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Schloss Hainfeld or, A Winter in Lower Styria by HALL, Basil
Book Description
Edinburgh: Robert Cadell, 1836. First edition. Octavo. [iv], 348, 4 [publisher's ads] pp, Publisher's quarter plum linen over drab boards, printed paper spine label. Some overall light toning to binding but altogether an excellent copy; extremely clean and in the original binding. An account of a visit to Hainfeld castle, near Gratz, and of the author's hostess, the Countess Purgstall. The final chapter concerns Sir Walter Scott. "Basil Hall and his family are staying in Naples when the Polish Countess Rzewuska informs them that she has been asked to pass on an invitation from Countess Purgstall of Styria. The Countess wants the Halls to come and stay with her in her Schloss Hainfeld, south of Gratz, owing to the fact that she had been a friend of his father, Sir James Hall, during her youth in Edinburgh. The countess turns out to be a most eccentric old lady. Since her husband's death in 1811 - a result of imprisonment during the Napoleonic wars - she has not changed anything in the castle (which she no longer owns, due to his dying intestate), and even stays in the bed where her own son died (pp. 36-8). She is now so ill as to be constantly bedridden, but is still intelligent, knowledgeable, and generally very good company for the Halls, with a 'wonderful cheerfulness' (p. 40). The Halls stay at the Schloss during some six months, while also making journeys to the ruined Schlosses of Riegersburg (still part of the Purgstall estate), Gleichenberg and Steinberg, as well as to Vordernberg, the Upper Styrian abode of Archduke John, a cousin of the Emperor Ferdinand (p. 100). Details such as the story of the count who locked his beautiful wife in an iron mask (pp. 66-7) and the poor Italian woman betrothed by her parents to the wrong man (p. 88) flesh out the narrative; in fact, the book is strewn with other stories which the Halls hear from the Countess's lips, all of which have a tinge of fantasy and Romance worthy of a Gothic novel. The Halls stay until the Countess's death on March 23rd 1834, and even arrange her burial, before returning to England" (M. Gibson)..
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