An extract from Franz Grillparzer's Diary on the Journey to France and England
(30 March to 28 June 1836) 1
Translated by Alistair Pirie. Additional notes by Sue Hayton
Franz Grillparzer, 1791-1872, was a well-known playwright and poet based in Vienna. He knew Beethoven and Schubert, wrote words for both of them to set to music, and wrote Beethoven's funeral oration. He spent his life in Austria committed to his work as a lowly civil servant and his writing. He only made two forays abroad, one to London and Paris and one to Athens and Constantinople. In London he visited the notable tourist sites such as St Paul's Cathedral and Hampton Court as well as visiting the theatre or opera almost every night. However it is his visit to Greenwich that interests us here.
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[London] Tuesday 31st May. The daughter of the house I am lodging in was married today. A grand wedding breakfast, but we poor boarders had to wait for it with empty stomachs until 11. It was conducted with a degree of formality that one can hardly imagine, even in Germany. Apart from the bridegroom three or four other people made short speeches and a number of toasts were given as protocol required.
Then to Greenwich with a few of the Germans who are staying here, but first visited one of the largest breweries here. Many of the detailed parts were not as big as I had imagined, but the whole establishment was so gigantic that it made one's flesh creep. Nearly everything done with a steam engine, that did its work fairly inconspicuously but tirelessly, performing the most varied functions by means of the same mechanical system. Supplies of barley that could provision a town under siege, cooling apparatus that you could be ship-wrecked on, a row of probably more than a hundred vats, the smallest holding a thousand barrels, the largest three thousand five hundred. A hundred and sixty working horses in the stables.
Then on the railway 2 to Deptford. The whole way up in the air on arches. Thirty or forty coaches 3 coupled together await the steam carriage [sic] that is to set them in motion. We get in. In due course a panting noise announces the return of the monster. It is hitched up in front. Now there is a lot of huffing and puffing, and we move off. At first slowly, then faster and faster until the whole thing is storming ahead at about the speed of the flight of a bird. You notice the speed more from the things flying past you, rather than being affected by it as you sit in the carriage. In six minutes you arrive in Deptford, which must be as much as half a German mile 4 away.
Then on to Greenwich. Magnificent park. Beautiful view. The hospital for disabled sailors more beautiful than a king's palace. The chapel with the portraits of famous admirals and depictions of great sea battles magnificent, uplifting. The company separates and loses touch as a result of misunderstandings about the meeting point. I and one of the Germans, Schulze, find we are on our own. The steamer to London doesn't leave until 5 o'clock. So we go back to the railway 5. We have to wait there too and don't arrive back home for lunch until 6.30.
In the evening to the Italian opera. "The Thieving Magpie" ...
It's difficult to know which brewery was visited by Grillparzer but it seems likely that it was the Anchor Brewery which lay off Southwark Bridge Road. It was first set up in 1616 but it was not until the 19th century that great expansion took place here after it was taken over by Barclay Perkins & Co. A fire in 1832 gave the owners the chance to develop the brewery further. It certainly was a favourite destination for foreign visitors who included Bismarck and Garibaldi. The buildings were demolished in the 1980s but there is a Blue Plaque on a wall close to the Anchor Tavern in Park Street.
Grillparzer also visited the London Greenwich Railway soon after it opened in February 1836. At that time the viaduct only ran from Spa Road near London Bridge to Deptford. There were problems with the construction of the arches near London Bridge and the crossing of the River Ravensbourne at Deptford Creek also proved problematical. The line opened to London Bridge by the end of 1836 and Greenwich by 1838. It was, from the first, a popular route carrying about 1,300 passengers a day in its first eleven months.
The railway had been the concept of Colonel George Landemann with George Walter who had suggested a brick viaduct of some 878 arches which would run above the streets, avoiding road traffic at ground level.
It is interesting to note that when Grillparzer travelled, modern railway coaches were not being used. There was a ramp at Deptford to allow private road carriages to be taken up to the viaduct and hitched onto a train. It is also interesting to see that Grillparzer had trouble with his connections on his journey home and suffered delays. No change there then!
'Snapshots' will be an occasional series of short pieces illustrating London's industrial past. The Editor welcomes contributions for future issues of the Journal.
Translator's notes
1. Source in German: Grillparzers Werke in zwei Bänden, ed. Prof. Dr. Friedrich Schreyvogel, Verlag "Das Bergland-Buch" Salzburg and Stuttgart, 1958, pp.466-7
2. English word
3. The word for horse-drawn coaches, not railway carriages
4. Before the unification of Germany in 1871, the definition of a German mile differed regionally, but one more general version measured 7.4 km
5. German word
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The ramp that enabled locomotives and carriages to reach the railway viaduct at Deptford.
Photographed in May 2009 by David Perrett
© GLIAS, 2014