, for example,—are not allowed the same privileges as the rest; for their liberty to sell is restricted to a shorter period, and woe to the ambitious or unhappy journeyman who shall manufacture, or expose for sale, any article of his trade, either on his own account or for others, if they be not acknowledged as masters by the Guild. Every such article will be seized by the public officers, deposited in the Rathhaus, and severe punishment—in the shape of fines—inflicted on the offender. The last week of the Fair is called the pay-week; the Thursday and Friday in this week being severally pay and assignation days. The traffic at the Easter Fair, before the establishment of railways, was estimated at forty millions of dollars, but since, by their means, increased facilities of transit between Leipsic and the two capitals, Berlin and Dresden, have been afforded, it has risen to seventy millions of dollars, or ten millions five hundred thousand pounds sterling.

In the meantime, here we are in the BrÜhl, a street important enough, no doubt, so far as its inhabitants and traffic are concerned, but neither beautiful nor picturesque. The houses are high and flat, and, from a peculiarity of build about their tops, seem to leer at you with one eye. Softly over the pebbles! and mind you don’t tread on the pigeons. They are the only creatures in Leipsic that enjoy uncontrolled freedom. They wriggle about the streets without fear of molestation; they sit in rows upon the tops of houses; they whirl in little clouds above our heads; they outnumber, at a moderate estimate, the whole human population of the city, and are as sacred as the Apis or the Brahmin bull. As we proceed along the BrÜhl, the evidences of the traffic become more perceptible. Square sheds of a dingy black hue line one side of the way, and are made in such a manner, that from being more closed boxes at night, they readily become converted into shops in the daytime, by a falling flap in front, which in some cases is adjusted so as to perform the part of a counter. These booths form the outer depositories of the merchandise of the fair, and are generally filled with small and inexpensive articles. The real riches accumulated in Leipsic during these periods, are stowed in the massive old houses: floor above floor being filled with them, till they jam up the very roof, and their plenitude flow out into the street. The booths, where not private property, are articles of profitable speculation with the master builders of the city. They are of planed deal painted, and are neatly enough made. They are easily stowed away in ordinary times, and, when required, are readily erected, being simply clammed together with huge hooks and eyes.

We have not proceeded half-way down the BrÜhl, when we are accosted by a veritable child of Israel, who in tolerably good English requests our custom. Will we buy some of those unexceptionable slippers? In spite of my cap and blouse, it is evident that I bear some national peculiarity about me, at once readable to the keen eyes of the Jew; and upon this point, I remember that my friend Alcibiade, of Argenteuil, jeweller, once expressed himself to me thus: “You may always distinguish an Englishman,” said he, “by two things: his trousers and his gait. The first never fit him, and he always walks as if he was an hour behind time.”

We are at the sign of the Golden Horn. Its very door-way is blocked up for the moment by an enormous bale of goods, puffy, and covered with cabalistic characters. When we at length enter the outer gate of the house, we find ourselves in a small court-yard paved with stone and open to the sky, but now choked with boxes and packages, piled one upon the other in such confusion, that they appear to have been rained from above, rather than brought by vulgar trucks and human hands. Herr Herzlich, whose house this is, resides on the third floor. As we ascend the winding stair to his apartments, we perceive that the building occupies the four sides of the courtyard, and that on the third floor a wooden gallery is suspended along one side, and serves as a means of connection between the upper portions of the house. Queerly-shaped bundles, and even loose goods, occupy every available corner; and as we look down from the gallery into a deep window on the opposite side, we perceive a portly, moustachioed gentleman busily counting and arranging piles of Prussian bank-notes, while heaps of golden coin, apparently Dutch ducats, or French louis d’or, are built up in a golden barricade before him. We pause before the door of Herr Herzlich, master goldsmith and house-owner, and prepare to deliver our letter of introduction. They are trying moments, these first self-presentations; but Herr Herzlich is a true-hearted old Saxon, who raises his black velvet skullcap with one hand, as I announce myself, while with the other he lowers his silver spectacles from his forehead on to his nose. Then, with all sorts of comforting words, as to my future prospects in Leipsic, he sends me forth rejoicing.

Once more in the open street, we pass up the crowded way into the market-place. A succession of wooden booths lines the road; and many of the houses have an overhanging floor resting on sturdy posts, which makes the footpath a rude colonnade. Here are piled rolls and bales of cloth, while the booths are crammed with a heterogeneous collection of articles of use and ornament diversified beyond description. A strange knot of gentlemen arrests our attention for a moment. They are clad in long gowns of black serge, and wear highly-polished boots reaching to the knee. Some have low-crowned hats, others a kind of semi-furred turban, but they all have jet black hair arranged in innumerable wiry ringlets, even to their beards. They are Polish Jews, and trade chiefly in pearls, garnets, turquoises, and a peculiar sort of ill-cut and discoloured rose-diamonds.

The market-place is scarcely passable for the crowd, and the wooden booths are so thickly studded over its whole space, as to allow of only a narrow footway between them. Here we see pipes and walking-sticks, enough not only for the present, but for generations unborn. Traversing the ground by slow degrees, we bend towards the Dresden gate, and come upon the country people, all handkerchief and waistcoat, who line the path with their little stores of toys, of eggs, butter, and little pats of goats’-milk cheese. Here is a farmer who has straggled all the way from Altenburg. He wears a queer round-crowned hat, with the rim turned up at the back; a jacket with large pockets outside, a sort of trunk hose, and black boots reaching to the knee. A little beyond him is a band of musicians with wind instruments, in the full costume of the Berg-leute, or mountaineers of Freiberg. With their jackets of black stuff, trimmed with velvet of the same hue, and edged at the bottom with little square lappets; their dark leggings and brimless hats, they look like a party of Grindoff the miller’s men in mourning.

As we approach the gates, the stalls and wares dwindle into insignificance, until they disappear altogether; and so we pass out of the city to the picturesque promenades which surround it. Afar off we hear the booming and occasional squeal of the real Fair. It is not without its drollery, and, if not equal to “Old Bartlemy” in noise and rude humour, has a word to say for itself on the point of decency. It is, however, but child’s play after all, and abounds with toys and games, from a half-penny whistle to an electric machine. Leipsic is now in its waking hours; but a short time hence her fitful three weeks’ fever will have passed away, and, weary with excitement, or as some say, plethoric with her gorge of profits, she will sink into a soulless lethargy. Her streets will become deserted, and echo to solitary footsteps; and whole rows of houses, with their lately teeming shops, will be black and tenantless, and barred and locked in grim security. The students will shine among the quiet citizens; the pigeons will flap their wings in idleness, and coo in melancholy tones as they totter about the streets; and the last itinerant player (on the flageolet, of course) will have sounded his farewell note to the slumbering city.