St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-10-03
nAyAR1A,s ECCENTRIC KING.
His Magnificent Reception and Bail Rooms
-Hoir He Animses Himself.


-Hoir He AniHses Himself.
Ludwig, of Bavaria, the second king of
that name, who has reigned over this superb
city of magnificent distances and broad
avenues, writes correspondent of the San
Francisco Chronicle, has been talked about,
called eccentric, peculiar, and then a shout
der shrug is given to express more than one
dares to say. Whatever sleepy cabinet min
listers may think of being called to their in
terviews with him at a. m, or disappoiu ted
dilettanti declare of his choosing to hear Wag-
ner's operas all alone by himself in the great
opera house he has had built for his favorite,
we cannot but suspect that this handsome
young monarch is far more level-headed than
the etiquette sticklers of his court. That he
is an artist whose apprehension of the beau
tiful is most cultured, that his intellectual ap-
probation seizes and insists on the spirit
ual in art and science, is demon trated
beyond negation in the arrangement of his
private rooms. OF the T56 rooms in his
''residenz" at Munich, he occupies but five.
The usual glitter of golden framed mirrors,
picture lined walls, curtains of crimson
damask and superby frescoed and golden
succeed ceilings fills the state apartments
usually shown to strangers, where, among
all the glories of these rooms occupied by the
Bavarian Karl VII, the bed made for Fer
dinond III. and Maria Leopoldina is the
most superb. 1t is of cardinal velvet, en-
broidered in gold: a canopy and cover which
required the constant work of forty needle
women for ten years. The cover alone needs
the united efforts of eight men to lift. Ma
poeon l., for whom this bed was prepared in
ella III H.. Tho
massive canopy might fall and crush him, or
the cover press too heavily upon him, so he
ordered a bed made upon the floor beside it.
The reception room and the ball room of
the state apartments of the present king are
eXQuisitely frescoed by designs from Schwan-
thaler, and the three historical walls leading
to the Abhen Saal, or throne room. painted
by Schnorr Won Carolsfeld, are certainly the
most magnificent specimens of mural paint
ing in Eufope. They represent in chrome
| logical order scenes from the lives of Ger
many's imperial heroes, Charlemagne, Fred
eric the Red Beard, and Rudolf of Hapsburg
| These rooms, occasionally used for halls for
dinners to royal guests, can be thrown open
and joined to the throne room by removing
the petition of that imposing hall, thus giving
! from the ball room distance of five hundred
feet to the steps of the throne. The colossal
| statues Of gilded brass the ancestry of Ba-
! varian monarchs from Ohio of Wittlesbach
to Charles XII, of Sweden, also of that
august family, line either side of the room.
! They are masterpieces of casting, designed
by Xavier Schwanthaler, but they make the
throne look diminutive and lonely; indeed,
the great hall is like new barn.
No elements of life, or ''having
been lived in,'' greet the psyche
logical visitor entering there. Not so the
private rooms of the young monarch. They
are full of his personal magnetism. Had we
met him bending over one of his exquisite
mosaic tables, in his white satin, fern, and
wood moss embroidered sitting room, or sit
| ting before the superb secretary of richly
carved ebony and pearl in his library, it
would not have surprised us. Magnificent
Munich gobelins line the walls; that rare old
! tapestry of the seventeenth century, only
made for kings. Florentine mosaics of mala-
chite. beryl, lapslaZul, and amethyst dis
pute attraction with tables of marquetry and
berg crystal. The splendors of embroidery
in silver and gold on damask curtains of
canopy and bed cover, the marvellous tex
lures of the japanese hangings and
priceless porcelains of the Celes-
tial empire excite wonder and sincere
admiration for taste so artistic as reigns in
these magnificent rooms. No Dresden,
Sevres, or the brilliancy of Persian-like Clio
isonne contrast With the purer porcelains OF
Chinese or japanese manufacture.
1t would be as impossible to enumerate as
it is to see all the splendors of art contained
in this royal ''residenz" in day-the papal
apartments occupied by Plus VII, the SUI
perb rooms of the Neibelungen Lied frescoes,
the military dining hall, with its colossal
pictures, "Battles of Bavaria,'' and the adj
joining beauty rooms, where the late king
| displayed his conquests, semi-conquests, ad-
miration and passing fancies in the portraits
of women whose faces had pleased him, from
the surperbly conscious beauty of Lola Mon
teZ to the sweetly innocent maidenhood of
the Bavarian peasant girl he had nobly and
| honoraby admired at her work
in the fields through which he
idly rode. These alone would re-
quire an entire day. The intense heat had
driven society to the baths and mountains.
the great avenues of the city were empty,
except to few tourists YEARLY walking I'M
der linen Umbrellas, bearing their Badeker
guide-books and wearing martyr-like faces,
as If to say: "The city must be done; so
ciety demands it, fashion commends.
| Amen!n
Days of delicious, restful sauuterine
among the Gyptotheks Greek marbles and
throughout the schools of art in the cool
halls of Alte and Neue Pinakothek; evening
drives in the lovely Englisher Garten, where
the ''Isar, rolling rapidly" cooled the wood
lands and sparkled through forests glades,
under our rest in Munich, in spite of the
summer heat, delightful. But house on
| Tyrolean mountain heights awaited us, so we
turned our faces southwark and came to the
capital of the Aurtrian Tyrol, legendary, his
torical Innsbruck.