AN UNPLEASANT POSITION; OR, WHAT A TOUR IN AUSTRIA USED TO BE.

Southland Times, Issue 1662, 15 November 1872, Page 1 (Supplement)

A N UNPLEASANT POSITION ; OR, WHAT A TOUR IN AUSTRIA USED TO BE.

On the tenth of December, eighteen hundred and fifty- four, I entered the Austrian capital, and took up my abode at a certain hotel. I had no particular business in Vienna. My object was to amuse myself; and, at my leisure, see the many works of art of which the imperial city can boast. My name, reader, is Jenkins — Alfred Jenkins. My passport, according to the regulation, was deposited with the police, and .I. was presented in lieu thereof with a pass or permission to remain one month ; this pass was renewable, provided the authorities had no objection. 0n the third day after my arrival, I called to the kellner to bring me the Lloyd (the Times of Vienna). The kellner* approached me, rubbed his hands, 'shook his bead, and smiled. " The Lloyd," I repeated. " It is suspended, sir," said the- kellner. "How?" •* Not allowed to come out, sir." "Why?" " For* abusing the Emperor of Russia." " For how long is it suspended ?" " Cannot say, sir ; it may be for one , month or for ever — the minister of police will settle that." Here I was guilty of an indiscretion. I remarked to an English officer, with j whom I had established an acquaintance, and who was seated at the same table witir me, " Only fancy if the Times, the Daily If tws, or the Post, was suddenly cut off from us ! Imagine Sir Richard Mayne riding down to Printing House square, and putting a padlock on the premises !" " Be careful," said my companion, in » whisper ; "do you ccc that little man at yonder table?" "Yes. Who is he?" " He is aspy. No one knows whether he is a German, an Italian, an Englishman, a Frenchman, or a Spaniard, for he speaks j all languages with equal facility and elegance. Spot that he ever opens his j mouth in this Toom' except to eat. He gives himself up to listening ; and, by long practice, his ears are peculiarly acute." I took the hint, and discoursed on the weather and other equally harmless topics. At five o'clock I seated myself at one of the small tables and ordered dinner. My companion had left Vienna for Trieste, and I. was now alone ; but, not far from me, I espied the little man to whom my attention had been called in the morning. Now, if there be one thing in the world that I detest more than another, it is having no one to talk to after dinner. To sip wine in silence, is to me insupportable, so I called out in a very great voice : "Kellner!" The kellner, an intelligent, well-man-nered' — indeed, a gentlemanlike person — came; and I made several inquiries touching the public amusements for the evening, and concluded by saying, "Bring me the Times, please." " The Times has not come to-day, sir — it has been stopped." * The Times stopped ! How ?" *' At the frontier, sir." " Why ?" "It has got something bad in it, I auppose, sir." "Oh ! Well, bring me the Daily News." ** That paper is forbidden in Vienna," "Why?" " It abuses the Austrian Government." " Indeed ! Then serve it right to exclude it from the Austrian dominions." Here I glanced at the little man, who was now smoking a cigar. The kellner then volunteered the following piece of information : — " WJien an English paper says anything bad, there comes a telegraphic message from London, and when that paper comes to the frontier, it is seized and burnt." " Does this often happen ?" . " Sometimes, sir," was the reply. That evening, I received a letter from a friend in Brussels, who required me to answer several questions by electric telegraph. I proceeded to the office, and was furnished with a paper, which I filled up thus :— Number One : Frazer's Magazine, October, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-two. Number Two: One thousand eight hundred and fortyeight. Number Three : Let it stand as written. Number Four : Send no money till you hear from me. Having paid some two pounds ten shillings across the counter for these messages, and having been furnished with a receipt, I returned to mj hotel, and subsequently went to the opera. At about nine o'clock on the following morning, whilst dressing, I heard a knock at my door, and called out — " Come in." A person in a semi-military uniform entered my apartment, and looking at a paper in his hand, pronounced something like my name. I bowed; I was immediately presented with an invitation to attend at a certain office — an office connected with the police department — at the hour of two p.m. "What on earth have I done?" I began to ask myself; and forthwith summoned my commissioner, who pulled his moustache, and quietly suggested : "Perhaps it is nothing ;" adding, by way of consoling me, " English gentlemen who come to stay here are mostly sent for and asked their business." At the hour of two precisely, I went to the place appointed, conducted thither by the commissioner ; who, having other business to attend to, left me in a long and gloomy passage, which I paced lor about three-quarters of an hour. The weather was bitterly cold, and I was half* frozen when the individual who had served me with a summons came out at a door and beckoned me to approach him. 'Irobejed the movement of his finger, and was: shown into a room where sat an official at s desk, writing. I made a bow on enfceriog the room, but of this no sort

of notice was taken. As I was not asked to take a chair, and as I never could stand still for any length of time, after a few minutes I began to walk up and down the room, slowly, 'and almost noiselessly. This appeared to annoy the official, who still kept on writing; he frowned awfully, and once or twice uttered something like " Donnerwetter ! " I know exactly how long I was kept waiting in the official's room, because I consulted my watch several times. I was there eighteen minutes before my attention was called to the business on hand. " Tour name is Jenkins ?" at length greeted my ears. "Yes," I replied. " Well !— What do you come here for ? To Vienna, I mean." " To see the city, and what it contains." " Bah !" ; This rather startled me. A long pause ensued. " This is your passport ?" resumed the official, holding up the document before me. '.' Yes." Where is yonr servant mentioned in this passport r he is not at the hotel." " No, he is not ; I was informed at the frontier, at Badenbagh, that as his name was not written in the passport, he could not enter Austria ; I had, therefore, to send him back to hia own country, Belgium, at great inconvenience, and some pecuniary loss." " Why do you correspond in cipher ?" " I do not, that I am aware of." " What ! Then you tell me what is false!" (lugen.) I felt indignant on hearing this ; but I contrived to stifle my wrath, and remarked calmly, " What I have asserted is the truth ; Ido not correspond in cipher." " But I hare bhe> proof." " Then produce it." My telegraphic despatch of the previous evening was exhibited. " There !" exclaimed the official triumphantly. "There! Yes! Forty-eight! Forty- eight! I see; so will you see !. What business has an Englishman with forty-eight ?" I began to inform the official that they were replies to certain questions forwarded to me by a literary friend in Brussels. I felt I might have spared myself the trouble of making this explanation, for the official did not listen to one word of it. He had made up his mind that I had come to Vienna as the agent of all the exiles in England ; and that I was, therefore, a dangerous character in the Austrian capital. "You are, then, a literarj man ?" " Yes." " I thought so ; well, I must see your papers." " I trust I may be spared the indignity of having my papers searched." " Indignity ! What indignity ? Many correspondents of English journals have | had their papers searched in Vienna ; where do you prefer the search to take place — at the hotel, or here ?" " In my own apartments," I replied. " Very well ; I will send a person with you ; you will meet there another person who will examine your papers and make the report to me." I was then given to understand that I was not in custody, though an agent of the police would " wait upon" me pending further inquiries. The agent of the police who accompanied me to the hotel was more civil than his superior ; though he, too, must have been satisfied that my iutentiona towards the Austrian Government were far from honorable ; for he gave me distinctly to understand, that if it had not been for the alliance between Austria and England by virtue of the treaty of the 2nd of December, the courtesy (!) which had been shown to me would have been withheld. On arriving at the door of my apartment, I found it open, and two soldiers seated on my sofa. They were in possession of my baggage. I produced my keys, and handed them to the officer who accompanied me. He first opened my desk. The inspection of the papers it contained would have afforded me considerable amusement under any other circumstances, but, as it was, I felt not a little angry. The first letter that he looked at and examined was a letter from a late innian brigadier-general, the last epistle he ever penned. It was dated Ramnugger, and was posted just before the fatal charge in which he fell. Over the superscription of this letter were several words in Persian character, signifying that " the postage had not been paid in camp, and was payable on delivery." There were also on the superscription a few words in Bengalee, written by the Baboo in the Meerut Post-office. These words signified my name and address, and were intended as a guide to the native postman, who could not read English. A Grand Lodge manuscript certificate now caught his eye, and he opened it out. He was not a Freemason, and had never seen a piece of parchment of the like character. Ho asked me what it was ,- I told him. Nevertheless, he put it aside with the brigadier's letter. S The fourth document that came to his hand was a letter from a German gentleman holding an office in the Prussian embassy in London. In that letter he facetiously alluded to my intended visit to Vienna, and recommended me to take care that they did not lock me up. No sooner did I see the officer take that epistle in his hand than I felt it was all over with me, and I daresay I turned pale. Albeit I laughed heartily, for the whole affair struck me as something comical. ,My laughter, however, was soon changed to gravity when I beheld the officer put back the papers into my d ea k — i oc k it — and hand it to one of the soldiers, and request me to "come along." It was now nearly five o'clock, and I suggested that I should like to dine. This favor, however, was not accorded. My levity bad disgusted the authority charged with the inspection ofmj papers.

He was now convinced that I was not only an intriguer, but a reckless intriguer. I had not called on the English ambassador, because his lordship was seriously ill when I arrived in Vienna, and his son was absent in England. To no other member of the Corps Diplomatique was I personally known. I made up my mind not to trouble any of these gentlemen, and resolved to undergo imprisonment patiently, until the return (which was daily expected) of the ambassador's son, or his lordship's restoration to health. I had read, of course, in the English paper 3, of the treatment experienced, jn eighteen hundred and fifty -two by the correspondent of a morning journal ; I was quite prepared to suffer an infinity of hardships, such as herding with felons — sleeping on bare stones — feeding on biack bread and water— and having my | rest disturbed by the shrieks of prisoners undergoing the punishment of Spiessruthen laufen. I had left my card with the commissioner of the hotel, and had requested him to present it to the son of the English ambassador on his return from England ; and inform him of the place where I should always be found "at home." whenever he might call upon me. Meanwhile I reconciled myself to my temporary loss of liberty, thanking my stars that I had withstood the importunity of my sister, who wished to accompany me to Vienna. What would have been her feelings on seeing me taken away from the hotel, it would, indeed, be difficult to describe. Conscious that I bad been guilty of no offence, and that I had nothing to fear, and perfectly satisfied that I should be set free, I passed my second day in prison in excellent spirits. To tell the real truth, I regarded my wrongs as a mere adventure ; of which the reminiscence, in after life, would be— at all events — amusing. , On the third morning of my incarceration, I asked my attendant, in a lighthearted tone, how long he was likely to have the care of me. This man, who (I have the vanity to believe) had grown to like me, replied, confidentially, tfaat it would be difficult to say ; but that he knew my passport had been forwarded to the Austrian minister at. Brussels. It was eleven o'clock. I had finished my breakfast, had lighted a cigar, and thrown myself upon my bed, to smoke and think, when suddenly the door of my room (it would be incorrect to describe it as a cell) was opened, and in walked the official whom I had seen at the bureau, and who had behaved so rudely to me. As soon as I recognised him, and observed hia countenance, I was satisfied he had discovered his mistake ; rising from my bed, I made him a very low bow, and requested him — in the politest manner imaginable — to be seated. (By the way, there was only one chair in my room.) He was a good deal embarrassed. I could see that he felt the contrast between my conduct towards him, and his towards tne, in point of " receiving" oue another. " Herr Jenkins," Baid my visitor, " I have made a grand mistake. I have been bungling." Here 1 conceived I might indulge in a little silent satire — and simply bowed assent, smiling blandly the while. There was my snuff-box on the table. My visitor took it up, and requested my permission to take a pinch. My animosity — whatever amount thereof lurked within my breast — was speedily dissipated Ah ! it is not in words that these foreign diplomatists overreach us. It is by the delicacy, the tact, and the prettiness of their manners — when they think proper to display them — that they achieve with Englishmen such immense ends. " You will forgive my stupidity ? It is proverbial that the English are as generous as they are brave." " Yes, I will forgive you," I replied, " but on one condition." "Which is?" " That you never visit England." " Why that condition ?" " I will cause you to be received by the English draymen, and you may have heard how reckless a race they are." I said this jocularly. He lifted his hands aloft and laughed loudly. General Haynau was evidently no favorite of his ; or else (which was most probable) he indulged in merriment to conceal his real sentiments. It is needless to enter into the particulars which led to my restoration to freedom. A promise was extracted from me that I would not make my wrongs known in the English newspapers. I have kept my promise — albeit the publication of them her©, at the present day, may induce those to whom the promise was made to exclaim, "Better late than never." — English paper.