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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Home Life in Germany, by Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Home Life in Germany
+
+Author: Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
+
+Release Date: March 29, 2009 [EBook #28432]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOME LIFE IN GERMANY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Jeannie Howse and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
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+
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+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has     |
+    | been preserved.                                           |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Superscripted text is marked with ^{} for example: S^{ce} |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |
+    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.     |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+HOME LIFE IN
+GERMANY
+
+
+BY
+MRS. ALFRED SIDGWICK
+
+
+
+
+The Chautauqua Press
+CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK
+MCMXII
+
+
+
+
+_First Published May 1908_
+_Second Edition June 1908_
+_Third Edition 1912_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAP.                                                        PAGE
+
+    I. INTRODUCTORY                                             1
+
+   II. CHILDREN                                                 7
+
+  III. SCHOOLS                                                 15
+
+   IV. THE EDUCATION OF THE POOR                               28
+
+    V. THE BACKFISCH                                           36
+
+   VI. THE STUDENT                                             47
+
+  VII. RIEHL ON WOMEN                                          59
+
+ VIII. THE OLD AND THE NEW                                     68
+
+   IX. GIRLHOOD                                                78
+
+    X. MARRIAGES                                               92
+
+   XI. THE HOUSEHOLDER                                        103
+
+  XII. HOUSEWIVES                                             113
+
+ XIII. HOUSEWIVES (_continued_)                               123
+
+  XIV. SERVANTS                                               138
+
+   XV. FOOD                                                   153
+
+  XVI. SHOPS AND MARKETS                                      167
+
+ XVII. EXPENSES OF LIFE                                       177
+
+XVIII. HOSPITALITY                                            196
+
+  XIX. GERMAN SUNDAYS                                         205
+
+   XX. SPORTS AND GAMES                                       217
+
+  XXI. INNS AND RESTAURANTS                                   225
+
+ XXII. LIFE IN LODGINGS                                       237
+
+XXIII. SUMMER RESORTS                                         250
+
+ XXIV. PEASANT LIFE                                           267
+
+  XXV. HOW THE POOR LIVE                                      286
+
+ XXVI. BERLIN                                                 297
+
+XXVII. ODDS AND ENDS                                          307
+
+Translations of foreign words and phrases in this book will be found
+in the Appendix at the back of the volume.
+
+
+
+
+HOME LIFE IN GERMANY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+
+I was once greatly impressed by a story of an officer in the German
+army, who told his English hostess that he knew the position of every
+blacksmith's forge in Yorkshire. I wondered at the time how many
+officers in the English army had learned where to find the
+blacksmiths' forges in Pomerania. But those are bygone days. Most of
+us know more about Germany now than we do about our own country.[1] We
+go over there singly and in batches, we see their admirable public
+institutions, we visit their factories, we examine their Poor Laws, we
+walk their hospitals, we look on at their drill and their manoeuvres,
+we follow each twist and turn of their politics, we watch their
+birth-rate, we write reams about their navy, and we can explain to any
+one according to our bias exactly what their system of Protection does
+for them. We are often sufficiently ignorant to compare them with the
+Japanese, and about once a month we publish a weighty book concerning
+various aspects of their flourishing empire.
+
+Some of these books I have read with ardent and respectful interest;
+and always as I read, my own little venture seemed to wither and
+vanish in the light of a profounder knowledge and a wider judgment
+than I shall ever attain. For I have not visited workhouses and
+factories, I know little more about German taxes than about English
+ones, and I have no statistics for the instruction and entertainment
+of the intelligent reader. I can take him inside a German home, but I
+can give him no information about German building laws. I know how
+German women spend their days, but I know as little about the exact
+function of a Buergermeister as about the functions of a Mayor. In
+short, my knowledge of Germany, like my knowledge of England, is based
+on a series of life-long, unclassified, more or less inchoate
+impressions, and the only excuse I have for writing about either
+country I find in my own and some other people's trivial minds.
+
+When I read of a country unknown or only slightly known, I like to be
+told all the insignificant trifles that make the common round of life.
+It is assuredly desirable that the great movements should be watched
+and described for us; but we want pictures of the people in their
+homes, pictures of them at rest and at play, as well as engaged in
+those public works that make their public history. For no reason in
+the world I happen to be interested in China, but I am still waiting
+for just the gossip I want about private life there. We have Pierre
+Loti's exquisite dream pictures of his deserted palace at Pekin, and
+we have many useful and expert accounts of the roads, mines, railways,
+factories, laws, politics, and creeds of the Celestial Empire. But the
+book I ask for could not be written by anyone who was not of Chinese
+birth, and it would probably be written by a woman. It might not have
+much literary form or value, but it would enter into those minutiae of
+life that the masculine traveller either does not see or does not
+think worth notice. The author of such a small-beer chronicle must
+have been intimate from childhood with the Chinese point of view,
+though her home and her friends were in a foreign land. She would
+probably not know much about her ancestral laws and politics, but she
+would have known ever since she could hear and speak just what Chinese
+people said to each other when none but Chinese were by, what they
+ate, what they wore, how they governed their homes, the relationship
+between husband and wife, parents and children, master and servant; in
+what way they fought the battle of life, how they feasted and how they
+mourned. If circumstances took her over and over again to different
+parts of China for long stretches of time, she would add to her
+traditions and her early atmosphere some experience of her race on
+their own soil and under their own sun. What she could tell us would
+be of such small importance that she would often hesitate to set it
+down; and again, she would hesitate lest what she had to say should be
+well known already to those amongst her readers who had sojourned in
+her father's country. She would do well, I think, to make some picture
+for herself of the audience she could hope to entertain, and to fix
+her mind on these people while she wrote her book. She would know that
+in the country of her adoption there were some who never crossed their
+own seas, and others who travelled here and there in the world but did
+not visit China or know much about its people. She would write for the
+ignorant ones, and not for any others; and she would of necessity
+leave aside all great issues and all vexed questions. Her picture
+would be chiefly, too, a picture of the nation's women; for though
+they have on the whole no share in political history, they reckon
+with the men in any history of domestic life and habit.
+
+Germans often maintain that their country is more diverse than any
+other, and on that account more difficult to describe: a country of
+many races and various rules held loosely together by language and
+more tightly of late years by the bond of empire. But the truth
+probably is, that in our country we see and understand varieties,
+while in a foreign one we chiefly perceive what is unlike ourselves
+and common to the people we are observing. For from the flux and
+welter of qualities that form a modern nation certain traits survive
+peculiar to that nation: specialities of feature, character, and
+habit, some seen at first sight, others only discovered after long and
+intimate acquaintance. It is undoubtedly true that no one person can
+be at home in every corner of the German Empire, or of any other
+empire.
+
+There are many Germanys. The one we hear most of in England nowadays
+is armed to the teeth, set wholly on material advancement, in a
+dangerously warlike mood, hustling us without scruple from our place
+in the world's markets, a model of municipal government and
+enterprise, a land where vice, poverty, idleness, and dirt are all
+unknown. We hear so much of this praiseworthy but most unamiable
+_Wunderkind_ amongst nations, that we generally forget the Germany we
+know, the Germany still there for our affection and delight, the dear
+country of quaint fancies, of music and of poetry. That Germany has
+vanished, the wiseacres say, the dreamy unworldly German is no more
+with us, it is sheer sentimental folly to believe in him and to waste
+your time looking for him. But how if you know him everywhere, in the
+music and poetry that he could not have given us if they had not
+burned within him, and in the men and women who have accompanied you
+as friends throughout life,--how if you still find him whenever you go
+to Germany? Not, to be sure, in the shape of the wholly unpractical
+fool who preceded the modern English myth; but, for instance, in some
+of the mystical plays that hold his stage, in many of his toys and
+pictures, and above all in the kindly, lovable, clever people it is
+your pleasure to meet there. You may perhaps speak with all the more
+conviction of this attractive Germany if you have never shut your eyes
+and ears to the Germany that does not love us, and if you have often
+been vexed and offended by the Anglophobia that undoubtedly exists.
+This Germany makes more noise than the friendly element, and it is
+called into existence by a variety of causes not all important or
+political. It flourished long before the Transvaal War was seized as a
+convenient stick to beat us with. In some measure the Anglicised
+Germans who love us too well are responsible, for they do not always
+love wisely. They deny their descent and their country, and that
+justly offends their compatriots. I do not believe that the Englishman
+breathes who would ever wish to call himself anything but English;
+while it is quite rare for Germans in England, America, or France to
+take any pride in their blood. The second generation constantly denies
+it, changes its name, assures you it knows nothing of Germany. They
+have not the spirit of a Touchstone, and in so far they do their
+country a wrong.
+
+In another more material sense, too, there are many Germanys, so that
+when you write of one corner you may easily write of ways and food and
+regulations that do not obtain in some other corner, and it is
+obviously impossible to remind the reader in every case that the part
+is not the whole. Wine is dear in the north, but it has sometimes
+been so plentiful in the south that barrels to contain it ran short,
+and anyone who possessed an empty one could get the measure of wine it
+would hold in exchange. Every town and district has its special ways
+of cooking. There is great variety in manner of life, in
+entertainments, and in local law. There are Protestant and Catholic
+areas, and there are areas where Protestants, Catholics, and Jews live
+side by side. The peasant proprietor of Baden is on a higher level of
+prosperity and habit than the peasant serf of Eastern Prussia; and the
+Jews on the Russian frontier, those strange Oriental figures in a
+special dress and wearing earlocks and long beards, have as little in
+common with the Jews of Mannheim or Frankfort as with the Jews of the
+London Stock Exchange. It would, in fact, be impossible for any one
+person to enter into every shade and variety of German life. You can
+only describe the side you know, and comment on the things you have
+seen. So you bring your mite to the store of knowledge which many have
+increased before you, and which many will add to again.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Throughout the book, although I am of German parentage, I have
+spoken of England as my country and of the English as my
+country-people. I was born and bred in England, and I found it more
+convenient for purposes of expression to belong to one country than to
+both.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CHILDREN
+
+
+In Germany the storks bring the children. "I know the pond in which
+all the little children lie waiting till the storks come to take them
+to their parents," says the mother stork in Andersen's story. "The
+stork has visited the house," people say to each other when a child is
+born; and if you go to a christening party you will find that the
+stork has come too: in sugar on a cake, perhaps, or to be handed round
+in the form of ice cream. Most of the kindly intimate little jests
+about babies have a stork in them, and a stranger might easily blunder
+by presenting an emblem of the bird where it would not be welcome. The
+house on which storks build is a lucky one, and people regret the
+disappearance of their nests from the large towns.
+
+When the baby has come it is not allowed out of doors for weeks. Air
+and sunlight are considered dangerous at first, and so is soap and
+even an immoderate use of water. For eight weeks it lies day and night
+in the _Steckkissen_, a long bag that confines its legs and body but
+not its arms. The bag is lined with wadding, and a German nurse, who
+was showing me one with great pride, assured me that while a child's
+bones were soft it was not safe to lift it in any other way. These
+bags are comparatively modern, and have succeeded the swaddling
+clothes still used in some parts of Germany. They are bandages
+wrapping the child round like a mummy, and imprisoning its arms as
+well as its legs. A German doctor told me that as these _Wickelkinder_
+had never known freedom they did not miss it; but he seemed to approve
+of the modern compromise that leaves the upper limbs some power of
+movement.
+
+Well-to-do German mothers rarely nurse their children. When you ask
+why, you hear of nerves and anaemia, and are told that at any rate in
+cities women find it impossible. I have seen it stated in a popular
+book about Germany that mothers there are little more than "aunts" to
+their children; and the _Steckkissen_ and the foster-mother were about
+equally blamed for this unnatural state of affairs. From our point of
+view there is not a word to be said in favour of the _Steckkissen_,
+but it really is impossible to believe that a bag lined with wadding
+can undermine a mother's affection for her child. Your German friends
+will often show you a photograph of a young mother holding her baby in
+her arms, and the baby, if it is young enough, will probably be in its
+bag. But unless you look closely you will take the bag for a long
+robe, it hangs so softly and seems so little in the mother's way. It
+will be as dainty as a robe too, and when people have the means as
+costly; for you can deck out your bag with ribbons and laces as easily
+as your robe. The objection to foster-mothers has reality behind it,
+but the evils of the system are well understood, and have been much
+discussed of late. Formerly every mother who could afford it hired one
+for her child, and peasant women still come to town to make money in
+this way. But the practice is on the wane, now that doctors order
+sterilised milk. The real ruler of a German nursery is the family
+doctor. He keeps his eye on an inexperienced mother, calls when he
+sees fit, watches the baby's weight, orders its food, and sees that
+its feet are kept warm.
+
+A day nursery in the English sense of the word is hardly known in
+Germany. People who can afford it give up two rooms to the small fry,
+but where the flat system prevails, and rents are high, this is seldom
+possible. One room is usually known as the _Kinderstube_, and here the
+children sleep and play. But it must be remembered that rooms are big,
+light, and high in Germany, and that such a _Kinderstube_ will not be
+like a night nursery in a small English home. Besides, directly
+children can walk they are not as much shut up in the nursery as they
+are in England. The rooms of a German flat communicate with each
+other, and this in itself makes the segregation to which we are used
+difficult to carry out. During the first few days of a sojourn with
+German friends, you are constantly reminded of a pantomime rally in
+which people run in and out of doors on all sides of the stage; and if
+they have several lively children you sometimes wish for an English
+room with one door only, and that door kept shut. Even when you pay a
+call you generally see the children, and possibly the nurse or the
+_Mamsell_ with them. But a typical middle-class German family
+recognises no such foreign body as a nurse. It employs one maid of all
+work, who helps the housewife wherever help is needed, whether it is
+in the kitchen or the nursery. The mother spends her time with her
+children, playing with them when she has leisure, cooking and ironing
+and saving for them, and for her husband all through her busy day.
+Modern Germans like to tell you that young women no longer devote
+themselves to these simple duties, but if you use your eyes you will
+see that most women do their work as faithfully as ever. There is an
+idle, pleasure-loving, money-spending element in Germany as there is
+in other countries, and it makes more noise than the steady bulk of
+the nation, and is an attractive target there as here for the darts of
+popular preachers and playwrights. But it is no more preponderant in
+Germany than in England. On the whole, the German mother leaves her
+children less to servants than the English mother does, and in some
+way works harder for them. That is to say, a German woman will do
+cooking and ironing when an Englishwoman of the same class would
+delegate all such work to servants. This is partly because German
+servants are less efficient and partly because fewer servants are
+employed.
+
+The fashionable nurses in Germany are either English or peasant girls
+in costume. It is considered smart to send out your baby with a young
+woman from the Spreewald if you live in Berlin, or from one of the
+Black Forest valleys if you live in the duchy of Baden. In some
+quarters of Berlin you see the elaborate skirts and caps of the
+Spreewald beside every other baby-carriage, but it is said that these
+girls are chiefly employed by the rich Jews, and you certainly need to
+be as rich as a Jew to pay their laundry bills. The young children of
+the poor are provided for in Berlin, as they are in other cities, by
+creches, where the working mother can leave them for the day. Several
+of these institutions are open to the public at certain times, and
+those I have seen were well kept and well arranged.
+
+The women of Germany have not thrown away their knitting needles yet,
+though they no longer take them to the concert or the play as they did
+in a less sophisticated age. Children still learn to knit either at
+school or at home, and if their mother teaches them she probably makes
+them a marvellous ball. She does this by winding the wool round little
+toys and small coins, until it hides as many surprises as a Christmas
+stocking, and is as much out of shape; but the child who wants the
+treasures in the stocking has to knit for them, and the faster she
+secures them the faster she is learning her lesson. The mother,
+however, who troubles about knitting is not quite abreast of her
+times. The truly modern woman flies at higher game; with the solemnity
+and devotion of a Mrs. Cimabue Brown she cherishes in her children a
+love of Art. Her watchword is _Die Kunst im Leben des Kindes_, or Art
+in the Nursery, and she is assisted by men who are doing for German
+children of this generation what Walter Crane and others did for
+English nurseries twenty-five years ago. You can get enchanting
+nursery pictures, toys, and decorations in Germany to-day, and each
+big city has its own school of artists who produce them: friezes where
+the birds and beasts beloved of children solemnly pursue each other;
+grotesque wooden manikins painted in motley; mysterious landscapes
+where the fairy-tales of the world might any day come true. Dream
+pictures these are of snow and moonlight, marsh and forest, the real
+Germany lying everywhere outside the cities for those who have eyes to
+see. Even the toy department in an ordinary shop abounds in treasures
+that never seem to reach England: queer cheap toys made of wood, and
+not mechanical. It must be a dull child who is content with a
+mechanical toy, and it is consoling to observe that most children
+break the mechanism as quickly as possible and then play sensibly with
+the remains. Many of the toys known to generations of children seemed
+to be as popular as ever, and quite unchanged. You still find the old
+toy towns, for instance, with their red roofed coloured houses and
+green curly trees, toys that would tell an imaginative child a story
+every time they were set up. It is to be hoped they never will change,
+but in this sense I have no faith in Germany. The nation is so
+desperately intent on improvement that some dreadful day it will
+improve its toys. Indeed, I have seen a trade circular threatening
+some such vandalism; and in the last Noah's ark I bought Noah and his
+family had changed the cut of their clothes. So the whole ark had lost
+some of its charm.
+
+Everyone who is interested in children and their education, and who
+happens to be in Berlin, goes to see the _Pestalozzi Froebel Haus_, the
+great model Kindergarten where children of the working classes are
+received for fees varying from sixpence to three shillings a month,
+according to the means of the parents. There are large halls in which
+the children drill and sing, and there are classrooms in which twelve
+to sixteen children are taught at a time. Every room has some live
+birds or other animals and some plants that the children are trained
+to tend; the walls are decorated with pictures and processions of
+animals, many painted and cut out by the children themselves, and
+every room has an impressive little rod tied with blue ribbons. But
+the little ones do not look as if they needed a rod much. They are
+cheerful, tidy little people, although many of them come from poor
+homes. In the middle of the morning they have a slice of rye bread,
+which they eat decorously at table on wooden platters. They can buy
+milk to drink with the bread for 5 pf., and they dine in school for 10
+pf. They play the usual Kindergarten games in the usual systematised
+mechanical fashion, and they study Nature in a real back garden, where
+there are real dejected-looking cocks and hens, a real cow, and a
+lamb. What happens to the lamb when he becomes a sheep no one tells
+you. Perhaps he supplies mutton to the school of cookery in connection
+with the Kindergarten. Some of the children have their own little
+gardens, in which they learn to raise small salads and hardy flowers.
+There are carpentering rooms for the boys, and both boys and girls are
+allowed in the miniature laundry, where they learn how to wash,
+starch, and iron doll's clothes. You may frequently see them engaged
+in this business, apparently without a teacher; but, as a matter of
+fact, the children are always under a teacher's eye, even when they
+are only digging in a sand heap or weeding their plots of ground. Each
+child has a bath at school once a week, and at first the mothers are
+uneasy about this part of the programme, lest it should give their
+child cold. But they soon learn to approve it, and however poor they
+are they do their utmost to send a child to school neatly shod and
+clad.
+
+As a rule German children of all classes are treated as children, and
+taught the elementary virtue of obedience. _Das Recht des Kindes_ is a
+new cry with some of the new people, but nevertheless Germany is one
+of the few remaining civilised countries where the elders still have
+rights and privileges. I heard of an Englishwoman the other day who
+said that she had never eaten the wing of a chicken, because when she
+was young it was always given to the older people, and now that she
+was old it was saved for the children. If she lived in Germany she
+would still have a chance, provided she kept away from a small loud
+set, who in all matters of education and morality would like to turn
+the world upside down. In most German homes the noisy, spoilt American
+child would not be endured for a moment, and the little tyrant of a
+French family would be taught its place, to the comfort and advantage
+of all concerned. I have dined with a large family where eight young
+ones of various ages sat at an overflow table, and did not disturb
+their elders by a sound. It was not because the elders were harsh or
+the young folk repressed, but because Germany teaches its youth to
+behave. The little girls still drop you a pretty old-fashioned curtsey
+when they greet you; just such a curtsey as Miss Austen's heroines
+must have made to their friends. The little boys, if you are staying
+in the house with them, come and shake hands at unexpected
+times,--when they arrive from school, for instance, and before they go
+out for a walk. At first they take you by surprise, but you soon learn
+to be ready for them. They play many of the same games as English
+children, and I need hardly say that they are brought up on the same
+fairy stories, because many of our favourites come from Germany. The
+little boys wear sensible carpenters' aprons indoors, made of leather
+or American cloth; and the little girls still wear bib aprons of black
+alpaca. Their elders do not play games with them as much as English
+people do with their children. They are expected to entertain and
+employ themselves; and the immense educational value of games, the
+training they are in temper, skill, and manners, is not understood or
+admitted in Germany as it is here. The Kindergarten exercises are not
+competitive, and do not teach a child to play a losing game with
+effort and good grace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SCHOOLS
+
+
+German children go to day schools. This is not to say that there are
+no boarding schools in Germany; but the prevailing system throughout
+the empire is a system of day schools. The German mother does not get
+rid of her boys and girls for months together, and look forward to the
+holidays as a time of uproar and enjoyment. She does not wonder
+anxiously what changes she will see in them when they come back to
+her. They are with her all the year round,--the boys till they go to a
+university, the girls till they marry. Any day in the streets of a
+German city you may see troops of children going to school, not with a
+maid at their heels as in Paris, but unattended as in England. They
+have long tin satchels in which they carry their books and lunch, the
+boys wear peaked caps, and many children of both sexes wear
+spectacles.
+
+Except at the Kindergarten, boys and girls are educated separately and
+differently in Germany. In some rare cases lately some few girls have
+been admitted to a boys' _Gymnasium_, but this is experimental and at
+present unusual. It may be found that the presence of a small number
+in a large boys' school does not work well. In addition to the
+elementary schools, there are four kinds of Public Day School for
+boys in Germany, and they are all under State supervision. There is
+the _Gymnasium_, the _Real-Gymnasium_, the _Ober-Real-Schule_, and the
+_Real-Schule_. Until 1870 the Gymnasiums were the only schools that
+could send their scholars to the universities; a system that had
+serious disadvantages. It meant that in choosing a child's school,
+parents had to decide whether at the end of his school life he was to
+have a university education. Children with no aptitude for scholarship
+were sent to these schools to receive a scholar's training; while boys
+who would have done well in one of the learned professions could not
+be admitted to a university, except for science or modern languages,
+because they had not attended a Gymnasium.
+
+A boy who has passed through one of these higher schools has had
+twelve years' education. He began Latin at the age of ten, and Greek
+at thirteen. He has learned some French and mathematics, but no
+English unless he paid for it as an extra. His school years have been
+chiefly a preparation for the university. If he never reaches the
+higher classes he leaves the Gymnasium with a stigma upon him, a
+record of failure that will hamper him in his career. The higher
+official posts and the professions will be closed to him; and he will
+be unfitted by his education for business. This at least is what many
+thoughtful Germans say of their classical schools; and they lament
+over the unsuitable boys who are sent to them because their parents
+want a professor or a high official in the family. It is considered
+more sensible to send an average boy to a _Real-Gymnasium_ or to an
+_Ober-Real Schule_, because nowadays these schools prepare for the
+university, and any boy with a turn for scholarship can get the
+training he needs. The _Ober-Real Schule_ professedly pays most
+attention to modern languages; and it is, in fact, only since 1900
+that their boys are received at a university on the classical side.
+They still prepare largely for technical schools and for a commercial
+career.
+
+At a _Real-Schule_, the fourth grade of higher school, the course only
+lasts six years. They do not prepare for the Abiturienten examination,
+and their scholars cannot go from them to a university. They prepare
+for practical life, and they admit promising boys from the elementary
+schools. A boy who has been through any one of these higher schools
+successfully need only serve in the army for one year; and that in
+itself is a great incentive to parents to send their children. A
+_Real-Schule_ in Prussia only costs a hundred marks a year, and a
+_Gymnasium_ a hundred and thirty-five marks. In some parts of Germany
+the fees are rather higher, in some still lower. The headmasters of
+these schools are all university men, and are themselves under State
+supervision. In an entertaining play called _Flachsmann als Erzieher_
+the headmaster had not been doing his duty, and has allowed the school
+to get into a bad way. The subordinates are either slack or
+righteously rebellious, and the children are unruly. The State
+official pays a surprise visit, discovers the state of things, and
+reads the Riot Act all round. The wicked headmaster is dismissed, the
+eager young reformer is put in his place, the slackers are warned and
+given another chance.... Blessed be St. Bureaukrazius ... says the
+genial old god out of a machine, when by virtue of his office he has
+righted every man's wrongs. The school in the play must be an
+elementary one, for children and teachers are of both sexes, but a
+master at a _Gymnasium_ told me that the picture of the official visit
+was not exaggerated in its importance and effect. There was
+considerable excitement in Germany over the picture of the evil
+headmaster, his incompetent staff, and the neglected children; and I
+was warned before I saw the play that I must not think such a state of
+affairs prevailed in German schools. The warning was quite
+unnecessary. An immoral, idle, and ignorant class of men could not
+carry on the education of a people as it is carried on throughout the
+German Empire to-day.
+
+I have before me the Annual Report of a _Gymnasium_ in Berlin, and it
+may interest English people to see how many lessons the teachers in
+each subject gave every week. There were thirty teachers in the
+school.
+
+                                     LESSONS
+    SUBJECT                          PER WEEK
+
+  Religion                              31
+  German                                42
+  Latin                                112
+  Greek                                 72
+  French                                36
+  History and Geography                 44
+  Mathematics and Arithmetic            56
+  Natural History                       10
+  Physics                               20
+  Hebrew                                 4
+  Law                                    1
+  Writing                                6
+  Drawing                               18
+  Singing                               12
+  Gymnasium                             27
+  Swimming                               8-1/2
+  Handfertigkeit                         3
+                                      ----
+                                       502-1/2 lessons
+
+The headmaster took Latin for seven hours every week, and Greek for
+three hours. A professor who came solely for religious teaching came
+for ten hours every week. But most of the masters taught from sixteen
+to twenty-four hours, while one who is down for reading, writing,
+arithmetic, gymnastics, German, singing, and _Natur_ could not get
+through all he had to do in less than thirty hours. On looking into
+the hours devoted to each subject by the various classes, you find
+that the lowest class had three hours religious instruction every
+week, and the other classes two hours. There were 407 boys in the
+school described as _Evangelisch_, 47 Jews, and 23 Catholics; but in
+Germany parents can withdraw their children from religious instruction
+in school, provided they satisfy the authorities that it is given
+elsewhere. The two highest classes had lessons on eight chapters of
+St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, on the Epistle to the Philippians,
+and on the confessions of St. Augustine. Some classes were instructed
+in the Gospel according to St. John, and the little boys learned Bible
+History. So Germans are not without orthodox theological teaching in
+their early years, whatever opinions they arrive at in their
+adolescence.
+
+Every boy in the school spent two or three hours each week on German
+composition, and, like boys in other countries, handled themes they
+could assuredly not understand, probably, like other boys, without a
+scruple or a hesitation.
+
+"Why does the ghost of Banquo appear to Macbeth, and not the ghost of
+Duncan?"
+
+"How are the unities of time, place, and action treated in Schiller's
+ballads?"
+
+"Discuss the antitheses in Lessing's Laokoon."
+
+"What can you say about the representation of concrete objects in
+Goethe's _Hermann and Dorothea_?"
+
+These examples are taken at random from a list too long to quote
+completely; but no one need be impressed by them. Boys perform
+wonderful feats of this kind in England too. However, I once heard a
+German professor say that the English boy outdid the German in
+_gesunder Menschenverstand_ (sound common sense), but that the German
+wins in the race when it comes to the abstract knowledge (_Wissen_)
+that he and his countryfolk prize above all the treasures of the
+earth. No one who knows both countries can doubt for a single moment
+that the professor was right, and that he stated the case as fairly as
+it can be stated. In an emergency or in trying circumstances the
+English boy would be readier and more self-reliant: but when you meet
+him where entertainment is wanted rather than resource, his ignorance
+will make you open your eyes. This, at any rate, is the kind of story
+told and believed of Englishmen in Germany. A student who was working
+at science in a German university had been there the whole winter, and
+though the city possessed many fine theatres he had only visited a
+variety show. At last his friends told him that it was his duty to go
+to the _Schauspielhaus_ and see a play by Goethe or Schiller. "Goethe!
+Schiller!" said my Englishman, "_Was ist das?_"
+
+The education of girls in Germany is in a transition state at present.
+Important changes have been made of late years, and still greater
+ones, so the reformers say, are pending. Formerly, if a girl was to be
+educated at all she went to a _Hoehere Toechterschule_, or to a private
+school conducted on the same lines, and, like the official
+establishment, under State supervision. When she had finished with
+school she had finished with education, and began to work at the
+useful arts of life, more especially at the art of cooking. What she
+had learned at school she had learned thoroughly, and it was
+considered in those days quite as much as was good for her. The
+officials who watched and regulated the education of boys had nothing
+to do with girls' schools. These were left to the staff that managed
+elementary schools, and kept on much the same level. Girls learned
+history, geography, elementary arithmetic, two modern languages, and a
+great deal of mythology. The scandalous ignorance of mythology
+displayed by Englishwomen still shocks the right-minded German. If a
+woman asked for more than this because she was going to earn her
+bread, she spent three years in reading for an examination that
+qualified her for one of the lower posts in the school. The higher
+posts were all in the hands of men. Of late years women have been able
+to prepare for a teacher's career at one of the Teachers' Seminaries,
+most of which were opened in 1897.
+
+More than forty years ago the English princess in Berlin was not
+satisfied with what was done in Germany for the education of women;
+and one of the many monuments to her memory is the Victoria Lyceum.
+This institution was founded at her suggestion by Miss Archer, an
+English lady who had been teaching in Berlin for some years, and who
+was greatly liked and respected there. At first it only aimed at
+giving some further education to girls who had left school, and it was
+not easy to get men of standing to teach them. But as it was the
+outcome of a movement with life in it the early difficulties were
+surmounted, and its scope and usefulness have grown since its
+foundation thirty-eight years ago. It is not a residential college,
+and it has no laboratories. During the winter it still holds courses
+of lectures for women who are not training for a definite career; but
+under its present head, Fraeulein von Cotta, the chief work of the
+Victoria Lyceum has become the preparation of women for the _Ober
+Lehrerin_ examination. This is a State examination that can only be
+passed five years after a girl has qualified as _Lehrerin_, and two
+of these five years must have been spent in teaching at a German
+school. To qualify as _Lehrerin_, a girl must have spent three years
+at a Seminary for teachers after she leaves school, and she usually
+gets through this stage of her training between the ages of fifteen
+and eighteen. Therefore a woman must have three years special
+preparation for a subordinate post and eight years for a higher post
+in a German girls' school.
+
+The whole question of women's education is in a ferment in Germany at
+present, and though everyone interested is ready to talk of it,
+everyone tells you that it is impossible to foresee exactly what
+reforms are coming. There are to be new schools established, _Lyceen_
+and _Ober-Lyceen_, and _Ober-Lyceen_ will prepare for matriculation.
+When girls have matriculated from one of these schools they will be
+ready for the university, and will work for the same examinations as
+men. Baden was the first German State that allowed women to
+matriculate at its universities. It did so in 1900, and in 1903
+Bavaria followed suit. In 1905 there were eighty-five women at the
+universities who had matriculated in Germany; but there are hundreds
+working at the universities without matriculating first. At present
+the professors are free to admit women or to exclude them from their
+classes; but the right of exclusion is rarely exercised. Before long
+it will presumably be a thing of the past.
+
+An Englishwoman residing at Berlin, and engaged in education, told me
+that in her opinion no German woman living had done as much for her
+countrywomen as Helene Lange, the president of the _Allgemeine
+deutsche Frauenverein_. Nineteen years ago she began the struggle that
+is by no means over, the struggle to secure a better education for
+women and a greater share in its control. In English ears her aim
+will sound a modest one, but English girls' schools are not entirely
+in the hands of men, with men for principals and men to teach the
+higher classes. She began in 1887 by publishing a pamphlet that made a
+great sensation, because it demanded, what after a mighty tussle was
+conceded, women teachers for the higher classes in girls' schools, and
+for these women an academic education. In 1890 she founded, together
+with Auguste Schmidt and Marie Loeper-Housselle, the _Allgemeine
+deutsche Lehrerinnen-Verein_, which now has 80 branches and 17,000
+members. But the pluckiest thing she did was to fight Prussian
+officialdom and win. In 1889 she opened _Real-Kurse fuer Maedchen und
+Frauen_, classes where women could work at subjects not taught in
+girls' schools, Latin for instance, and advanced mathematics; for the
+State in Germany has always decided how much as well as how little
+women may learn. It would not allow people as ignorant as Squeers to
+keep a school because it offered an easy livelihood. It organised
+women's education carefully and thoroughly in the admirable German
+way; but it laid down the law from A to Z, which is also the German
+way. When, therefore, Helene Lange opened her classes for women, the
+officials came to her and said that she was doing an illegal thing.
+She replied that her students were not schoolgirls under the German
+school laws, but grown-up women free to learn what they needed and
+desired. The officials said that an old law of 1837 would empower them
+to close the classes by force if Helene Lange did not do so of her own
+accord. After some reflection and in some anxiety she decided to go on
+with them. By this time public opinion was on her side and came to her
+assistance; for public opinion does count in Germany even with the
+officials. The classes went on, and were changed in 1893 to
+_Gymnasialkurse_. In 1896 the first German women passed the
+Abiturienten examination, the difficult examination young men of
+eighteen pass at the end of a nine years' course in one of the
+classical schools. Even to-day you may hear German men argue that
+women should not be admitted to universities because they have had no
+classical training. Helene Lange was the first to prove that even
+without early training women can prepare themselves for an academic
+career. Her experiment led to the establishment of _Gymnasialkurse_ in
+many German cities; and even to the admission of girls in some few
+cases to boys' Gymnasium schools.
+
+To-day Helene Lange and her associates are contending with the
+schoolmasters, who desire to keep the management of girls' schools in
+their own hands. She calls the _Hoehere Toechterschule_ the failure of
+German school organisation, and she says that the difference of view
+taken by men and women teachers as to the proper work of girls'
+schools makes it most difficult to come to an understanding.
+Consciously or not, men form an ideal of what they want and expect of
+women, and try to educate them up to it; while women think of the
+claims life may make on a girl, and desire the full development of her
+powers. "The Higher Daughter," she says, "must vanish, and her place
+must be taken by the girl who has been thoroughly prepared for life,
+who can stand on her own feet if circumstances require it, or who
+brings with her as housewife the foundations of further
+self-development, instead of the pretentiousness of the half
+educated." In one of her many articles on the subject of school reform
+she points to three directions where reform is needed. What she says
+about the teaching of history is so characteristic of her views and of
+the modern movement in Germany, that I think the whole passage is
+worth translation:--
+
+     "All those subjects that help to make a woman a better
+     citizen must be taken more seriously," she says. "It can no
+     longer be the proper aim of history teaching to foster and
+     strengthen in women a sentimental attachment to her country
+     and its national character: its aim must be to give her the
+     insight that will enable her to understand the forces at
+     work, and ultimately play an active part in them. Many
+     branches of our social life await the work of women, civic
+     philanthropy to begin with; and as our public life becomes
+     more and more constitutional, it demands from the individual
+     both a ripe insight into the good of the community and a
+     living sense of duty in regard to its destiny; and, on the
+     other hand, the foundations of this insight and sense of duty
+     must be in our times more and more laid by the mother, since
+     the father is often entirely prevented by his work from
+     sharing in the education of his children. Therefore, both on
+     her own account and in consideration of the task before her,
+     a woman just as much as a man should understand and take a
+     practical interest in public life, and it is the business of
+     the school to see that she does so. Over and over again those
+     who are trying to reform girls' schools insist that history
+     teaching should lead the student to understand the present
+     time; that it should recognise those economic conditions on
+     which the history of the world, especially in our day,
+     depends in so great a measure; that it should pay attention
+     not only to dates and events, but also to the living process
+     of civilisation, since it is only from the latter inquiry
+     that we can arrive at the principles of individual effort in
+     forwarding social life."
+
+Nowadays in Germany Helene Lange is considered one of the
+"Moderates," but it will be seen from the above quotation that she has
+travelled far from the old ideals which invested women with many
+beautiful qualities, but not with the sense and knowledge required of
+useful public citizens. She proceeds in the same article to say that
+scientific and mathematical teaching should reach a higher standard in
+girls' schools; and thirdly, that certain branches of psychology,
+physiology, and hygiene should receive greater attention, because a
+woman is a better wife and mother when she fulfils her duties with
+understanding instead of by mere instinct. Nor will education on this
+higher plane deprive women of any valuable feminine virtues if it is
+carried out in the right way. But to this end women must direct it,
+and in great measure take it into their own hands. She would not shut
+men out of girls' schools, but she would place women in supreme
+authority there, and give them the lion's share of the work.
+
+It seems to the English onlooker that this contest can only end in one
+way, and that if the women of Germany mean to have the control of
+girls' schools they are bound to get it. Some of the evils of the
+present system lie on the surface. "It is a fact," said a
+schoolmaster, speaking lately at a conference,--"it is a fact that a
+more intimate, spiritual, and personal relationship is developed
+between a schoolgirl and her master than between a schoolgirl and her
+mistress." This remark, evidently made in good faith, was received
+with hilarity by a large mixed audience of teachers; and when one
+reflects on the unbridled sentiment of some "higher daughters" one
+sees where it must inevitably find food under the present anomalous
+state of things. But the schoolmaster's argument is the argument
+brought forward by many men against the reforms desired by Helene
+Lange and her party. They insist that girls would deteriorate if they
+were withdrawn throughout their youth from masculine scholarship and
+masculine authority in school. They talk of the emasculation of the
+staff as a future danger. They do not seem to talk of their natural
+reluctance to cede important posts to women, but this must, of course,
+strengthen their pugnacity and in some cases colour their views.
+
+Meanwhile many parents prefer to send their daughters to one of the
+private schools that have a woman at the head, and where most of the
+teaching is done by women; or to a _Stift_, a residential school of
+the conventual type, which may be either Protestant or Catholic. A
+girl who had spent some years at a well-known Protestant _Stift_
+described her school life to me as minutely as possible, and it
+sounded so like the life in a good English boarding-school thirty
+years ago that it is difficult to pick out points of differences. That
+only means, of course, that the differences were subtle and not
+apparent in rules and time-tables. The girls wore a school uniform,
+were well fed and taught, strictly looked after, taken out for walks
+and excursions, allowed a private correspondence, shown how to mend
+their clothes, made to keep their rooms tidy, encouraged in piety and
+decorum. In these strenuous times it sounds a little old-fashioned,
+and as a matter of fact a school of this kind fits a girl for a
+sheltered home but not for the open road. For everyone concerned about
+the education of women the interesting spectacle in Germany to-day is
+the campaign being carried on by Helene Lange and her party, the
+support they receive from the official as well as from the unofficial
+world, and the progress they make year by year to gain their ends.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE EDUCATION OF THE POOR
+
+
+There are no people in the world who need driving to school less than
+the Germans. There are no people in the world who set so high a value
+on knowledge. In the old days, when they lived with Jove in the
+clouds, they valued knowledge solely for its own sake, and did not
+trouble much about its practical use in the world. It is absurd to
+say, as people often do now, that this spirit is dead in the nation.
+You cannot be long in the society of Germans without recognising that
+it survives wherever the stress of modern life leaves room for it. You
+see that when a German makes money his sons constantly enter the
+learned and the artistic professions with his full approval, though
+they are most unlikely to make a big income in this way. You are told
+by people who work amongst the poor, that parents will make any
+sacrifices year after year in order to send a boy to one of the higher
+schools. You know that the Scotsmen who live on oatmeal while they
+acquire learning have their counterparts in the German universities,
+where many a student would not dine at all if private or organised
+charity did not give him a dinner so many days a week. Sometimes you
+have heard it said of such and such a great German, that he was so
+poor when he was young that he had to accept these free dinners given
+in every German university town to penniless students. The fact would
+be remembered, but it would never count against a man in Germany. The
+dollar is not almighty there.
+
+To say, therefore, that education is compulsory throughout the empire
+is not to say that it is unpopular. A teacher in an elementary school
+was once telling me how particular the authorities were that every
+child, even the poorest, should come to school properly clothed and
+shod. "For instance," she said, "if a child comes to school in
+house-shoes he is sent straight home again." "But do the parents mind
+that?" I asked from my English point of view, for the teacher was
+speaking of people who in England would live in slums and care little
+whether their children were educated or not. But in Germany even the
+poorest of the poor do care, and to refuse a child admission to school
+is an effective punishment. At any rate, you may say this of the
+majority. No doubt if school was not compulsory the dregs of the
+nation would slip out of the net, especially in those parts of the
+empire where the prevalent character is shiftless and easy going.
+"When you English think that we hold the reins too tight, it is
+because you do not understand what a mixed team we have to drive," a
+north German said to me. "We should not get on, we should not hold
+together long, if our rule was slack and our attention careless."
+
+At the last census only one in 10,000 could not read or write, and
+these dunces were all Slavs. But how even a Slav born under the eye of
+the Eagle can remain illiterate is a mystery. In 1905 there were
+59,348 elementary schools in the empire, and their organisation is as
+elaborate and well planned as the organisation of the army. In Berlin
+alone there are 280. All the teachers at these schools have been
+trained to teach at special seminaries, and have passed State
+examinations that qualify them for their work. In Germany many men and
+women, entitled both by class and training to teach in the higher
+grade schools, have taken up work in the elementary ones from choice.
+I know one lady whose certificates qualify her to teach in a _Hoehere
+Toechterschule_ and who elects to teach a large class of backward
+children in a _Volkschule_. Her ambition is to teach those children
+described in Germany as _nicht voellig normal_: children we should
+describe as "wanting." She says that her backward children repay her
+for any extra trouble they give by their affection and gratitude. She
+knows the circumstances of every child in her class, and where there
+is real need she can get help from official sources or from
+philanthropic organisations, because a teacher's recommendation
+carries great weight in Germany. This lady gets up every day in summer
+at a quarter past five, in order to be in school by seven. Her school
+hours are from seven to eleven in summer, and from eight till twelve
+in winter; but she has a great deal of work to prepare and correct
+after school. Her salary is raised with every year of service, and
+when she is past work she will be entitled to a State pension of
+thirty pounds.
+
+Children have to attend school from the age of six and to stay till
+they are fourteen; and in their school years they are not allowed to
+work at a trade without permission. They do not learn foreign
+languages, but they are thoroughly grounded in German, and they
+receive religious instruction. Of course, they learn history,
+geography, and arithmetic. In the new schools every child is obliged
+to have a warm bath every week, but it is not part of a teacher's
+duties to superintend it. Probably the women who clean the school
+buildings do so. In the old schools, where there are no bathrooms,
+the children are given tickets for the public bathing establishments.
+The State does not supply free food, but there are philanthropic
+societies that supply those children who need it with a breakfast of
+bread and milk in winter. Everyone connected with German schools says
+that no child would apply for this if his parents were not destitute,
+and one teacher told me a story of the headmaster's boy being found,
+to his father's horror and indignation, seated with the starving
+children and sharing their free lunch. He had brought his own lunch
+with him, but it was his first week at school, and he thought that a
+dispensation of bread and milk in the middle of the morning was part
+of the curriculum.
+
+School books are supplied to children too poor to buy them, and it
+seems that no trouble is given by applications for this kind of relief
+by people not entitled to it. Gymnastics are compulsory for both boys
+and girls in the lower classes, and choral singing is taught in every
+school. Teachers must all be qualified to accompany singing on the
+violin. Most of the elementary schools in Prussia are free. Some few
+charge sixpence a month. A child can even have free teaching in its
+own home if it is able to receive instruction, but not to attend
+school. Medical inspection is rigorously carried out in German
+elementary schools. The doctor not only watches the general health of
+the school, but he registers the height, weight, carriage, state of
+nourishment, and vaccination marks of each child on admission; the
+condition of the eyes and ears and any marked constitutional tendency
+he can discover. Every child is examined once a month, when necessary
+once a fortnight. In this way weak or wanting children are weeded out,
+and removed to other surroundings, the short-sighted and the deaf are
+given places in the schoolroom to suit them. The system protects the
+child and helps the teacher, and has had the best results since it was
+introduced into Prussia in 1888.
+
+Attendance at continuation schools is now compulsory on boys and girls
+for three years after leaving the elementary school, where they have
+had eight years steady education. They must attend from four to six
+hours weekly; instruction is free, and is given in the evening, when
+the working day is over. Certain classes of the community are free,
+but about 30,000 students attend these schools in Berlin. The subjects
+taught are too many to enumerate. They comprise modern languages,
+history, law, painting, music, mathematics, and various domestic arts,
+such as ironing and cooking. More boys than girls attend these
+schools, as girls are more easily exempt. It is presumably not
+considered so necessary for them as for their brothers to continue
+their education after the age of fourteen.
+
+One of the most interesting experiments being made in Germany at
+present is the "open air" school, established for sickly children
+during the summer months. The first one was set up by the city of
+Charlottenberg at the suggestion of their _Schulrat_ and their school
+doctor, and it is now being imitated in other parts of Germany. From
+Charlottenberg the electric cars take you right into the pine forest,
+far beyond the last houses of the growing city. The soil here is loose
+and sandy, and the air in summer so soft that it wants strength and
+freshness. But as far out as this it is pure, and the medical men must
+deem it healing, for they have set up three separate ventures close
+together amongst the pine trees. One belongs to the Society of the Red
+Cross, and here sick and consumptive women come with their children
+for the day, and are waited on by the Red Cross sisters. We saw some
+of them lying about on reclining chairs, and some, less sickly, were
+playing croquet. The second establishment is for children who are not
+able to do any lessons, children who have been weeded out by the
+school doctor because they are backward and sickly. There are a
+hundred and forty children in this school, and there is a creche with
+twenty beds attached to it for babies and very young children. One
+airy room with two rows of neat beds was for rickety children.
+
+The third and largest of the settlements was the _Waldschule_, open
+every day, Sundays included, from the end of April to the middle of
+October, and educating two hundred and forty delicate children chosen
+from the elementary schools of Charlottenberg. We arrived there just
+as the children were going to sit down to their afternoon meal of
+bread and milk, and each child was fetching its own mug hanging on a
+numbered hook. The meals in fine weather are taken at long tables in
+the open air. When it rains they are served in big shelters closed on
+three sides. Dotted about the forest there were mushroom-shaped
+shelters with seats and tables beneath them, sufficient cover in
+slight showers; and there were well lighted, well aired class-rooms,
+where the children are taught for twenty-five minutes at a time.
+
+All the buildings are on the Doecker system, and were manufactured by
+Messrs. Christoph & Unmark of Niesky. This firm makes a speciality of
+schools and hospitals, built in what we should call the bungalow
+style. Of course, this style exactly suits the needs of the school in
+the forest. There is not a staircase in the place, there is no danger
+of fire, no want of ventilation, and very little work for housemaids
+or charwomen. The school furniture is simple and carefully planned.
+Some of it was designed by Richard Riemerschmid of Munich, the
+well-known artist.
+
+Each child has two and a half hours' work each day; all who are strong
+enough do gymnastics, and all have baths at school. Each child has its
+own locker and its own numbered blanket for use out of doors on damp
+or chilly days. The doctor visits the school twice a week, and the
+weight of each child is carefully watched. The busy sister who
+superintends the housekeeping and the hygienic arrangements seemed to
+know how much each child had increased already; and she told us what
+quantities of food were consumed every day. The kitchen and larder
+were as bright and clean as such places always are in Germany. When
+the children arrive in the morning at half-past seven they have a
+first breakfast of _Griesbrei_. At ten o'clock they have rolls and
+butter. Their dinner consists of one solid dish. The day we were there
+it had been pork and cabbage, a combination Germans give more
+willingly to delicate children than we should; the next day it was to
+be _Nudelsuppe_ and beef. At four o'clock they have bread and milk,
+and just before they go home a supper like their early breakfast of
+milk-soup, and bread. 260 litres of milk are used every day, 50 to 60
+lbs. of meat, 2 cwts. potatoes, 30 big rye loaves, 280 rolls, and when
+spinach, for instance, is given, 80 lbs. of spinach. We asked whether
+the children paid, and were told that those who could afford it paid
+from 25 to 45 pf. a day. The school is kept open throughout the summer
+holidays, but no work is done then, and two-thirds of the teachers are
+away. Although the children are at play for the greater part of the
+day in term time, and all day in the holidays, the headmaster told us
+that they gave no trouble. There was not a dirty or untidy child to be
+seen, nor one with rough manners. They are allowed to play in the
+light, sandy soil of the forest, much as English children play at the
+seaside, and we saw the beginning of an elaborate chain of fortresses
+defended by toy guns and decorated with flowers. We heard a lesson in
+mental arithmetic given in one of the class-rooms, the boys sitting on
+one side of the room and the girls on the other; and we found that
+these young sickly children were admirably taught and well advanced
+for their age. To be a teacher in one of these open-air schools is
+hard work, because the strain is never wholly relaxed. All day long,
+and a German day is very long, the children must be watched and
+guarded, sheltered from changes in the weather and prevented from
+over-tiring themselves. Many of them come from poor cramped homes, and
+to spend the whole summer in the forest more at play than at work
+makes them most happy. I met Germans who did not approve of the
+_Waldschule_ who considered it a fantastic extravagant experiment, too
+heavy for the rate-payers to bear. This is a side of the question that
+the rate-payers must settle for themselves; but there is no doubt
+about the results of the venture on the children sent to school in the
+forest. They get a training that must shape their whole future, moral
+and physical, a training that changes so many unsound citizens into
+sound ones every year for the German Empire. If the rate-payers can
+survive the strain it seems worth while.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE BACKFISCH
+
+
+The word is untranslatable, though my dictionary translates it.
+Backfisch, m. fried fish; young girl; says the dictionary. In Germany
+a woman does not arrive at her own gender till she marries and becomes
+somebody's _Frau_. Woman in general, girl, and miss are neuter; and
+the fried-fish girl is masculine. But if one little versed in German
+wished to tell you that he liked a fried sole, and said _Ich liebe
+einen Backfisch_, it might lead to misunderstandings. The origin of
+the word in this application is dubious. Some say it means fish that
+are baked in the oven because they are too small to fry in pans; but
+this does not seem a sensible explanation to anyone who has seen
+white-bait cooked. Others say it means fish the anglers throw back
+into the water because they are small. At any rate, the word used is
+to convey an impression of immaturity. A _Backfisch_ is what English
+and American fashion papers call a "miss." You may see, too, in German
+shop windows a printed intimation that special attention is given to
+_Backfisch Moden_. It is a girl who has left school but has not cast
+off her school-girl manners; and who, according to her nation and her
+history, will require more or less last touches.
+
+Miss Betham-Edwards tells us that a French girl is taught from
+babyhood to play her part in society, and that the exquisite grace
+and taste of Frenchwomen are carefully developed in them from the
+cradle. An English girl begins her social education in the nursery,
+and is trained from infancy in habits of personal cleanliness and in
+what old-fashioned English people call "table manners." An
+Englishwoman, who for many years lived happily as governess in a
+German country house, told me how on the night of her arrival she
+tried out of politeness to eat and drink as her hosts did; and how the
+mistress of the house confided to her later that she had disappointed
+everyone grievously. There were daughters in the family, and they were
+to learn to behave at table in the English way. That was why the
+father, arriving from Berlin, had on his own initiative brought them
+an English governess; for the English are admitted by their
+continental friends to excel in this special branch of manners, while
+their continental enemies charge them with being "ostentatiously" well
+groomed and dainty. The truth is, that if you have lived much with
+both English and Germans, and desire to be fair and friendly to both
+races, you find that your generalisations will not often weigh on one
+side. The English child learns to eat with a fork rather than with a
+spoon, and never by any chance to put a knife in its mouth, or to
+touch a bone with its fingers. The German child learns that it must
+never wear a soiled or an unmended garment or have untidy hair. I have
+known a German scandalised by the slovenly wardrobe of her well-to-do
+English pupil, and I have heard English people say that to hear
+Germans eat soup destroyed their appetite for dinner. English girls
+are not all slovens, and nowadays decently bred Germans behave like
+other people at table. But untidiness is commoner in England than in
+Germany, and you may still stumble across a German any day who,
+abiding by old customs, puts his knife in his mouth and takes his
+bones in his hands. He will not only do these things, but defend them
+vociferously. In that case you are strongly advised not to eat a dish
+of asparagus in his company.
+
+Your modern German _Backfisch_ may be a person of finish and wide
+culture. You may find that she insists on her cold tub every morning,
+and is scandalised by your offer of hot water in it. She has seen
+Salome as a play and heard Salome as an opera. She has seen plays by
+G.B.S. both in Berlin and London. She does not care to see Shakespeare
+in London, because, as she tells you, the English know nothing about
+him. Besides, he could not sound as well in English as in German. She
+has read Carlyle, and is now reading Ruskin. She adores Byron, but
+does not know Keats, Shelley, or Rossetti. Tennyson she waves
+contemptuously away from her, not because she has read him, but
+because she has been taught that his poetry is "bourgeois." Her
+favourite novels are _Dorian Gray_ and _Misunderstood_. She dresses
+with effect and in the height of fashion, she speaks French and
+English fluently, she has travelled in Italy and Switzerland, she
+plays tennis well, she can ride and swim and skate, and she would
+cycle if it was not out of fashion. In fact, she can do anything, and
+she knows everything, and she has been everywhere. Your French and
+English girls are ignorant misses in comparison with her, and you say
+to yourself as you watch her and humbly listen to her opinions,
+delivered without hesitation and expressed without mistakes: "Where is
+the German _Backfisch_ of yesteryear?"
+
+"Did you ever read _Backfischchen's Leiden und Freuden_?" you say to
+her; for the book is in its 55th edition, and you have seen German
+girls devouring it only last week; German girls of a different type,
+that is, from your present glittering companion.
+
+"That old-fashioned inferior thing," she says contemptuously. "I
+believe my mother had it. That is not literature."
+
+You leave her to suppose you could not have made that discovery for
+yourself, and you spend an amusing hour over the story again, for
+there are occasions when a book that is not "literature" will serve
+your purpose better than a masterpiece. The little book has
+entertained generations of German girls, and is presumably accepted by
+them, just as _Little Women_ is accepted in America or _The Daisy
+Chain_ in England. The picture was always a little exaggerated, and
+some of its touches are now out of date; yet as a picture of manners
+it still has a value. It narrates the joys and sorrows of a young girl
+of good family who leaves her country home in order to live with an
+aunt in Berlin, a facetious but highly civilised aunt who uses a large
+quantity of water at her morning toilet. All the stages of this toilet
+are minutely described, and all the mistakes the poor countrified
+_Backfisch_ makes the first morning. She actually gets out of bed
+before she puts on her clothes, and has to be driven behind the bed
+curtains by her aunt's irony. This is an incident that is either out
+of date or due to the genius and imagination of the author, for I have
+never seen bed curtains in Germany. However, Gretchen is taught to
+perform the early stages of her toilet behind them, and then to wash
+for the first time in her life in a basin full of water. She is
+sixteen. Her aunt presents her with a sponge, and observes that the
+civilisation of a nation is judged by the amount of soap it uses. "In
+much embarrassment I applied myself to this unaccustomed task,"
+continues the ingenuous _Backfisch_, "and I managed it so cleverly
+that everything around me was soon swimming. To make matters worse, I
+upset the water-jug, and now the flood spread to the washstand, the
+floor, the bed curtains, even to my clothes lying on the chair. If
+only this business of dressing was over," she sighs as she is about to
+brush her teeth, with brushes supplied by her aunt. But it is by no
+means over. She is just going to slip into a dressing-gown, cover her
+unbrushed hair with a cap, and so proceed to breakfast, when this
+exacting aunt stops her: actually desires her to plait and comb her
+hair at this hour of the morning, and to put on a tidy gown.
+Gretchen's gown is extremely untidy, and on that account I will not
+admit that the portrait is wholly lifelike. In fact, the author has
+summed up the sins of all the _Backfisch_ tribe, and made a single
+_Backfisch_ guilty of them. But caricature, if you know how to allow
+for it, is instructive. Mr. Stiggins is a caricature, yet he stands
+for failings that exist among us, though they are never displayed
+quite so crudely. "Go and brush your nails," says the aunt to the
+niece when the girl attempts to kiss her hand; and the _Backfisch_
+uses a nail-brush for the first time in her life.
+
+Then the two ladies sit down to breakfast. Gretchen fills the cups too
+full, soaks her roll in her coffee, and drinks out of her saucer. Her
+aunt informs her that "coffee pudding" is not polite, and can only be
+allowed when they are by themselves; also that she must not drink out
+of the saucer. "But we children always did it at home," says Gretchen.
+"I can well believe it," says the aunt. "_Everything is permitted to
+children._" The italics are mine.
+
+An aunt who has such ideas about the education of the young is
+naturally not surprised when at dinner-time she has to admonish her
+niece not to wipe her mouth with her hand, not to speak with her
+mouth full, to eat her soup quietly, to keep her elbows off the table,
+not to put her fingers in her plate or her knife in her mouth, and not
+to take her chicken into her hands on ceremonial occasions.
+
+"My treasure," says the aunt, "as you know, we are going to dinner
+with the Dunkers to-morrow. Be good enough not to take your chicken
+into your hands. Here at home I don't object to it, but the really
+correct way is to separate the meat from the bone with the knife and
+fork."
+
+The docile _Backfisch_ says _Jawohl, liebe Tante_, and feels that this
+business of becoming civilised is full of pitfalls and surprises.
+Never in her life has she eaten poultry without the assistance of her
+fingers. When she gets to the dinner-party she is fortunate enough to
+sit next to her bosom friend, who starts in horror and whispers "With
+a knife, Gretchen," when Gretchen is just about to dip her fingers in
+the salt. The _Backfisch_ is truly anxious to learn, but she feels
+that the injunctions of society are hard, and says it is poor sport to
+eat your chicken with a knife and fork, because the best part sticks
+to the bones. Then her friend stops her from drinking fruit syrup out
+of her plate, and her neighbour on the other side, a stout guzzler who
+has not been taught by his aunt to eat properly, encourages Gretchen
+to drink too much champagne.
+
+After these early adventures the education of the _Backfisch_ proceeds
+quickly. She has to learn at her aunt's tea-parties not to fill cups
+to overflowing in sheer exuberance of hospitality; and she is also
+instructed not to press food on people. "In good society," says the
+aunt, "people decline to eat because they have had enough, and not
+because they require pressing." She is obliged also to discourage
+Gretchen from waiting too attentively on the young men who visit at
+the house; and Gretchen, who does not care about young men, but only
+yearns to be serviceable, devotes herself in future to the old ladies,
+their foot-stools, their knitting, and their smelling bottles. This
+touch is one of many that makes the book, in spite of its obvious
+shortcomings, valuable as a picture of German character and manner. It
+is impossible to imagine Gretchen in a French or English story of the
+same class. The French girl would be more adroit and witty; the
+English girl would expect young men to wait on her; and neither of
+them would gush as Gretchen did about her old ladies. "My readiness to
+serve them knew no bounds. To arrange their seats to their liking, to
+give them stools for their feet and cushions for their backs, to rush
+for their shawls and cloaks, to count the rows in their knitting, to
+help them pick up their stitches, to thread their needles, to wind
+silk or wool, to peel fruit, to run for smelling bottles and cold
+water,--all these things I did with delight the instant my watchful
+eye discovered the smallest wish, and I was always cordially thanked."
+
+Tastes differ. Some old ladies would be made quite uncomfortable by
+such fussy attentions. The _Backfisch_ goes on to say that she was
+equally assiduous in waiting on the old gentlemen. She picked up
+anything they dropped, polished their spectacles for them, and
+listened to their dull stories when no one else would. I consider the
+portrait of Gretchen in this story a literary triumph. I can see the
+girl; I can hear her voice and laugh. I know exactly how she behaved
+and what the old ladies and gentlemen said to her, how she dressed and
+how she did her hair; not because the author tells me just these
+things, but because her type is as true to life to-day as it was
+thirty years ago. As a contrast to her, a fine young lady from the
+city presently joins the household, and the aunt does not have to
+provide her with a tooth-brush. The new arrival wears blue satin
+slippers, drinks her chocolate in bed, and cannot dress without the
+help of a maid. In this way the author shows you that girls brought up
+in cities are superfine rather than savage, and that you are not to
+suppose the ordinary German _Backfisch_ is like her little heroine
+from the provinces.
+
+The truth of the matter is, that no one nowadays has such manners as
+the _Backfisch_ had when she first came from the wilds; at least, no
+one of her class, even if they have grown up in Hinter-Pommern. But if
+you travel in Germany next week and stay in small towns and country
+places, you will still meet plenty of people who take their poultry
+bones in their fingers and put their knives in their mouths. If they
+are men you will see them use their fork as a dagger to hold the meat
+while they cut it up; you will see them stick their napkins into their
+shirt collars and placidly comb their hair with a pocket comb in
+public; if they are women and at a restaurant, they will pocket the
+lumps of sugar they have not used in their coffee. But if you are in
+private houses amongst people of Gretchen's type you will see none of
+these things. A German host still pulls the joint close to him
+sometimes or stands up to carve, and a German hostess still presses
+you to eat, still in the kindness of her heart piles up your plate.
+But this embarrassing form of hospitality is dying out. As Gretchen's
+aunt said, people in good society recognise that a guest refuses food
+because he does not want it. Some years ago, when you had satisfied
+your hunger and declined more, your German friends used to look
+offended or distressed, and say _Sie geniren sich gewiss_. This is a
+difficult phrase to translate, because the idea is one that has never
+taken root in the English mind, _Sich geniren_, however, is a
+reflective verb, a corruption of the French verb _se gener_, and what
+they meant was that you really wanted a third potato dumpling but did
+not like to say so. Whether your reluctance was supposed to proceed
+from your distrust of your host's hospitality or shame at your own
+appetite, is not clear; in either case it was taken, is even to-day
+still often taken, for artificial. To accept a portion of an untouched
+dish was considered a sign that you came from "a good house" where no
+one grudged or wished to save the food put on the table; and formerly
+you could not refuse sugar in your tea without being commended for
+your economy. You are still invited to eat tarts and puddings in
+Germany with what we consider the insufficient assistance of a
+tea-spoon, but I have never been in a private house where salt-spoons
+were not provided. You never used to find them in inns of a plain
+kind, and unless you were known to be English and peculiar you were
+not provided with more than one knife and fork for all the courses of
+a _table d'hote_. You would see your German neighbours putting theirs
+aside as a matter of course when their plates were removed.
+
+On the whole, then, the celebrated picture of the _Backfisch_, though
+it is overloaded, bears some relation to the facts of life in Germany:
+not only in the episodes that make the early chapters entertaining,
+but all through the story in atmosphere, in the little touches that
+give a story nationality. When the excellent Gretchen has been
+civilised she spends a great deal of time in the kitchen, and soon
+knows all the duties of the complete housekeeper; while, when the
+frivolous Eugenie becomes _Braut_ she cannot cook at all. But
+frivolous as she is, she recognises that marriage is unthinkable
+without cooking, and straightway sets to work to learn. Then, too,
+the _Backfisch_ is the ideal German maiden, cheerful, docile, and
+facetious; and constantly on the jump (_springen_ is the word she
+uses) to serve her elders. Middle-aged Germans used to have a most
+tiresome way of expecting girls to be like lambs in spring, always in
+the mood to frisk and caper: so that a quiet or a delicate girl had a
+bad time with some of them. _Ein junges Maedchen muss immer heiter
+sein_, they would say reproachfully. But it does not follow that you
+are always _heiter_ just because you are not twenty yet; especially in
+Germany, where girls are often anaemic and have headaches. However,
+perhaps the modern German maiden does not allow her elders to be so
+silly.
+
+There are some other ways, too, in which my _Backfisch_ of thirty
+years ago is typical of German womanhood both then and now. She is as
+good as gold, she is devoted to duty not to pleasure, and she is as
+guileless as a child. You know that when she marries she will be
+faithful unto death; you know that her husband and her children will
+call her blessed. These things come out quite naturally, almost
+unconsciously, in the little story that is "not literature," and which
+for all that is so truly and deeply German in its quality and tone.
+This Gretchen of the schoolroom, this caricature of the country
+cousin, is akin in her simplicity, sweetness, and depth of nature to
+that other Gretchen whose figure lives for ever in the greatest of
+German poems. Just as the women of Shakespeare and the women of Miss
+Austen are subtly kin to each other, inasmuch as they are English
+women, so Goethe's girl and the girl of the poor little schoolroom
+story are German in every pulse and fibre. And this national essence,
+the honesty, goodness, and sweetness of the girl, are the real
+things, the things to remember about her. Those little matters of the
+toilet and the table will soon be out of date, are out of date already
+in the greater part of Germany. As a picture of forgotten manners they
+will always be amusing, just as it is amusing to read an
+eighteenth-century English story of school life, in which the young
+ladies fought and bit and scratched each other and were whipped and
+sent to bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE STUDENT
+
+
+When an English lad goes to the university he usually goes there from
+a public school, where out of school hours he has been learning for
+years past to be a man. In these strenuous days he may have learned a
+little in school hours too, but that is a new departure. Cricket and
+character are what an English boy expects to develop at school, and if
+there is stuff in him he succeeds. He does not set a high value on
+learning. Even if he works and brings home prizes he will not be as
+proud of them as of his football cap, while a boy who is head of the
+school, but a duffer at games, will live for all time in the memory of
+his fellows as a failure. But the German boy goes to school to acquire
+knowledge, and he too gets what he wants. The habit of work must be
+strong in him when at the age of eighteen he goes to one of his many
+universities. But when he gets there he is free for the first time in
+his life, and the first use he for the most part makes of his freedom
+is to be thoroughly, happily idle. This idleness, if he has a backbone
+and a call to work, only lasts a term or two; and no one who knows how
+a German boy is held to the grindstone for twelve years of school life
+can grudge him a holiday. But the odd fact is, that the Briton who
+leaves school a man is more under control at Oxford or Cambridge than
+the German at Heidelberg who leaves school a boy.
+
+A German university is a teaching institution which prepares for the
+State examinations, and is never residential. There are no old
+colleges. The professors live in flats like other people, and the
+students live in lodgings or board with private families. There is one
+building or block of buildings called the _Universitaet_ where there
+are laboratories and lecture-rooms. The State can decline a professor
+chosen by the university; but this power is rarely exercised. The
+teachers at a German university consist of ordinary professors,
+extraordinary professors, and _Privatdocenten_--men who are not
+professors yet, but hope to be some day. An Englishman in his
+ignorance might think that an extraordinary professor ought to rank
+higher than an ordinary one; but this is not so. The ordinary
+professors are those who have chairs; the extraordinary ones have
+none. But all professors have a fixed salary which is paid to the day
+of their death, though they may cease work when they choose. The
+salaries vary from L240 to L350, and are paid by the State, but this
+income is increased by lecturing fees. Whether it is largely increased
+depends on the popularity of the lecturer and on his subject. An
+astronomer cannot expect large classes, while a celebrated professor
+of Law or Medicine addresses crowds. I have found it difficult to make
+my English friends believe that there are professors now in Berlin
+earning as much as L2500 a year. The English idea of the German
+professor is rudely disturbed by such a fact, for his poverty and
+simplicity of life have played as large a part in our tradition of him
+as his learning. The Germans seem to recognise that a scholar cannot
+want as much money as a man of affairs; therefore, when one of their
+professors is so highly esteemed by the youth of the nation that his
+fees exceed L225, half of the overflow goes to the university and not
+to him at all. In this way Berlin receives a considerable sum every
+year, and uses it to assist poorer professors and to attract new men.
+As a rule a German professor has not passed the State examinations.
+These are official, not academic, and they qualify men for government
+posts rather than for professorial chairs. A professor acquires the
+academic title of doctor by writing an original essay that convinces
+the university of his learning. The title confers no privileges. It is
+an academic distinction, and its value depends on the prestige of the
+university conferring it.
+
+Germans say that our English universities exist to turn out gentlemen
+rather than scholars, and that the aim of their own universities is to
+train servants for the State and to encourage learning. I think an
+Englishman would say that a gentleman is bred at home, but he would
+understand how the German arrived at his point of view. When a German
+talks of an English university he is thinking of Oxford and Cambridge,
+and he knows that, roughly speaking, it is the sons of well-to-do men
+who go there. Perhaps he does not know much about the Scotch and Irish
+and Welsh universities, or London, or the north of England; though it
+is never safe to build on what a German does not know. I once took for
+granted that a man talking to me of some point in history would no
+more remember all the names and dates of the Kings of Scotland than I
+remember them myself. But he knew every one, and was scandalised by my
+ignorance. So perhaps the average German knows better than I do what
+it costs a man to graduate at Edinburgh or at Dublin. Anyhow, he knows
+that three or four years at Oxford or Cambridge cost a good deal; and
+he knows that in Berlin, for instance, a student can live on sixty
+pounds a year, out of which he can afford about five pounds a term for
+academic fees. If he is too poor to pay his fees the authorities allow
+him to get into their debt, and pay later in life when he has a post.
+There are cases where a man pays for his university training six years
+after he has ended it. But a German university comes to a man's help
+still more effectively when there is need for it, and will grant him
+partial or even entire support. Then there are various organisations
+for providing hungry men with dinners so many days a week; sometimes
+at a public table, sometimes with families who arrange to receive one
+or more guests on certain days every week. The Jewish community in a
+university always looks after its poor students well, and this
+practice of entertaining them in private houses is one that gives
+rises to many jests and stories. The students soon find out which of
+their hosts are liberal and which are not, and give them a reputation
+accordingly.
+
+A German comparing his universities with the English ones will always
+lay stress on the fact that his are not examining bodies, and that his
+professors are not crammers but teachers. A student who intends to
+pass the State examinations chooses his own course of reading for
+them, and the lectures that he thinks will help him. He does not
+necessarily spend his whole time at the same university, but may move
+from one to the other in pursuit of the professors he wants for his
+special purpose. He is quite free to do this; and he is free to work
+night and day, or to drink beer night and day. He is under no
+supervision either in his studies or his way of life.
+
+English people who have been to Germany at all have invariably been
+to Heidelberg, and if they have been there in term time they have been
+amused by the gangs of young men who swagger about the narrow streets,
+each gang wearing a different coloured cap. They will have been told
+that these are the "corps" students, and the sight of them so jolly
+and so idle will confirm their mental picture of the German student,
+the picture of a young man who does nothing but drink beer, fight
+duels, sing _Volkslieder_ and _Trinklieder_, and make love to pretty
+low-born maidens. When you see a company of these young men clatter
+into the Schloss garden on a summer afternoon, and drink vast
+quantities of beer, when you observe their elaborate ceremonial of
+bows and greetings, when you hear their laughter and listen to the
+latest stories of their monkey tricks, you understand that the
+student's life is a merry one, but except for the sake of tradition
+you wonder why he need lead it at a seat of learning. Anything further
+removed from learning than a German corps student cannot be imagined,
+and the noise he makes must incommode the quiet working students who
+do not join a corps. Not that the quiet working students would wish to
+banish the others. They are the glory of the German universities. In
+novels and on the stage none others appear. The innocent foreigner
+thinks that the moment a young German goes to the Alma Mater of his
+choice he puts on an absurd little cap, gets his face slashed, buys a
+boarhound, and devotes all his energies to drinking beer and ragging
+officials. But though the "corps" students are so conspicuous in the
+small university towns, it is only the men of means who join them. For
+poorer students there is a cheaper form of union, called a
+_Burschenschaft_. When a young German goes to the university he has
+probably never been from home before, and by joining a _Corps_ or a
+_Burschenschaft_ he finds something to take the place of home,
+companions with whom he has a special bond of intimacy, and a
+discipline that carries on his social education; for the etiquette of
+these associations is most elaborate and strict. The members of a
+corps all say "thou" to each other, and on the _Alte Herren Abende_,
+when members of an older generation are entertained by the young ones
+of to-day, this practice still obtains, although one man may be a
+great minister of State and the other a lad fresh from school. The
+laws of a "corps" remind you of the laws made by English schoolboys
+for themselves,--they are as solemnly binding, as educational, and as
+absurd. If a Vandal meets a Hessian in the street he may not recognise
+him, though the Hessian be his brother; but outside the town's
+boundary this prohibition is relaxed, for it is not rooted in ill
+feeling but in ceremony. One corps will challenge another to meet it
+on the duelling ground, just as an English football team will meet
+another--in friendly rivalry. All the students' associations except
+the theological require their members to fight these duels, which are
+really exercises in fencing, and take place on regular days of the
+week, just as cricket matches do in England. The men are protected by
+goggles and by shields and baskets on various parts of their bodies,
+but their faces are exposed, and they get ugly cuts, of which they are
+extremely proud. As it is quite impossible that I should have seen
+these duels myself, I will quote from a description sent me by an
+English friend who was taken to them in Heidelberg by a corps student.
+"They take place," he says, "in a large bare room with a plain boarded
+floor. There were tables, each to hold ten or twelve persons, on
+three sides of the room, and a refreshment counter on the fourth
+side, where an elderly woman and one or two girls were serving wine.
+The wine was brought to the tables, and the various corps sat at their
+special tables, all drinking and smoking. The dressing and undressing
+and the sewing up of wounds was done in an adjoining room. When the
+combatants were ready they were led in by their seconds, who held up
+their arms one on each side. The face and the top of the head were
+exposed, but the body, arms and neck were heavily bandaged. The
+duellists are placed opposite each other, and the seconds, who also
+have swords in their hands, stand one on each side, ready to interfere
+and knock up the combatant's sword. They say '_Auf die Mensur_', and
+then the slashing begins. As soon as blood is drawn the seconds
+interfere, and the doctor examines the cut. If it is not bad they go
+on fighting directly. If it needs sewing up they go into the next
+room, and you wait an endless time for the next party. I got awfully
+tired of the long intervals, sitting at the tables, drinking and
+smoking. While the fights were going on we all stood round in a ring.
+There were only about three duels the whole morning. There was a good
+deal of blood on the floor. The women at the refreshment counter were
+quite unconcerned. They didn't trouble to look on, but talked to each
+other about blouses like girls in a post office. The students drove
+out to the inn and back in open carriages. It is a mile from
+Heidelberg. The duels are generally as impersonal as games, but
+sometimes they are in settlement of quarrels. I think any student may
+come and fight on these occasions, but I suppose he has to be the
+guest of a corps."
+
+A German professor lecturing on university life constantly used a word
+I did not understand at first. The word as he said it was _Commang_,
+with a strong accent on the second syllable. The word as it is written
+is _Comment_, and means the etiquette set up and obeyed by the
+students. The Germans have taken many French words into their language
+and corrupted them, much as we have ourselves: sometimes by
+Germanising the pronunciation, sometimes by conjugating a French verb
+in the German way as they do in _raisonniren_ and _geniren_. The
+_Commang_, said the professor, was a highly valuable factor in a young
+man's education, because it helped more than anything else to turn a
+schoolboy into a man of the world. So when I saw a little book called
+_Der Bier Comment_ for sale I bought it instantly, for I wanted to
+know how beer turned a schoolboy into a man of the world. It began
+with a little preface, a word of warning to anyone attempting to write
+about the morals, customs, and characteristics of the German nation.
+No one undertaking this was to forget that the Germans had an amazing
+_Bierdurst_, and that they liked to assuage this thirst in company, to
+be cheerful and easy, and to sing while they were drinking. Then it
+goes on to give the elaborate ceremonial observed at the _Kneiptafel_.
+One of my dictionaries, although the German-English part has 2412
+pages, translates _Kneipe_ as "any instrument for pinching." I never
+yet found anything I wanted in those 2412 pages. Another dictionary,
+one that cost ninepence, and is supposed to give you all words in
+common use, does not include _Kneipe_ at all. As an instrument for
+pinching, _Kneipe_ is certainly not common, except possibly amongst
+people who use tools. As a word for a sort of beer club it is as
+common as beer. It is not only students who go to the _Kneipe_. In
+some parts of Germany men spend most of the evening drinking beer and
+smoking with their friends, while the womenfolk are by themselves or
+with the children at home. But the beer _Commang_ that the professor
+thought had such educational value is the name for certain intricate
+rites practised by university students at the _Kneiptafel_. Those who
+sit at the table are called Beer Persons, and they are of various
+ranks according to the time of membership and their position in the
+Kneipe. Every Beer Person must drink beer and join in the songs,
+unless he has special permission from the chairman. The Beer Persons
+do not just sit round the table and drink as they please. If they did
+there would be no _Comment_, and I suppose no educational value. They
+have to invite their fellows to drink with them, and the quantity
+drunk, the persons who may have challenged, and the exact number of
+minutes that may elapse before a challenge is accepted and returned,
+is all exactly laid down. Then there are various festive and ingenious
+ways of drinking together, so as to turn the orgy into something like
+a game. For instance, the glass "goes into the world," that is, it
+circulates, and any Beer Person who seizes it with a different hand or
+different fingers from his neighbour is fined. Or the glasses are
+piled one on the top of another while the Beer Persons sing, and some
+one man has to drink to each glass in the pile at the word of command.
+Or the president orders a "Beer Galop" with the words "_Silentium fuer
+einen Biergalopp: ich bitte den noetigen Stoff anzuschaffen._" At the
+word of command everyone, beginning with the president, passes his
+glass to his left-hand neighbour and empties the one he receives. Then
+the glasses are refilled, passed to the right, and emptied again as
+soon as possible. The president, it seems, has to exercise a good deal
+of discretion and ingenuity, for if the _Kneipe_ seems flat it lies
+with him to order the moves in the game that will make it lively and
+stimulate beer, song, and conversation. There are various fines and
+punishments inflicted according to strict rule on those who transgress
+the code of the _Kneipe_, but as far as I can make out they all
+resolve themselves into drinking extra beer, singing extra songs, or
+in really serious cases ceasing to be a Beer Person for whatever
+length of time meets the offence. An Englishman who was present at
+some of these gatherings in Heidelberg, told me that the etiquette was
+most difficult for a foreigner to understand, and always a source of
+anxiety to him all the evening. He was constantly invited to drink
+with various members, and the German responsible for him explained
+that he must not only respond to the invitation at the moment, but
+return it at the right time: not too soon, because that would look
+like shaking off an obligation, and not too late, because that would
+look like forgetting it.
+
+A _Kommers_ is a students' festival in which the professors and other
+senior members of a university take part, and at which outsiders are
+allowed to look on. The presiding students appear _in vollem Wichs_,
+as we should say in their war paint, with sashes and rapiers. Young
+and old together drink beer, sing songs, make speeches, and in honour
+of one or the other they "rub a Salamander,"--a word which is said to
+be a corruption of _Sauft alle mit einander_. This is a curious
+ceremony and of great antiquity. When the glasses are filled, at the
+word of command they are rubbed on the table; at the word of command
+they are raised and emptied; and again at the word of command every
+man rubs his glass on the table, the second time raises it and brings
+it down with a crash. Anyone who brought his glass down a moment
+earlier or later than the others would spoil the _Salamander_ and be
+in disgrace. In _Ekkehardt_ Scheffel describes a similar ceremonial in
+the tenth century. "The men seized their mugs," he says, "and rubbed
+them three times in unison on the smooth rocks, producing a humming
+noise, then they lifted them towards the sun and drank; each man set
+down his mug at the same moment, so that it sounded like a single
+stroke."
+
+A _Kommers_ is not always a gay festival. It may be a memorial
+ceremony in honour of some great man lately dead. Then speeches are
+made in his praise, solemn and sacred music is sung, and the
+Salamander, an impressive libation to the dead man's Manes, is drunk
+with mournful effect.
+
+In small university towns--and it must be remembered that there are
+twenty-two universities in Germany--the students play a great part in
+the social life of the place. German ladies have often told me that
+the balls they looked forward to with most delight as girls were those
+given by students, when one "corps" would take rooms and pay for
+music, wine, and lights. For supper, tickets are issued on such
+occasions, which the guests pay themselves. The small German
+universities seem full of the students in term time, especially in
+those places where people congregate for pleasure and not for work.
+Even in a town as big as Leipsic they are seen a good deal, filling
+the pavement, occupying the restaurants, going in gangs to the play.
+But in Berlin the German student of tradition, the beer person, the
+duellist, the rollicking lad with his big dog, is lost. He is there,
+you are told, but if you keep to the highway you never see him; and,
+to tell the truth, in Germany you miss him. He stands for youth and
+high spirits and that world of ancient custom most of us would be
+loth to lose. In Berlin, if you go to the _Universitaet_ when the
+working day begins, you see a crowd of serious, well-mannered young
+men, most of them carrying books and papers. They are swarming like
+bees to the various lecture-rooms; they are as quiet as the elderly
+professors who appear amongst them. They have no corps caps, no dogs,
+no scars on their scholarly faces. By their figures you judge that
+they are not Beer Persons. They have worked hard for twelve years in
+the gymnasiums of Germany, they have no idle habits, no interests so
+keen as their interest in this business of preparing for the future.
+They are the men of next year's Germany, and will carry on their
+country's reputation in the world for efficiency and scholarship.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+RIEHL ON WOMEN
+
+
+Not long ago I heard a German professor say that anyone who wanted to
+speak with authority about the German family must read _Die Familie_
+by W.H. Riehl. He said that, amongst other things, this important work
+explained why men went to the _Kneipe_, because they were fond of home
+life; and also what was the sphere of women. I thought it would be
+useful to have both these points settled; besides, I asked several
+wise Germans about the book, and they all nodded their heads and said
+it was a good one. So I got it, and was surprised to find it came out
+in 1854. I thought ideas about women had advanced since then, even in
+Germany, though a German friend had warned me just before my last
+visit not to expect much in this way. She made a movement with her
+lips as if she was blowing a bit of thistledown from her. "Remember,"
+she said, "that is what you will be directly you get there ... nothing
+at all." But I had been to Germany so often that I was prepared to be
+"nothing at all" for a time, and not to mind it much. What I wanted to
+discover was how far German women had arrived at being "something" in
+the eyes of their men. In my eyes they had always been a good deal:
+admirable wives and mothers, for instance, patient, capable, thrifty,
+and self-sacrificing. At first I thought that my friend was wrong,
+and that women of late years had made great strides in Germany. I met
+single women who had careers and homes of their own and were quite
+cheerful. When you are old enough to look back twenty or thirty years,
+and remember the blight there used to be on the "old maid," and the
+narrow gossiping life she was driven to lead, you must admit that
+these contented bachelor women have done a good deal to emancipate
+themselves. In England they have been with us for a long time, but
+formerly I had not come across them in Germany. On the contrary, I
+well remember my amazement as a girl at hearing a sane able-bodied
+single woman of sixty say she had naturally not ventured on a summer
+journey to Switzerland till some man who looked after her money
+affairs, but was in no way related, had given her his consent. I did
+once hear a German boast of having struck his wife in order to bring
+her to submission. He was not a navvy either, but a merchant of good
+standing. He was not a common type, however. German men, on the whole,
+treat their womenfolk kindly, but never as their equals. Over and over
+again German women have told me they envied the wives of Englishmen,
+and I should say that it is impossible for an English woman to be in
+Germany without feeling, if she understands what is going on around
+her, that she has suddenly lost caste. She is "nothing at all" because
+she is a woman: to be treated with gallantry if she is young and
+pretty, and as a negligible quantity if she is not. That perhaps is a
+bitter description of what really takes place, but after reading Herr
+Riehl, and hearing that his ideas are still widely accepted in
+Germany, I am not much afraid of being unjust. His own arguments
+convict the men of the nation in a measure nothing I could say would.
+They are in extreme opposition to the ideas fermenting amongst modern
+women there, and the strange fact that they are not regarded as quite
+out of date makes them interesting.
+
+Herr Riehl's theory, to put it in a nutshell, is that the family is
+all-important, and the individual, if she is a woman, is of no
+importance at all. He does not object to her being yoked to a plough,
+because then she is working for the family, but he would forbid her,
+if he could, to enter any profession that would make her independent
+of the family. She is not to practise any art, and if she "commences
+author" it is a sure sign that she is ugly, soured, and bitter. In any
+country where they are allowed to rule, and even in any country where
+they distinguish themselves in art and literature, civilisation as
+well as statecraft must be at a standstill. Queen Elizabeth and Maria
+Theresa were evidently awkward people for a man laying down this
+theory to encounter, so he goes out of his way to say that they were
+not women at all, but men in women's clothes. Moreover, he has no
+doubt that the Salic law must ultimately prevail everywhere.
+
+A woman has no independent existence: he says she is taught from
+childhood to be subordinate to others; she cannot go out by herself
+with propriety; she is not a complete creature till she finds a mate.
+The unlucky women who never find one (more than 400,000 in Germany)
+are not to make any kind of career for themselves, either humble or
+glorious. Each one is to search carefully for relatives who will give
+her a corner in their house, and allow her to work for them. If no one
+wants her she may live with other women and bring up poor children. He
+would allow women some education. Far be it from him to think that
+women are to remain in compulsory ignorance. But their education is to
+be "womanly," and carried on in the family. Women teachers in public
+schools he considered a danger to the State, and he would send all
+girls till they reach their twelfth or fourteenth year to the
+elementary schools, where they would be taught by men and associate
+with bare-footed children. Woman, in short, is to learn how to be
+woman at home, and how not to be superwoman in school. She may even
+have some instruction in art and science, but only a limited
+instruction that will not encroach on her duty to the family.
+
+The fate of lonely single women is much on Herr Riehl's mind. What are
+we to do with them? he asks despairingly. "What is to become of the
+army of innocent creatures, without means, without a craft, doomed to
+an aimless, disappointed life. Shall we shut them up in convents?
+Shall we buy them into Stifts? Shall we send them to Australia? Shall
+we put an end to them?" Quite in the manner of Dogberry, he answers
+his own questions. Let them go their ways as before, he says. He knows
+there is no short cut to social regeneration, and he will not
+recommend one, not even extirpation. He points out that the working
+women of Germany have never asked to be on an equality with men. The
+lower you descend in the social scale the less sharply women are
+differentiated from men, and the worse time women have in consequence.
+The wife of a peasant is only his equal in one respect: she works as
+hard as he does. Otherwise she is his serf. The sole public position
+allowed to a woman in a village is that of gooseherd; while those
+original minds who in other circumstances would take to authorship or
+painting have to wait, if they are peasants, till they are old, when
+they can take to fortune-telling and witchcraft. Herr Riehl admits
+that the lot of women when they are peasants is not a happy one. He
+does not make the admission because he thinks it of much consequence,
+but because it illustrates his argument that the less "feminine" women
+are the less power they exercise. He has no great fault to find with
+the peasant's household, where the wife is a beast of burden in the
+field and a slave indoors, bears children in quick succession, is old
+before her time, and sacrifices herself body and soul to the family.
+But he points out that on a higher social plane, where women are more
+unlike men, more distinctively feminine, the position they take is
+more honourable. Yet it is these same "superfeminine" women who are
+foolishly claiming equality with men.
+
+Herr Riehl's views expressed in English seem a little behind the
+times, here and there more than a little brutal. He speaks with
+sympathy of suttee, and he quotes the Volga-Kalmucks with approval.
+This tribe, it seems, "treat their wives with the most exquisite
+patriarchal courtesy; but directly the wife neglects a household duty
+courtesy ceases (for the _genius_ of the house is more important than
+the personal dignity of the wife), and the sinner is castigated (_wird
+tuechtig durchgepeitscht_). The whip used, the household sword and
+sceptre, is handed down from generation to generation as a sacred
+heirloom." I have translated this passage instead of alluding to it,
+because I thought it was an occasion on which Herr Riehl should
+literally speak for himself.
+
+It is, however, fair to explain that modern men as well as modern
+women come under his censure. All the tendencies and all the habits of
+modern life afflict him, and he lashes out at them without
+discrimination, and with such an entire lack of prophetic insight
+that I have found him consoling. For this book was published sixteen
+years before the Franco-Prussian War, when Germany, the world must
+admit, proved that it was not decadent. Yet every page of it is a
+Jeremiad, an exhortation to his countryfolk to stop short on the road
+to ruin. He does not see that the whole nation is slowly and patiently
+girding its loins for that mighty effort; he believes it is blind,
+weak, and flighty. If he had lived in England, and a little later, he
+would certainly have talked about the Smart Set, Foreign Financiers,
+and the Yellow Press. As he lived in Germany fifty years ago, he
+scolds his countryfolk for living in flats. He wants to know why a
+family cannot herd in one room instead of scattering itself in
+several. As for a father who cannot endure the cry of children, that
+man should never have been a father, says Herr Riehl. He cannot
+approve of the dinner hour being put off till two o'clock. Why not
+begin work at five and dine at eleven in the good old German way? He
+praises the ruinous elaborate festivals that used to celebrate family
+events, and considers that the police help to destroy family life by
+fining people who in their opinion spend more than they can afford on
+a wedding or a christening. He objects to artificial Christmas trees,
+and points out that other nations set a tree in the drawing-room, but
+that Germans have it in the nursery, the innermost sanctum of family
+life. He arrives at some curious conclusions when he discusses the
+German's habit of turning the beer-house into a sort of club that he
+calls his _Kneipe_. Other races can drink, he says; _aber bloss die
+germanischen koennen kneipen_--only the Germanic peoples can make
+themselves at home in an inn. What does the _Stammgast_, the regular
+guest, ask but the ways of home? the same chair every night, the same
+corner, the same glass, the same wine; and where there is a
+_Stammtisch_ the same companions. He sees that family life is more or
+less destroyed when the men of the household spend their leisure
+hours, and especially their evenings, at an inn, but he says that the
+homelike surroundings of the _Kneipe_ prove the German's love of home.
+In fact, he suggests that even the habitual drunkard is often a weak,
+amiable creature cut out for family life; only, he has sought it at
+the public-house instead of on his own hearth.
+
+Herr Riehl is, in fact, deeply concerned to see amongst his
+countryfolk a gradual slackening of family ties, a widespread selfish
+individualism amongst women, an abdication of duty and authority
+amongst men. His views about women sound outrageous to-day, chiefly
+because he wants to apply them to all women without distinction; and
+also because they display a total want of consideration for the
+welfare and the wishes of women themselves. But his position is
+interesting, because with some modifications it is the position still
+taken by the majority of German men; naturally, not by the most
+advanced and intelligent, but by the average German from the Spree to
+the Danube. He thinks that woman was made for man, and that if she has
+board, lodging, and raiment, according to the means of her menfolk,
+she has all she can possibly ask of life. When her menfolk are
+peasants, she must work in the fields; when they belong to the middle
+or upper classes, her place is in the kitchen and the nursery. Unless
+he is exceptionally intelligent he does not understand that this
+simple rule is complicated by modern economic conditions, and by the
+enormous number of women thrown on their own resources. He would send
+them as Herr Riehl did, to the kitchens and nurseries of other people;
+or he would give up the problem in despair, as Herr Riehl did,
+admitting with a sigh that modern humanitarianism forbids the
+establishment of a lethal chamber for the superfluous members of a
+weaker sex.
+
+The most modern German women are in direct opposition to Herr Riehl,
+and it must be said that some of their leaders are enthusiastic rather
+than sensible. They are drunk with the freedom they claim in a country
+where women are not even allowed to attend a political meeting except
+with the express consent of the police. In their ravings against the
+tyranny of men they lose all historical sense, just as an American
+does when he describes a mediaeval crime as if it had been committed by
+a European with a twentieth-century conscience. They charge men with
+keeping half humanity in a degrading state of slavery, and attribute
+all the sins of civilisation to the enforced ignorance and
+helplessness of women. Their contempt for their masters is almost
+beyond the German language to express, eloquently as they use it. They
+demand equality of education and opportunity, but they do not want to
+be men. Far be such a desire from their minds. They mean to be
+something much better. To what a pass have men brought the world, they
+ask? How much better would manners and morals and politics be in the
+hands of women! They repel with indignation the taunt that women have
+no right to govern the State because their bodies are too weak to
+defend it. They point out with a gleam of sense and justice that the
+mother of children does serve the State in a supremely important way;
+and for that matter they are willing to take many State duties on
+their shoulders, and to train for them as arduously and regularly as
+men train for the wretched business of killing each other. They will
+not mate with those poor things--modern men--under the existing
+marriage laws. They refuse to be household beasts of burden a day
+longer. Life, life to the dregs with all its joys and all its
+responsibilities, is what they want, and love if it comes their way.
+But not marriage. Young Siegfrieds they ask for, young lions. Here one
+bewildered reader rubbed her eyes; for she had just heard Siegfried
+and the Goetterdaemmerung again, and sometimes she reads in the
+_Nibelungenlied_; and if ever a man won a woman with his club, by
+muscle seemingly, by magic really, but anyhow by sheer bodily
+strength, was not that man Siegfried? and was not the woman
+Bruennhilde? And what does the Siegfried of the Lied say when his wife
+has failed to keep a guard on her tongue--
+
+    "Man soll so Frauen ziehen," sprach Siegfried, "der Degen,
+    Das sie ueppig Reden lassen unterwegen.
+    Verbiet es deinem Weibe; der meinen thu' ich's auch.
+    Ich schaeme mich, wahrlich um solchen uebermuethigen Brauch."
+
+And then, just as if he was one of those Volga-Kalmucks admired by
+Herr Riehl, he beats poor Kriemhilde black and blue.
+
+    "Das hat mich bald gereuet," so sprach das edle Weib;
+    "Auch hat er so zerblaueet deswegen meinen Leib!
+    Dass ich es je geredet, beschwerte ihm den Muth:
+    Das hat gar wohl gerochen der Degen tapfer und gut."
+
+Yet here is the last development in women, the woman who refuses as an
+outrage both the theory of masculine superiority and the fact so
+evident in Germany of masculine domination, here is the
+self-constituted superwoman calling as if she was Eve to the primaeval
+male. It may be perverse of me, but my imagination refuses to behold
+them mated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE OLD AND THE NEW
+
+
+Germany stands midway between France and England in its care for its
+womenfolk. French parents consider marriage the proper career for a
+woman, and with logical good sense set themselves from the day of a
+girl's birth to provide a dowry for her. When she is of a marriageable
+age they provide the husband. They will make great sacrifices to
+establish a daughter in prosperity, and they leave nothing to chance.
+We leave everything to chance, and the idea of marriage made by
+bargain and without love offends us. Such marriages are often enough
+made in England, but they are never admitted. Some gloss of sentiment
+or of personal respect is considered decent. But on the whole in this
+country a girl shifts for herself. If she marries, well and good; if
+she remains single, well and good too, provided she can earn her
+living or has means. When she has neither means nor craft and fails to
+marry, she is one of the most tragic figures in our confused social
+hierarchy, difficult to help, superfluous. She sets her hand to this
+and that, but she has no grip on life. To think of her is to invoke
+the very image of failure and incompetence. She flocks into every
+opening, blocking and depressing it; as a "help" she becomes a byword,
+for she has grown up without learning to help herself or anybody
+else. If she is a Protestant she has no haven. Only people who have
+set themselves to help poor ladies know the difficulties of the
+undertaking, and the miseries their protegees endure.
+
+Even in the Middle Ages the conscientious German was doing more for
+this helpless element of his population than England and America are
+doing to-day. He saw that some of his daughters would remain
+unmarried, and that if they were gently bred he must provide for their
+future, and he did this by founding _Stifte_. The old _Stift_ was
+established by the gentlemen of some one district, who built a house
+and contributed land and money for its maintenance, so that when they
+died their unmarried daughters should still have a suitable home. Some
+of these old _Stifte_ are very wealthy now, and have buildings of
+great dignity and beauty; they still admit none but the descendants of
+the men who founded them, and when they have more money than they need
+to support the _Stift_ itself, they use it to pension the widows and
+endow the brides belonging to their group or families. In
+Hesse-Cassel, for instance, there is an ancient _Stift_ formed by the
+_Ritterschaft_ of the Duchy and it is so well off that it can afford
+to pension every widow and fatherless child, and buy an outfit for
+every bride whose name either by marriage or descent entitles her to
+its protection. The example set by the noble families of the Middle
+Ages was followed in time by other classes, and _Stifte_ were
+established all over Germany for the daughters of the bourgeoisie.
+They grew in number and variety; some had a school attached to their
+endowment and some an orphanage. In some the rule was elastic, in
+others binding. There are _Stifte_ from which a woman may absent
+herself for the greater part of the year, and yet draw an income from
+its funds and have a room or rooms appointed to her use; there are
+others where residence is compulsory. Some are only open to
+descendants of the founders; some sell vacancies. A woman may have to
+wait year after year for a chance of getting in; or she may belong to
+one that will admit her at a certain age. In many there is a presiding
+lady, the Domina or Abbess; and when the present Emperor visited a
+well-known _Stift_ lately he gave the Abbess a shepherd's crook with
+which to rule her flock. Some are just sets of rooms with certain
+privileges of light and firing attached. Their constitution varies
+greatly, according to the class provided for and the means available.
+But you cannot be much amongst Germans without meeting women who have
+been educated, endowed, helped in sickness, or supported in old age by
+one of these organisations. You come across girls of gentle birth but
+with no means who have been brought up in a _Stift_, or you hear of
+well-to-do girls whose parents have paid high for their schooling in
+one. You know the elderly unmarried daughter of an official living on
+his pension, and you find that though she has never been taught to
+earn her bread she looks forward to old age with serenity, because
+when she was a child her relations bought her into a _Stift_ that will
+give her at the age of fifty free quarters, fire, light, and an income
+on which, with her habits of thrift, she can live comfortably. Another
+woman engaged in private teaching and a good deal battered by the
+struggle for life, comes to you some day more radiant than you have
+ever seen her, and you find that influential friends have put her case
+before a _Stift_, and that it has granted her two charming rooms with
+free fire and light. I heard of a cook the other day who, after many
+years of faithful service, left her employers to spend her old age in
+a _Stift_. No social stigma attaches to the women living in one, and
+they are as free, in some cases as well placed and well born, as the
+English women living at Hampton Court. Some friction and some gossip
+is presumably inevitable wherever women herd together in an unnatural
+segregation from men and children. But at any rate the German _Stift_
+saves many a woman from the tragic struggle with old age and poverty
+to which the penniless incapable spinster is condemned in our country.
+It may not be a paradise, but it is a haven. As I said at the
+beginning, the Frenchman dowers and marries his girl, the German buys
+her a refuge, the Englishman leaves her to fate.
+
+On the whole, the German believes that the woman's province is within
+the limits of the household. He wants her to be a home-maker, and in
+Germany what "he" wants her to be still fixes the standard. But as the
+census reveals the existence of large numbers of single women, and as
+"he" often has a thoughtful and benevolent mind, more and more is done
+there every year to prepare those women who must earn their living to
+earn it capably. It has been understood for some time past that Herr
+Riehl's plan of finding a family roof for every woman without one
+presents difficulties where there are 400,000-odd women to provide for
+in this way. One of the people who first saw this clearly, and
+supported every sensible undertaking that came to the assistance of
+women, was the Empress Frederick; and one of the institutions that she
+encouraged and esteemed from the beginning was the _Lette-Verein_ in
+Berlin.
+
+The _Lette-Verein_, named after its originator, Dr. A. Lette, was
+founded, says its prospectus, to further the education of women and to
+increase the efficiency of women dependent on themselves for support.
+What it actually does is to train for housekeeping and office work,
+and for some trades. Its interest lies in the ordered and thoughtful
+provision it makes both for the woman who means to devote herself body
+and soul to the family; and for the woman who prefers, or who is
+driven, to stand in the market-place and compete with men. The
+_Lette-Verein_ does not train servants or admit servants to its
+classes. It occupies a large block of buildings in the west of Berlin,
+for its various schools and hostels require a great deal of room.
+Students who live in the city can attend daily classes; but those who
+come from a distance can have board and residence for L1 a week or
+less. Once a week strangers are allowed to see the _Lette-Haus_ at
+work, and when I went there we were taken first to the kitchens, where
+the future housewives of Germany were learning to cook. The stoves
+were the sensible low closed-in ones used on the continent, and the
+vessels were either earthenware or metal, kept brightly polished both
+inside and out. The students were preparing and cooking various
+dishes, but the one that interested me was the _Leipziger Allerlei_,
+because I compared it with the "herbage" an English plain cook throws
+into water and sends up half drained, half cold, and often enough half
+clean. I could not stop to count the vegetables required for
+_Leipziger Allerlei_, but there seemed to be at least six varieties,
+all cooked separately, and afterwards combined with a properly made
+sauce. The Englishman may say that he prefers his half-cooked cabbage,
+and the English woman, if she is a plain cook, will certainly say that
+the cabbage gives her as much trouble as she means to take; but the
+German woman knows that when she marries her husband will want
+_Leipziger Allerlei_, so she goes to the _Lette-Haus_ and learns how
+to make it. Even the young doctors of Berlin learn cooking at the
+_Lette-Haus_. Special classes for invalid cookery are held on their
+behalf, and are said to be popular and extremely useful. Certainly
+doctors whose work is amongst the poor or in country places must often
+wish they understood something about the preparation of food. The
+girls who go to the _Lette-Haus_ are taught the whole art of
+housekeeping, from the proper way to scour a pan or scrub a floor to
+fine laundry work and darning, and even how to set and serve a table.
+An intelligent girl who had been right through the courses at the
+_Lette-Haus_ could train an inexperienced servant, because she would
+understand exactly how things ought to be done, how much time they
+should take, and what amount of fatigue they involve. If her servants
+failed her she would be independent of them. Some students at the
+_Lette-Haus_ do, as a matter of fact, form a household that is carried
+on without a single servant, and is on this account the most
+interesting branch of the organisation. The girls are from fourteen to
+sixteen years of age, and they pay L25 a year for instruction, board,
+and lodging. Some of them are the daughters of landed proprietors, and
+some will eventually earn a living as "supports of the housewife," an
+honourable career shortly referred to by Germans as _eine Stuetze_.
+They were a happy, healthy looking lot of girls. They wear neat
+serviceable gowns while they are at work, aprons, linen sleeves to
+protect their stuff ones, and pretty blue handkerchiefs tied like
+turbans over their hair. Some of them were busy at the wash-tub, and
+this seemed heavy work for girls of that age. The various kinds of
+work are done in turn, and the student when her washing week comes
+round is employed in this way three hours every morning. On alternate
+days she mangles clothes, and in the afternoons she sews. Our guide
+would not admit that three hours at the wash-tub could be too great a
+strain on a half-developed girl, and it is a question for medical
+wisdom to decide. The cooking and ironing looked hot work, but these
+young German girls were cheerfully and thoroughly learning how to do
+them, and whether they marry or stay single their knowledge of these
+arts will be of inestimable use in later years. I heard of an
+able-bodied Englishwoman the other day who took to her bed in tears
+because her maids left her suddenly. She could not have roasted a leg
+of mutton or made the plainest pudding. This is the school of the
+future, said our enthusiastic guide when we went to see the "children"
+at work at the _Lette-Haus_; and I, remembering my helpless
+Englishwoman, agreed with her. The children's afternoons are mostly
+given to needlework, and they are instructed in the prospectus not to
+bring new clothes with them, because it is desired that they should
+learn how to mend old ones neatly and correctly. They are taught to
+darn and patch so finely that the repair cannot easily be discovered;
+they make sets of body linen for themselves, three finely sewn men's
+linen shirts, a gown for work-days, and some elaborate blouses. In
+another part of the _Lette-Haus_, where students were being trained as
+expert embroiderers and dressmakers, we were shown pieces of flowered
+brocade into which patches had been so skilfully inserted that you
+could only find them by holding them up to the light. In the
+bookbinding department there were amateur and professional students.
+The professionals apprentice themselves for three years, and from the
+first receive a small weekly wage. The length of their apprenticeship
+is determined by the length of time prescribed for men, and not by
+what is necessary for their training. I asked if they easily found
+regular work later, and was told that at present the demand for
+expert women bookbinders exceeded the supply. The _Lette-Haus_ trains
+women to be photographers, printers, and clerks. In fact, with German
+thoroughness and foresight it does all one big institution can to save
+the women of the nation from the curse of incompetence. It turns them
+out efficient housewives or efficient craftswomen, according to their
+needs.
+
+The German woman of to-day has travelled far from the ideal set up by
+Herr Riehl, and still upheld by his disciples. Women have found that
+the realities of life clash with that particular ideal, and rudely
+upset it. Just like any man, a woman wants bread when she is hungry,
+and when there is no man to give it to her she must raven for it
+herself. She has been driven from a family hearth that has no fire on
+it, and from a family roof that cannot afford her shelter. On the
+whole, if I may judge from personal observation, it has done her good.
+The traditional old maid is dying out in Germany as assuredly as she
+is dying out in England, and who shall regret her? Her outlook was
+narrow, her temper often soured. She had neither self-reliance nor
+charm. She was that sad, silly spectacle, a clinging plant without
+support. Now that she is learning to grow on her own account, she
+finds that there is a good deal in life a sensible plant can enjoy
+without clinging. The German "old maid" of the twentieth century has,
+like her English sister, transformed herself into a "bachelor," a
+person who for this reason or that has not married, and who
+nevertheless has a cheerful time. She has her own work, she often has
+her own flat, and if she lives in one of the big cities she has her
+own club.
+
+There are at present three Ladies' Clubs in Berlin all flourishing.
+The subscription to the _Berliner Frauenklub_ is only six marks a
+year, yet it provides the members with comfortably furnished rooms
+and well cooked meals at low prices. A member of this club can dine
+for ninepence, and have a hot dish from fourpence to sevenpence. She
+has access to a library of 1300 volumes, to the leading papers and
+reviews, and to magazines in four languages. She can entertain women
+at the club, but not men; though she can meet men there at certain
+hours of the day. Social gatherings of various kinds are arranged to
+meet the various needs and ages of the members; and one night a week
+four or five card-tables are set out, so that the older members can
+have a quiet game of skat or whist. We wonder what Herr Riehl would
+say if he could see them.
+
+Another German Ladies' Club in Berlin is the _Deutscher Frauenklub_,
+and it is nicknamed the Millionaire's Club because the subscription is
+twenty-five shillings. It is a rather smarter club than the other, and
+has a charming set of rooms. There are about 450 members. The Third
+Club is a branch of the London Lyceum, and it has aroused great
+interest and attention in Berlin, not only because it is on a more
+magnificent scale than the other clubs, but because of the brave
+effort it makes to unite the women of all nations and help them. Most
+of the women distinguished in art and literature have joined it.
+
+I began this chapter by saying something of the _Stift_, the refuge
+for unmarried women that Germany established in the Middle Ages and
+still preserves. I end it with the Lyceum Club, that latest
+manifestation of a modern woman's desire to help her own sex. The
+character of these institutions and their history are both
+significant. In other days men helped women; in these days women try
+to help themselves. The _Stift_ gives a woman bread and shelter in
+idleness; the aim of the Lyceum Club is not to give, but to bring
+women together and to encourage good work. The _Stifte_ are still
+crowded and the Lyceum flourishes, for in our time the old woman
+jostles the new. But the new woman has arrived, and is making herself
+felt; with amazing force and swiftness, you must admit when you
+reflect on the position of women in Germany thirty or forty years
+ago.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+GIRLHOOD
+
+
+In the _Memoiren einer Idealistin_, those genuine and interesting
+Memoirs that have been so widely read in Germany of late, Malvida von
+Meysenbug, the daughter of a highly placed official at a small German
+Court, describes her confirmation day and the long period of
+preparation and the spiritual struggle that preceded it.
+
+"During a whole year my sister and I went twice a week to the pastor's
+house to be instructed in the dogma of the Protestant Church," she
+says.... "The ceremony was to be on Sunday. The Friday before we had
+our last lesson. Our teacher was deeply moved; with tears in his eyes
+he spoke to us of the holiness and importance of the act we were about
+to perform.... According to the German custom amongst girls of the
+better classes, we put on black silk dresses for the first time for
+our confirmation, and this ceremonial attire calmed me and did me
+good. Our maid took special pains with our toilet, as if we were going
+to a worldly entertainment, and chattered more than usual. It jarred
+on me, but it helped to distract my thoughts. When it was time to
+start I said Good-bye to my mother with deep emotion, and asked her to
+forgive me my faults. My sister and I were to go to the pastor's house
+on our way to church. There we found everything strewn with flowers.
+Our teacher received us in his priestly robes, and spoke to all of us
+so lovingly and earnestly that the most indifferent were moved. When
+the church bells began to peal our procession set out, the pastor at
+its head, and we following two by two. The way from the rectory to the
+church was strewn with flowers, and the church was decked with them.
+The Choral Society of the town, to which some of our best friends
+belonged, received us with a beautiful hymn. I felt on wings, I prayed
+to God that this hour might be blessed to me throughout my life. The
+sermon preached by the voice that had so often affected me made me
+calm. When the preacher required us to make our confession of faith, I
+uttered my 'Yes' with firm assurance. Then I knelt before him with the
+rest to receive his blessing. He put his hands on our heads, accepted
+us as members of the Protestant Church, and blessed each one
+separately, and with a special verse from the Bible. To me he said,
+'Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.'
+My heart echoed the solemn vow: Faithful unto death. The choir greeted
+the young Christians with a song of victory. We did not return to the
+seats reserved for candidates, but sat with our parents and relatives
+waiting with them until everyone had left the church, except those who
+wished to partake of the Holy Communion."
+
+Malvida von Meysenbug is too much absorbed in her intense spiritual
+experiences to describe the lighter side of confirmation in Germany,
+which celebrates it with presents and a gathering of friends. A girl
+gets her first black silk gown for the occasion, and both boys and
+girls get as many presents as they do at Christmas or on a birthday.
+These are all set out for the inspection of the friends who assemble
+at the house after the religious ceremony, to congratulate the
+parents and the youngest member of their church. There is an
+entertainment of coffee, chocolate, and cakes; and a few days later
+both boys and girls return these visits of congratulation in the
+company of their parents. Some years ago, when a girl had been
+confirmed, she was considered officially grown up and marriageable,
+and entered straight away into the gaieties that are supposed to lead
+to marriage. But the modern tendency in Germany is to prolong
+girlhood, and the wife of sixteen is as rare there amongst the
+educated classes as it is here.
+
+Amongst the Jews in Germany marriages are still arranged for the young
+people by their elders; often, as in France, through the intervention
+of friends, but also by the business-like office of the marriage
+broker. It need hardly be said, perhaps, that the refined and
+enlightened Jews refuse to marry in this way. They insist on choosing
+their own mate, and even on overlooking some disparity of fortune.
+Unorthodox Jews marry Christian women, and the Jewish heiress
+constantly allies herself and her money with a title or a uniform. In
+the latter case, however, the nuptials are just as business-like as if
+the _Schadchan_ had arranged them and received his commission. The
+Graf or the Major gets the gold he lacks, and the rich Jewess gets
+social prestige or the nearest approach to it possible in a
+Jew-baiting land. An ardent anti-Semite told me that these mixed
+marriages were not fertile, and that if only everyone of Jewish blood
+would marry a Christian, the country would in course of time be
+cleared of a race that, she solemnly assured me, is as great a curse
+to it, and as inferior as the negro in America. But as she was an
+anti-Semite with a sense of humour she admitted that the remedy was a
+slow one and difficult to enforce. As a matter of fact, the Jews
+marry mostly amongst themselves in Germany, and men are still living
+in Frankfurt and other large cities who have made comfortable fortunes
+by the brokerage they charged on their matchmaking. Formerly a
+prosperous unmarried Jew used to be besieged by offers from these
+agents; and so were men who could give their daughters a good dowry.
+The better-class Jews do not employ them nowadays, but their marriages
+are suggested and arranged much as marriages are in France. A young
+merchant of Berlin thinks it is time to settle down, or perhaps wants
+a little capital to enlarge his business. He consults an uncle in
+Frankfurt. The uncle tells his old friend, the father of several
+daughters, that the most handsome, industrious, and accomplished man
+the world has ever seen, his own nephew, in fact, thinks of marriage,
+and that his conditions are this and that; he tells his nephew that
+the most beautiful and amiable creature in Germany, a brilliant
+musician, a fluent linguist, a devoted daughter, and a person of
+simple housewifely tastes, lives next door to him, the uncle. Except
+for the housewifely tastes, it sounds, and in fact is, rather like a
+courtship in the _Arabian Nights_ so far. The prince hears of the
+princess, and without having seen her sets out to seek her hand. The
+young merchant pays a flying visit to Frankfurt, is presented to the
+most beautiful creature in Germany, finds her passable, has a talk to
+her father as business-like as a talk between two solicitors,
+proposes, is accepted, and at once becomes the most ardent lover the
+world has ever seen.
+
+Amongst Christians marriages are certainly not arranged for girls in
+this matter-of-course way, and so "old maids" abound. Girls without
+money have far less chance of marriage in Germany than in England,
+where young people mate as they please and where a man expects to
+support his wife entirely; while the spectacle, quite common here, of
+girls with a good deal of money remaining single from various reasons,
+sometimes actually from want of opportunity to marry, this every-day
+occurrence amongst the English better classes is unknown on the
+continent. In her powerful novel _Aus guter Familie_, Gabrielle Reuter
+describes the life of a German girl whose parents cannot give her a
+dowry, and who is doomed in consequence to old maidhood and to all the
+disappointments, restrictions, and humiliations of unsought women.
+While women look to marriage and nothing else for happiness, there
+must be such lives in every monogamous country, where they outnumber
+the men; but in England a woman's marriage is much more a matter of
+chance and charm than of money. If she is poor and misses her chance
+she is worse off than the German, for she has no _Stift_ provided for
+her; but if she is attractive she is just as likely to marry without a
+fortune as with one. Those German women who consider their ideas
+"progressive" have taken up a new cry of late, a cry about every
+woman's "right" to motherhood; but they do not seem to have found a
+satisfactory way of securing this right to the 400,000 women who
+outnumber the men. One learned professor wrote a pamphlet advocating
+polygamy, but his proposal did not have the success he no doubt felt
+it deserved. The women who discuss these questions, in magazines they
+edit and mostly write themselves, said that his arguments were all
+conducted from the man's point of view, and were most reprehensible.
+Their own chief aim at present is to protect the mothers of
+illegitimate children, and this seems a natural and proper thing for
+the women of any community to do. Otherwise they are not a united
+body. There are moderates and immoderates amongst them, and as I am a
+moderate myself in such matters, I think those who go all lengths are
+lunatics. It makes one open one's eyes to go to Germany to-day with
+one's old-fashioned ideas of the German Frau, and hear what she is
+doing in her desire to reform society and inaugurate a new code of
+morals. She does not even wait till she is married to speak with
+authority. On the contrary, she says that marriage is degrading, and
+that temporary unions are more to the honour and profit of women.
+"Dear Aunt S.," I heard of one girl writing to a venerable relative,
+"I want you to congratulate me on my happiness. I am about to be
+united with the man I love, and we shall live together (_in freier
+Ehe_) till one of us is tired of it." A German lady of wide views and
+worldly knowledge told me a girl had lately sent her a little volume
+of original poems that she could only describe as unfit for
+publication; yet she knew the girl and thought her a harmless
+creature. She was presumably a goose who wanted to cackle in chorus.
+This same lady met another girl in the gallery of an artist who
+belonged to what Mr. Gilbert calls the "fleshly school." "Ah!" said
+the girl to my friend, "this is where I feel at home." One of these
+immoderates, on the authority of Plato, recommended at a public
+meeting that girls should do gymnastics unclothed. Some of them are
+men-haters, some in the interests of their sex are all for free love.
+None of them accept the domination of men in theory, so I think that
+the facts of life in their own country must often be unpleasantly
+forced on them. I discussed the movement, which is a marked one in
+Germany at present, with two women whose experience and good sense
+made their opinion valuable. But they did not agree. One said that the
+excesses of these people were the outcome of long repression, and
+would wear out in time. The other thought the movement would go on and
+grow; which was as much as to say that she thought the old morals were
+dead. Undoubtedly they are dead in some sets in Germany to-day. You
+hear of girls of good family who have asserted their "right to
+motherhood" without marriage; and you hear of other girls who refuse
+to marry because they will not make vows or accept conditions they
+consider humiliating. These views do not attract large numbers;
+probably never will. But they are sufficiently widespread to express
+themselves in many modern essays, novels, and pamphlets, and even to
+support several magazines. The women holding them are of various types
+and quality, and are by no manner of means agreed with each other;
+while those women who are working steadily and discreetly for the
+progress of their sex condemn the extreme party, and consider them a
+check on all real advancement.
+
+The German girl, then, is not always the simple creature tradition
+paints her. At any rate she reads novels and sees plays that would
+have been forbidden to her mother. Nevertheless she is as a rule just
+as happy as a girl should be when the man of her dreams asks her to
+marry him. In other days a proposal of marriage was a ceremonial in
+Germany. A man had to put on evening dress for the occasion, and carry
+a bouquet with him. "Oh yes," said a German friend of mine, "this is
+still done sometimes. A little while ago a cousin of mine in Mainz was
+seen coming home in evening dress by broad daylight carrying his
+bouquet. The poor fellow had been refused." But in these laxer times a
+man is spared such an ordeal. It is more usual in Germany than in
+England to speak to a girl's father before proposing to her, but even
+this is not invariable nowadays. Young people make their own
+opportunities. "Last year my brother proposed to his present wife in
+the woods near Baden while they gathered Waldmeister," said a young
+German to a girl he ardently admired. "It will be in flower next week,
+and your parents have just arranged that I may meet them at the _Alte
+Schloss_ in time for dinner. After dinner we will walk in the
+woods--_nicht wahr_?" But the girl, as it happened, did not wish to
+receive a proposal of marriage from this young man, so she took care
+not to walk in the woods and gather Waldmeister with him. It is often
+said that the sexes herd separately in Germany, and do not meet each
+other much. But this always seems to me one of the things said by
+people who have looked at Germans and not lived amongst them. A nation
+that has such an intimate home life, and is on the whole poor,
+receives its friends in an intimate informal way. Young men have
+different occupations and interests from girls, but when they are
+admitted to a family they are often admitted on terms of easy
+friendship. In London you may ask a young man with others to dinner at
+intervals, and never get to know him; in Berlin you ask him without
+others to supper, and soon get to know him very well. Besides, a
+German cannot endure life long without an _Ausflug_ or a _Landpartie_,
+and when the family plans one it includes one or two of its friends.
+
+When two Germans do get engaged they let their world know of it. A
+betrothal there is not the informal flimsy contract it often is with
+us. They begin by publishing the event in their newspapers, and
+sending round printed forms announcing it to their friends. In the
+newspaper the announcement is rather bare compared with the
+advertisement of other family events. "Engaged. Frl. Martha Raekelwitz
+mit Hrn. Ingenieur Julius Prinz Dresden-Hamburg" is considered
+sufficient. But the printed intimations sent round on gilt-edged paper
+or cardboard to the friends of the contracting parties are more
+communicative. On one side the parents have the honour to announce the
+engagement of their daughter Anna to Mr. So-and-So, and on the other
+side Mr. So-and-So announces his engagement to Miss Anna. Here is a
+reproduction of such a form, with nothing altered except the actual
+names and addresses. On the left-hand side of the double sheet of
+cartridge paper the parents of the _Braut_ have their say--
+
+     "Die Verlobung ihrer Tochter Pauline mit Herrn Referendar Dr.
+     jur. Heinrich Schmidt in Berlin beehren sich ergebenst
+     anzuzeigen.
+
+                          Geh. Regierungsrat Dr. EUGEN BRAND
+                              Koenigl. Gymnasialdirektor und
+                              FRAU HELENE, geb. ENGEL
+
+STUTTGART, _im Juni 1906_
+    Tiergarten 7"
+
+Then on the opposite page the future bridegroom speaks for himself--
+
+     "Meine Verlobung mit Fraeulein Pauline Brand, Tochter des
+     Koenigl. Gymnasialdirektors Herrn Geh. Regierungsrat Dr. Eugen
+     Brand und seiner Frau Gemahlin Helene, geb. Engel, in
+     Stuttgart, beehre ich mich ergebenst anzuzeigen.
+
+                                   Dr. jur. HEINRICH SCHMIDT
+                                           Referendar
+
+BERLIN, _im Juni 1906_
+    Kurfuerstendamm 2000"
+
+Directly these forms have been circulated, all the friends who have
+received one and live near enough pay a visit of congratulation to the
+bride's parents, and soon after the betrothed couple return these
+visits with some ceremony. It is quite impossible, by the way, to talk
+of Germans who are officially engaged without calling them the bride
+and bridegroom. They plight their troth with the plain gold rings that
+will be their wedding rings, and this stage of their union is
+celebrated with as much ceremony and merrymaking as the actual
+wedding. The Germans are giving up so many of their quaint poetical
+customs that the girl of to-day probably wears a fine diamond
+engagement ring instead of the old-fashioned gold one. But the ring
+with which her mother and grandmother plighted their troth was the
+ring with which they were wedded, and when Chamisso wrote _Du Ring an
+meinem Finger_ he was not writing of diamonds. All the tenderness and
+poetry of Germany go out to lovers, and the thought of a German bride
+and bridegroom flashes through the mind with thoughts of flowers and
+moonlight and nightingales. At least, it does if you can associate
+them with the poems of Heine and Chamisso, with the songs of Schumann,
+and with the caressing intimate talk of the German tongue unloosed by
+love. But your experience is just as likely to play you the unkindest
+trick, and remind you of German lovers whose uncouth public
+endearments made everyone not to the manner born uncomfortable.
+
+When the bride and bridegroom live in the same town, and know a large
+number of people, they are overdone with festivities from the moment
+of betrothal to the day of marriage. The round of entertainments
+begins with a gala dinner given by the bride's father, and this is
+followed by invitations from all the relatives and friends on either
+side. When you receive a German _Brautpaar_ they should be the guests
+of honour, and if you can hang garlands near them so much the better.
+You must certainly present the _Braut_ with a bouquet at some stage of
+the proceedings, and you will give pleasure if you can manufacture one
+or two mottoes in green stuff and put them in conspicuous places. For
+instance, I knew of a girl who got engaged away from home. Do you
+suppose that she was allowed to return to a bare and speechless front
+door as her English cousin would? Nothing of the kind. The whole
+family had set to work to twine laurel wreaths and garlands in her
+honour, and she was received with _Wilkommen du glueckseliges Kind_
+done in ivy leaves by her grandmother. It was considered very
+_ruehrend_ and _innig_. At some time during the engagement the
+betrothed couple are sure to get photographed together, and anyone who
+possesses a German family album will bear me out that the lady is
+nearly always standing, while her bearded lover is sitting down. When
+they are both standing they are arm in arm or hand in hand. I remember
+a collection possessing two photographs of a married daughter with her
+husband. One had been taken just before the wedding in the orthodox
+pose; he in an easy chair and she standing meekly by his side: the
+other represented them a year after marriage, when Heaven had sent
+them twins. They were both standing then, and they each had a baby in
+a _Steckkissen_ in their arms.
+
+If the bridegroom is not living in the same town with his bride her
+life is supposed to run rather quietly in his absence. She is not
+expected to dance with other men, for instance; but rather to spend
+her time in embroidering his monogram on every conceivable object he
+might use: on tobacco pouches, or slippers, on letter cases, on
+braces, on photograph frames, on luggage straps, on fine pocket
+handkerchiefs. If she is expert and possesses the true sentiment she
+will embroider things for him with her hair. In these degenerate days
+she does not make her own outfit. Formerly, when a German girl left
+school she began to make stores of body and house linen for future
+years. But in modern cities the _Braut_ gets everything at one of the
+big "white" shops, from her own laces and muslins to the saucepan
+holders for the kitchen, and the bread bags her cook will hang outside
+the flat for the baker's boy. In Germany it is the bride, or rather
+her parents, who furnish the house and provide the household linen;
+and the linen is all embroidered with her initials. This custom
+extends to all classes, so that you constantly hear of a servant who
+is saving up for her _Aussteuer_, that is, the furniture and linen of
+a house as well as her own clothes. If you ask whether she is engaged
+you are told that the outfit is the thing. When the money for that is
+there it is easy to provide the bridegroom. In higher spheres much
+more is spent on a bride's trousseau than in England, taking class for
+class. Some years ago I had occasion to help in the choice of a
+trousseau bought in Hamburg, and to be often in and out of a great
+"white ware" business there. I cannot remember how many outfits were
+on view during those weeks, but they were all much alike. What some
+people call "undies" had been ordered in immense quantities, sometimes
+heavily trimmed with Madeira work, sometimes with a plain scollop of
+double linen warranted to wash and wear for ever. The material was
+also invariably of a kind to wear, a fine linen or a closely woven
+English longcloth. How any one woman could want some six dozen
+"nighties" (the silly slang sounds especially silly when I think of
+those solid highly respectable German garments) was a question no one
+seemed to ask. The bride's father could afford six dozen; it was the
+custom to have six dozen if you could pay for them, and there they
+were. The thin cambric garments French women were beginning to wear
+then were shown to you and tossed contemptuously aside as only fit for
+actresses. But this has all been changed. If you ask for "undies" in
+Berlin to-day, a supercilious shoplady brings you the last folly in
+gossamer, decolletee, and with elbow sleeves; and you wonder as you
+stare at it what a sane portly German housewife makes of such a
+garment. In this, as in other things, instead of abiding by his own
+sensible fashions, the German is imitating the French and the
+Americans; for it is the French and the Americans who have taught the
+women of other nations to buy clothes so fragile and so costly that
+they are only fit for the purse of a Chicago packer.
+
+When the outfit is ready and the wedding day near, the bride returns
+all the entertainments given in her honour by inviting her girl
+friends to a Bride-chocolate or a Bean-coffee. This festivity is like
+a _Kaffee-Klatsch_, or what we should call an afternoon tea. In
+Germany, until quite lately, chocolate and coffee were preferred to
+tea, and the guests sat round a dining-table well spread with cakes.
+At a Bean-coffee the cake of honour had a bean in it, and the girl who
+got the bean in her slice would be _Braut_ before the year was out.
+Another entertainment that takes place immediately before the marriage
+is given by the bride's best friend, who invites several other girls
+to help her weave the bridal wreath of myrtle. The bride does not help
+with it. She appears with the bridegroom later in the afternoon when
+the wreath is ready. It is presented to her with great ceremony on a
+cushion, and as they bring it the girls sing the well-known song from
+the _Freischuetz_--
+
+    "Wir winden dir den Jungfernkranz
+    Mit veilchenblauer Seide;
+    Wir fuehren dich zu Spiel und Tanz
+    Zu Glueck und Liebesfreude!
+
+    Lavendel, Myrt' und Thymian
+    Das waechst in meinen Garten;
+    Wie lang bleibt doch der Freiersmann?
+    Ich kann es kaum erwarten.
+
+    Sie hat gesponnen sieben Jahr
+    Den goldnen Flachs am Rocken;
+    Die Schleier sind wie Spinnweb klar,
+    Und gruen der Kranz der Locken.
+
+    Und als der schmucke Freier kam,
+    War'n sieben Jahr verronnen:
+    Und weil sie der Herzliebste nahm
+    Hat sie den Kranz gewonnen."
+
+The bridegroom receives a buttonhole, but no one sings him a song. In
+the opera he is not on the stage during the bridesmaids' chorus. I
+have not been able to find out whether the quaint pretty verses are by
+Friedrich Kind, who founded the libretto of the opera on a story by
+August Apel, or whether he borrowed them from an older source. German
+brides wore myrtle and their friends wove a wedding wreath for them
+long before 1820, when _Der Freischuetz_ appeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+MARRIAGES
+
+
+"He was a pompous, stiff-jointed man," said my friends, "an official
+in a small town, who would go to the stake rather than break the
+letter of the law. But when he came to Berlin to attend a niece's
+marriage he thought he would have some fun. He arrived late on
+_Polterabend_, and he brought with him an enormous earthenware crock.
+Instead of ringing he hurled the crock against the outside door of the
+flat, so that it smashed to atoms with a noise like thunder. The
+inhabitants of that flat came forth like a swarm of bees, but they
+were not laughing at the fun, because it was not their _Polterabend_."
+He had broken crockery on the wrong floor.
+
+In cities this ancient German custom of breaking crockery at the
+bride's door on _Polterabend_ (the night before the wedding) has died
+out, but it has not long been dead. I have talked with people who
+remembered it in full force when they were young. I believe that the
+idea was to appease the _Poltergeist_, who would otherwise vex and
+disturb the young couple. My dictionary, the one that has 2412 pages,
+says that a _Poltergeist_ is a "racketing spectre," probably what we
+who are not dictionary makers would call a hobgoblin. In Brands'
+_Antiquities_ I find reference to this old custom at the marriage of a
+Duke of York in Germany, when great quantities of glass and china were
+smashed at the palace doors the night before the wedding.
+
+Polterabend is still celebrated by Germans, although they no longer
+consider it polite to smash crockery. There is always a large
+entertainment, sometimes at the bride's house, sometimes at the house
+of a near relative; there are theatricals with personal allusions, or
+recitations of home-made topical poetry, some good music, and the
+inevitable evergreens woven into sentiments of encouragement and
+congratulation. The bride's presents are set out much as they are in
+England, and perhaps class for class more valuable presents are given
+in Germany than in England. Electro-plate, for instance, was
+considered impossible a few years ago. A wedding present, if it was
+silver at all, must be real silver. But it is not so much the custom
+as with us to give presents of money.
+
+The civil marriage takes place either the day before or early on the
+same day as the religious ceremony. The bride used to wear black silk,
+and still wears a dark plain costume for this official function. Her
+parents go with her and the necessary witnesses. The religious
+ceremony often used to take place in the house, but that is no longer
+customary. The anonymous author of _German Home Life_, a book
+published and a good deal read in 1879, says that marriage is a
+troublesome and expensive ceremony in Germany, and that this accounts
+for the large number of illegitimate children. Mr. O. Eltzbacher, the
+author of _Modern Germany_ published in 1905, confirms what was said
+in 1877 as to the number of illegitimate children born in Germany and
+Austria, for he says that in Germany itself they are 9 per cent.,
+while in those districts of Austria where the Germans form about
+nine-tenths of the population, from 20 per cent, to 40 per cent, of
+the children are born out of wedlock. In France statistics give 9 per
+cent., in Scotland 7.4 per cent., and in England and Wales 4.2 per
+cent. Nevertheless in modern Germany children are not illegitimate
+because their parents are too poor to pay their marriage fees. The
+civil marriage is obligatory everywhere, and costs nothing. The
+religious ceremony need cost nothing at all. In the porch of every
+church in Prussia there is a notice stating on which days _Freie
+Trauungen_ are conducted. Several couples are married at the same
+time, but they have the full liturgy and the marriage sermon. A small
+charge is made for the organist and for the decoration of the church.
+A friend whose husband has a large poor parish in Berlin tells me that
+the Social Democrats object to the religious ceremony, and will stand
+guard outside the house on the day of the civil marriage, to make sure
+that the newly made husband and wife do not leave together to go to
+church. Sometimes an artisan will wait a fortnight after the civil
+ceremony before he ventures to have the religious one. Every artisan
+in Berlin has to belong to the _Sozialdemokratischer Verband_, because
+if he did not his fellow-workmen would destroy his tools and ruin his
+chances of work. Apparently they interfere with his private affairs as
+well.
+
+The marriage service is not to be found in the prayer-book Germans
+take to church, but I have both read it and listened to it. The vows
+made are much the same as here; but in Germany great importance is
+attached to the homily or marriage sermon. This is often long and
+heavy. I have heard the pastor preach to the young couple for nearly
+half an hour about their duties, and especially about the wife's duty
+of submission and obedience. His victims were kept standing before him
+the whole time, and the poor little bride was shaking from head to
+foot with nervousness and excitement. In some cities the carriage used
+by a well-to-do bride and bridegroom is as big as a royal coach, and
+upholstered with white satin, and on the wedding day decorated inside
+and out with garlands of flowers. The bridegroom fetches his bride in
+this coach, and enters the church with her. When a pretty popular girl
+gets married all her admirers send flowers to the church to decorate
+it. The bride and bridegroom exchange rings, for in Germany men as
+well as women wear a plain gold wedding ring, and it is always worn on
+the right hand. The bridegroom and all the male guests wear evening
+dress and silk hats. The women wear evening clothes too, and no hats.
+The bride wears the conventional white silk or satin and a white veil,
+but her wreath must be partly of myrtle, for in Germany myrtle is the
+bride's emblem.
+
+After the wedding dinner the bride slips away unnoticed and changes
+her gown, and is presently joined by the bridegroom, but not by any of
+the guests. No rice and no old slippers are thrown in Germany, and no
+crowd of friends assembles to see the young pair start. The bride bids
+her parents farewell, and slips away with her husband unseen and
+unattended. After the wedding dinner there is often dancing and music.
+
+A hundred years ago wedding festivities lasted for many days after the
+wedding, and the bride and bridegroom did not go till they were over.
+When the celebrated and much married Caroline Schlegel married her
+first husband, George Boehmer, in 1784, the ceremony took place at her
+own home in Goettingen, where her father was a well-known professor.
+"It would be unnatural if a young wife did not begin with an account
+of her wedding day," she says in one of her letters. "Mine was
+delightful enough. Boehmer breakfasted with me, and the morning hours
+passed gaily, and yet with quietness. There was no trepidation--only
+an intercourse of souls. My brother came. We were together till four,
+and when he left us he gave us his blessing with tears.... Lotte and
+Friederike wove the bridal wreath.... Then I had a talk with my father
+and dressed myself.... Meanwhile those dear Meiners sent me a note,
+with which were some garters they had embroidered themselves. Several
+of my friends wrote to me, and last of all I got a silhouette, painted
+on glass, of Lotte and Friederike weaving my bridal wreath. When I was
+dressed I was a pretty bride. The room was charmingly decorated by my
+mother. Soon after four o'clock Boehmer arrived, and the guests,
+thirty-eight in number. Thank Heaven, there were no old uncles and
+aunts, so the company was of a more bearable type than is usual on
+such occasions. I stood there surrounded by my girl friends, and my
+most vivid thought was of what my condition would be if I did not love
+the man before me. My father, who was still far from well, led me to
+the clergyman, and I saw myself for life at Boehmer's side and yet did
+not tremble. During the ceremony I did not cry. But after it was over
+and Boehmer took me in his arms with every expression of the deepest
+love, while parents, brothers, sisters, and friends greeted me with
+kind wishes as never a bride was greeted before, my brother being
+quite overwhelmed--then my heart melted and overflowed out of sheer
+happiness."
+
+A week later Caroline and her husband are still at Goettingen, and
+still celebrating their marriage. At one house, under pretence of the
+heat, the bride was led into the garden, and beheld there an
+illuminated motto: "Happy the man who has a virtuous wife: his life
+will be doubly long." Another friend arrayed her son as Hymen, and
+taught him to strew flowers in Caroline's path, leading her thus to an
+arbour where there was a throne of moss and flowers, with high steps
+ascending to it, a canopy and a triumphal arch. Concealed behind a
+bush were musicians, who sang an appropriate song, while the bride and
+bridegroom mounted the throne and sank in each other's arms before a
+crowd of sympathising and tearful spectators.
+
+This took place more than a hundred and twenty years ago, but I have
+in my possession what I can only describe as the "literature" of a
+marriage celebrated three years ago between a North and a South
+German, both belonging to commercial families of old standing; and it
+supplies me, if I needed it, with documentary evidence that Germans
+enjoy now what they enjoyed then. The marriage took place in winter
+and from a flat, so that the bride's friends could not build grottoes
+or hide musicians behind a bush; but for weeks before both sides of
+the family must have been busy composing the poems sung at the wedding
+feast, the music that accompanied them, and the elaborate humorous
+verses containing allusions to the past history of the bride and
+bridegroom. To begin with, there is a dainty book of picture
+postcards, the first one giving portraits of a very handsome and
+dignified bridegroom with his dainty bride. Then there is a view of
+Dresden where the bridegroom was born, another of the Rhenish town in
+which he found his bride, and one of Berlin where she used to stay
+with a married sister and deal "baskets" right and left to would-be
+admirers. In Germany, when a girl refuses a man she is said to give
+him a "basket," and a favourite old figure in the cotillon used to put
+one in a girl's hands and then present two men to her. She danced with
+the one she liked best, and the rejected man had to dance round after
+them with the basket.
+
+Besides the book of postcards, each guest at this wedding was
+presented with printed copies of the _Tafel-Lieder_ composed by
+members of the family. One of these has eight verses and each verse
+has eight lines. It relates little events in the life of the
+bridegroom from babyhood onwards. You learn that he was a clever
+child, that he lived at home with his mother instead of going abroad
+to learn his work, that when he was young he ardently desired to go on
+the stage, that he is a fine gymnast and musician, but that he needs a
+wife because he is a dreamy person capable of putting on odd boots.
+Another _Tafel-Lied_ describes the courtship step by step, and even
+the assistance given by the poet's wife to bring the romance to its
+present happy conclusion.
+
+    "At last Frau Sophie stirred in the affair,
+    Her eyes had pierced to his heart's desire,
+    With fine diplomacy she coaxed Miss Clare
+    To own her maiden heart was set on fire.
+    On all the words and sighs there follow deeds:
+    He comes, he woos her, and at last succeeds."
+
+The songs are not all sentiment. They are jocular, and contain puns
+and play upon names. Three out of the five end with an invitation to
+everyone to raise their glasses with a _Hoch_ to the married pair.
+This is done over and over again at German weddings, and as all the
+guests want to clink glasses with the bride and bridegroom, there is a
+good deal of movement as well as noise. Besides the _Tafel-Lieder_,
+each of which made a separate booklet with its own dedication and
+illustration, every guest received an elaborate book of samples:
+samples of the various straws used that summer for ladies' hats. The
+bridegroom's family had manufactured hats for many generations; they
+were wealthy, highly considered people, and extremely proud of their
+position in their own industry. I am sure that when an Englishman in
+the same trade and of the same standing gets married, the last thing
+that would be mentioned at his wedding would be hats. It would be
+considered in the highest degree indecorous. But the German is still
+guileless enough to be satisfied with his station in life when it is
+sufficiently honourable and prosperous, and for this wedding two
+little nieces had prepared this card of samples and composed a rhyme
+for each different colour--
+
+    "Wie ist doch der Onkel hoch beglueckt
+    Das Tantchen heute der 'Brautkranz' schmueckt"
+
+went with "myrtle green."
+
+    "Liebe Gaeste, mit Genuss,
+    Wollet alle Euch erheben--
+    Hoch das Brautpaar--
+        Es soll leben!"
+
+went with the "champagne" straw at the end; and one accompanying the
+"silver" straw contained an allusion to the "silver" wedding
+twenty-five years hence, when the bride's golden hair would be
+silver-grey.
+
+Here is the _menu_, mostly in French, to which all the _Tafel-Lieder_
+were sung, and all the toasts drunk and congratulatory speeches made.
+You will observe that it is none of your light cup, cake, and ice
+entertainments that you have substituted for the solid old wedding
+breakfast in this country.
+
+HOCHZEITS-TAFEL.
+
+Caviar-Schnitten
+Potage Douglas
+Saumon-S^{ce} Bernaise
+Pommes Naturelles
+Selle de Chevreuil a la Chipolata
+Ris de Veau en demi Deuil
+Poularde
+Salade & Compote
+Asperges en Branches S^{ce} Mousseline
+Glace Napolitaine
+Patisserie
+Fruits & Dessert
+Fromage
+
+Scharzberger Mousseux
+1900er Caseler
+1896er St. Emilion
+
+1890er Schloss Johannisberg
+
+Moet et Chandon
+  White Star
+
+And that no guest should depart hungry--
+
+Kaltes Abendbrot
+Bier
+
+Germans celebrate both silver and golden weddings with as much
+ceremony and rejoicing as the first wedding. The husband and wife
+receive presents from all their friends, and entertain them according
+to the best of their circumstances. Children will travel across the
+world and bring grandchildren with them to one of these anniversaries,
+and they are of course a great occasion for the topical poetry,
+theatricals, and tableaux that Germans enjoy. If the grandmother by
+good luck has saved a gown she wore as a girl, and the grandchild can
+put it on and act some little episode from the old lady's youth,
+everyone will applaud and enjoy and be stirred to smiles and tears.
+There is as much feasting as at a youthful wedding, and perhaps more
+elaborate performances. Silver-grey is considered the proper thing for
+the silver bride to wear.
+
+It seems like a want of sentiment to speak of divorce in the same
+breath with weddings; but as a matter of fact, divorce is commoner in
+Germany than in England, and more easily obtained. Imprisonment for
+felony is sufficient reason, and unfaithfulness without cruelty,
+insanity that has lasted three years, desertion, ill treatment or any
+attempt on the other's life. You hear divorce spoken of lightly by
+people whose counterparts in England would be shocked by it; people, I
+mean, of blameless sequestered lives and rigid moral views. Some
+saintly ladies, who I am sure have never harboured a light thought or
+spent a frivolous hour, told me of a cousin who played whist every
+evening with her present husband and his predecessor. My friends
+seemed to think the situation amusing, but not in any way to be
+condemned. At the same time, I have heard Germans quote the
+saying--"_Geschiedene Leute scheiden fort und fort_," and object
+strongly to associate with anyone, however innocent, who had been
+connected with a matrimonial scandal.
+
+A woman remains in possession of her own money after marriage even
+without marriage settlements; but the husband has certain rights of
+use and investment. Her clothes, jewels, and tools are her own, and
+the wages she earns by her own work. A man's creditors cannot seize
+either these or her fortune to pay his debts. Both in Germany and
+England the wife must live in the house and place chosen by the
+husband, but in Germany she need not follow him to _unwirtlichen_
+countries against her will. He can insist on her doing the housework
+and helping him in his business when he has no means to pay
+substitutes; but she can insist on being maintained in a style proper
+to their station in life. He is responsible for her business debts if
+he has consented to her undertakings; but he can forbid her to carry
+on a business if he prefers that she should be supported by him and
+give her time and strength to the administration of their home. When
+they are legally separated he must make her an allowance, but it need
+only be enough for the bare necessaries of life if the separation is
+due to her misconduct. The father and mother have joint control of the
+children, but during the father's lifetime his rule is paramount. When
+he is dead or incapacitated parental authority remains in the mother's
+hands. It is her right and duty to care for the child's person, to
+decide where it shall live, and to superintend its education. She can
+claim it legally from people who desire to keep it from her. A child
+born in wedlock is legitimate unless the husband can prove otherwise,
+and he must establish proof within a year of the birth coming to his
+knowledge. But a woman is not allowed to prove that a child born in
+wedlock is illegitimate.
+
+If a man dies intestate and leaves children or grandchildren, his
+widow inherits a fourth of his property; if he only has more distant
+relatives, half; if he has none, the whole. A man cannot cut his wife
+off with a shilling. He must leave her at least half of what would
+come to her if he died intestate. All the laws relating to husband and
+wife are to be found in the _Buergerliches Gesetzbuch_, which can be
+bought for a mark. As far as the non-legal intelligence can grasp
+them, they seem according to our times to be just to women, except
+when they give the use of her income to the husband. This is a big
+exception, however. I remember hearing a German say that his sister's
+quarterly allowance, which happened to be a large one, was always sent
+to her husband, as it was right and proper that important sums of
+money should be in the man's hands and under his control. This
+undoubtedly is the general German view. After the moonshine, the
+nightingales, the feasting, the toasts, and the family poetry come the
+realities of life: and the realities in German make the man the
+predominant partner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE HOUSEHOLDER
+
+
+Rents are high in Germany. At least, the Germans say so, and so do the
+people whose books about Germany are crammed with soul-satisfying
+statistics and elaborate calculations. Over-crowding, too, is said to
+be worse in Germany than in English cities. But I have always seen the
+rent and the crowding judged by the number of rooms and not by their
+size. This is really misleading, because you could put the whole of a
+small London flat into many a German middle-class dining-room or
+_Wohnzimmer_. You could bring up a family in a single room I once had
+for a whole summer in Thueringen for 5s. a week. It was as big as a
+church, and most light and airy. One camped in bits of it. I think
+rent for rent rooms in Germany are quite twice as large as in London.
+In Berlin, where rent is considered wickedly high, you can get a flat
+in a good quarter for L80, and for that sum you will have four large
+rooms, three smaller ones, a good kitchen, an attic that serves as a
+lumber-room, and a share in a laundry at the top of the house. There
+will even be a bathroom with a trickle of cold water, but it is only
+in the very newest and most expensive German flats that you find hot
+and cold water laid on. Your drawing and dining-rooms will be
+spacious, and one of them is almost sure to have a balcony looking on
+the street and the pleasant avenue of trees with which it is planted.
+For this rent you must either make yourself happy on the third or
+fourth floor in a house without a lift, or you must find one of the
+delightful "garden" dwellings behind the _Hof_; but you will have a
+better home for your money than you could get in a decent part of
+London. In fact, it comes to this, in spite of all the statistics in
+favour of London. If you can only spend L80 on your rent you can live
+in a good quarter of Berlin, near enough to the Tiergarten, close to
+the Zoological Gardens, and within a tram-ride of the delightful woods
+at Halensee. In London you can get a small house for L80, but it will
+either be in an unattractive quarter or in a suburb. A flat, wherever
+it is, must always seem a dwelling place rather than a home, but the
+Germans have elected to live in flats and accept their disadvantages.
+In and around all the great cities there are villas, but their number
+hardly counts in comparison with the masses of tall white houses, six
+storeys high for the most part, and holding within their walls all
+degrees of wealth and poverty. The German villa is florid, and likes
+blue glass balls and artificial fountains in its garden. It is often a
+villa in appearance and several flats in reality. Its most pleasant
+feature is the garden-room or big verandah, where in summer all meals
+are served. Outside Hamburg, on the banks of the Elbe, the merchant
+princes of the city have built themselves palaces surrounded by
+splendid park-like gardens. But Hamburg, though it does not love the
+English, is always accused by the rest of Germany of being English. It
+certainly has beautiful gardens. So have other German cities in some
+instances, but well kept gardens are not the matter of course in
+Germany that they are here. You see more bare and artificial ones and
+more neglected overgrown ones in an afternoon's walk than you do all
+the year round in England. But I wish we could follow the German
+fashion of planting all our streets with double avenues of healthy
+trees. Berlin in spring seems to be set in a wood; it is so fresh and
+green. The flowering shrubs, on the other hand, are not to be compared
+with ours. Everyone rushes to see a few lilac bushes, and Gueldres
+roses trimmed to a stiff snowball of flowers, and everyone says _Wie
+Herrlich!_ but you miss the profusion of lilac, hawthorn, and laburnum
+that runs riot all about London in every residential road and every
+garden. Above all, you miss the English lawns. In Berlin wherever
+grass is grown it looks either thin or coarse. The majority of Germans
+do not dream of wanting a garden. They are content with a few palms in
+their sitting-room or window boxes on their balcony. They are proud of
+their window-gardening in Berlin, but I think London windows in June
+are gayer and more flowery. The palms kept in German rooms attain to a
+great size and number, and a palm is a favourite present. Nursery
+gardeners undertake the troublesome business of repotting them every
+spring, so the owners have nothing to do but water them and keep them
+from draughts. There are usually so many windows in a German
+sitting-room that those near the plants need never be opened in
+winter; and even when the temperature sinks several degrees below zero
+outside, the air of the flat is kept artificially warm, so warm that
+English folk gasp and flag in it. At the first sign of winter the
+outside windows, removed for the summer, are brought back again. Our
+windows are unknown on the continent, and disliked by continentals who
+see them here. They call them guillotine windows, and consider them
+dangerous. Theirs all open like doors, so that you have four doors to
+each window, and until you get used to them you find they make a
+pretty clatter whenever you set them wide. But in winter they are only
+opened for a few minutes every morning when the room is "aired." It is
+considered extravagant to open them at other times, because the heat
+would escape and more fuel would be required. I suppose everyone in
+England understands that our open fireplaces are almost unknown in
+Germany. They have enclosed stoves of iron or porcelain that make
+little work or dirt and give no pleasure. There is no gathering round
+the hearth. You sit about the room as you would in summer, for it is
+evenly heated. All the beauty and poetry of fire are wanting; you have
+nothing but an atmosphere that will be comfortable or asphyxiating,
+according to the taste of your hosts. Years ago in South Germany you
+burnt nothing but logs of wood in the old-fashioned iron stoves, and
+there was some faint pleasure in listening to their crackle. You could
+just see the flames too, if you stooped low enough and opened the
+little stove door. But the wood burnt so quickly that it was most
+difficult to keep a big room warm. Nowadays you always find the
+porcelain stove that Mark Twain says looks like the family monument.
+In some of these coal is burnt, or a mixture of coal and peat. Some
+burn anthracite, and are considered economical. A _Fuellofen_ of this
+kind is kept burning night and day during the worst of the winter. It
+requires attention two or three times in twenty-four hours; it is
+easily regulated, and if the communicating doors are left open it
+warms two or three rooms. A friend who has a large flat in Berlin told
+me that there was one of these stoves in her husband's study, and that
+her drawing-room which opens out of it, and which they constantly use,
+had only had a fire in it five times last winter. I find on looking
+at this friend's budget that she spends L16 a year on turf and other
+fuel, and this seems high for a flat where so few fires were lighted.
+But fuel is dear in German towns. Briquettes are largely used in
+cities, small slabs of condensed coal that cost one pfennig each. It
+takes about twenty-four slabs to keep a stove in during the day. The
+great advantage of the _Fuellofen_ over the ordinary stove is that it
+keeps in all night. There are dangerous variations of temperature in a
+German flat that is kept as hot as an oven all day, and allowed to
+sink below zero during the night. But you hear complaints on all sides
+in Germany, both of inconsiderate English people who waste fuel by
+opening windows in cold weather; and of the sufferings endured by
+Germans who have been in England in winter. They do not like our open
+fireplaces at all, because they say they wish to be warm all over and
+not in bits. "In England," they tell you solemnly, "you can be warm
+either in front or at the back; but you cannot be warm on both sides
+as we are here. Besides, your fireplaces make dirt and work and are
+extravagant. They would not suit us." In fact, they imply that for the
+French and the English they are well enough, but not for the salt of
+the earth. The German kitchen stoves are certainly more practical and
+economical than ours, and I never can understand why we do not fetch a
+few over and try them. They are entirely enclosed, and much lower than
+ours. The Berlin kitchener has one fire that is lighted for a short
+time to roast a joint, and another using less fuel that heats water
+and does light cooking. The sweep, who is bound by the etiquette of
+his trade to wear a tall hat in Germany, does not come into your flat
+at all. You hear him shout through the courtyard that he will visit
+the house next day, and he works from the garrets and cellars. The
+police regulate his visits as they regulate everything else in
+Germany. Chimneys must be swept every six weeks in summer, and every
+four weeks in winter in Berlin. Dustbins are emptied every day, and in
+some towns the police make most troublesome regulations with regard to
+them. The householder has to set his outside to be emptied, and the
+police insist on this being done at a certain hour, neither earlier
+nor later, so that if your servant happens to be careless or
+unpunctual you will be repeatedly fined.
+
+Staircases vary greatly according to the date and rent of the house.
+The most modern houses in Berlin have broad front staircases with
+thick carpets, and in some cases seats of "Nouveau Art" design on the
+landings. In such houses you are always met on the threshold by
+printed requests to wipe your feet and shut the door gently. They
+don't tell you to do as you're bid. That is taken for granted, or the
+police will know the reason why. There is always an uncarpeted back
+staircase for servants and tradespeople, and for the tenants who
+inhabit the poorer parts of the building. In houses where all the
+tenants belong to the poorer classes, you find notices that forbid
+children to play in the Hof, and command people not to loiter or to
+make any noise on the stairs. Carpet-beating and shaking, which is
+constantly and vigorously carried on, is only allowed on certain days
+of the week and at certain hours. When there is a house porter he is
+not as important and conspicuous as the French concierge. In my
+experience he has usually gone out and thoughtfully left the front
+door ajar. He is not a universal institution even in Berlin.
+
+Taxes vary in different parts of Germany. In Saxony a man spending
+L500 a year pays altogether L60 for Income tax, Municipal rates,
+Water, School, and Church rates. In Berlin the Income tax is not an
+Imperial (Reichs) tax, but a _Landes_ tax, and amounts to L15 on an
+income of L500. Smaller incomes pay less and larger ones more, in
+proportion varying from about 2 to 4 per cent. Besides this _Staats_
+tax there is a municipal tax of exactly the same amount in Berlin and
+Charlottenberg. But there are towns in Prussia where it is less;
+others, mostly in the Western Provinces, where it is more,
+considerably more in some cases. The water rate is paid by the house
+owners, and the tenant pays it in his rent. There are no school taxes.
+The church tax is compulsory on members of the _Landeskirche_. When a
+man has no capital his income tax is levied on his yearly expenses;
+but the man whose income is derived from capital pays a higher tax
+than the man who has none. The German, too, pays a great deal to the
+State indirectly; for nearly everything he requires is taxed. But the
+three things he loves best, tobacco, beer, and music, he gets
+cheap--cheaper than he can in a Free Trade country; so he pays for
+everything else as best he can, and tries to look pleasant. "But the
+burden is almost more than we can bear," said one thoughtful German to
+me when I told him how greatly English people admired their municipal
+enterprise, and the admirable provision made in Berlin for the very
+poor.
+
+Last time I went to Germany I actually made the acquaintance of one
+German who did not smoke, and on various occasions I was in the
+society of others who did not smoke for some hours. In the Berlin
+tramcars smoking is strictly forbidden, but I did not observe that
+this rule was strictly enforced. In fact, my attention was drawn to it
+one day by finding my neighbour's cigar unpleasantly strong. One
+cigar in a tramcar, however, is nothing at all, and should not be
+mentioned. It is when a railway carriage beautifully upholstered with
+crimson velvet holds you, six Germans, and one Englishman, for eight
+hours on a blazing summer day, that you begin to wonder whether, after
+all, you do mind smoke. To be sure, you might have travelled in a
+_Nichtraucher_ or a _Damen-Coupe_, but changes are a nuisance on a
+journey. Besides, you know that a _Damen-Coupe_ is always crowded, and
+that the moment you open a window someone will hold a handkerchief
+tearfully to her neck and say, "_Aber ich bitte meine Dame: es
+zieht!_" and all the other women in the carriage will say in chorus,
+"_Ja! ja! es zieht!_" and if you don't shut the window instantly the
+conductor will be summoned, and he will give the case against you. So
+you travel all day long with seven cigars, most of them cheap strong
+ones, that their owners smoke very slowly and replace directly they
+are finished. And after a time the conversation turns on smoking, and
+your neighbour admits that he always lights his first cigar when he
+gets up in the morning and smokes it while he is dressing. His wife
+dresses in the same room and does not like it, but.... It is
+unnecessary to say more. Five cigars out of six are in sympathy with
+him, while you amuse yourself by wondering what revenge a wife could
+take in such circumstances. A bottle of the most offensive scent in
+the market suggests itself, but you look at your neighbour's profile,
+and see that he is the kind of man to pitch scent he did not like out
+of the window. You have heard of one German husband who did this when
+his wife brought home perfumes that did not please him. And then your
+memory travels back and back along the years, arriving at last at the
+picture of an English nursery, in the household where a German guest
+had arrived the night before. The nurses and the children are sitting
+peacefully at breakfast, when there enters to them a housemaid,
+scornful, scandalised, out of breath with her hurry to impart what she
+had seen.
+
+"He's a-smoking in bed," she says, "that there Mr. Hoggenheimer! He's
+a-smoking in bed!"
+
+"Some of them do," says nurse, who is a travelled person, and refuses
+to be taken by surprise.
+
+"Well, of all the nasty...."
+
+"Sh!" says nurse, pointing to the children, all eyes and ears.
+
+So that is all you can remember about the housemaid and Mr.
+Hoggenheimer. But you remember him--a little dark man who sent you
+books you could not read at Christmas, and brought you enchanting
+gingerbreads covered with hundreds and thousands. You thought him
+rather funny, but you liked him, and if he wanted to smoke in bed why
+not? You liked toys in bed yourself, and you would have taken the dog
+there if only it had been allowed. Then you come back again to the
+present hour, nearly all the years of your life later, and you are in
+a railway carriage with six German householders who, like Mr.
+Hoggenheimer, want cigars in and out of season.
+
+"To-morrow," you say to your Englishman; "to-morrow I shall travel in
+a _Nichtraucher_."
+
+"But then I can't smoke," he says quite truly.
+
+"We shall not travel together."
+
+"But that is so unsociable."
+
+"I would rather be unsociable than suffocated," you explain. "I have
+suffered tortures to-day."
+
+"Have you? But you always say you don't mind smoke."
+
+"In reason. Seven cigars and one woman are not reasonable. Never
+again will I travel with seven cigars."
+
+"I thought we had a pleasant journey," says the Englishman
+regretfully. "That little man next to you----"
+
+"Mr. Hoggenheimer----?"
+
+"Was that his name?--I couldn't understand all he said, but he had an
+amusing face."
+
+"A face can be misleading," you say; "that man bullies his wife."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"He told us so. He smokes before breakfast ... while he is dressing,
+... and he has no dressing room...."
+
+The Englishman looks calm.
+
+"They do take one into their confidence," he remarks. "My neighbour
+told me that he never could eat mayonnaise of salmon directly after
+roast pork, because it gave him peculiar pains. I was afraid you'd
+hear him describe his symptoms; but I believe you were asleep."
+
+"No, I wasn't," you confess; "I heard it all, and I shut my eyes,
+because I knew if I opened them he'd address himself to me. I shut
+them when he began talking to you about your _Magen_ and what you
+ought to do to give it tone. You seemed interested."
+
+"It's quite an interesting subject," says the Englishman, who makes
+friends with every German he meets. "He is not in the least like an
+Englishman," they say to you cordially,--"he is so friendly and
+amiable."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+HOUSEWIVES
+
+
+"Frenchwomen are the best housewives in Europe," said a German lady
+who knew most European countries well; "the next best are the English;
+Germans come third." The lady speaking was one whose opinions were
+always uttered with much charm, but _ex-cathedra_; so that you found
+it impossible to disagree with her ... until you got home. But to hear
+the supreme excellence of the _Hausfrau_ contested takes the breath
+away; to see her deposed from the first place by one of her own
+countrywomen dazzles the eyes. It was a new idea to me that any women
+in the world except the Germans kept house at all. If you live amongst
+Germans when you are young you adopt this view quite insensibly and
+without argument.
+
+"My son is in England," you hear a German mother say. "I am uneasy
+about him. I fear he may marry an Englishwoman."
+
+"They sometimes do," says her gossip, shaking her head.
+
+"It would break my heart. The women of that nation know nothing of
+housekeeping. They sit in their drawing-rooms all day, while their
+husband's hard-earned money is wasted in the kitchen. Besides ...
+_mein armer Karl_--he loves _Nudelsuppe_ and _Kueken mit Spargel_. What
+does an Englishwoman know of such things? She would give him cold
+mutton to eat, and he would die of an indigestion. I was once in
+England in my youth, and when I got back we had a _Frikassee von
+Haehnchen mit Krebsen_ for dinner, and I wept with pleasure."
+
+"Perhaps," says the gossip consolingly, "your Karl will remember these
+things and fetch himself a German wife."
+
+"Poor girl!" says Karl's not-to-be-consoled mother, "she would have to
+live in England and keep house there. It happened to my niece Greta
+Loehring. She had a new cook every fortnight, and each one was worse
+than the one before. In England when a cook spoils a pudding she puts
+it in the fire and makes another. Imagine the eggs that are used under
+such circumstances."
+
+I remember this little dialogue, because I was young and ignorant
+enough at the time to ask what a German did when she spoilt a pudding,
+and was promptly informed that in Germany such things could not
+happen. A cook was not allowed to make puddings unless her mistress
+stood by and saw that she made them properly; "unless she is a
+_perfekte Koechin_," added Karl's mother, "and then she does not spoil
+things."
+
+A German friend, not the travelled one, but a real home-baked domestic
+German, took me one hot afternoon this summer to pay a call, and at
+once fell to talking to the mistress of the house about the washing of
+lace curtains. There were eight windows in front of the flat, and each
+window had a pair of stiff spotless lace curtains, and each curtain
+had been washed by the lady's own hands. My friend had just washed
+hers, and they both approached the subject as keenly as two gardeners
+will approach a question of bulbs or Alpines. There are different ways
+of washing a white curtain, you know, and different methods of
+rinsing and drying it, and various soaps. Starch is used too at some
+stage of the process; at least, I think so. But the afternoon was hot
+and the argument involved. The starch I will not swear to, but I will
+swear to ten waters--ten successive cleansings in fresh water before
+the soul of the housewife was at rest.
+
+"And how do you wash yours?" said one of them, turning to me.
+
+"Oh--I!" I stammered, taken aback, for I had been nearly asleep; "I
+send a post-card to Whiteley's, and they fetch them one week and bring
+them back the next. They cost 1s. a pair."
+
+The two German ladies looked at each other and smiled. Then they
+politely changed the subject.
+
+This trivial story is not told for its intrinsic merits, but because
+it illustrates the difference of method between English and German
+women. The German with much wear and tear of body and spirit washes
+her own lace curtains. She saves a little money, and spends a great
+deal of time over them. The Englishwoman, when she possibly can, likes
+to spend her time in a different way. In both countries there are
+admirable housekeepers, and middling housekeepers, and extremely bad
+ones. The German who goes the wrong way about it sends her husband to
+the _Kneipe_ by her eternal fussing and fidgeting. She is not his
+companion mentally, but the cook's, for her mind has sunk to the
+cook's level, while her temper through constant fault-finding is on a
+lower one. The Englishwoman sends her husband to the club or the
+public house, according to his social station, because she is
+incapable of giving him eatable food. But the English belief that
+German housewives are invariably dull and stodgy is not a whit more
+ignorant and untrue than the German belief that all Englishwomen are
+neglectful, extravagant housekeepers. The Englishwoman keeps house in
+her own way, and it is different from the German way, but it is often
+admirable. The comfort, the organisation, and the unbroken peace of a
+well-managed English household are not surpassed, in some details not
+equalled, anywhere in the world.
+
+The German ideal (for women) is one of service and self-sacrifice. Let
+her learn betimes to serve, says Goethe, for by service only shall she
+attain to command and to the authority in the house that is her due.
+
+    "Dienen lerne bei Zeiten das Weib nach ihrer Bestimmung,
+    Denn durch Dienen allein gelangt sie endlich zum Herrschen
+    Zu der verdienten Gewalt, die doch ihr im Hause gehoeret,
+    Dienet die Schwester dem Bruder doch frueh, sie dienet den Eltern;
+    Und ihr Leben ist immer ein ewiges Gehen und Kommen,
+    Oder ein Heben und Tragen, Bereiten und Schaffen fuer Andre;
+    Wohl ihr, wenn sie daran sich gewoehnt, dass kein Weg ihr zu sauer
+    Wird, und die Stunden der Nacht ihr sind wie die Stunden des Tages:
+    Dass ihr niemals die Arbeit zu klein und die Nadel zu fein duenkt,
+    Dass sie sich ganz vergisst, und leben mag nur in Andern!"
+
+She is to serve her brothers and parents. Her whole life is to be a
+going and coming, a lifting and carrying, a preparing and acting for
+others. Well for her if she treads her way unweariedly, if night is as
+day to her, if no task seems too small and no needle too fine. She is
+to forget herself altogether and live in others.
+
+It is a beautiful passage, and an unabashed magnificent masculine
+egotism speaks in every line of it. Whenever I read it I think of the
+little girl in _Punch_ whose little brother called to her, "Come here,
+Effie. I wants you." And Effie answered, "Thank you, Archie, but I
+wants myself!" Herr Riehl quotes the passage at the end of his own
+exhortations to his countrywomen, which are all in the same spirit,
+and were not needed by them. German women have always been devoted to
+their homes and their families, and they are as subservient to their
+menfolk as the Japanese. They do not actually fall on their knees
+before their lords, but the tone of voice in which a woman of the old
+school speaks of _die Herren_ is enough to make a French, American, or
+Englishwoman think there is something to be said for the modern revolt
+against men. For any woman with a spice of feminine perversity in her
+nature will be driven to the other camp when she meets extremes; so
+that in Germany she feels ready to rise against overbearing males;
+whilst in America she misses some of the regard for masculine judgment
+and authority that German women show in excess. At least, it seems an
+excess of duty to us when we hear of a German bride who will not go
+down to dinner with the man appointed by her hostess till she has
+asked her husband's permission; and when we hear of another writing
+from Germany that, although in England she had ardently believed in
+total abstention, she had now changed her opinion because her husband
+drank beer and desired her to approve of it. But it was an
+Englishwoman who, when asked about some question of politics, said
+quite simply and honestly, "I think what Jack thinks."
+
+The truth is, that the women of the two great Germanic races are kin.
+There are differences, chiefly those of history, manners, and
+environment. The likeness is profound.
+
+"Par une rencontre singuliere," says M. Taine, "les femmes sont plus
+femmes et les hommes plus hommes ici qu'ailleurs. Les deux natures
+vont chacune a son extreme; chez les uns vers l'audace, l'esprit
+d'entreprise et de resistance, le caractere guerrier, imperieux et
+rude; chez les autres vers la douceur, l'abnegation, la patience,
+l'affection inepuisable; chose inconnue dans les pays lointains,
+surtout en France, la femme ici se donne sans se reprendre et met sa
+gloire et son devoir a obeir, a pardonner, a adorer, sans souhaiter ni
+pretendre autre chose que se fondre et s'absorber chaque jour
+davantage en celui qu'elle a volontairement et pour toujours choisi.
+C'est cet instinct, un antique instinct Germanique, que ces grands
+peintres de l'instinct mettent tous ici en lumiere!... L'ame dans
+cette race, est a la fois primitive et serieuse. La candeur chez les
+femmes y subsiste plus longtemps qu'ailleurs. Elles perdent moins vite
+le respect, elles pesent moins vite les valeurs et les caracteres:
+elles sont moins promptes a deviner le mal et a mesurer leurs
+maris.... Elles n'ont pas la nettete, la hardiesse d'idees,
+l'assurance de conduite, la precocite qui chez nous en six mois font
+d'une jeune fille une femme d'intrigue et une reine de salon. La vie
+enfermee et l'obeissance leur sont plus faciles. Plus pliantes et plus
+sedentaires elles sont en meme temps plus concentrees, plus
+interieures, plus disposees a suivre des yeux le noble reve qu'on
+nomme le devoir...."
+
+I cannot imagine what M. Taine means by saying that Englishwomen lead
+a more sedentary and sequestered life than Frenchwomen, but the rest
+of his description presents a well-known type in England and Germany.
+"Voir la peinture de ce caractere dans toute la litterature anglaise
+et allemande," he says in a footnote. "Le plus grand des observateurs,
+Stendhal tout impregne des moeurs et des idees Italiennes et
+francaises, est stupefait a cette vue. Il ne comprend rien a cette
+espece de devouement, 'a cette servitude, que les maris Anglais, sous
+le nom de devoir, out eu l'esprit d'imposer a leurs femmes.' Ce sont
+'des moeurs de serail.'"
+
+Here the "greatest of all observers" seems to talk nonsense, for
+marriage in the seraglio does not hinge on the submission of one wife
+to one husband, but on a plurality of wives that English and German
+women have only endured in certain historic cases. In both western
+countries marriage has its roots in the fidelity of one man and one
+woman to each other. A well-known English novelist once said quite
+truly that an Englishman very rarely distrusts his wife, and never by
+any chance distrusts the girl who is to become his wife; and just the
+same may be said of the German of the better classes. In both
+countries you will find sections of society above and below where
+morals are lax and manners corrupt. German professors write sketches
+of London in which our busy grimy city is held up to a virtuous
+Germania as the modern Sodom and Gomorrah; and the Continental
+Anglophobe likes nothing better than to entertain you with pictures of
+our decadent society, pictures that really do credit to the vividness
+and detail of his imagination. Meanwhile our press assures the
+respectable Briton that Berlin is the most profligate city in Europe,
+and that scurrilous German novels about the German army will show him
+what the rotten state of things really is in that much over-rated
+organisation. But these national amenities are misleading. The bulk of
+the nation in both countries is sound, and family life still
+flourishes both here and there. The men of the race, in spite of Herr
+Riehl's prognostications, still have the whip hand, as much as is good
+for them in England, a little more than is good for them in Germany.
+If you go to Germany you must not expect a man to open a door for you,
+or to wait on you at afternoon tea, or to carry a parcel for you in
+the street. He will kiss your hand when he greets you, he will address
+you as gracious lady or gracious miss, he will put his heels together
+and make you beautiful bows, he will pay you compliments that are
+manifestly, almost admittedly, artificial. That at least is one type
+of man. He may leave out the kisses and the bows and the compliments
+and be quite undisguisedly bearish; or he may be something betwixt and
+between, kindly, concerned for your pleasure and welfare. But whatever
+he is he will never forget for a moment that you are "only a woman."
+If you marry him he will expect to rule everywhere except in the
+kitchen, and as you value a quiet life you had better take care that
+the kitchen produces what pleases him. On occasion he will assert his
+authority with some violence and naivete. No one can be long amongst
+Germans, or even read many German novels, without coming across
+instances of what I mean. For example, there was once a quarrel
+between lovers that all turned upon a second glass of champagne. The
+girl did not want it, and the man insisted that she should drink it
+whether she wanted it or not. What happened in the end is forgotten
+and does not matter. It is the comment of the historian that remains
+in the memory.
+
+"Her family had spoilt her," said he. "When they are married and my
+friend gets her to himself she will not behave so."
+
+"But why should she drink a second glass of champagne if she did not
+want it?" I asked.
+
+"Because he commanded her to," said this Petruchio, beginning to
+bristle at once; and he straightway told me another story about a man
+who threw his lady-love's dog into a pond, not because the dog needed
+a bath, but in assertion of his authority. The lady had wished to keep
+her dog out of the water.
+
+"Did she ever forgive the man?" said I.
+
+"Forgive!--What was there to forgive? The man wished to put the dog
+in the pond. A man must know how to enforce his will ... or he is no
+man."
+
+I nearly said "Lor!" like Mr. Tweddle in _The Tinted Venus_, but in
+Germany it's a serious matter, a sort of _lese majeste_, to laugh at
+the rightful rule of man. You must expect to see them waited on hand
+and foot, and to take this service as a matter of course. I have known
+Englishmen embarrassed by this state of affairs.
+
+"They will get me chairs," complained one, "and at table the daughters
+jump up and wait on me. It's horrid."
+
+"Not at all," said I. "It's your due. You must behave as if you were
+used to it."
+
+"I can't. The other day I got the daughters of the house to sit still
+while I handed about cups of tea, and if some of the old boys didn't
+jump down their throats and tell them they'd no business to let me
+forget my dignity. Bless my dignity ... if it's such a tender plant as
+that...."
+
+"Sh!" I said. "They must have been old-fashioned people. In some
+houses young men hand cups."
+
+"They look jolly self-conscious while they're doing it, ... as if they
+didn't half like it. You bet, they take it out of their womenfolk when
+they get home. Look at that chap Mueller!"
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"In Dresden, where I lived last winter. He stormed the house down
+because his wife took up his glass of beer and drank before he did.
+Nearly had a fit. Said his dignity as a husband was damaged. Then he
+turned to me and asked whether even in England a wife would be so bold
+and bad?"
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"I didn't say anything. I looked sick."
+
+"That's no use. You should say a great deal, and wave your arms about
+and hammer on the table. You don't know how to show emotion."
+
+"I should hope not," says the Englishman. "But German women are always
+telling me they envy the women in our country."
+
+"That's their politeness," I assure him. "They don't mean it. They're
+as happy as the day is long. Besides, Germans don't get drunk and beat
+their wives with pokers. You know perfectly well that most
+Englishmen----"
+
+But, of course, whatever you say about German women of the present day
+can be contradicted by anybody who chooses to describe one at either
+end of the scale, for the contrasts there are violent. You will find
+in the same street a woman who exercises a profession, lives more or
+less at her club, and is as independent as her brother; and women who
+are household drudges, with neither leisure nor spirit for any
+occupation that would enrich their minds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+HOUSEWIVES (_Continued_)
+
+
+In Germany the home is furnished by the bride's parents, and the
+household linen forms part of her trousseau and is marked by her
+monogram. In describing the furniture of a German flat, you must first
+decide whether you are going to choose one furnished to-day by a
+fashionable young woman in Berlin or Hamburg; or one furnished by her
+parents twenty to twenty-five years ago. Modern German furniture is
+quite easily suggested to the English imagination, because some of it
+looks as if the artist had visited our Arts and Crafts Exhibitions and
+then made his own designs in a nightmare; while some has accepted
+English inspiration and adapted itself wisely and cleverly to German
+needs. To-day a German bride will have in her bedroom a wardrobe with
+a big mirror, a toilet table or chest, a marble-topped washstand and
+two narrow bedsteads, all of fumed wood. If she has money and
+understanding the things have probably come from England, not from an
+emporium, but from one of our artists in furniture whom the Germans
+know better and value more highly than we do ourselves. But if she has
+money only she can buy florid pretentious stuff that outdoes in
+ugliness the worst productions of our "suite" sellers. Her mother,
+however, probably did without any kind of toilet table or glass in
+her wardrobe. Twenty years ago you occasionally saw such things in the
+houses of rich people, but they were quite unusual. A small hanging
+glass behind the washstand was considered enough for any _ordentliche
+Frau_. Nowadays in rare cases the _ordentliche Frau_ actually has
+silver brushes and powder pots and trinket boxes. But as a rule she
+still does without such things; she brushes her beautiful hair with an
+ivory or a wooden brush, and leaves paint and powder to ladies who are
+presumably not _ordentlich_. At one time narrow brass or iron
+bedsteads were introduced from England, and were used a great deal in
+Germany. I remember seeing one all forlorn in a vast magnificent
+palace bedroom where a fourposter hung with brocade or tapestry would
+have looked more at home. But the real old-fashioned bedstead, still
+much liked and formerly seen everywhere was always of wood, single and
+with deep sides to hold the heavy box mattress. In Mariana Starcke's
+_Travels in Europe_, published in 1833, she says of an inn in Villach,
+"tall people cannot sleep comfortably here or in any part of Germany;
+the beds, which are very narrow, being placed in wooden frames or
+boxes, so short that any person who happened to be above five feet
+high must absolutely sit up all night supported by pillows; and this,
+in fact, is the way in which the Germans sleep."
+
+I think this is a statement that will be as surprising to any German
+who reads it as the statements made by Germans about England have
+often been to me. It is true, however, that tall people do find the
+old-fashioned German bedsteads short; and it is true that the big
+square downy pillows are supported by a wedge-shaped bolster called a
+_Keilkissen_. But the _Plumeau_ is what the German loves, and the
+Briton hates above all things: the mountain of down or feathers that
+tumbles off on cold nights and stays on on hot ones. You hate it all
+the year round, because in winter it is too short and in summer it is
+an oppression. Sometimes the sheet is buttoned to it, and then though
+you are a traveller you are less than ever content. At the best you
+never succumb to its attractions. Every spring the good German
+housewife takes her maid and her _Plumeaux_ to a cleaner and sits
+there while the feathers are purified by machinery and returned to
+their bags. In this way she makes sure of getting back her own
+feathers both in quality and quantity. Except for the _Plumeaux_ and
+the want of a dressing-table and proper mirror, an ordinary German
+bedroom is very comfortable and always very clean. However plain it is
+you can use it partly as a sitting-room, because a sofa and a good
+sized table in front of it are considered an indispensable part of its
+furniture. When Germans come to England and have to live in lodgings
+or poorly furnished inns, the bedrooms seem to them most comfortless
+and ill provided. The poor Idealist who lived as an exile in London in
+the early Victorian age describes her forlorn room with nothing in it
+but a "colossal" bed, a washstand, and a chest of drawers, and though
+she does not describe them, you who know London from that side can see
+the half-dirty honey-combed counterpane, the untempting cotton sheets,
+the worn uncleanly carpet, the grained or painted furniture with doors
+and drawers that will not shut; and if you know Germany too you must
+in honesty compare with it the pleasant rooms you have inhabited there
+for less rent than she paid her Mrs. Quickly,--rooms with cool clean
+painted floors, solid old dark elm cupboards, and bedsteads that when
+you had pitched the _Plumeau_ on the floor or the sofa were inviting
+because they were made with spotless home-spun linen.
+
+What we call the drawing-room used to be extremely chill and formal in
+Germany, but it has never been as hideously overloaded as English
+drawing-rooms belonging to people who do not know better. The "suite"
+of furniture covered with rep or brocade was everywhere, and the rep
+was frequently grass-green or magenta. There was invariably a sofa and
+a table in front of the sofa, and a rug or a small carpet under the
+table. Even in these days this arrangement prevails and must continue
+to do so while the sofa is considered the place of honour to which the
+hostess invites her leading guest. If you go to Germany in ignorance
+of the social importance attached to the sofa, you may blunder quite
+absurdly and sit down uninvited or when your age or your sex does not
+entitle you to a seat there. I was once present when an English girl
+innocently chose a corner of the sofa instead of a chair, though there
+were older women in the room. The hostess promptly and audibly told
+her to get up, for she knew it was not an affair to pass off as a
+joke. In England the question of precedence comes up chiefly at the
+dinner-table. The host and hostess must send the right people together
+and place them correctly too. In Germany you have to know as hostess
+who is to sit on the sofa; and your decision may be complicated by the
+absurd titles of your guests. For instance, one Frau Direktor may be
+the wife of a post office official who had a university education, and
+in Germany a university education counts; while another Frau Direktor,
+though she can afford better clothes, is merely the wife of the man
+who manages the factory in the next village. I have heard a story of a
+Frau Kreisrichter and a Frau Actuar that ended in a life-long feud,
+and it all turned on a _Kaffee Klatsch_ and the wrong woman on the
+sofa. It is not easy to know what to do about these ridiculous titles
+in Germany, because some people insist on them and some laugh at them
+as much as we do. I once asked a lady who had the best right to know,
+about using military titles instead of names: Herr Lieutenant, Herr
+Major, and so on. She was quite explicit. "_Mir ist es ein Greuel_,"
+she said, and went on to tell me that it was only done as one might
+expect by people who did not know better, and of course by servants.
+All the same, it is well to be careful and study the individual case.
+I know of an American who addressed his professor as Professor Lachs.
+
+"Where are your manners, mein Herr?" said the professor in a fury, "I
+am Herr Professor Dr. Lachs to every student in this laboratory."
+
+But when it comes to Mrs. Tax-Collector and Mrs. Organist and Mrs.
+Head Master, and it does come to this quite seriously, it is difficult
+for the foreigner to appraise values. The length of the titles, too,
+is a stumbling-block. You may marry a harmless Herr Braun, and in
+course of time become Frau Wirklichergeheimerober regierungsrath. In
+this case I don't think your friends would use the whole of your title
+every time they addressed you; but you would undoubtedly have a seat
+on the sofa before all the small fry.
+
+On the table in front of the sofa there used always to be a heavy
+coloured cloth, and then put diamond-wise a light embroidered or lace
+one. A vase of artificial or real flowers, according to taste, stood
+exactly in the middle, and a few books in ornamental bindings on
+either side. There would be very few ornaments, but these few would be
+good of their kind, though probably hideous. Luckily the family did
+not assemble here on State occasions. For every-day use there was a
+_Wohnzimmer_ soberly furnished with solid well made chairs and
+cupboards. Here the mistress of the house kept her palms, her
+work-table, and her pet birds. Here her husband smoked his
+after-dinner cigar and drank his coffee before going to his work
+again. Here the elder children did their lessons for next day's
+school, and here at night the family sat round one lamp,--the father
+smoking, the mother probably mending, the children playing games. For
+German fathers do not live at the _Kneipe_. They are occasionally to
+be found with their families. When the flat was not large enough to
+furnish a third sitting-room, the dining-room was used in this way. A
+modern German family still lives in any room rather than the
+drawing-room, but it has learned how to make a drawing-room
+attractive. The odious "suite" has been abolished or dispersed, and a
+lighter, less formal scheme of decoration is making its way. You see
+charming rooms in Germany nowadays, but they are never quite like
+English ones, even when your friends point to a wicker chair or an
+Eastern carpet and tell you that they love everything English and have
+furnished in the English fashion. In the first place, you do not see
+piles of magazines and papers or of library books in a German
+drawing-room. They would be considered scandalously untidy, and put
+away in a cupboard at once. If there are cut flowers they are not
+arranged as they are here. On ceremonial occasions and anniversaries
+great quantities of flowers are presented, but they are mostly wired
+and probably arranged in a fanciful shape. The favourite shape changes
+with the season and the fashion of the moment. One year those who wish
+to honour you and have plenty of money, will send you lyres and harps
+made of violets, pansies, pinks, cornflowers, any flower that will
+lend itself meekly to popular design. The favourite design in Berlin
+one spring was a large flat sofa cushion of Guelder roses with tall
+sprays of roses or carnations dancing from it. On ordinary occasions
+market bunches are put into water as an English cottager puts in his
+flowers, level and tightly packed. But on a festive occasion in a rich
+man's house you hear of a long dinner table strewn with branches of
+pink hawthorn and peonies. In fact, a riot of flowers is now
+considered correct by wealthy people, but you do not find them here
+and there and everywhere, whether people are wealthy or not, as you do
+in England. That is partly because there are so few private gardens.
+
+The extreme tidiness of German rooms is a constant source of surprise.
+They are as guiltless of "litter" as the showrooms of a furniture
+emporium. You would think that the people who live in them were never
+employed if you did not know that Germans were never idle. Every bit
+of embroidery has its use and its own corner. The article now being
+embroidered is neatly folded inside the work-basket or work-table when
+it is not in the lady's hands. The one book she is reading will be
+near. Any other books she possesses will be on shelves, and probably
+behind glass doors. Each chair has its place, each cushion, each
+ornament. Even where there are children German rooms never look
+disarranged. I can truly say I have only once seen a German room
+untidy and dusty, and that was in a house with no one but a "Mamsell"
+in charge; and she apologised and explained that it was to be spring
+cleaned next day. There is, by the way, a curious litter of things
+kept on a German sideboard in many houses,--coffee machines, silver,
+useful and ornamental glass, great blue beer jugs, and suchlike; but
+they are kept there with intention and not by neglectful accident.
+Then the narrow corridor of a German flat is often uncomfortably
+choked with articles of household use: lamps, for instance, and a
+refrigerator, and the safe in which the mistress locks her food; spare
+cupboards too, and neat piles of papers and magazines. It will be
+inelegant, but it will be orderly and clean.
+
+It is the way in this country to laugh at the German _Hausfrau_, and
+pity her for a drudge; and it is the way with many Germans to talk as
+if all Englishwomen were pleasure loving and incompetent. The less
+people know of a foreign nation the greater nonsense they talk in
+general, and the more cocksure they are about their own opinions. A
+year ago, when I was in Germany, I asked a friend I could trust if
+there really was much Anglophobia abroad except in the newspapers. She
+reflected a little before she answered, for she was honest and
+intelligent.
+
+"There is none amongst people like ourselves," she said,--"people who
+know the world a little. But you come across it?" She turned to her
+husband.
+
+"There are others like G.," she said. "He turns green if anyone speaks
+of England, and he says Shakespeare is _dumm_. You see, he has never
+been out of Germany, and has never met any English people."
+
+So I told her about my English cook, who snorted with scorn when I
+assured her Germans considered rabbits vermin and would not eat them.
+
+"H ... ph!" she said, "I shouldn't have thought foreigners were so
+particular."
+
+The average German housewife has to keep the house going on
+exceedingly small means and with inefficient help. It is her pride and
+pleasure to make a little go a long way, and she can only achieve
+this by working with her hands. Probably her servant cannot cook, but
+she can, and it would never occur to her to let her husband and
+children eat ill-prepared food because servants do not like ladies in
+the kitchen. A German lady, like a princess of ancient Greece,
+considers that it becomes her to do anything she chooses in her own
+house, and that the most convenient household workshop is the kitchen.
+The Idealist from whom I have quoted before was the daughter of a
+well-known German diplomatist, and she had been used since childhood
+to the atmosphere of Courts. She was an accomplished well-born woman
+of the world, but she had not been a week in her sordid London
+lodgings with the woman she calls Mrs. Quickly, before she blundered
+in her innocent German way--into the lodging-house kitchen. Figure to
+yourself the stupefaction and the indignation of Mrs. Quickly,
+probably engaged, though the Idealist does not say so, in dining off
+the foreign woman's beef. "I went down to the kitchen," says Fraeulein
+von Meysenbug, "with a muslin gown on my arm to ask for an iron so
+that I could iron my gown there. The kitchen was Mrs. Quickly's true
+kingdom; here she alone reigned at the hearth, for the servant was not
+allowed to approach the saucepans. Mrs. Quickly looked at me with
+unconcealed astonishment as I came in, but when I proffered my request
+her astonishment turned to wrath. 'What!' she shrieked, 'a lady
+ironing in the kitchen? That is impossible.' And with the mien of
+offended majesty she snatched the gown from me, and ordered the little
+maid servant to put an iron in the fire and to iron the gown; then she
+turned to me and said with tragic emphasis, 'You are a foreigner. You
+don't understand our English ways: we consider it extremely
+unladylike for a lady to enter the kitchen, and worse still if she
+wants to iron her own gown. No, ma'am, please to ring the bell when
+you require anything; otherwise you will ruin my servants.' Much
+ashamed of my ignorance on this higher plane of English custom,"
+continues the Idealist, "I crept back to my parlour and laughed
+heartily as I looked round the dirty, wretchedly furnished room, and
+reflected on the abyss set by prejudice between the ground-floor and
+the basement."
+
+"How do you like your new German governess?" I once asked an English
+friend who lived in the country and had just engaged a German lady for
+her only daughter.
+
+"Oh! I like her," said my friend without enthusiasm. "She is a
+brilliant musician and a fine linguist and all that. But she has such
+odd ideas about what a girl ought to know. The other day I actually
+caught her teaching Patricia to _dust_."
+
+"If you don't watch her," I said, "she'll probably teach Patricia to
+cook."
+
+My friend looked anxious first, and then relieved.
+
+"I don't see how she could do that," she said. "The cook would never
+have them in the kitchen for five minutes. But now you mention it, I
+believe she can cook. When things go wrong she seems to know what has
+been done or not done."
+
+"That might be useful," I suggested.
+
+"I don't see it. I expect my cook to know her work, and to do it and
+not to rely on me. I've other fish to fry."
+
+But the German housewife expects to have her fingers literally in
+every pie even when by rights they should be employed elsewhere. You
+hear, for instance, of a great Court functionary whose wife is so
+devoted to cooking that though she has a large staff of servants she
+cannot be persuaded to spend the day anywhere but in her kitchen.
+Mistresses of this kind breed incapable servants, and you find, in
+fact, that German maids cannot compare with our English ones in
+qualities of self-reliance, method, and initiative. They mostly expect
+to be told from hour to hour what to do, and very often to lend a hand
+to the ladies of the household rather than to do the thing themselves.
+Indeed, though the servants are on duty from morning till night more
+than English servants are, in some ways they have an easier time of it
+than ours, because they are used so much to run errands and go to
+market. Everyone who has been in German towns can remember the hordes
+of servants with baskets and big umbrellas strolling in twos and
+threes along the streets in the early morning. They are never in any
+hurry to get home to work again, and a good many doubtless know that
+what they leave undone will be done by their mistress. The German
+kitchen with its beautiful cleanliness and brightly polished copper
+pans I have described, but I have not said anything yet about the
+fidgety housewife who carries her _Tuechtigkeit_ to such a pitch that
+she ties every wooden spoon and twirler with a coloured ribbon to hang
+by against the wall. In England you hear of ladies who tie every
+bottle of scent on the toilet table with a different ribbon, and that
+really has more sense in it, because it must be trying to a cook's
+nerves to use spoons tied with delicate ribbons that must not be
+spoiled. Every housewife has dainty little holders for the handles of
+saucepans when they are hot. You see them, all different shapes and
+sizes, on view with the piles of kitchen cloths and the various aprons
+that form part of every lady's trousseau, and if you have German
+friends they probably present you with a few from time to time. I
+have never noticed any pictures in a German kitchen, but there are
+nearly always _Sprueche_ both in the kitchen, and the dining-room and
+sometimes in the hall: rhyming maxims that are done in poker work or
+painted on wood and hung in conspicuous positions--
+
+    "Wie die Kueche so das Haus,
+    Reinlich drinnen, reinlich draus"
+
+is a nice one; and so is
+
+    "Trautes Heim
+    Glueck allein."
+
+There was one in the _Lette-Haus_ or some other big institution about
+an hour in the morning being worth several hours later in the day,
+which would prick our English consciences more sharply than it can
+most German ones, for they are a nation of early risers. Schools and
+offices all open so early that a household must of necessity be up
+betimes to feed its menfolk and children with bread and coffee before
+their day's work. In most German towns the tradespeople do not call
+for orders, but they do in Hamburg; and a friend born there told me in
+a whisper, so that her husband should not hear the awful confession,
+that she would never be a good "provider" in consequence. She went to
+market regularly, for many housewives will not delegate this most
+important business to a cook, but she had not the same eye for a tough
+goose or a poor fish, perhaps not the same backbone for a bargain, as
+a housewife used from childhood to these sorties. In some towns the
+butcher calls over night for orders. The baker's boy brings rolls
+before anyone is up, and hangs them outside the flat in one of two
+bags every household possesses. After the early breakfast either the
+mistress or the cook fetches what is required for the day.
+
+When the good German housewife is not in her kitchen, English
+tradition believes her to be at her linen cupboard.
+
+"I am going to write a humble little gossiping book about German Home
+Life," I said to a learned but kindly professor last spring.
+
+"German Home Life," he said, rather aghast at my daring, for we had
+only just made each other's acquaintance, and I believe he thought
+that this was my first visit to Germany and that I had been there a
+week. "It is a wide field," he went on. "However ... if you want to
+understand our Home Life ... just look at that...."
+
+We were having tea together in the dining-room in his wife's absence,
+and he suddenly got up from table and threw back both doors of an
+immense cupboard occupying the longest wall in the room. I gazed at
+the sight before me, and my thoughts were too deep for words. It was a
+small household, I knew. It comprised, in fact, the professor, his
+beautiful young wife, and one small maid-servant; and for their
+happiness they possessed all this linen: shelf upon shelf, pile upon
+pile of linen, exactly ordered, tied with lemon coloured ribbons,
+embroidered beyond doubt with the initials of the lady who brought it
+here as a bride. The lady, it may as well be said, is a celebrated
+musician who passes a great part of each winter fulfilling engagements
+away from home. "But what happens to the linen cupboard when you are
+away?" I asked her, later, for it was grievous to think of any
+servant, even a "pearl," making hay of those ordered shelves. "I come
+home for a few days in between and set things to rights again," she
+explained; and then, seeing that I was interested, she admitted that
+she had put up and made every blind and curtain, and had even
+carpentered and upholstered an empire sofa in her drawing-room. She
+showed me each cupboard and corner of the flat, and I saw everywhere
+the exquisite order and spotlessness the notable German housewife
+knows how to maintain. We even peeped into the professor's
+dressing-room.
+
+"He must be a very tidy man," I said, sighing and reflecting that he
+could not be as other men are. "Do you never have to set things to
+rights here?"
+
+"Every half hour," she said.
+
+These enormous quantities of linen that are still the housewife's
+pride used to be necessary when house and table linen were only washed
+twice a year. A German friend who entertained a large party of
+children and grandchildren every week, pointed out to me that she used
+eighteen or twenty dinner napkins each time they came, and that when
+washing day arrived at the end of six months even her supply was
+nearly exhausted. The soiled linen was stored meanwhile in an attic at
+the top of the house. The wash itself and the drying and ironing all
+took place up there with the help of a hired laundress. In most German
+cities this custom of washing at home still prevails, but in these
+days it is usually done once a month. The large attics that serve as
+laundries are engaged for certain days by the families living in the
+house, and one servant assisted for one day by a laundry woman washes
+and irons all the house and body linen used by her employers and
+herself in four weeks. It sounds impossible, but in Germany nothing
+involving hard work is impossible. All the differences of life between
+England and Germany, in as far as expenses are concerned, seem to come
+to this in the end: that over there both men and women will work
+harder for less money. On the monthly washing day the ladies of the
+household do the cooking and housework, and on the following day they
+help to fold the clothes and iron them.
+
+"I am very tired," confessed a little maid-servant who had been sent
+out at night to show me where to find a tram. "We got up at four
+o'clock this morning, and have been ironing all day. My mistress gets
+up as early, and works as hard as I do. She is very _tuechtig_, and
+where there are four children and only one servant there is a good
+deal to do."
+
+Yet her mistress had asked me to supper, I reflected, and everything
+had been to time and well cooked and served. The rooms had looked as
+neat and orderly as usual. The _Hausfrau_ had entertained me as
+pleasantly as if she had no reason to feel tired. We had talked of
+English novels, and of the invasion of England by Germany; for her
+husband was a soldier, and another guest present was a soldier too.
+The men had talked seriously, for they were as angry with certain
+English newspapers as we are over here with certain German ones. But
+the _Hausfrau_ and I had laughed.
+
+"When they come, I'm coming with them," she said.
+
+"We will receive you with open arms," said I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+SERVANTS
+
+
+The first thing that English people notice about German servants is,
+that they are allowed to dress anyhow, and that the results are most
+unpleasing. In Hamburg, the city that gives you ox-tail soup for
+dinner and has sirloins of beef much like English sirloins, the maids
+used to wear clean crackling, light print gowns with elbow sleeves.
+This was their full dress in which they waited at table, and fresh
+looking country girls from Holstein and thereabouts looked very well
+in it. This costume is being superseded in Hamburg to-day by the
+English livery of a black frock with a white cap and apron. But in
+other German cities, in the ordinary middle-class household, the
+servants wear what they choose on all occasions. In most places they
+are as fond of plaids as their betters, and in a house where
+everything else is methodical and well arranged, you will find the
+dishes plumped on the table by a young woman wearing a tartan blouse
+decidedly decolletee, and ornamented with a large cheap lace collar. I
+have dined with people whose silver, glass, and food were all
+luxurious; while the girl who waited on us wore a red and white
+checked blouse, a plaid neck-tie with floating ends, and an enormous
+brooch of sham diamonds. In South Germany the servants wear a great
+deal of indigo blue: stuff skirts of plain blue woollen, with blouses
+and aprons of blue cotton that has a small white pattern on it. Some
+ladies keep smart white aprons to lend their servants on state
+occasions, but the laciest apron will not do much for a girl in a
+sloppy coloured blouse with a plaid neck-tie. But these same girls who
+look such slovens usually have stores of tidy well-made body linen and
+knitted stockings. In England a servant of the better class will not
+be seen out of doors in her working-dress. "In London," says the
+Idealist in her Memoirs, "no woman of the people, no servant-girl will
+stir a step from the house without a hat on her head, and this is one
+of the ugliest of English prejudices. While the clean white cap worn
+by a French maid looks pretty and suitable, the Englishwoman's hat
+which makes her "respectable" is odious, for it is usually dirty, out
+of shape, and trimmed with faded flowers and ribbons." It gives me
+pleasure to quote this criticism made by an observant German on our
+English servants, partly because it is true, and it is good for us to
+hear it, and partly because it encourages me to continue my criticism
+of German as compared with English servants. For it ought to be
+possible to criticise without giving offence. The Idealist has a very
+poor opinion of English lodging-house bedrooms and lodging-house
+keepers, and she states her opinion quite plainly, but I cannot
+imagine that anyone in this country would be hurt by what she says. On
+the contrary, it is amusing to find the ills from which most of us
+have suffered at times recognised by the stranger within our gates.
+None of us admire the battered tawdry finery we see in our streets
+every day, and I cannot believe that German ladies admire the shocking
+garments in which their servants will come to the door and wait at
+table. But though these clothes are sloppy looking and unsuitable,
+they are never ragged; and the girl who puts on an impossible tie and
+blouse will also wear an impeccable long white apron with an
+embroidered monogram you can see across the room. In most towns
+servants go shopping or to market with a large basket and an umbrella.
+They do not consider a hat or a stuff gown necessary, for they are not
+in the least ashamed of being servants. Some years ago they made no
+attempt to dress like ladies when they went out for themselves, and
+even now what they do in this way is a trifle compared to the
+extravagant get-up of an English cook or parlour-maid on a Sunday
+afternoon. A German girl in service is always saving with might and
+main to buy her _Aussteuer_, and as she gets very low wages it takes
+her a long time. She needs about _L_30, so husbands are not expensive
+in Germany in that class. German servants get less wages than ours,
+and work longer hours. Speaking out of my own experience, I should say
+that they were indefatigable, amiable, and inefficient. They will do
+anything in the world for you, but they will not do their own work in
+a methodical way. A lady whose uncle at one time occupied an important
+diplomatic post in London, told me that her aunt was immensely
+surprised to find that every one of her English servants knew his or
+her work and did it without supervision, but that none of them would
+do anything else. The German lady, not knowing English ways, used to
+make the mistake at first of asking a servant to do what she wanted
+done instead of what the servant had engaged to do; but she soon found
+that the first housemaid would rather leave than fill a matchbox it
+was the second housemaid's "place" to fill; and what surprised her
+most was to find that her English friends sympathised with the
+housemaids and not with her. "We believe in everyone minding his own
+business," they said.
+
+"We believe that it is the servant's business to do what his employer
+wants," says the German.
+
+"You must tell him what you want when you engage him," you say. "Then
+he can take your place or leave it."
+
+"But that is impossible ... _Unsinn_ ... _Quatsch_...." says the
+German indignantly. "How can I tell what I shall want my servant to do
+three months hence on a Monday morning. _Das hat keinen Zweck._"
+
+"I know exactly what each one of my servants will do three months
+hence on a Monday morning," you say. "It is quite easy. You plan it
+all out...."
+
+But you will never agree. The German has his or rather her own
+methods, and you will always think her unmethodical but thrifty and
+knowledgeable, and she will always think you extravagant and ignorant,
+but "chic," and on these terms you may be quite good friends. In most
+German households there is no such thing as the strict division of
+labour insisted on here. Your cook will be delighted to make a blouse
+for you, and your nurse will turn out the dining-room, and your
+chambermaid will take the child for an airing. They are more human in
+their relation to their employers. The English servant fixes a gulf
+between herself and the most democratic mistress. The German servant
+brings her intimate joys and sorrows to a good _Herrschaft_, and
+expects their sympathy. When a girl has bad luck and engages with a
+bad _Herrschaft_ she is worse off than in England, partly because when
+German housekeeping is mean it sounds depths of meanness not unknown,
+but extremely rare here; and also because a German servant is more in
+the power of her employers and of the police than an English one.
+Anyone who has read Klara Viebig's remarkable novel, _Das Taegliche
+Brot_ (a story of servant life in Berlin) will remember the mistress
+who kept every bit of dainty food under lock and key, and fed the
+kitchen on soup-meat all the year round. The chambermaid gives way in
+a moment of hunger and temptation, manages to get the key, and is
+discovered by the worthless son of the house stealing cakes. He
+threatens her with exposure if she will not listen to his love-making.
+Even if there was no son and no love-making, a girl who once steals
+cakes in Germany may go from place to place branded as a thief.
+Because every servant has to have a _Dienstbuch_, which is under the
+control of the police, and has to be shown to them whenever she leaves
+her situation. There is no give and take of personal character in
+Germany. Ladies do not see the last lady with whom a girl has lived.
+They advertise or they go to a registry office where servants are
+waiting to be engaged. In Berlin every third house seems to be a
+registry office, and you hear as many complaints of the people who
+keep them as you hear here. So the government has set up a large
+Public Registry in Charlottenberg, where both sides can get what they
+want without paying fees. But servants are not as scarce in Germany
+yet as they are here and in America. German ladies tell you they are
+scarce, but it is only true in comparison with a former state of
+things. In comparison with London, servants are still plentiful in
+Germany. When a lady finds a likely looking girl at an office, she
+either engages her at once on the strength of the good character in
+her _Dienstbuch_, or, if she is very particular, she takes her home
+and discusses things with her there. The engagement is not completed
+until the lady has filled in several forms for police inspection;
+while the servant has to take her _Dienstbuch_ to the police station
+both when she leaves and when she enters a situation. It is hardly
+necessary to say that when a girl does anything seriously bad, and her
+employers record it in the book, the book gets "lost." Then the police
+interfere and make things extremely disagreeable for the girl. A
+friend told me that in the confusion of a removal her own highly
+valued servant lost her _Dienstbuch_, or rather my friend lost it, for
+employers usually keep it while a girl is in their service; and though
+she took the blame on herself, and explained that the book was lost,
+the police were most offensive about it. In the end the book was
+found, so I am not in a position to say what penalties my friend and
+her maid would have incurred if they had never been able to produce
+it. But Germans have often told me that servants as a class have real
+good reason to complain of police insolence and brutality. Here is an
+entry from a German servant's _Dienstbuch_, with nothing altered but
+the names. On the first page you found the following particulars:--
+
+GESINDE-DIENSTBUCH
+
+Fuer                  Anna Schmidt.
+Aus                  Rheinbeck.
+Alt                  Geb. 20 Juni 1885.
+Statur               Schlank.
+Augen                Grau.
+Nase }               Gewoehnlich.
+Mund }
+Haare                Dunkelblond.
+Besondere Merkmale
+
+_Official stamp._     (_Official signature of
+                            Amtsvorsteher._)
+
+Then came the record of her previous situations:--
+
+Key:
+A: NR.
+B: NAME, STAND, UND WOHNUNG DER DIENERSCHAFT
+C: INHABER IST ANGENOMMEN ALS
+D: TAG DES DIENSTANTRITTS
+E: TAG DES DIENSTAUSTRITTS
+F: GRUND DES DIENSTAUSTRITTS UND DIENSTABSCHIEDS--ZEUGNISS
+G: BEGLAUBIGUNG UND BEMERKUNG DER POLIZEI-BEHOeRDE
+
++--+------------+-------------+---------+--------+--------------+-----------
+ A |    B       |       C     |    D    |      E |      F       |    G
++--+------------+-------------+---------+--------+--------------+-----------
+ 1 |Wittwe      |Dienstmagd   |Den 20ten|Den 2ten|Veraenderung   |Gesehen
+   |Auguste     |             | Oktober | Januar | halber.      |
+   |Knoblauch   |             | 1901    | 1902   | Betragen     |(_Place and
+   |            |             |         |        | gut          |date, with
+   |            |             |         |        |              |official
+   |            |             |         |        |              |stamp and
+   |            |             |         |        |              |signature_)
+   |            |             |         |        |              |
+ 2 |Boretzky,   |Dienstmaedchen|Den 2ten |Den 2ten|Wird entlassen|Gesehen
+   |Restaurant  |             | Februar | Oktober| weil ihr     |
+   |zur Post,   |             | 1902    | 1904   | Benehmen mir |(_Place and
+   |Baerenstrasse|             |         |        | nicht mehr   |date, with
+   |2           |             |         |        | passt. Sonst |official
+   |            |             |         |        | fleissig und |stamp and
+   |            |             |         |        | ehrlich      |signature_)
++--+------------+-------------+---------+--------+--------------+-----------
+
+It will be seen that the characters given tell nothing about a
+servant's qualities and knowledge; while the vague complaint that Anna
+Schmidt's behaviour no longer suited her mistress might mean anything
+or nothing. In this case it meant that a son of the house had annoyed
+the girl with his attentions, and she had in consequence treated him
+with some brusquerie. But ten minutes' talk with a lady who knows the
+best and the worst of a servant is worth any _Dienstbuch_ in Germany.
+And when English servants write to the _Times_ and ask to have the
+same system here, I always wonder how they would like their failings
+sent with them from place to place in black and white; every fresh
+start made difficult, and every bad trait recorded against them as
+long as they earn their daily bread.
+
+Wages are much lower in Germany than here. Some years ago you could
+get a good cook for from L7 to L12, but those days are past. Now you
+hear of a general servant getting from L10 to L12, and a good plain
+cook from L15 upwards. These are servants who would get from L22 to
+L30 in England, and more in America. But the wages of German servants
+are supplemented at Christmas by a system of tips and presents that
+has in course of time become extortionate. Germans groan under it, but
+every nation knows how hard it is to depart from one of these
+traditional indefinite customs. The system is hateful, because it is
+neither one of free gift nor of business-like payment, but hovers
+somewhere between and gives rise to much friction and discontent. In a
+household account book that a friend allowed me to see I found the
+following entry. "Christmas present for the servant. 30 marks in
+money. Bed linen, 9.50. Pincushion, 1.5. Five small presents. In all
+42 marks. _Was not contented._" This was a general servant in a
+family of two occupying a good social position, but living as so many
+Germans do on a small income. But then the servant's wages for doing
+the work of a large well-furnished, well-kept flat was L14, and these
+same friends told me that servants now expect to get a quarter of
+their wages in money and presents at Christmas. A German servant gets
+a great deal more help from her mistress, and is more directly under
+her superintendence, than she would be in a household of the same
+social standing in this country. I have heard an English lady say that
+when she had asked people to dinner she made it a rule to go out all
+day, because if she did not her servants worried her with questions
+about extra silver and other tiresome details. All the notable
+housewives in England will say that this lady was a "freak," and must
+not be held up to the world as an English type. But I think there is
+something of her spirit in many Englishwomen. They engage their
+servants to do certain work, and hold them responsible. The German
+holds herself responsible for every event and every corner in her
+husband's house, and she never for a moment closes her eyes and lets
+go the reins. The servants are used to working hand in hand with the
+ladies of the household, and do not regard the kitchen as a department
+belonging exclusively to themselves after an early hour in the
+morning.
+
+"Why did you leave your last place?" you say to an English cook
+applying for yours.
+
+"Because the lady was always in the kitchen," she replies quite
+soberly and civilly. "I don't like to see ladies in my kitchen at all
+hours of the day. It is impossible to get on with the work."
+
+But in Germany the kitchen is not the cook's kitchen. It belongs to
+the people who maintain it, and they enter it when they please. It is
+always so spick and span that you sigh as you see it, because you
+think of your own kitchen at home with its black pans and unpleasant
+looking sink. _There are no black pans in a German kitchen_; you never
+see any grease, and you never by any chance see a teacloth or a duster
+with a hole in it. An English kitchen in a small household is
+furnished with more regard to the comfort of the servants than a
+German one, and with less concern for the work to be done there. We
+supply comfortable chairs, a coloured table-cloth, oil-cloth, books,
+hearth-rug, pictures, cushions, inkstand, and a roaring fire. The
+German kitchen lacks all these things. It does not look as if the
+women who live in it ever expected to pursue their own business, or
+rest for an hour in an easy chair. But the shining brightness of it
+rejoices you,--every vessel is of wood, earthenware, enamel, or highly
+polished metal, and every one of them is scrupulously clean. The
+groceries and pudding stuffs are kept in fascinating jars and barrels,
+like those that come to children at Christmas in toy kitchens made in
+Germany. The stove is a clean, low hot table at which you can stand
+all day without getting black and greasy. In this sensible spotless
+workshop a German servant expects to be busy from morning till night.
+Neither for herself nor for her fellow-servants will she ever set a
+table for a tidy kitchen meal. She eats anywhere and anywhen, as the
+fancy takes her and the exigencies of the day permit. Her morning meal
+will consist of coffee and rye bread without butter. In the middle of
+the morning she will have a second breakfast, rye bread again with
+cheese or sausage. In a liberal household she will dine as the family
+dines; in a stingy one she will fare worse than they. In an
+old-fashioned household her portion will be carved for her in the
+dining-room, because the joint will not return to the kitchen when the
+family has done with it, but be placed straightway in the
+_Speiseschrank_ under lock and key. In the afternoon she will have
+bread and coffee again, and for supper as a rule what the family has,
+sausage or ham or some dish made with eggs. One friend who goes out so
+much with her husband that they are rarely at home to supper, told me
+that she made her servant a monthly allowance to buy what she liked
+for supper. German servants are allowed coffee and either beer or
+wine, but they are never given tea. Except for the scarcity of butter
+in middle-class households, they live very well.
+
+They go out on errands and to market a great deal, but they do not go
+out as much for themselves as our servants do. A few hours every other
+Sunday still contents them in most places. Their favourite amusement
+is the cheap public ball, and the careful German householder is
+actually in the habit of trusting the key of the flat to his
+maid-of-all-work, and allowing her to return at any hour of the night
+she pleases. This at any rate is the custom in Berlin and some other
+large German towns, and the evil results of such a system are
+manifold. Over and over again burglaries have been traced to it. One
+beguiling man engages your maid to dance and sup with him, while his
+confederate gets hold of her key and comfortably rifles your rooms. On
+the girls themselves these entertainments are said to have the worst
+possible influence, and most sensible Germans would put a stop to them
+if they could.
+
+You must not expect in Germany to have hot water brought to you at
+regular intervals as you do in every orderly English household. The
+Germans have a curious notion that English life is quite uniform, and
+all English people exactly alike. One man, a notably wise man too,
+said to me that if he knew one English family he knew ten thousand.
+Another German told me that this account of German life would be
+impossible to write, because one part of Germany differed from the
+other part; but that a German could easily write the same kind of book
+about England, because from Land's End to John o' Groats we were so
+many peas in a pod. To us who live in England and know the differences
+between the Cornish and the Yorkshire people, for instance, or the
+Welsh and the East Anglians, this seems sheer nonsense. I have tried
+to understand how Germans arrive at it, and I believe it is by way of
+our cans of hot water brought at regular intervals every day in the
+year in every British household. I remember that their machine-like
+precision impressed M. Taine when he was in England, and certainly
+miss them sadly while we are abroad. Gretchen brings you no hot water
+unless you ask for it; but she will brush your clothes as a matter of
+course, though she does all the work of the household. She will,
+however, be hurt and surprised if you do not press a small coin into
+her hand at the end of each week, and one or two big ones at parting.
+One friend told me that when she stayed with her family at a German
+hotel her German relatives told her she should give the chambermaid a
+tip that was equal to 20 pf. for each pair of boots cleaned during
+their stay. It seems an odd way of reckoning, because the chambermaid
+does not clean boots. However, the tip came to L3, which seems a good
+deal and helps to explain the ease with which German servants save
+enough for their marriage outfit on small wages. It is usual also to
+tip the servant where you have supped or dined. Your opportunity
+probably comes when she precedes you down the unlighted stairs with a
+lantern or a candle to the house door. But you need not be at all
+delicate about your opportunity. You see the other guests make little
+offerings, and you can only feel that the money has been well earned
+when you have eaten the elaborate meal she has helped to cook, and has
+afterwards served to you.
+
+Domestic servants come under the law in Germany that obliges all
+persons below a certain income to provide for their old age. The Post
+Office issues cards and 20 pf. stamps, and one of these stamps must be
+dated and affixed to the card every Monday. Sometimes the employers
+buy the cards and stamps, and show them at the Post Office once a
+month; sometimes they expect the servant to pay half the money
+required. Women who go out by the day to different families get their
+stamps at the house they work in on Mondays. If a girl marries she may
+cease to insure, and may have a sum of money towards her outfit. In
+that case she will receive no Old Age Pension. But if she goes on with
+her insurance she will have from 15 to 20 marks a month from the State
+after the age of 70. In cases of illness, employers are legally bound
+to provide for their domestic servants during the term of notice
+agreed on. At least this is so in Prussia, and the term varies from a
+fortnight to three months. In some parts of Germany servants are still
+engaged by the quarter, but in Berlin it has become unusual of late
+years. The obligation to provide for illness is often a heavy tax on
+employers, especially in cases when the illness has not been caused by
+the work or the circumstances of the situation, but by the servant's
+own carelessness and folly. Most householders in Berlin subscribe 7.50
+a year to an insurance company, a private undertaking that provides
+medical help, and when necessary sends the invalided servant to a
+hospital and maintains her there. It even pays for any special food or
+wine ordered by its own doctor.
+
+One cause of ill health amongst German servants must often be the
+abominable sleeping accommodation provided for them in old-fashioned
+houses. It is said that rooms without windows opening to the air are
+no longer allowed in Germany, and there may be a police regulation
+against them. Even this cannot have been issued everywhere, for not
+long ago I had a large well furnished room of this kind offered me in
+a crowded hotel. It had windows, but they opened on to a narrow
+corridor. The proprietor was quite surprised when I said I would
+rather have a room at the top of the house with a window facing the
+street. I know a young lady acting as _Stuetze der Hausfrau_ who slept
+in a cupboard for years, the only light and air reaching her coming
+from a slit of glass over the door. I remember the consumptive looking
+daughter of a prosperous tradesman showing us some rooms her father
+wished to let, and suggesting that a cupboard off a sitting-room would
+make a pleasant study. She said she slept in one just like it on a
+higher floor. Of course she called it a _Kammer_ and not a cupboard,
+but that did not make it more inviting. Over and over again I have
+known servants stowed away in holes that seemed fit for brooms and
+brushes, but not for creatures with lungs and easily poisoned blood.
+This is one of the facts of German life that makes comparison between
+England and Germany so difficult and bewildering. Everyone knowing
+both countries is struck by the amount of State and police
+surveillance and interference the Germans enjoy compared with us. I do
+not say "endure," because Germans would not like it. Most of them
+approve of the rule they are used to, and they tell us we live in a
+horrid go-as-you-please fashion with the worst results. I suppose we
+do. But I have never known an English servant put to sleep in a
+cupboard, though I have heard complaints of damp fireless rooms,
+especially in old historical palaces and houses. And I have never been
+offered a room in a good English inn that had no windows to the open
+air. These windowless rooms may be forbidden as bedrooms by the German
+police, but it would take a bigger earthquake than the empire is
+likely to sustain to do away with those still in use.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+FOOD
+
+
+Although the Germans as a nation are large eaters, they begin their
+day with the usual light continental breakfast of coffee and rolls. In
+households where economy is practised it is still customary to do
+without butter, or at any rate to provide it only for the master of
+the house and for visitors. In addition to rolls and butter, you may,
+if you are a man or a guest, have two small boiled eggs; but eggs in a
+German town are apt to remind you of the Viennese waiter who assured a
+complaining customer that their eggs were all stamped with the day,
+month, and year. Home-made plum jam made with very little sugar is
+often eaten instead of butter by the women of the family; and the
+servants, where white rolls are regarded as a luxury, have rye bread.
+No one need pity them on this account, however, as German rye bread is
+as good as bread can be. Ordinary London household bread is poor stuff
+in comparison with it. The white rolls and butter are always excellent
+too, and I would even say a good word for the coffee. To be sure, Mark
+Twain makes fun of German coffee in the _Tramp Abroad_: says something
+about one chicory berry being used to a barrel of water; but the
+poorest German coffee is better than the tepid muddy mixture you get
+at all English railway stations, and at most English hotels and
+private houses. Milk is nearly always poor in Germany, but whipped
+cream is often added to either coffee or chocolate.
+
+The precision that is so striking in the arrangement of German rooms
+is generally lacking altogether in the serving of meals. The family
+does not assemble in the morning at a table laid as in England with
+the same care for breakfast as it will be at night for dinner. It
+dribbles in as it pleases, arrayed as it pleases, drinks a cup of
+coffee, eats a roll and departs about its business. Formerly the women
+of the family always spent the morning in a loose gown, and wore a cap
+over their undressed hair. This fashion, Germans inform you, is
+falling into desuetude; but it falls slowly. Take an elderly German
+lady by surprise in the morning, and you will still find her in what
+fashion journals call a _neglige_, and what plain folk call a wrapper.
+When it is of shepherd's plaid or snuff-coloured wool it is not an
+attractive garment, and it is always what the last generation but one,
+with their blunt tongues, called "slummocking." Most German women are
+busy in the house all the morning, and when they are not going to
+market they like to get through their work in this form of dress and
+make themselves trim for the day later. The advantage claimed for the
+plan is one of economy. The tidy costume worn later in the day is
+saved considerable wear and tear. The obvious disadvantage is the
+encouragement it offers to the sloven. In England whatever you are by
+nature you must in an ordinary household be down to breakfast at a
+fixed hour, presentably dressed; at any rate, with your hair done for
+the day, and, it is to be supposed, with your bath accomplished.
+Directly you depart from this you open the door to anything in the
+dressing-gown and slipper way, to lying abed like a sluggard, and to
+a waste of your own and the servants' time that undermines the whole
+welfare of a home. At least, this is how the question presents itself
+to English eyes. Meanwhile the continent continues to drink its coffee
+attired in dressing-gowns, and to survive quite comfortably. In every
+trousseau you still see some of these confections, and on the stage
+the young wife who has to cajole her husband in the coming scene
+usually appears in a coquettish one. But then it will not be made of
+shepherd's plaid or snuff-coloured wool.
+
+The dinner hour varies so much in Germany that it is impossible to fix
+an hour for it. In country places you will find everyone sitting down
+at midday, in towns one o'clock is usual, in Hamburg five is the
+popular hour, in Berlin you may be invited anywhen. But unless people
+dine at twelve they have some kind of second breakfast, and this meal
+may correspond with the French dejeuner, or it may be even more
+informal than the morning coffee. It consists in many places of a roll
+or slice of bread with or without a shaving of meat or sausage.
+Servants have it, children take it to school, charitable institutions
+supply the bread without the meat to their inmates. In South Germany
+all the men and many women drink beer or wine with this light meal,
+but in Prussia most people are content with a _belegtes Butterbrot_, a
+roll cut in two, buttered, and spread with meat or sausage or smoked
+fish. This carries people on till one or two o'clock, when the chief
+meal of the day is served.
+
+All over Germany dinner begins with soup, and in most parts the soup
+is followed by the _Ochsenfleisch_ that made it. At least
+_Ochsenfleisch_ should make it by rights.
+
+"I know what this is," said an old German friend, prodding at a tough
+slice from a dish we all found uneatable. "This is not _Ochsenfleisch_
+at all. This is _cow_."
+
+Good gravy or horseradish sauce is served with it, whether it is ox or
+cow, and for a time you take a slice day after day without
+complaining. It is the persistence of the thing that wears you out in
+the end. You must be born to _Ochsenfleisch_ to eat it year in and
+year out as if it was bread or potatoes. It does not appear as
+regularly in North as in South Germany; and in Hamburg you may once in
+a way have dinner without soup. People who know Germany find this
+almost beyond belief, but Hamburg has many little ways of its own, and
+is a city with a strong individual character. It is extremely proud of
+its cooking and its food, and it has every right to be. I once
+travelled with two Germans who in a heated way discussed the
+comparative merits of various German cities. They could not agree, and
+they could not let the matter drop. At last one man got the best of
+it. "I tell you that Hamburg is the finest city in Germany," he said.
+"In a Hamburg hotel I once ate the best steak I ever ate in my life."
+The other man had nothing to say to that. Hamburg has a splendid fish
+supply, and Holstein brings her quantities of fruit and of farm
+produce. Your second breakfast there is like a French dejeuner, a meal
+served and prepared according to your means, but a regular meal and
+not a mere snack. You drink coffee after it, and so sustain life till
+five o'clock, when you dine. Then you drink coffee again, and as your
+dinner has probably been an uncommonly good one you only need a light
+supper at nine o'clock, when a tray will arrive with little sandwiches
+and slender bottles of beer. In North Germany, where wine is scarce
+and dear, it is hardly ever seen in many households, so that a young
+Englishman wanting to describe his German friends, divided them for
+convenience into wine people and beer people. The wine people were
+plutocrats, and had red or white Rhine wine every day for dinner. I
+probably need not tell my well-informed country people that Germans
+never speak of hock.
+
+In households where the chief meal of the day is at one or two o'clock
+there is afternoon tea or coffee. It used invariably to be coffee,
+good hot coffee and fresh rusks and dainty little _Hoernchen_ and
+_Radankuchen_, an excellent light cake baked in a twisty tin. German
+cakes want a whole chapter to themselves to do them justice, and they
+should have it if it were not for a dialogue that frequently takes
+place in a family well known to me. The wife is of German origin, but
+as she has an English husband and English servants she keeps house in
+the English way. Therefore mutton cold or hashed is her frequent
+portion.
+
+"How I hate hashed mutton," she sometimes says.
+
+"Why do you have it, then?" says the husband, who has a genius for
+asking apparently innocent but really provoking questions.
+
+"What else can I have?" says the wife.
+
+"Eel in jelly," says the husband. He once tasted it in Berlin, and it
+must have given him a mental shock; for whenever his wife approaches
+him with a domestic difficulty, asks him, for instance, what he would
+like for breakfast, he suggests this inaccessible and uninviting dish.
+
+"There is never anything to eat in England except mutton and
+apple-tart," says the wife. "Your plain cooks can't cook anything
+else. They can't cook those really. Think of a German apple-tart--"
+
+"Why should I? I don't want one."
+
+"That's the hopeless part of it. You are all content with what Daudet
+called your _abominable cuisine_. I thank him for the phrase. It is
+descriptive."
+
+"Oh, well," says the husband, "we're not a greedy nation."
+
+So if this is the English point of view the less said about cakes the
+better. And anyhow, it is in this country that afternoon tea is an
+engaging meal. Berlin offers you tea nowadays, but it is never good,
+and instead of freshly cut bread and butter they have horrid little
+chokey biscuits flavoured with vanilla. Old-fashioned Germans used to
+put a bit of vanilla in the tea-pot when they had guests they delighted
+to honour, but they all know better than that nowadays. The milk is
+often boiled milk, but even that scarcely explains why tea is so seldom
+fit to drink in Germany. Supper is a light meal in most houses. The
+English mutton bone is never seen, for when cold meat is eaten it is
+cut in neat slices and put on a long narrow dish. But there is nearly
+always something from the nearest _Delikatessen_ shop with it,--slices
+of ham or tongue, or slices of one or two of the various sausages of
+Germany: _Blutwurst_, _Mettwurst_, _Schinkenwurst_, _Leberwurst_, all
+different and all good. When a hot dish is served it is usually a light
+one, often an omelette or some other preparation of eggs; and in spring
+eggs and bits of asparagus are a great deal cooked together in various
+ways: not asparagus heads so often as short lengths of the stalk sold
+separately in the market, and quite tender when cooked. There is nearly
+always a salad with the cold meat or a dish of the salted cucumbers
+that make such a good pickle. The big loaves of light brown rye bread
+appear at this meal instead of the little white rolls eaten at
+breakfast. Beer or wine is drunk, and very often of late years tea as
+well. Sweets are not usually served at supper, unless guests are
+present. They are eaten at the midday dinner, and each part of Germany
+has its own favourite dishes.
+
+Soups are nearly always good in Germany, and some of the best are not
+known in England. The dried green corn so much used for soup in South
+Germany can, however, be bought in London from the German provision
+merchants, so at the end of this greedy chapter I will give a recipe
+for making it. _Nudelsuppe_ of strong chicken stock and home-made
+_Nudeln_ used to be what the Berliner called his roast goose--"_eine
+jute Jabe Jottes_," but the degenerate Germans of to-day buy tasteless
+manufactured _Nudeln_ instead of rolling out their own. _Nudeln_ are
+the German form of macaroni, but when properly made they are better
+than any macaroni can be. If you have been brought up in an
+old-fashioned German menage, and, as a child likes to do, peeped into
+the kitchen sometimes, you will remember seeing large sheets of
+something as thin and yellow as chamois leather hung on a clothes
+horse to dry. Then you knew that there would be _Nudeln_ for your
+dinner, either narrow ones in soup, or wider ones boiled in water and
+sprinkled with others cut as fine as vermicelli and fried brown in
+butter. The paste is troublesome to make. It begins with a deceptive
+simplicity. Take four whole eggs and four tablespoonsful of milk if
+you want enough for ten people, says the cookery book, and make a
+light dough of it with a knife in a basin. Anyone can do that, you
+find. But then you must put your dough on the pastry board, and work
+in more flour as you knead it with your hands. "The longer you knead
+and the stiffer the dough is the better your _Nudeln_ will be,"
+continues the cookery book. But the next operation is to cut the dough
+into four, and roll out each portion _as thin as paper_, and no one
+who has not seen German _Nudeln_ before they are cooked can believe
+that this is actually done. It is no use to give the rest of the
+recipe for drying them, rolling each piece loosely and cutting it into
+strips and boiling them with salt in water. If you told your English
+cook to make you _Nudeln_ she would despise it for a foreign mess, and
+bring you something as thick as a pancake. If you want them you had
+better get them in a box from a provision merchant, as the _Hausfrau_
+herself does nowadays.
+
+English people often say that there is no good meat to be had in
+Germany. I would say that there is no good mutton, and a great deal of
+poor coarse beef. But the _Filetbraten_ that you can get from the best
+butchers is excellent. It is a long roll of undercut of beef, so long
+that it seems to be sold by the yard. If you cook it in the English
+way, says my German cookery book, you rub it well with salt and pepper
+and baste it with butter; while the gravy is made with flour,
+mushrooms, cream, and extract of beef. I should like to see the
+expression of the English plain cook if she was told to baste her beef
+with butter and make her gravy for it with mushrooms. I once came back
+from Germany with a new idea for gravy, and tried it on a cook who
+seemed to think that gravy was made by upsetting a kettle over a joint
+and then adding lumps of flour.
+
+"My sister's cook always puts an onion in the tin with a joint," I
+said tentatively, for I was not very hopeful. I know that there is
+always some insuperable objection to anything not consecrated by
+tradition.
+
+"It gives the gravy a flavour," I went on,--"not a strong flavour"--
+
+I stopped. I waited for the objection.
+
+"We couldn't do that HERE," said the cook.
+
+"Why not?--We have tins and we have onions."
+
+"It would spoil the dripping. What could I do with dripping as tasted
+of onion?"
+
+I had never thought of that, and so I had never asked my sister what
+was done in her household with dripping as tasted with onion.
+
+"I should think," I said slowly, "that it could be used to baste the
+next joint."
+
+"Then that would taste of onion," said the cook, "and I should have no
+dripping when I wanted it."
+
+I have always thought dripping a dull subject, and I know that it is
+an explosive one, so I said nothing more. I went on instead to
+describe a piece of beef stewed in its own juices on a bed of chopped
+vegetables. We actually tried that, and when it was cold it tasted
+agreeably of the vegetables, and was as tender to carve as butter.
+
+"How did you like the German beef?" I said to an Englishwoman who had
+been with me a great many years.
+
+"I didn't like it at all, M'm."
+
+"But it was so tender."
+
+"Yes, M'm, it made me creep," she said.
+
+So this chapter is really of no use from one point of view. You may
+hear what queer things benighted people like the Germans eat and
+drink, but you will never persuade your British household to
+condescend to them.
+
+Except in the coast towns, sea fish is scarce and dear all over
+Germany. Salt fish and fresh-water fish are what you get, and except
+the trout it is not interesting. A great deal of carp is eaten, cooked
+with vinegar to turn it blue, and served with horseradish or wine
+sauce. At a dinner party I have seen tench given, and they were
+extremely pretty, like fish in old Italian pictures, but they were not
+worth eating. At least a pound of fresh butter was put on each dish of
+them, handed round, and you took some of it as well as a sort of
+mustard sauce. Perch, pike, and eel are all eaten where nothing better
+is to be had; but the standing fish-course of inland Germany is trout.
+Most hotels have a tank where they keep it alive till it is wanted,
+and in the Black Forest the peasants catch it and peddle it, walking
+miles to make good sales. We went into the garden of our hotel in the
+Wiesenthal one day, and found the basin of the fountain there crammed
+with live trout. It was so full that you could take one in your hand
+for a moment and look at its speckles, as lovely as the speckles on a
+thrush's breast. The man who was carrying them on his back in a wooden
+water-tight satchel was having a drink, and he had put out his fish
+for a drink while he rested. I have never been within reach of fresh
+herrings in Germany, and have never seen them there, but smoked ones
+are eaten everywhere, often with salad, or together with smoked ham
+and potatoes in their jackets. Neither the ham nor the herrings are
+ever cooked when they have been smoked, and the ham is very tough in
+consequence. The breast of a goose, too, is eaten smoked but not
+cooked, and is considered a great delicacy. Poultry varies in quality
+a good deal. Everyone knows the little chickens that come round at
+hotel dinners, all legs and bones. A German family will sit down
+contentedly to an old hen that the most economical of us would only
+use for soup, and they will serve it roasted though it is as tough as
+leather. I think it must be said that you get better fowls both in
+France and England than in Germany. The German national bird is the
+goose. In England, if you buy a goose your cook roasts it and sends it
+up, and that is all you ever know of it. In Germany a goose is a
+carnival, rather as a newly killed pig is in an English farmhouse.
+You begin with a stew of the giblets, you perhaps continue with the
+bird itself roasted and stuffed with chestnuts, you may have a dozen
+different dishes made of its remains, while the fat that has basted it
+you hoard and use sparingly for weeks. For instance, you cook a
+cabbage with a little of it instead of with water. In South Germany,
+goose livers are prepared with it, and are just as much liked as _pate
+de foie gras_.
+
+Hares are eaten and most carefully prepared in Germany. They are
+skinned in a way that an English poulterer has been known to learn
+from his German customers and pronounce very troublesome, and the back
+is usually served separately, larded and basted with sour cream.
+Vegetables are cooked less simply than in England, and you will find
+the two countries disagree heatedly about them. The Englishman does
+not want his peas messed up with grease and vinegar, and though he
+will be too polite to say so, he will silently agree with his plain
+cook who says that peas served in the pod is a dish only fit for pigs
+and what she has never been accustomed to; while the German will get
+quite dejected over the everlasting plain boiled cabbage and potatoes
+he is offered week after week in his English boarding-house. At home,
+he says, he is used to mountains of fat asparagus all the spring, and
+he thinks slightly of your skinny green ones or of the wooden stuff
+you import and pay less for because it is "foreign." He likes potatoes
+cooked in twenty various ways, and when mashed he is of opinion that
+they should not be black or lumpy. He wants a dozen different
+vegetables dished up round one joint of beef, and in summer salads of
+various kinds on various occasions, and not your savage mixed salad
+with a horrible sauce poured out of a bottle; furniture polish he
+believes it to be from its colour. In the autumn he expects chestnuts
+cooked with gravy and vegetables, or made into light puddings; and
+apple sauce, he assures you, should be a creamy white, and as smooth
+as a well made puree. If he is of the South he would like a
+_Mehlspeise_ after his meat, _Spetzerle_ if he comes from Wuertemberg;
+one of a hundred different dishes if he is a Bavarian. He will not
+allow that your national milk puddings take their place. If he is a
+North German his _Leibgericht_ may be _Rote Gruetze_. This is eaten
+enormously all over Denmark and North Germany in summer, and is
+nothing in the world but a ground rice or sago mould made with fruit
+juice instead of milk. The old-fashioned way was to squeeze
+raspberries and currants through a cloth till you had a quart of pure
+juice, which you then boiled with 4 oz. ground rice and sugar to
+taste, stirring carefully lest it should burn, and stirring patiently
+so that the rice should be well cooked. But where fruit is dear you
+can make excellent _Rote Gruetze_ by stewing the fruit first with a
+little water and straining off the juice. A quart of currants and a
+pound of raspberries should give you a good quart mould. The Danes
+make it of rhubarb and plum juice in the same way; and my German
+cookery book gives a recipe for _Gruene Gruetze_ made with green
+gooseberries, but I tried that once and found it quite inferior to our
+own gooseberry fool.
+
+Food is so much a matter of taste and custom, that it seems absurd to
+make dogmatic remarks about the superiority of one kitchen to another.
+If you like cold mutton, boiled potatoes and rice pudding, most days
+in the week, you like them and there is an end of it. The one thing
+you can say for certain is that to cook for you requires neither skill
+nor pains, while to cook for a German family, even if it lives plainly
+and poorly, takes time and trouble. In trying to compare the methods
+of two nations, one must naturally be careful to compare households on
+the same social plane; and an English household that lives on cold
+mutton and rice pudding is certainly a plain and probably a poor one.
+In well-to-do English households you get the best food in the world as
+far as raw material goes, but it must be said that you often get poor
+cooking. It passes quite unnoticed too. No one seems to mind thick
+soups that are too thick and gravies that are tasteless, and melted
+butter like Stickphast paste, and savouries quite acrid with over much
+vinegar and anchovy. I once saw a whole company of English people
+contentedly eat a dish of hot scones that had gone wrong. They tasted
+of strong yellow soap. But I once saw a company of Germans eat bad
+fish and apparently like it. They were sea soles handed round in a
+Swiss hotel, and they should by rights have been buried the day
+before. I thought of Ottilie von Schlippenschlopp and the oysters. But
+the soles were carefully cooked, and served with an elaborate sauce.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GREEN CORN SOUP.--For six people take 7 oz. of green corn: wash it
+well in hot water, and cook it until it is quite soft in stock or salt
+water. Put it through a sieve, add boiling stock, and serve with fried
+slice of bread or with small semolina dumplings.
+
+GREEN CORN SOUP.--Another way. For six people take 5-1/2 oz. of green
+corn, wash it well in hot water, and let it simmer for a few minutes
+with a little stock and 1-1/2 oz. butter. Then add strong stock, and let
+it simmer slowly with the lid on till the corn is soft. Then stir a
+tablespoonful of fine flour with half a cupful of milk, and add it to
+the soup, stirring all the time. This must then cook an hour longer.
+When ready to serve, mix the yolks of two eggs with a little sour
+cream, and add the soup carefully so that it is not curdled. The soup
+is not strained through a sieve when it is served without dumplings.
+
+The little dumplings are first cooked as a panada of semolina, butter,
+milk and egg, and then dropped into the soup and cooked in it for ten
+minutes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+SHOPS AND MARKETS
+
+
+Berlin people compare their Wertheim with the Bon Marche at Paris, or
+with Whiteley's in London; only always adding that Wertheim is
+superior to any emporium in France or England. So it really is in one
+way. A great artist designed it, and the outside of the building is
+plain and stately, a most refreshing contrast to most Berlin
+architecture. On the ground floor there is a high spacious hall that
+is splendid when it is lighted up at night, and a staircase leads up
+and down from here to the various departments, all decorated soberly
+and pleasantly, mostly with wood. You can buy almost anything you want
+at Wertheim's, from the furniture of your house to a threepenny pair
+of cotton mittens with a thumb and no fingers. You can see tons of the
+most hideous rubbish there, and you can find a corner reserved for
+original work, done by two or three artists whose names are well known
+in Germany. For instance, Wertheim exhibits the very clever curious
+"applications" done by Frau Katy Muenchhausen, groups of monkeys,
+storks, cocks and hens, and other animals, drawn with immense spirit
+and life on cloth, cut out and then _machined_ on a background of
+another colour. The machining has a bad sound, I admit, but for all
+that the "applications" are enchanting. Wertheim, too, shows some
+good furniture; he sells theatre tickets, books, fruit, groceries,
+Liberty cushions, embroideries, soaps, perfumes, toys, ironmongery,
+china, glass, as well as everything that can be called drapery. He has
+a tea-room as well as a large general refreshment-room, where you can
+get ices, iced coffee, beer, all kinds of sandwiches, and the various
+_Torten_ Germans make so very much better than other people. In this
+room no money is wasted on waiters or waitresses, and no one expects
+to be tipped. You fetch what you want from a long bar running along
+two sides of the room, and divided into short stretches, each selling
+its own stuff; you pay at the counter, and you carry your ice or your
+cake to any little marble-topped table you choose. The advantage of
+the plan is that you do not have to wait till you catch the eye of a
+waitress determined not to look your way: the disadvantage is that you
+have to perform the difficult feat of carrying a full cup or a full
+glass through a crowd. Whatever you buy at the counter is sure to be
+good, but if all you could get was a Mugby Junction bun you would have
+to eat it after the exhausting process of buying a yard of ribbon or a
+few picture postcards at Wertheim's.
+
+To begin with, there are no chairs. You cannot sit down. On a hot
+summer morning, when you have perhaps been to the market already, you
+go to the Leipziger Strasse for theatre tickets, a pair of gloves, and
+two or three small odds and ends. On the ground floor you see gloves,
+innumerable boxes of them besieged by a pushing, determined crowd of
+women. The shop ladies in any coloured blouses look hot and weary, but
+try to serve six customers at once. When you have chosen what you
+want, and know exactly how sharp the elbows to left and right of you
+are, you see your lady walk off with your most pushful neighbour and
+the pair of three-penny gloves she has after much argument agreed to
+buy; for at Wertheim's you cannot depart with so much as a halfpenny
+postcard till it has passed through three pairs of hands besides your
+own. First the shop lady must deposit it with a bill at the cashier's
+desk. Then, when the cashier can attend to you, you pay for it. Then
+you may wait any time until the third person concerned will do it up
+in paper and string. This last proceeding is often so interminably
+delayed that if you were not in Germany you would snatch at what you
+have paid for and make off. But the _Polizei_ alone knows what would
+happen if you ran your head against the established pedantry of things
+in the city of the Spree. You would probably find yourself in prison
+for _Beamtenbeleidigung_ or _lese majeste_. "The Emperor is a fool,"
+said some disloyal subject in a public place. "To prison with him,"
+screamed every horror-struck official. "Off with his head!" "But I
+meant the Emperor of China," protested the sinner. "That's
+impossible," said the officials in chorus. "Anyone who says the
+Emperor is a fool means our Emperor." And an official spirit seems to
+encroach on the business one, and drill its very customers while it
+anxiously serves them. For instance, the arrangements for sending what
+you buy are most tiresome and difficult to understand at Wertheim's.
+His carts patrol the streets, and your German friends assure you that
+he sends anything. You find that if you shop with a country card the
+things entered on it will arrive; but if you buy a bulky toy or some
+heavy books and pay for them in their departments, you meet with fuss
+and refusal when you ask as a matter of course to have them sent. It
+can be done if your goods have cost enough, but not if you have only
+spent two or three shillings. It is the fashion in England just now
+for every man who writes about Germans to say that they are immensely
+ahead of us in business matters. I cannot judge of them in their
+factories and warehouses, but I am sure they are behind us in their
+shops. A woman cannot live three hundred miles from Berlin and get
+everything she wants from Wertheim delivered by return and carriage
+free. Nor will he supply her with an immense illustrated catalogue and
+a book of order forms addressed to his firm, so that the trouble of
+shopping from a distance is reduced to a minimum. In England you can
+do your London shopping as easily, promptly, and cheaply from a Scotch
+or a Cornish village as you can from a Surrey suburb.
+
+In most German towns you still find the shops classified on the old
+lines. You go to one for drapery, and to another for linen, and to
+another for small wares, and to yet another for ribbons. There are
+sausage shops and chocolate shops, and in Berlin there are shops for
+the celebrated Berlin _Baumkuchen_. There are a great many cellar
+shops all over Germany, and these are mostly restaurants, laundries,
+and greengrocers. The drinking scene in _Faust_ when Mephisto made
+wine flow from the table takes place in Auerbach's Keller, a cellar
+restaurant still in existence in Leipzig. The lower class of cellar
+takes the place in Germany of our slums, and the worst of them are
+regular thieves' kitchens known to the police. There is an admirable
+description of life in a cellar shop in Klara Viebig's _Das Taegliche
+Brot_. The woman who keeps it has a greengrocery business and a
+registry office for servants, and as such people go is respectable;
+but I recommend the book to my countrymen who go to Berlin as
+officials or journalists for ten days, are taken over various highly
+polished public institutions, and come back to tell us that the
+Germans are every man jack of them clean, prosperous, well mannered,
+and healthy. It is true that German municipal government is striving
+rather splendidly to bring this state of things about, but they have
+plenty of work before them still. These cellar shops, for instance,
+are more fit for mushroom growing than for human nurseries, and yet
+the picture in the novel of the family struggling with darkness and
+disease there can still be verified in most of the old streets of
+Germany.
+
+When our English journalists write column after column about the
+dangerous explosive energy and restlessness of modern Germany, I feel
+sure that they must be right, and yet I wish they could have come
+shopping with me a year or two ago in a small Black Forest town. One
+of us wanted a watch key and the other a piece of tape, and we set off
+light-heartedly to buy them, for we knew that there was a draper and a
+watchmaker in the main street. We knew, too, that in South Germany
+everyone is first dining and then asleep between twelve and two, so we
+waited till after two and then went to the watchmaker's. There was no
+shop window, and when, after ringing two or three times, we were let
+in we found there was no shop. We sat down in a big cool sitting-room,
+beautifully clean and tidy. The watchmaker's wife appeared in due
+course, looked at us with friendly interest, asked us where we came
+from, and how long we meant to stay, wondered if we knew her cousin
+Johannes Mueller, a hairdresser in Islington, discussed the relative
+merits of emigration to England and America, offered us some cherries
+from a basketful on the table, and at last admitted unwillingly that
+her husband was not at home, and that she herself knew not whether he
+had watch keys. So we set off to buy our tape, and again found a
+private room, an amiable family, but no one who felt able to sell
+anything. It seemed an odd way of doing business we said to our
+landlord, but he saw nothing odd in it. Most people were busy with
+their hay, he explained. Towards the end of a week we caught our
+watchmaker, and obtained a key, but he would not let us pay for it. He
+said it was one of an old collection, and of no use to him. The
+etiquette of shopping in Germany seems to us rather topsy-turvy at
+first. In a small shop the proprietor is as likely as not to conduct
+business with a cigar in his mouth, even if you are a lady, but if you
+are a man he will think you a boor if you omit to remove your hat as
+you cross his threshold. Whether you are a man, woman, or child, you
+will wish him good-morning or good-evening before you ask for what you
+want, and he will answer you before he asks what your commands are. If
+you are a woman, about as ignorant as most women, and with a humble
+mind, you will probably have no fixed opinion about the question of
+free or fair trade. You may even, if you are very humble, recognise
+that it is not quite the simple question Dick, Tom, and Harry think it
+is. But you will know for certain that when you want ribbons for a hat
+you had better buy them in Kensington and not in Frankfurt, and that
+though there are plenty of cheap materials in Germany, the same
+quality would be cheaper still in London. Everything to do with
+women's clothing is dearer there than here. So is stationery, so are
+groceries, so are the better class of fancy goods. But the Germans,
+say the Fair Traders, are a prosperous nation, and it is because their
+manufactures are protected. This may be so. I can only look at various
+quite small unimportant trifles, such as ribbons, for instance, or
+pewter vases or blotting-paper or peppermint drops. I know that a
+German woman either wears a common ribbon on her hat, or pays twice
+as much as I do for a good one; she is content with one pewter vase
+where your English suburban drawing-room packs twenty into one corner,
+with twenty silver frames and vases near them. A few years ago the one
+thing German blotting-paper refused to do was to absorb ink, and it
+was so dear that in all small country inns and in old-fashioned
+offices you were expected to use sand instead. The sand was kept
+beside the ink in a vessel that had a top like a pepper pot; and it
+was more amusing than blotting-paper, but not as efficacious. As for
+the peppermint drops, they used to be a regular export from families
+living in London to families living in Germany. They were probably
+needed after having goose and chestnuts for dinner, and ours were
+twice as large as the German ones and about six times as strong, so no
+doubt they were like our blotting-paper, and performed what they
+engaged to perform more thoroughly.
+
+But shops of any kind are dull compared with an open market held in
+one of the many ancient market places of Germany. Photographs of
+Freiburg give a bird's-eye view of the town with the minster rising
+from the midst of its red roofs; but there is just a peep at the
+market which is being held at the foot of the minster. On the side
+hidden by the towering cathedral there are some of the oldest houses
+in Freiburg. It is a large crowded market on certain days of the week,
+and full of colour and movement. The peasants who come to it from the
+neighbouring valleys wear bright-coloured skirts and headgear, and in
+that part of Germany fruit is plentiful, so that all through the
+summer and autumn the market carts and barrows are heaped with
+cherries, wild strawberries, plums, apricots, peaches, and grapes in
+their season. The market place itself, and even the steps of the
+minster and of the surrounding houses, are crowded with the peasants
+and their produce, and with the leisurely servants and housewives
+bargaining for the day's supplies. From a view of the market place at
+Cottbus in Brandenburg you may get a better idea of the people at a
+German market; the servants with their umbrellas, their big baskets,
+their baggy blouses and no hats, the middle class housewife with a hat
+or a bonnet, and a huge basket on her arm, a nursemaid in peasant
+costume stooping over her perambulator, other peasants in costume at
+the stalls, and two of the farm carts that are in some districts yoked
+oftener with oxen than with horses. There is naturally great variety
+in the size and character of markets, according to the needs they
+supply. In Hamburg the old names show you that there were separate
+markets for separate trades, so that you went to the Schweinemarkt
+when you wanted pigs, and to some other part of the city when you
+wanted flowers and fruit. In Berlin there are twelve covered markets
+besides the open ones, and they are all as admirably clean, tidy, and
+unpoetical as everything else is in that spick and span, swept and
+garnished Philistine city. The green gooseberries there are marked
+"unripe fruit" by order of the police, so that no one should think
+they were ripe and eat them uncooked; and you can buy rhubarb
+nowadays, a vegetable the modern Berliner eats without shuddering. But
+in a Berlin market you buy what you need as quickly as you can and
+come away. There is nothing to tempt you, nothing picturesque, nothing
+German, if German brings to your mind a queer mixture of poetry and
+music, gabled, tumbledown houses, storks' nests, toys, marvellous
+cakes and sweets and the kindliest of people. If you are so modern
+that German means nothing to you but drill and hustle, the roar of
+factories and the pride of monster municipal ventures, then you may
+see the markets of Berlin and rest content with them. They will show
+you what you already know of this day's Germany. But my household
+treasures gathered here and there in German markets did not have one
+added to their number in Berlin.
+
+"That!" said a German friend when I showed her a yellow pitcher dabbed
+with colour, and having a spout, a handle, and a lid,--"that! I would
+not have it in my kitchen."
+
+It certainly only cost the third of a penny, but it lived with honour
+in my drawing-room till it shared the fate of all clay, and came in
+two in somebody's hands. The blue and grey bellied bottle, one of
+those in which the Thuringian peasants carry beer to the field, cost
+three halfpence, but the butter-dish with a lid of the same ware only
+cost a halfpenny. There is always an immense heap of this rough grey
+and blue pottery in a South German market, and it is much prettier
+than the more ornate Coblenz ware we import and sell at high prices.
+So is the deep red earthenware glazed inside and rough outside and
+splashed with colours. You find plenty of it at the Leipziger Messe,
+that historical fair that used to be as important to Western Europe as
+Nijni Novgorod is to Russia and the East. To judge from modern German
+trade circulars, it is still of considerable importance, and the
+buildings in which merchants of all countries display their wares have
+recently been renovated and enlarged. Out of doors the various
+market-places are covered with little stalls selling cheap clothing,
+cheap toys, jewellery, sweets, and gingerbread; all the heterogeneous
+rubbish you have seen a thousand times at German fairs, and never
+tire of seeing if a fair delights you.
+
+But better than the Leipziger Messe, better even than a summer market
+at Freiburg or at Heidelburg, is a Christmas market in any one of the
+old German cities in the hill country, when the streets and the open
+places are covered with crisp clean snow, and the mountains are white
+with it, and the moon shines on the ancient houses, and the tinkle of
+sledge bells reaches you when you escape from the din of the market,
+and look down at the bustle of it from some silent place, a high
+window perhaps, or the high empty steps leading into the cathedral.
+The air is cold and still, and heavy with the scent of the Christmas
+trees brought from the forest for the pleasure of the children. Day by
+day you see the rows of them growing thinner, and if you go to the
+market on Christmas Eve itself you will find only a few trees left out
+in the cold. The market is empty, the peasants are harnessing their
+horses or their oxen, the women are packing up their unsold goods. In
+every home in the city one of the trees that scented the open air a
+week ago is shining now with lights and little gilded nuts and apples,
+and is helping to make that Christmas smell, all compact of the pine
+forest, wax candles, cakes, and painted toys, you must associate so
+long as you live with Christmas in Germany.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+EXPENSES OF LIFE
+
+
+A few years ago a German economist reckoned that there were only
+250,000 families in the empire whose incomes exceeded L450, a year.
+There were nearly three million households living on incomes ranging
+from L135 to L450, and nearly four millions with more than L90 but
+less than L135. But there were upwards of five millions whose incomes
+fell below L45. Since that estimate was made, Germany has grown in
+wealth and prosperity; and in the big cities there is great
+expenditure and luxury amongst some classes, especially amongst the
+Jews who can afford it, and amongst the officers of the army who as a
+rule cannot. But the bulk of the nation is poor, and class for class
+lives on less than people do in England. For instance, the headmaster
+of a school gets about L100 a year in a small town, and from L200 to
+L300 in a big one. A lieutenant gets about L65 a year, and an
+additional L12 if he has no private means. His uniform and mess
+expenses are deducted from this. He is not allowed to marry on his
+official income, unless he or his wife has an income of L125 in
+addition to his pay, as even in Germany an army man can hardly keep up
+appearances and support a wife and family on less than L190 a year. It
+is quite common to hear of a clerk living on L40 or L50, or of a
+doctor who knows his work and yet can only make L150. The official
+posts so eagerly sought after are poorly paid; so are servants,
+agricultural labourers, and artisans. When you are in Germany, if you
+are interested in questions of income and expenditure, you are always
+trying to make up your mind why a German family can live as
+successfully on L400 as an English family on L700, for you know that
+rent and taxes are high and food and clothing dear. If you are a woman
+and think about it a great deal, and look at family life in as many
+places and classes as you can, you finally decide that there are three
+chief reasons for the great difference between the cost of life in
+England and Germany. In the first place, labour is cheaper there; in
+the second place, the standard of luxury and even of comfort is lower;
+in the third place, the women are thriftier and more industrious than
+Englishwomen. This, too, leaves out of account the most important
+fact, that the State educates a man's children for next to nothing;
+and drills the male ones into shape when they serve in the army.
+
+Servants, we have seen, get lower wages than they do here, but the
+real economy is in the smaller number kept. Where we pay and maintain
+half a dozen a German family will be content with two, and the typical
+small English household that cannot face life without its plain cook
+in the kitchen and its parlour-maid in her black gown at the front
+door, will throughout the German Empire get along quite serenely with
+one young woman to cook and clean and do everything else required. If
+she is a "pearl" she probably makes the young ladies' frocks and irons
+the master's shirts to fill in her time. Germans do not trouble about
+the black frock and the white apron at the front door. They will even
+open the door to you themselves if the "girl" is washing or cooking.
+A female servant is always a "girl" in Germany. I once heard a young
+Englishwoman who had not been long in Germany ask an elderly
+acquaintance to recommend a dressmaker.
+
+"The best one in ---- is Fraeulein Mueller," said the elderly
+acquaintance.
+
+"But she is too expensive," said the Englishwoman, and she glanced
+across the room at the lady's nieces, who were neatly and plainly
+dressed. "Do girls go to Fraeulein Mueller?"
+
+"Girls! Certainly not," said the lady, with the expression Germans
+keep for the insane English it is their fate to encounter
+occasionally.
+
+"But that is what I want to know, ... a dressmaker girls go to ...
+girls with a small allowance."
+
+"I am afraid I cannot help you," said the lady stiffly. "I know
+nothing about the dressmakers girls employ."
+
+"Perhaps Miss Brown means 'young girls,'" said one of the nieces, who
+was not as slow in the uptake as her aunt, and it turned out that this
+was what Miss Brown did mean; but she had not known that in everyday
+life _Maedchen_ without an adjective usually means a servant. She had
+heard of _Das Maedchen aus der Fremde_ and _Der Tod und das Maedchen_,
+and blundered.
+
+I once made a German exceedingly angry by saying that the standard of
+comfort was higher in England than in Germany. She said it was lower.
+When you have lived in both countries and with both peoples you arrive
+in the end at having your opinions, and knowing that each one you hold
+will be disputed on one side or the other. "Find out what means
+_Gemuetlichkeit_, and do it without fail," says Hans Breitmann, but
+_Gemuetlichkeit_ and comfort are not quite interchangeable words. Our
+word is more material. When we talk of English comfort we are thinking
+of our open fires, our solid food, our thick carpets, and our
+well-drilled smart-looking servants. The German is thinking of the
+spiritual atmosphere in his own house, the absence, as he says, of
+ceremony and the freedom of ideas. He talks of a man being _gemuetlich_
+in his disposition, kindly, that is, and easy going. We talk of a
+house being comfortable, and when we do use the word for a person
+usually mean that she is rather stout. When both you and the German
+have decided that "comfort" for the moment shall mean material
+comfort, you will disagree about what is necessary to yours. You must
+have your bathroom, your bacon for breakfast, your table laid
+precisely, your meals served to the moment, your young women in black
+or your staid men to give them to you, and your glowing fires in as
+many rooms as possible. The German cares for none of these things. He
+would rather have his half-pound of odds and ends from the provision
+shop than your boiled cod, roast mutton, and apple-tart; he wants his
+stove, his double windows, his good coffee, his _kraeftige Kost_, and
+freedom to smoke in every corner of his house. He is never tired of
+telling you that, though you have more political freedom in England,
+you are groaning under a degree of social tyranny that he could not
+endure for a day. The Idealist, quoted in a former chapter, is for
+ever talking of the "hypocrisy" of English life, and her burning
+anxiety is to save the children of certain Russian and German exiles
+from contact with it. Another German tells you that our system of
+collegiate life for women would not suit her countryfolk, because
+they are more "individual." Each one likes to choose her own rooms,
+and live as she pleases. The next German has suffered torments in
+London because he had to sit down to certain meals at certain hours
+instead of eating anything he fancied at any time he felt hungry, and
+I suppose it is only your British _Heuchelei_ that leads you to smile
+politely instead of adding, "As the beasts of the field do." But I am
+always mazed, as the Cornish say, when Germans talk of their freedom
+from convention. In Hamburg I was once seriously rebuked by an old
+friend for carrying a book through the streets that was not wrapped up
+in paper. In Hamburg that is one of the things people don't do. In
+Mainz and in many other German towns there are certain streets where
+one side, for reasons no one can explain, is taboo at certain hours of
+the day; not of the night, but of the day. You may go to a music shop
+at midday to buy a sonata, and find, if you are a girl, that you have
+committed a crime. The intercourse between young people outside their
+homes is hedged round with convention. German titles of address are so
+absurdly formal that Germans laugh at them themselves. Their
+ceremonies in connection with anniversaries and family events bristle
+with convention, and offer pitfalls at every step to the stranger or
+the blunderer. It is true that men do not dress for dinner every day,
+and wax indignant over the necessity of doing so for the theatre in
+England; but there are various occasions when they wear evening dress
+in broad daylight, and an Englishman considers that an uncomfortable
+convention. The truth is, that these questions of comfort and
+ceremonial are not questions that should be discussed in the hostile
+dogmatic tone adopted in both countries by those who only know their
+own. The ceremonies that are foreign to you impress you, while those
+you have been used to all your life have become a second nature. An
+Englishwoman feels downright uncomfortable in her high stuff gown at
+night, and a German lady brought up at one of the great German Courts
+told me that when she stayed in an English country house and put on
+what she called a ball dress for dinner every night, she felt like a
+fool.
+
+To come back to questions of expenditure so intimately related to
+questions of comfort, it must be remembered that in an English
+household there are two dinners a day: one early for the servants and
+children, and one late for the grown-ups; and solid dinners cost money
+even in England, where at present there is no meat famine. When
+Germans dine late they don't also dine early, even where there are
+children; while the kitchen dinner, that meal of supreme importance
+here, is eaten when the family has finished theirs, and is as informal
+as the meal a bird makes of berries. In a German household, living on
+a small income, nothing is wasted,--not fuel, not food, not cleaning
+materials, as far as possible not time. The _tuechtige Hausfrau_ would
+be made miserable by having to pay and feed a woman who put on gala
+clothes at midday, and did no work to soil them after that.
+
+"Two girls," I once heard a German say to an Englishwoman who had just
+described her own modest household which she ran, she said, with two
+maids. "Two girls ... for you and your husband. But what, I ask you,
+does the second one do?"
+
+"She cleans the rooms and waits at table and opens the door," said the
+Englishwoman.
+
+"All that can one girl do just as well. I assure you it is so. There
+cannot possibly be work in your household for two girls. You have told
+me how quietly you live, and I know what English cooking is, if you
+can call it cooking."
+
+"You see, there must be someone to open the door."
+
+"Why could one girl not answer the door, ... unless she was washing.
+Then you would naturally go yourself."
+
+"But it wouldn't be natural in England," said the Englishwoman. "It
+would be odd. Besides, if you only have one servant, she can't dress
+for lunch."
+
+"Why should she dress for lunch?" asked the German. "My Auguste is a
+pearl, but she only dresses when we have _Gesellschaft_. Then she
+wears a plaid blouse and a garnet brooch that I gave her last
+Christmas, and she looks very well in them. But every day ... and for
+lunch, when half the work of the day is still to be done.... What,
+then, does your second girl do in the afternoons?"
+
+"She brings tea and answers the door."
+
+"Always the door. But your husband is not a doctor or a dentist. Why
+do so many people come to your door that you need a whole girl to
+attend to them?"
+
+"Oh! They don't," said the Englishwoman, getting rather worn. "There
+are very few, really. It's the custom."
+
+"Ah!" said the German, with a long deep breath of satisfaction. "So
+are you English ... such slaves to custom. _Gott sei Dank_ that I do
+not live in a country where I should have to keep a girl in idleness
+for the sake of the door. With us a door is a door. Anyone who happens
+to be near opens it."
+
+"I know they do," said the Englishwoman, "and when a servant comes she
+expects you to say _Guten Tag_ before you ask whether her mistress is
+at home?"
+
+"Certainly. It is a politeness. We are a polite nation."
+
+"And once, when I had just come back from Germany, I said Good-morning
+to an English butler before I asked if his mistress was at home, and
+he thought I was mad. We each have our own conventions. That's the
+truth of the matter."
+
+"Not at all," said the German. "The truth of the matter is, that the
+English are extremely conventional, and follow each other as sheep do;
+but the German does what pleases him, without asking first whether his
+neighbour does likewise."
+
+This is what the German really believes, and you agree or disagree
+with him according to the phase of life you look at when he is
+speaking. You find that when he comes to England he honestly feels
+checked at every turn by our unwritten laws, while when you go to
+Germany you wonder how he can submit so patiently to the pettiness and
+multiplicity of his written ones. He vaguely feels the pressure and
+criticism of your indefinite code of manners; you think his elaborate
+system of titles, introductions, and celebrations rather childish and
+extremely troublesome. If you have what the English call manners you
+will take the greatest care not to let him find this out, and in
+course of time, however much you like him on the whole, you will lose
+your patience a little with the individual you are bound to meet, the
+individual who has England on his nerves, and exhausts his energy and
+eloquence in informing you of your country's shortcomings. They are
+legion, and indeed leave no room for the smallest virtue, so that in
+the end you can only wonder solemnly why such a nation ever came to be
+a nation at all.
+
+"That is easily answered," says your Anglophobe. "England has arrived
+where she is by seizing everything she can lay hands on. Now it is
+going to be our turn."
+
+You express your interest in the future of Germany as seen by your
+friend, and he shows you a map of Europe which he has himself marked
+with red ink all round the empire as it will be a few years hence.
+There is not much Europe outside the red line.
+
+"But you haven't taken Great Britain," you say, rather hurt at being
+left out in this way.
+
+"We don't want it ... otherwise, ... but India ... possibly
+Australia." He waves his hands.
+
+You look at him pensively, and suddenly see one of the great everyday
+distances between your countryfolk and his. You think of a French
+novel that has amused you lately, because the parents of the heroine
+objected to her marriage with the hero on grounds you were quite
+incapable of understanding. The young man's work was in Cochin-China,
+and the young lady's father and mother did not wish her to go so far.
+Never in your life have you heard anyone raise such a trivial
+difficulty. You live in a dull sober street mostly inhabited by dull
+sober people, but there is not one house in it that is not linked by
+interest or affection, often doubly linked, with some uttermost end of
+the earth. You can hardly find an English family that has not one
+member or more in far countries, and so the common talk of English
+people in all classes travels the width of the world in the wake of
+those dear to them. But in 1900 only 22,309 Germans out of a
+population of 60,400,000 emigrated from Germany, and these, says Mr.
+Eltzbacher, whose figures I am quoting, were more than counterbalanced
+by immigration into Germany from Austria, Russia, and Italy. It is
+true that the population of Germany is increasing with immense
+rapidity, and that the question of expansion is becoming a burning
+one; but it is a question quite outside the strictly home politics of
+this unpretending chronicle. We are only concerned with the obvious
+fact that Germans settle in far countries in much smaller numbers than
+we do, and that those who go abroad mostly choose the British flag and
+avoid their own. It does not occur as easily to a German as to an
+Englishman that he may better his fortunes in another part of the
+world, or if he is an official that he will apply for a post in Asia
+or Africa. He wants to stay near the Rhine or the Spree where he was
+born, and to bring up his children there; and with the help of the
+State and his wife he contrives to do this on an extraordinary small
+income. The State, as we have seen, almost takes his children off his
+hands from the time they are six years old. It brings them up for
+nothing, or next to nothing; in cases of need it partially feeds and
+clothes them, it even washes them. Some English humorist has said that
+a German need only give himself the trouble to be born; his government
+does the rest. But first his mother and then his wife do a good deal.
+They are like the woman in Proverbs who worked willingly with her
+hands, rose while it was night, saw well to the ways of her household,
+and ate not the bread of idleness.
+
+I have before me the household accounts of several German families
+living on what we should call small incomes; and they show more
+exactly than any vague praise can do the prodigies of thrift
+accomplished by people obliged to economise, and at the same time to
+present a respectable appearance. The first one is the budget of a
+small official living with a wife and two children in a little town
+where a flat on the fourth or fifth floor can be had at a low rent:--
+
+                                         L   s. d.
+Rent                                    20   0  0
+Fuel                                     3  10  0
+Light                                    1  10  0
+Clothes for the man                      3   0  0
+Clothes for the wife                     2   0  0
+Clothes for the children                 1   0  0
+Boots for the man                        1   0  0
+Boots for the wife and children          1   5  0
+Repairs to boots                         0  17  6
+Washing and house repairs                3   0  0
+Doctor                                   2   0  0
+Newspaper                                0  12  0
+Charwoman                                3   0  0
+Taxes                                    2  10  0
+Postage                                  1   4  0
+Insurances                               2  10  0
+Amusements                               3   0  0
+Housekeeping                            45   0  0
+Sundries                                 3   1  0
+                                      -----------
+                                      L100   0  0
+                                      ===========
+
+The fuel allowed in this budget consists of 30 cwt. of _Steinkohlen_
+at 1 mark 15 pf. the cwt., 30 cwt. of _Braunkohlen_ at 70 pf. the
+cwt., and 4 cwt. of kindling at 1 mark 10 pf. the cwt. This quantity,
+3 tons without the kindling, would have to be used most sparingly to
+last through a long rigorous German winter, as well as for cooking and
+washing in summer. The amount set apart for lights allows for one lamp
+in the living room and two small ones in the passage and kitchen. The
+man may have a new suit every year, one year in winter and the next
+year in summer, and his suit may cost L2, 10s. His great-coat also is
+to cost L2, 10s., but he can't have a new suit the year he buys one,
+and it should last him at least four years. The ten shillings left is
+for all his other clothes except boots, and presumably for all his
+personal expenses, including tobacco, so he had better not spend it
+all at once. His wife performs greater miracles still, for she has to
+buy a winter gown and a summer gown, a hat and gloves, for her L2.
+These are not fancy figures. The miracle is performed by tens of
+thousands of German women every year. They buy a few yards of cheap
+stuff and get in a sewing-woman to make it up, for as a rule they are
+not nearly as clever and capable as Englishwomen about making things
+for themselves. Your English maid-servant will buy a blouse length at
+a sale for a few pence, make it up smartly, and wear it out in a month
+of Sundays. Your German she-official will have a blouse made for her,
+and it will probably be hideous; but she will wear it so carefully
+that it lasts her two years. Under-raiment she will never want to buy,
+as she will have brought a life-long supply to her home at marriage.
+You easily figure the children who are dressed on twenty marks a year,
+the girl in a shoddy tartan made in a fashion of fifty years ago with
+the "waist" hooked behind, and the boy in some snuff-coloured mixture
+floridly braided. But the interesting revelation of this small
+official budget is in its carefully planned fare made out for a
+fortnight in summer and a fortnight in winter. In winter the
+_Hausfrau_ may spend about 17s. a week on her food and in summer 19s.
+That leaves only 2s. a month for the extra days of the month, and for
+small expenses, such as soda, matches, blacking, and condiments.
+Breakfast may cost sixpence a day, and for this there is to be 3/4 litre
+of milk, 4 small white rolls, 1/2 lb. rye bread, 2 oz. of butter, 1 oz.
+of coffee. Nothing is set down for sugar, and I think that most German
+families of this class would not use sugar, and would eat their bread
+without butter. On Sunday they have a goose for dinner, and pay 4s.
+6d. for it, and though 4s. 6d. is not much to pay for a goose, it
+seems an extravagant dish for this family, until you discover that
+they are still dining on it on Wednesday. Not only has the _Hausfrau_
+brought home this costly bird, but she has laid in a whole pound of
+lard to roast with it, white bread for stuffing, and cabbage for a
+vegetable. Pudding is not considered necessary after goose, and for
+supper there is bread and milk for the children, and bread, butter,
+cheese, and beer for the parents. On Monday they have a rest from
+goose, and dine on _gehacktes Schweinefleisch_. German butchers sell
+raw minced meat very cheaply, and the _Hausfrau_ would probably get as
+much as she wanted for three-halfpence. On Tuesday they get back to
+the goose, and have a hash of the wings, neck, and liver with
+potatoes. For supper, rice cooked with milk and cinnamon. Germans use
+cinnamon rather as the Spaniards use garlic. They seem to think it
+improves everything, and they eat quantities of milky rice strewn with
+it. On Wednesday my family has soup for dinner, a solid soup made of
+goose, rice, and a pennyworth of carrots. For supper there is sausage,
+bread, and beer. By the way, this official is not really
+representative, for he spends nothing on tobacco, and only a penny
+every other day on beer. He cannot have been a Bavarian. His wife
+gives him cod with mustard sauce on Thursday, Sauerkraut and shin of
+beef on Friday, and on Saturday lentil soup with sausages, an
+excellent dish when properly cooked for those who want solid
+nourishing food. On the following Sunday 3 pounds of beef appears, and
+potato dumplings with stewed fruit, another good German mixture if the
+dumplings are as light as they should be. The husband has them warmed
+up for supper next day. One day he has bacon and vegetables for
+dinner, and another day only apple sauce and pancakes, but at every
+midday meal throughout the fortnight he has carefully planned food on
+which his wife spends considerable time and trouble. He never comes
+home from his work on a winter's day to have a mutton bone and watery
+potatoes set before him. In summer the bill of fare provides soups
+made with wine, milk, or cider; sometimes there are curds for supper,
+and if they have a chicken, rice and stewed fruit are eaten with it.
+But a chicken only costs this _Hausfrau_ 1 mark 20 pf., so it must
+have been a small one. I have often bought pigeons for 25 pf. apiece
+in Germany, and stuffed in the Bavarian way with egg and bread crumbs
+they are good eating. Fruit is extremely cheap and plentiful in many
+parts of Germany, but not everywhere. We have Heine's word for it that
+the plums grown by the wayside between Jena and Weimar are good, for
+most of us know his story of his first interview with Goethe; how he
+had looked forward to the meeting with ecstasy and reflection, and how
+when he was face to face with the great man all he found to say was a
+word in praise of the plums he had eaten as he walked. In the
+fruit-growing districts most of the roads are set with an avenue of
+fruit trees, and so law-abiding are the boys of Germany, and so
+plentiful is fruit in its season, that no one seems to steal from
+them. I have talked with elderly Germans, who remembered buying 3
+pounds of cherries for 6 kreuzers, a little more than a penny, when
+they were boys. But those days are over. The small sweet-water grapes
+from the vineyards of South Germany are to be had for the asking where
+they are grown, and apricots are plentiful in some districts, and the
+little golden plums called _Mirabellen_ that are dried in quantities
+and make the best winter compote there is. When I see English grocers'
+shops loaded up with dried American apples and apricots that are not
+worth eating, however carefully they are cooked, I always wonder why
+we do not import _Mirabellen_ instead.
+
+Sweetbreads in the Berlin markets were about 1 mark 10 pf. each last
+year, small tongues were 1 mark 10 pf. _Morscheln_, a poor kind of
+fungus much used in Germany, were 65 pf. a pound, real mushrooms were
+1 mark 50 pf., and the dried ones used for flavouring sauces were the
+same price. Butter and milk are usually about the same price as with
+us, but eggs are cheaper. You get twenty for a mark still in spring,
+and I remember making an English plumcake once in a Bavarian village
+and being charged 6 pf. for the three eggs I used. A rye loaf weighing
+4 pounds costs 50 pf., the little white rolls cost 3 pf. each. In
+Berlin last year vegetables were nearly as dear as in London, but in
+many parts of Germany they are much cheaper. I know of one housewife
+who fed her family largely on vegetables, and would not spend more
+than 10 pf. a day on them, but she lived in a small country town where
+green stuff was a drug in the market. Asparagus is cheaper than here,
+for it costs 35 pf. to 40 pf. a pound, and is eaten in such quantities
+that even an asparagus lover gets tired of it. Meat has risen terribly
+in price of late years. In the open market you can get fillet of beef
+for 1 mark 60 pf., sirloin for 90 pf., good cuts of mutton for 90 pf.
+to 1 mark, and veal for 1 mark, but all these prices are higher at a
+butcher's shop. Fillet of beef, for instance, is 2 marks 40 pf. a
+pound there.
+
+The budget of a family living on L250 a year does not call for so much
+comment as the smaller one, because L250 is a fairly comfortable
+income in Germany. Either a schoolmaster or a soldier must have risen
+in his profession before he gets it; but the following estimate is
+made out for a business man who does not get a house free or any other
+aid from outside:--
+
+                                                L   s.  d.
+Rent                                           50   0   0
+Fuel                                            7  10   0
+Light                                           5   0   0
+Clothes--husband                                6   0   0
+  "  wife                                       4   0   0
+  "  children                                   2  10   0
+Shoes                                           4   0   0
+School fees                                     5   0   0
+Washing                                         5   0   0
+Repairs to linen                                2  10   0
+Doctor and dentist                              5   0   0
+Newspapers and magazines                        2   0   0
+Servant's wages                                 9   0   0
+Servant's insurance and Christmas present       2   0   0
+Taxes                                           6   0   0
+Postage                                         1  10   0
+Insurances                                      5   0   0
+Housekeeping                                   90   0   0
+Amusements and travelling                      25   0   0
+Christmas and presents                         10   0   0
+Sundries                                        3   0   0
+                                              -----------
+                                             L250   0   0
+                                              ===========
+
+On examining this budget it will occur to most people that the poor
+_Hausfrau_ might spend a little more on her clothes and a little less
+on her presents, and as a matter of fact even in Germany, where
+Christmas is a burden as well as a pleasure, this would be done. The
+next budget is the most interesting, because it is not an ideal one
+drawn up for anyone's guidance, but is taken without the alteration of
+one penny from the beautifully kept account book of a friend. There
+were no children in the family, so nothing appears for school fees or
+children's clothes. The household consisted of husband and wife and
+one maid. They lived in one of the largest and dearest of German
+cities, and the husband's work as well as their social position forced
+certain expenses on them. For instance, they had to live in a good
+street and on the ground floor; and they had to entertain a good deal.
+
+                                                  M. Pf.
+Bread                                            180 --
+Meat                                             310 95
+Fish and poultry                                  98 55
+Aufschnitt                                        67 25
+Potatoes                                          19 10
+Vegetables                                       110 50
+Fruit                                             87 95
+Eggs                                              83 90
+Milk                                             121 85
+Butter                                           195 --
+Lard                                              36 55
+Flour, Gries, etc.                                25 60
+Sugar and treacle                                 66 20
+Groceries                                         22 50
+Coffee                                            67 --
+Tea and chocolate                                 17 95
+Drinks                                           159 10
+Lights                                            30 55
+Washing                                          126 80
+Laundress                                         32 25
+Ice                                               10 20
+Coal and wood                                    170 10
+Turf and other fuel                              159 25
+Matches                                            3 --
+Cleaning                                          60 --
+Furniture                                          4 55
+Repairs                                           19 50
+Crockery and kitchenware                          38 --
+Repairs                                           49 --
+China and glass                                   30  5
+Clothes--husband                                 181 20
+  "      wife                                    452 85
+Boots--husband                                    24 10
+  "    wife                                       60 35
+Linen                                             17  5
+Charities                                        232 20
+Rent                                            2150 --
+Rent of husband's share of professional rooms    318 70
+                                                ---- --
+                                  Carry forward 5839 45
+
+                                                  M. Pf.
+Brought forward                                 5839 45
+Fares                                             46 10
+Books                                             64 25
+Writing materials                                 30 50
+Charwoman and tips                                85 95
+Wages and servants' presents                     335 50
+Papers                                            35 25
+Carpenter                                        125 --
+Tobacco and cigars                               165 90
+Sundries                                          39 35
+Photography and fishing tackle                   141 10
+Music lessons                                     15 10
+Medicine                                          13 80
+Hairdresser                                        2 40
+Presents--family                                 291 75
+   "      friends                                119 --
+Amusements                                       137 25
+Travelling                                       736 40
+Stamps                                            99 65
+Entertaining (at Home)                           232 --
+Charities[2]                                      24 --
+Subscriptions                                    119 80
+Fire insurance                                    12 30
+Old age insurance                                 10 40
+                                                ---- --
+                                                8722 20
+                                                ==== ==
+
+There are some interesting points about this budget as compared with
+an English one of L436. It will be seen that although meat is so dear
+in Germany the weekly butcher's bill for three people was only 6s.,
+fish and poultry together only 2s., and the ham sausage, etc. from the
+provision shop under 1s. 6d. a week. The washing bill for the year is
+low, because nearly everything was washed at home, and dear as fuel is
+in Germany this household spent about L16, where an English one
+presenting the same front would spend L20 to L25. Observe, too, the
+amount spent on servants' wages by people who lived in a large
+charmingly furnished flat, and had a long visiting list. The wife,
+too, a very pretty woman and always well dressed, spent much less on
+her toilet than anyone would have guessed from its finish and variety,
+for she came from one of the German cities where women do dress well.
+There is nearly as much difference amongst German cities in this
+respect as there is amongst nations. Berlin is far behind either
+Hamburg or Frankfurt, for instance. The middle-class women of Berlin
+have an extraordinary affection all through the summer season for
+collarless blouses, bastard tartans, and white cotton gloves with
+thumbs but no fingers. In England the force of custom drives women to
+uncover their necks in the evening, whether it becomes them or not,
+and it is not a custom for which sensible elderly women can have much
+to say. But pneumonia blouses have never been universal wear in any
+country, and it is impossible to explain their apparently irresistible
+attraction for all ages and sizes of women in the Berlin electric
+cars. Those who were not wearing pneumonia blouses a year ago were
+wearing _Reform-Kleider_, shapeless ill-cut garments usually of grey
+tweed. The oddest combination, and quite a common one, was a sack-like
+_Reform-Kleid_, with a saucy little coloured bolero worn over it,
+fingerless gloves, and a madly tilted beflowered hat perched on a
+dowdy coiffure. These are rude remarks to make about the looks of
+foreign ladies, but the _Reform-Kleid_ is just as hideous and absurd
+in Germany now as our bilious green draperies were on the wrong people
+twenty-five years ago, and I am sure every foreigner who came to
+England must have laughed at them. On the whole, I would say of German
+women in general what a Frenchwoman once said to me in the most
+matter-of-fact tone of Englishwomen, _Elles s'habillent si mal_.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] Probably private charities.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+HOSPITALITY
+
+
+If a German cannot afford to ask you to dinner he asks you to supper,
+and makes his supper inviting. At least, he does if he is sensible,
+and if he lives where an inexpensive form of entertainment is in
+vogue. But even in Germany people are not sensible everywhere. The
+headmaster of a school in a small East Prussian town told me that his
+colleagues, the higher officials and other persons of local
+importance, felt bound to entertain their friends at least once a
+year, and that their way was to invite everyone together to a dinner
+given at the chief hotel in the town; and that to do this a family
+would stint itself for months beforehand. He spoke with knowledge, so
+I record what he said; but I have never been amongst Germans who were
+hospitable in this painful way. Hotels are used for large
+entertainments, just as they are in England, but most people receive
+their friends in their homes, and only hire servants for some special
+function, like a wedding or a public dinner.
+
+The form of hospitality most popular in England now, the visit of two
+or three days' duration, is hardly known in Germany, and I believe
+that they have not begun yet to supply their guests with small cakes
+of soap labelled "Visitors," and meant to last for a week-end but not
+longer. In towns no one dreams of having a constant succession of
+staying guests, and either in town or country when a German family
+expects a guest at all it is more often than not for the whole summer
+or winter. You do not find a German girl arranging, as her English
+cousin will, for a round of visits, fitting in dates, writing here and
+there to know if people can take her in, and by the same post
+answering those who are planning a pilgrimage for themselves and wish
+to be taken. A visit in Germany is not the flighty affair it is with
+us.
+
+"This winter," says your friend, "my niece from Posen will be with
+us," and presently the niece arrives and stays about three months.
+There is rarely more than one spare room on a flat, and that is often
+a room not easily spared. In country houses there are rows of rooms,
+but they are not filled by an everlasting procession of guests in the
+English way. When you stay in a country house at home you wonder how
+your hosts ever get anything done, and whether they don't sometimes
+wish they had a few days to themselves. To be sure, English hosts go
+about their business and leave you to yours, more than Germans think
+polite. I once spent six weeks, quite an ordinary visit as to length,
+with some friends who had several grown-up children. It was a most
+cheerful friendly household, but one day I got into a corner near the
+stove, rather glad for a change to be myself for a while with a novel
+for company. When I had been there a little time the second daughter
+looked in and at once apologised.
+
+"Mamma sent me to see," she explained,--"she feared you were by
+yourself."
+
+It is not easy to tell your German hosts that you like and wish to be
+by yourself sometimes; and if you say that you are used to it in
+England you won't impress them. The English are so inhospitable and
+unfriendly, they will say, for that is one of the many popular myths
+that are believed about us. I have been told of a German lady who has
+lived here most of her life, and complains to her German friends that
+she has never spent a night under an English roof; but then, she
+chooses to associate exclusively with Germans, whose roofs she refuses
+to regard as English ones, even when they are in Kensington; and she
+cherishes such an invincible prejudice against the born English that
+she lives amongst them year after year without making a friend. It
+would be quite simple to perform the same feat in Paris, or even in
+Berlin, although there you would not have such a large foreign colony
+to stand between you and the detestable natives.
+
+The real difficulty in writing about German hospitality is to find and
+express the ways in which it differs from our own; and certainly these
+lie little in qualities of kindness and generosity. Amongst both
+nations, if you have a friendly disposition you will find friends
+easily, and receive kindness on all sides. Perhaps, as one concrete
+instance is worth many assertions, I may describe a visit I paid many
+years ago to a family who invited me because a marriage had recently
+connected us. I had seen some of the family at the wedding, and had
+been surprised to receive a warm invitation, not for a week-end and a
+cake of visitors' soap, but for the rest of the winter; six weeks or
+two months at least. The family living at home consisted of the
+parents, a grown-up son and two grown-up daughters. Some of them met
+me at the station, for the German does not breathe who would let a
+guest arrive or depart alone. Your friends often give you flowers when
+you arrive, and invariably when you go away. I cannot remember about
+the flowers on this occasion, but I remember vividly that the day
+after my arrival the two married daughters living in the same town
+both called on me and brought me flowers. Week after week, too, they
+made it their pleasure to entertain me just as kindly as my immediate
+hosts, taking me to concerts or the opera, asking me to dinner or
+supper, including me on every occasion in the family festivities,
+which were numerous and lively. In some ways my hosts found me a
+disappointing guest, and said so. The trouble was that I liked plain
+rolls and butter for breakfast, while the daughters for days before I
+came had baked every size and variety of rich cake for me to eat first
+thing in the morning with my coffee. I never could eat enough to
+please anyone either. You never can in Germany, try as you may. Yet it
+was hungry weather, for the Rhine was frozen hard all the time I was
+there, and we used to skate every day in the harbour when the
+daughters of the house had finished their morning's work. Two maids
+were kept on the flat, but, like most German servants, they were
+supposed to require constant supervision, and when a room was turned
+out the young ladies in their morning wrappers helped to do it. They
+helped with the ironing too and the cooking, and did all the mending
+of linen and clothes. "A child's time belongs to her parents," said
+the father one day when the elder daughter wanted to skate, but was
+told that she could not be spared. "I've had a heavenly time," said a
+girl friend who had been laid up for some weeks with a sprained ankle;
+"I've had nothing to do but read and amuse myself." The household
+work, however, was usually done before the one o'clock dinner, and the
+afternoon was given up to skating, walks, and visits. There were not
+so many formal calls paid as in England, but there was a constant
+interchange of hospitality amongst the members of the family, the kind
+of intimate unceremonious entertaining described in Miss Austen's
+novels. Every time one of the many small children had a birthday there
+was a feast of chocolate and cakes, a gathering of the whole clan. The
+birthday cake had a sugared _Spruch_ on it, and a little lighted
+candle for each year of the child's age, and the birthday table had a
+present on it from everyone who came to the party, and many who did
+not. Once a week the married daughters and their husbands came to
+supper with my hosts, and every day when they were not coming to
+supper they called on their mother, and if she could coax them to stay
+drank their afternoon coffee with her. Sometimes one or two strangers
+were asked to coffee, for this household was an old-fashioned one, and
+gave you good coffee rather than wishy-washy tea. It made a point of
+honour of a _Meringuetorte_ when strangers came, and of the little
+chocolate cream cakes Germans call Othellos. But it must not be
+supposed that one or two strangers constitute a _Kaffee-Klatsch_, that
+celebrated form of entertainment where at every sip a reputation dies.
+A genuine _Klatsch_ was, however, given during my stay by a young
+married woman who wished to entertain her friends and display her
+furniture. About twenty ladies were invited, and when they had
+assembled they were solemnly conducted through every room of the flat
+from the drawing-room to the spick-and-span kitchen, where every pan
+was of shining copper and every cloth embroidered with the bride's
+monogram. The procession as it filed through the rooms chattered like
+magpies, for except myself every member of it had been to school with
+the bride, and had helped to adorn her home with embroidered chair
+backs, cushions, cloths, newspaper stands, foot-stools, duster bags,
+and suchlike, all of which they now had the pleasure of seeing in the
+places suitable to them. By the time we sat down in the dining-room
+to a table loaded with cakes, the slight frost of arrival had melted
+away. The strange Englishwoman no longer acted as a wet blanket, and
+when she tried to converse with her neighbours she found, as she still
+finds at German entertainments, that she could only do so by screaming
+at the top of her voice as you do in England in a high wind or in the
+sound of loud machinery. Everyone was in the highest spirits, and the
+collective noise they made was amazing. In Germany, when actors play
+English parts or when people in private life put on English manners,
+the first thing they do is to lower their voices as if they had met to
+bury a friend. This is the way our natural manner strikes them, while
+their natural manner strikes us as easy and jolly, but tiring to the
+voice and after a time to the spirit. There are quiet Germans, but
+when they sit at a good man's table they must certainly either shout
+or be left out of all that goes on. At a _Kaffee-Klatsch_ you either
+shout or whisper, you eat every sort of rich cake presented to you if
+you can, you drink chocolate or coffee with whipped cream. Nowadays
+you would often find tea provided instead. When the hostess finds she
+cannot persuade anyone to eat another cake, she leads her guests back
+to the drawing-room, and the _Klatsch_ goes on. There is often music
+as well as gossip, and before you are allowed to depart there are more
+refreshments, ices, sweetmeats, fruit, little glasses of lemonade or
+_Bowle_. When you get home you do not want any supper, and you are
+quite hoarse, though you have only been to a simple _Kaffee-Klatsch_
+without _Schleppe_. Your friends tell you that when they were young a
+_Kaffee-Klatsch mit Schleppe_ was the favourite form of entertaining,
+and lasted the whole afternoon and evening. Men were asked to come in
+when the _Klatsch_ was over and a supper was provided. Those must have
+been proud and bustling days for a _Hausfrau_ with one "girl."
+
+To be asked to dinner or supper in Germany may mean anything. Either
+form of invitation varies both in hour and kind more than it does in
+England; but unless you are asked to a dinner that precedes a dance
+you hardly ever need evening dress. Some years ago you would have
+written that people never dressed for dinner in Germany except when
+the dinner celebrated a betrothal, a wedding, or some equally
+important and unusual event. But it has become the fashion in Berlin
+lately to dress for large dinners and evening entertainments. No rule
+can be laid down for the guidance of English visitors to Germany,
+because what you wear must depend partly on the dinner hour and partly
+on the ways of your hosts and their friends. Last year when I was in
+Berlin I accepted a formal invitation sent a fortnight beforehand to a
+dinner given on a Sunday at five o'clock. As the host was a
+distinguished scientific man who had just returned from a journey
+round the world, it promised to be an interesting entertainment; and
+there were, in fact, some of the most celebrated members of the
+University present. They were all in morning dress, and their
+womenfolk wore what we should call Sunday frocks. The dinner was
+beautifully cooked and served, and was not oppressively long. Soup
+began it of course, roast veal with various vegetables followed, fish
+came next, lovely little grey-blue fish better to look at than to eat,
+then chicken, ice pudding, and dessert. There were flowers on the
+table, but not as many as we should have with the same opportunities,
+for the house was set in an immense garden; and all down the long
+narrow table there were bottles of wine and mineral water. When the
+champagne came, and that is served at a later stage in Germany than it
+is with us, speeches of congratulation were made to the host on his
+safe return, and every guest in reach clinked their glasses with his.
+After dinner men and women rose together in the German way, and drank
+coffee in the drawing-room. The men lighted cigars. A little later in
+the evening slender glasses of beer and lemonade were brought round,
+and just before everyone left at nine o'clock there was tea and a
+variety of little cakes and sandwiches, not our double sandwiches, but
+tiny single slices of buttered roll, each with its scrap of caviare or
+smoked salmon.
+
+A ball supper or a Christmas supper in Germany consists of three or
+four courses served separately, and all hot except the sweet, which is
+usually _Gefrorenes_. Salmon, roast beef or veal, venison or chicken,
+and then ice would be an ordinary menu, and every course would be
+divided into portions and handed round on long narrow dishes. In most
+German towns you are often asked to supper, and very seldom to dinner.
+You never know beforehand what sort of meal to expect unless you have
+been to the house before. In some houses it will be hot, in others
+cold. In Berlin, supper usually offers you a dish made with eggs and
+mushrooms, eggs and asparagus, or some combination of the kind, and
+after this the usual variety of ham and sausages fetched from the
+provision shop. Tea and beer are drunk at this meal in most houses.
+Sometimes Rhine wine is on the table too. The sweets are often small
+fruit tartlets served with whipped cream. One menu I remember
+distinctly, because it was so quaint and full of surprises. We began
+with huge quantities of asparagus and poached eggs eaten together.
+Then we had _Pumpernickel_, Gruyere cheese and radishes, and for a
+third course vanilla ice. That was the end of the supper, but later in
+the evening, just before we left, in came an enormous dish covered
+with gooseberry tartlets, and we had to eat them, for somehow in
+Germany it seems ungrateful and unfriendly not to eat and drink what
+is provided.
+
+After dinner or supper everyone wishes everyone else _Mahlzeit_ which
+is to say, "I wish you a good digestion." Sometimes people only bow as
+they say it, but more often they shake hands. I know an Englishman who
+was much puzzled by this ceremony at his first German dinner-party. He
+saw everyone shaking hands as if they were about to disperse the
+instant the feast was over, and when his host came to him with a
+smiling face, took his hand and murmured _Mahlzeit_, he summoned what
+German he had at his command and answered _Gute Nacht_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+GERMAN SUNDAYS
+
+
+There was to be singing in the forest on Sunday afternoon, we were
+told, when we arrived at our little Black Forest town; and we were on
+no account to miss it. We did not want to miss anything, for whenever
+we looked out of our windows or strolled through the streets we were
+entertained and enchanted. From the hotel we could see women and girls
+pass to and fro all day with the great wooden buckets they carried on
+their backs and filled at the well close by. As dusk fell the oldest
+woman in the community hobbled out, let down the iron chains slung
+across the street, and lighted the oil lamps swinging from them. All
+the gossips of the place gathered at the well of evenings, and
+throughout the day barefooted children played there. Behind the main
+street there were gabled houses with ancient wooden balconies and
+gardens crammed with pinks. The population mostly sat out of doors
+after dark, and as it was hot weather no one went to bed early. Even
+in the dead of night the timber waggons drawn by oxen passed through
+the town, and the driver did his best to wake us by cracking his long
+whip. For though a Black Forest town is mediaeval in its ways, it is
+not restful. It may soothe you by suggestion, the people seem so
+leisurely and the life so easy going; but there is not an hour in the
+twenty-four when you are secure from noise. The Sunday in question
+began with the bustle occasioned in a country inn by an unusual strain
+on its resources. There must be an extra good dinner for the expected
+influx of guests, said the landlord's niece, who kept house for him,
+while the wife and daughters ran a second hotel higher up the valley.
+We escaped to the forest, where the morning hours of a hot June day
+were fresh and scented, and we were sorry we had to return to the
+hotel for a long hot midday dinner. When it was over, we sat in the
+garden and wondered why people held a festival on the top of a hill on
+such a sleepy afternoon. However, when the time came we joined the
+leisurely procession making the ascent. An hour's stroll took us to
+the concert hall, a forest glade where people sat about in groups
+waiting for the music to begin. Barrels of beer had been rolled up
+here, and children were selling _Kringel_, crisp twists of bread
+sprinkled with salt. There were more children present than adults, and
+we observed, as you nearly always will in Germany, that though they
+belonged to the poorer classes they wore neat clothes and had quiet,
+modest manners. The older people often let them drink out of their
+glasses, for it was a thirsty afternoon, and when the singing began
+the children joined in some of the songs. The occasion of the festival
+was the friendly meeting of several choirs, and they sang fine anthems
+as well as _Volkslieder_. The effect of the music in the heart of the
+forest was enchanting, and we stayed till the end. These choral
+competitions or reunions often take place on a Sunday in Germany, and
+in summer are often held in an inn garden. They bring some custom to
+the innkeeper, but drunkenness and disorder are almost unknown. In
+fact, all the cases of drunkenness I have seen in Germany have been
+in the Munich comic papers. You never by any chance hear of it as you
+do in England amongst people you know, and you may spend hours at the
+Berlin Zoo on a Whit-Monday and see no one who is not sober.
+University students get drunk and have fights with innkeepers and
+policemen, but that is etiquette rather than vice. Next day they
+suffer from _Katzenjammer_, but feel that they are upholding ancient
+tradition. Real intemperance is found almost entirely amongst the
+dregs of the big cities and the lowest class of peasants.
+
+In Berlin the better class of artisans and small tradespeople escape
+from their flats on Sundays to their allotment gardens. You see whole
+tracts of these gardens on the outskirts of the city, and many of them
+have some kind of summer house or rough shelter. Here the family
+spends the whole day in fresher air, and presumably finds out how to
+grow the simpler kinds of flowers and vegetables. Those who have no
+garden and can afford a few pence for fares go farther afield. They
+carry food for the day in tin satchels, or rolls that look as if they
+ought to accompany butterfly nets and contain entomological specimens.
+But they are usually in the hands of a stout alpaca-clad middle-class
+mater-familias, who looks rather anxious and flustered while she herds
+her flock and hunts for a garden with the announcement, "Hier koennen
+Familien Kaffee kochen." There for a trifling indemnity she can be
+accommodated with seats, cups and saucers, and hot water; just as
+people can in an English tea-garden. Provisions she has with her in
+her _Pickenick Rolle_. If fate takes you to Potsdam on a fine summer
+Sunday, you will think that the whole bourgeoisie of Berlin has
+elected to come by the same train and steamer, and that everyone but
+you has brought food for the day in a green tin. You need not expect
+to find a seat either in the train or the steamer at certain hours of
+the day, and as you stand wedged in the crowd on the dangerously
+overladen boat, and look about you as best you can at the chain of
+wooded lakes, you wonder how it is that such overcrowding is permitted
+in a police-governed land. At home we take such things for granted as
+part of our system or want of system. But in Germany the moment you
+cross the frontier a thousand trifles make you feel that you are a
+unit in an army, drilled and kept under by the bureaucracy and the
+police. It surprises you to see an unmanageable crowd in a train or on
+a steamer, much as it would surprise you to see soldiers swarm at will
+into a troopship. You expect them to march precisely, each man to his
+place. And in Germany this nearly always happens in civil life; while
+even on a Sunday or a public holiday the mob behaves itself. At the
+Berlin Zoo, for instance, there are such masses of people every Sunday
+that you see nothing but people. It is impossible, or rather would not
+be agreeable, to force your way through the crowd surrounding the
+cages. But the people are interesting, and it is to see them that you
+have ventured here. You soon find, however, that it is not a venture
+at all. No one will offend you, no one is drunken or riotous. The
+gardens are packed with decent folk, mostly of the lower middle
+classes, and the only unseemly thing you see them do is to eat small
+hot sausages with their fingers in the open-air restaurants.
+
+Sunday is the great day of the week at German theatres. In all the
+large towns there are afternoon performances at popular prices, and
+this means that people who can pay a few pence for a seat can see all
+the great classical plays and most of the successful modern ones; and
+they can hear many of the great operas as well as a variety of
+charming light ones never heard in this country. On one Sunday
+afternoon in Berlin, Hoffmann's _Erzaehlungen_ was played at one
+theatre, and at others Gorky's _Nachtasyl_, Tolstoy's _Power of
+Darkness_, Hauptmann's _Versunkene Glocke_, the well known military
+play _Zapfenstreich_, and Lortzing's light opera _Der Waffenschmied_.
+The star players and singers do not usually appear at these popular
+performances, and the Wagnerian _Ring_ has, as far as I know, never
+yet been given. But on Sunday afternoons all through the winter the
+playhouses are crowded with people who cannot pay week-day prices, and
+yet are intelligent enough to enjoy a fairly good performance of
+_Hamlet_ or _Egmont_; who are musical and choose a Mozart opera; or
+who are interested in the problems of life presented by Ibsen, Gorky,
+Tolstoy, or their own great fellow-countryman Gerhardt Hauptmann. When
+summer comes, as long as the theatres are open the whole audience
+streams out between the acts to have coffee or beer in the garden, or
+when there is no garden, in the nearest restaurant; and then comes
+your chance of appraising the people who take their pleasure in this
+way. They look for the most part as if they belonged to the small
+official and shop-keeper class. If the play is a suitable one, there
+are sure to be a great many young people present, and at the
+State-supported theatres these Sunday performances are such as young
+people are allowed to see.
+
+In the evening the Sunday play or opera is always one of the most
+important of the week; the play everyone wishes to see or the opera
+that is most attractive. A Wagner opera is often played on a Sunday
+evening in the theatre that undertakes Wagner. The smaller stages will
+give some old favourite, _Der Freischuetz_, _Don Juan_, _Oberon_, or
+_Die Zauberfloete_. In fact, all through the winter the upper and
+middle classes make the play and the opera their favourite Sunday
+pastime. The lower classes depend a good deal on the public dancing
+saloons, which seem to do as much harm as our public-houses, and to be
+disliked and discouraged by all sensible Germans.
+
+So far this account of a German Sunday suggests that Germans always go
+from home for their weekly holiday, and it is true that when Sunday
+comes the German likes to amuse himself. But he is not invariably at
+the play or in inn gardens. It is the day when scattered members of a
+family will meet most easily, and when the branch of the family that
+can best do so will entertain the others. Some years ago in a North
+German city I was often with friends who had a dining-room and narrow
+dinner table long enough for a hotel. The host and hostess, when they
+were by themselves, dined in a smaller room, sitting next to each
+other on the sofa; but on Sundays their children and grandchildren,
+some spinster cousins, some _Stammgaeste_ (old friends who came every
+week) all met in the drawing-room at five o'clock, and sat down soon
+after to a dinner of four or five courses in a long dining-room. It
+was a company of all ages and some variety of station, and the
+patriarchal arrangement placed the venerable and beloved host and
+hostess side by side at the top of the room, with their friends in
+order of importance to right and left of them, until you came, below
+the salt as it were, to the Mamsells and the little children at the
+foot of the table. But the Mamsells did not leave the room when the
+sweets arrived. Everyone ate everything, including the preserved
+fruits that came round with the roast meat, and the pudding that
+arrived after the cheese. In those days it was not considered proper
+in Germany for ladies to eat cheese, and no young lady would dream of
+taking one of the little glasses of Madeira offered on a tray. They
+were exclusively for _die Herren_, and always gave a fillip to the
+conversation, which was also more or less a masculine monopoly. Just
+before the end of the dinner it was the business of the Mamsell
+belonging to the house to light a little army of Vienna coffee
+machines standing ready on the sideboard, so that coffee could be
+served when everyone went back to the drawing-room. The men smoked
+their cigars there too, and someone would play the piano, and when no
+music was going on there was harmless, rather dull, family
+conversation. The spinster cousins got out their embroidery, the
+Mamsells disappeared with the children, _die Herren_ either talked to
+each other or had a quiet game of _Skat_. The women and some of the
+men had been to church in the morning, but this did not prevent them
+from spending the rest of the day as it pleased them.
+
+It will be seen that from the English point of view Sunday is not
+observed at all in Germany; yet this does not mean, as is often
+announced from English pulpits, that the whole nation is without
+religion. Un-belief is more widely professed than here, and many
+people who call themselves Christians openly reject certain vital
+doctrines of Evangelical faith,--are Unitarians, in fact, but will not
+say so. But the whole question of religious belief in Germany is a
+difficult and contentious one, for according to the people you meet
+you will be told that the nation lacks faith or possesses it. If you
+use your own judgment you must conclude that there is immensely more
+scepticism there than here, and that there is also a good deal of
+vague belief, a belief, that is, in a personal God and a life after
+death. But you must admit that except in an "evangelical" set belief
+sits lightly on both men and women. Certainly it has nothing to do
+with the way they spend Sunday, and if they go to church in the
+morning they are as likely as not to go to the theatre in the
+afternoon. They sew, they dance, they fiddle, they act, they travel on
+the day of rest, more on that day than on any other, and when they
+come to England there is nothing in our national life they find so
+tedious and unprofitable as our Sundays. They cannot understand why a
+people with so strong a tendency to drink should make the public-house
+the only counter attraction to the church on the working man's day of
+leisure; and when they are in a country place, and see our groups of
+idle, aimless young louts standing about not knowing what to do, they
+ask why in the name of common sense they should not play an outdoor
+game. The Idealist expresses the German point of view very well in her
+Memoirs, and in so far as she misunderstands our English point of view
+she is only on a line with those amongst us who denounce the
+continental Sunday as an orgy of noisy and godless pleasures. She
+says: "I had a thousand opportunities of noticing that the religious
+life did not mean a deep life-sanctifying belief, but simply one of
+those formulas that are a part of 'respectability,' as they understand
+it both in the family and in society." Nothing proves this better than
+their truly shocking way of keeping holy the Sabbath day, which is the
+very reverse of holy, inasmuch as it paves the way to the heaviest
+boredom and slackness of spirit. I have been in English houses on
+Sundays where the gentlemen threw themselves from one easy chair to
+the other, and proclaimed their empty state of mind by their awful
+yawns; where the children wandered about hopelessly depressed, because
+they might neither play nor read an amusing book, not even Grimm's
+_Fairy Tales_; where all the mental enjoyment of the household
+consisted of so-called 'sacred music,' which some young miss strummed
+on the piano or, worse still, sang. A young girl once spoke to me in
+severe terms about the Germans who visit theatres and concerts on
+Sundays. I asked her whether, if she put it to her conscience, she
+could honestly say that she had holier feelings and higher thoughts,
+whether, in fact, she felt herself a better human being on her quiet
+Sunday, than when she heard a Beethoven Symphony, saw a Shakespeare
+play, or any other noble work of art. She confessed with embarrassment
+that she could not say so, but nevertheless arrived at the logical
+conclusion that, for all that, it was very wicked of the Germans not
+to keep Sunday more holy. Another lady, a cultured liberal-minded
+person, invited me once to go with her to the Temple Church, one of
+the oldest and most beautiful London churches in the city, belonging
+to the great labyrinth of Temple Bar where English justice has its
+seat. The music of the Temple Church is famous, and I had expressed a
+wish to hear it. So I went with my house-mate and the lady in
+question, and sat between them. During the sermon I had great trouble
+not to fall asleep, but fought against it for the sake of decorum. To
+my surprise, when I glanced at my right-hand neighbour I saw that she
+was fast asleep, and when I glanced at the one on my left I saw that
+she was asleep too. I looked about at other people, and saw more than
+one sunk in a pious Nirvana. As we left the church I asked the
+Englishwoman, who had a strong sense of humour, whether she had slept
+well. 'Yes,' she said, laughing, 'it did me a lot of good.' 'But why
+do you go?' I said. 'Oh, my dear,' said she, 'what can one do? It has
+to be on Sundays.'
+
+"But this narrow Sunday observance is worse for the lower than for the
+upper classes. At that time the great dispute was just beginning as to
+whether the people should be admitted to the Crystal Palace, to
+museums, and suchlike institutions. The question was discussed in
+Parliament, and decided in the negative. It was feared that the
+churches would remain empty, and that morals would suffer if the
+people began to like heathen gods, works of art and natural
+curiosities, better than going to church. At least, this is the only
+explanation one can give of such a decision. The churches and the
+public-houses remained the only public places open on Sundays. The
+churches were all very well for a few hours in the morning, but what
+about the afternoon and evening? Then the beer-house was the only
+refuge for the artisan or proletarian bowed down by the weight of hard
+work, unused and untaught to wile away the idle hours of Sunday in any
+intellectual occupation, and having no friendly attractive home to
+make the peace of his own hearth the best refreshment after the
+exhausting week. And so it turned out: the public-houses were full to
+overflowing, and the holiness of Sunday was only too often desecrated
+by the unholy sight of drunken men and, more horrible still, drunken
+women; but this was not all, for so strong was the temptation thrust
+upon them, that the workman's hardly earned week's wages went in
+drink, and the children were left without bread and not a penny was
+saved to lighten future distress. The coarse animal natures of the
+only half-human beings became coarser and more animal through the
+degrading passion for drink that only too often has murder in its
+train, and murder in its most terrible and brutal guise!"
+
+There is not one idea or argument in this passage that I have not
+heard over and over again from the lips of every German who has
+anything to say about our English Sunday, and every German who has
+been in England or heard much of English life invariably attacks what
+he considers this weak joint in our armour.
+
+"What is the use?" he asks, "of going to church in the morning if you
+get drunk and beat your wife at night?"
+
+"But the same man does not usually do both things in one day," you
+represent to him. "One set of people goes to church and keeps Sunday
+strictly, and another set goes to public-houses and is drunk and
+disorderly. You should try to get out of your head your idea that we
+are all exactly alike."
+
+"But you are--exactly alike. Everyone of you goes to church with a
+solemn face, sings psalms, and comes back to his roast beef and
+apple-pie. All the afternoon you are asleep; and at night the streets
+and parks are not fit for respectable people."
+
+"At night," you explain, "all the respectable people are at home
+eating cold beef and cold pie. The others...."
+
+"The others you drive to drink and fight and kill by your pharisaical
+methods. You shut the doors of your theatres and your art galleries,
+and you set wide the doors of your drinking hells. How you can call
+yourself a religious people--it is Satanic...."
+
+"But, my dear man," you say, taking a long breath, "the people who go
+to public-houses don't want theatres and art galleries. They are on
+too low a level."
+
+"It is the business of the State to raise them--not to push them down.
+Besides, there is drinking--much drinking--in England on the higher
+levels too, as you well know...."
+
+"Of course I know," you say impatiently. "All I am saying is that we
+do not bring it about by shutting the British Museum on Sundays."
+
+But next time the subject comes up for discussion your German will say
+again, as he has said ever since he could speak, that the English
+Sunday is anathema, and a standing witness to British _Heuchelei_,
+because people sing psalms in the morning and get drunk and beat their
+wives at night. You can easily imagine the Hypocrite's Progress
+painted by a German Hogarth, and it would begin with a gentleman in a
+black coat and tall hat on his way to church, and would end with the
+same gentleman in the last stage of delirium tremens surrounded by his
+slaughtered family. For in Germany one of the curious deep rooted
+notions about us, who as people go are surely indifferent honest, is
+that we are _ein falsches Volk_. With the want of logic that makes
+human nature everywhere so entertaining, a German will nearly always
+cash a cheque offered by an English stranger when he would refuse to
+do so for a countryman. As far as one can get at it, what Germans
+really mean by our _Heuchelei_ when they speak without malice is our
+regard for the unwritten social law. This is so strong in us from old
+habit and tradition that most of us do not feel the shackles; but the
+stranger within our gates feels it at every step.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+SPORT AND GAMES
+
+
+The word Sport has been taken into the German language lately, but
+Germans use it when we should use "hobby." "It is my sport," says an
+artist when he shows you furniture of his own design. He means that
+his business in life is to paint pictures, but his pleasure is to
+invent beautiful chairs and tables. When the talk turns on the absurd
+extreme to which the Marthas of Germany carry their housekeeping zeal,
+a German friend will turn to you in defence of his countrywomen. "It
+is their 'sport,'" says he, and you understand his point of view. Yet
+another will tell you that the English have only become sportsmen in
+modern times, and that the Germans are rapidly catching them up; but
+this is the kind of information you receive politely, disagree with
+profoundly, and do not discuss because you have not all the facts at
+your fingers' ends. But you know that the British love of sport, be it
+vice or virtue, is as ingrained in Britons as their common sense, and
+as old as their history.
+
+In Germany the country gentleman is a sportsman. He rides, he shoots,
+he hunts the wild boar which he preserves in his great forests. "You
+have no country (_Land_)," said a German to me, using the word as
+opposed to town. "In Germany we have country still." He meant that
+England is thickly populated, and that we have no vast tracts of
+heath and forest where wild animals live undisturbed. I told him there
+were a few such places still in Scotland, but that they all belonged
+to American and Jewish millionaires; however, he would not believe it.
+He said he had spent a fortnight in England and had not heard of them.
+
+It is not such a matter of course with Germans of a certain class to
+ride as it is with us. You see a few men, women, and children on
+horseback in Berlin, but not many; and in most German towns you see no
+one riding except cavalry officers. I am told that the present Emperor
+tried to institute a fashionable hour for riding in the Tiergarten,
+but that it fell through partly because there were not enough people
+to bring decent carriages and horses. On the great estates in East
+Prussia the women as well as the men of the family ride, and go great
+distances in this way to see their friends; but in cities you cannot
+fail to observe the miserable quality and condition of the horses and
+the scarcity of private carriages. In fact, the German does not make
+as much of animals as the Englishman does. If he lives in the country,
+or if he means to be a man of fashion, he will have dogs and horses,
+but he will not have one or both, by hook or by crook, whether he is
+rich or poor, as the Briton does. You see dogs in any German city that
+remind you of a paragraph that once appeared in an Italian paper, a
+paragraph about a case of dog stealing. The dog was produced in court,
+said the paper, and was either a fox terrier or a Newfoundland. But
+you often see a fine Dachs; in Heidelberg the students are proud of
+their great boar-hounds, and in the Black Forest there are numbers of
+little black Pomeranians.
+
+In German towns where there is water, the traffic on it both for
+business and amusement is as busy as with us, and in some respects
+better managed. Hamburg life, for instance, is largely on the basin of
+the Alster; either in the little steamers that carry you from city to
+suburb, or in the small craft that crowd its waters on a summer night.
+It is as usual in Hamburg as on the Thames to own boats and understand
+their management, and there are the same varieties to be seen there:
+the pleasure boats with people of all ages, the racing outrigger full
+of strenuous, lightly clad young men, and the little sail boats
+scurrying across the water before the breeze. On the Rhine the big
+steamers do a roaring traffic all the summer, and catch the public
+that likes a good dinner with their scenery; and on the Rhine, as well
+as on most of the other rivers of Germany, there are a great many
+swimming baths; for every German who has a chance learns to swim. In
+Hamburg on a summer evening you meet troops of little boys and girls
+going to the baths, many of them belonging to the poorer classes; for
+where there are no swimming baths attached to the school they get
+tickets free or at a very low rate. About fishing I can only speak
+from hearsay, for I have never caught a minnow myself, but I have met
+Germans who are keen anglers, and I have found that they knew every
+London shop beloved of anglers, and the English name of every fly.
+
+Germans get more amusement out of their water-ways in winter than we
+do, for the winters there are long and hard, so that there is always
+skating. I have seen the Alster frozen for weeks, and the whole city
+of Hamburg playing on the ice. It was not what we call good ice, and
+not what we call good skating. For the most part people were content
+to get over the ground, to mix with their friends, to have hot drinks
+at the booths that sprang up in long lines by the chief track, and
+even to stroll about without skates and watch the fun. All classes,
+all ages, and both sexes skate nowadays, but some fifty or sixty years
+ago German ladies were not seen on the ice at all. Skating, like most
+exercises that are healthy and agreeable, was considered unfeminine,
+and men had the fun to themselves. In the mountain districts of
+Germany winter sports are growing in favour every year, and people go
+to the Riesengebirge or to the Black Forest for tobogganing and
+ski-ing. The German illustrated papers constantly have articles about
+these winter pastimes, and portraits of the distinguished men and
+women who took part in them. The history of cycling in Germany is not
+unlike its history here. The boom subsided some years ago, but a
+steady industry survives. In Berlin you see officers in uniform on
+bicycles, but you see hardly any ladies. That is because the Emperor
+and Empress disapprove of cycling for women, and their disapproval has
+made it unfashionable. Ten years ago, two years, that is, after the
+English boom, no woman on a bicycle had ever been seen in the remoter
+valleys of the Black Forest. One who ventured there used to be
+followed by swarms of wondering children, who wished her _All Heil_ at
+the top of their voices. They did not heave bricks at her.
+
+Tennis has not been blighted by the imperial frown, and is extremely
+popular in Germany. Hockey, as far as I know, is not played yet;
+certainly not by women. Cricket and football are played, but not very
+much. An Englishman teaching at a gymnasium, told me that the
+authorities discouraged outdoor games, as they were considered waste
+of time. Gymnastics is the form of athletics really enjoyed and
+practised by Germans. Every boy, even every girl, begins them at
+school, and the boy when he leaves school joins a _Turnverein_. For
+wherever Germans foregather, and whatever they do, you may be sure
+they have a _Verein_, and that the _Verein_ has feasts in winter and
+_Ausfluege_ in summer. When a man is young and lusty, the delights of
+the _Verein_, the _Ausflug_, the feast, and the walking tour are often
+combined. You meet a whole gang of pleasure pilgrims ascending the
+broad path that leads to the restaurant on the top of a German
+mountain, or you encounter them in the restaurant itself making
+speeches to the honour and glory of their _Verein_; and you find that
+they are the gymnasts or the fire brigade, or the architects or what
+not of an adjacent town, and that once a year they make an excursion
+together, beginning with a walk or a journey by rail or by steamer,
+and culminating in a restaurant where they dine and drink and
+speechify. Every age, every trade, and every pastime has its _Verein_
+and its anniversary rites. I was much amused and puzzled in Berlin one
+afternoon by a procession that filed slowly past the tram in which I
+sat, and was preceded and attended by such a rabble of sightseers that
+the ordinary traffic was stopped for a time. I thought at first it was
+a demonstration in connection with temperance or teetotalism, because
+there were so many broad blue ribbons about, and I was surprised,
+because I know that Germans club together to drink beer and not to
+abstain from it, and that they are a sober nation. At the head of the
+procession came a string of boys on bicycles, each boy carrying a
+banner. Then came four open carriages garlanded with flowers. There
+was a garland round each wheel, as well as round the horses' necks and
+the coachmen's hats, and anywhere else where a garland would rest. In
+each carriage sat four damsels robed in white, and they wore garlands
+instead of hats. After them walked a large, stout, red-faced man in
+evening dress, and he carried a staff. After him walked the music, men
+puffing and blowing into brass instruments, and, like their leader,
+wearing evening dress and silk hats. They were followed by a
+procession that seemed as if it would stretch to the moon, a
+procession of elderly, portly men all wearing evening dress, all
+wearing broad blue ribbons and embroidered scarves, and all marching
+with banners bearing various devices. The favourite device was _Heil
+Gambrinus_, and when I saw that I knew that the blue ribbons had
+nothing to do with total abstention. The next banner explained things.
+It was the _Verein_ of the _Schenkwirte_ of Berlin,--the publicans, in
+fact, of Berlin having their little holiday.
+
+All through the summer the German nation amuses itself out of doors,
+and leads an outdoor life to an extent unknown and impossible in our
+damp climate. A house that has a garden nearly always has a garden
+room where all meals are served. Sometimes it is a detached summer
+house, but more often it opens from the house and is really a big
+verandah with a roof and sides of glass. In country places the inn
+gardens are used as dining-rooms from morning till night, and you may
+if you choose have everything you eat and drink brought to you out of
+doors. Most inns have a skittle alley, for skittles are still played
+in Germany by all classes. The peasants play it on Sunday afternoons,
+and the dignified merchant has his skittle club and spends an evening
+there once a week. The favourite card game of Germany is still _Skat_,
+but bridge has been heard of and will probably supersede it in time.
+_Skat_ is a good game for three players, with a system of scoring
+that seems intricate till you have played two or three times and got
+used to it. In Germany it is always _die Herren_ who play these
+serious games, while the women sit together with their bits of
+embroidery. At the Ladies' Clubs in Berlin there is some card playing,
+but these two or three highly modern and emancipated establishments do
+not call the tune for all Germany. Directly you get away from Berlin
+you find that men and women herd separately, far more than in England,
+take their pleasures separately, and have fewer interests in common.
+It is still the custom for the man of the family to go to a beer-house
+every day, much as an Englishman goes to his club. Here he meets his
+friends, sees the papers, talks, smokes, and drinks his _Schoppen_.
+Each social grade will have its own haunts in this way, or its own
+reserved table in a big public room. At the Hof Braeuhaus in Munich one
+room is set apart for the Ministers of State, and I was told some
+years ago that the appointments of it were just as plain and rough as
+those in the immense public hall where anyone who looked respectable
+could have the best beer in the world and a supper of sorts.
+
+It is dull uphill work to write about sport and outdoor games in
+Germany, because you may have been in many places and met a fair
+variety of people without seeing any enthusiasm for either one or the
+other. The bulk of the nation is, as a matter of fact, not interested
+in sport or in any outdoor games except indifferent tennis, swimming,
+skating, and in some places boating. When a German wants to amuse
+himself, he sits in a garden and listens to a good band; if he is
+young and energetic, he walks on a well-made road to a restaurant on
+the top of a hill. In winter he plays skat, goes to the theatre or to
+a concert, or has his music at home. Also he reads a great deal, and
+he reads in several tongues. This, at any rate, is the way of Germans
+in cities and summer places, and it is a very small proportion of the
+educated classes who lead what we call a country life. "Elizabeth"
+knows German country life, and describes it in her charming books;
+perhaps she will some day choose to tell us how the men in her part of
+the world amuse themselves, and whether they are good sportsmen. I
+must confess that I have only once seen a German in full sporting
+costume. It was most impressive, though, a sort of pinkish grey bound
+everywhere with green, and set off by a soft felt hat and feathers. As
+we were having a walk with him, and it was early summer, we ventured
+to ask him what he had come to kill. "Bees," said he, and killed one
+the next moment with a pop-gun.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+INNS AND RESTAURANTS
+
+
+English people who have travelled in Germany know some of the big
+well-kept hotels in the large towns, and know that they are much like
+big hotels in other continental cities. It is not in these
+establishments that you can watch national life or discover much about
+the Germans, except that they are good hotel-keepers; and this you
+probably discovered long ago abroad or at home. If you are a woman,
+you may be impressed by the fineness, the whiteness, the profusion,
+and the embroidered monograms of the linen, whether you are in a huge
+caravanserai or a wayside inn. Otherwise a hotel at Cologne or
+Heidelberg has little to distinguish it from a hotel at Brussels or
+Bale. The dull correct suites of furniture, the two narrow bedsteads,
+even the table with two tablecloths on it, a thick and a thin, the
+parqueted floor, and the small carpet are here, there, and everywhere
+directly you cross the Channel.
+
+The modern German tells you with pride that this apparent want of
+national quality and colour is to be felt in every corner of life, and
+that what you take to be German is not peculiarly German at all, but
+common to the whole continent of Europe. This may be true in certain
+cases and in a certain sense, but there is another sense in which it
+is never true. For instance, the women of continental nations wear
+high-necked gowns in the evening. It is only English women who wear
+evening gowns as a matter of course every day of their lives. I have
+been told in Germany that, so far from being a sign of civilisation,
+this fashion is merely a stupid survival from the times when all the
+women of Europe went barenecked all day. However this may be, there is
+no doubt that whether the gown be high or low, worn by sunlight or
+lamplight, you can see at a glance whether the woman who wears it is
+English, French, or German. Every nation has its own features, its own
+manners, and its own tone, instantly recognised by foreigners, and
+apparently hidden from itself. The German assures you that the English
+manner is quite unmistakable, and he will even describe and imitate
+for your amusement some of his silly countryfolk who were talking to
+him quite naturally, but suddenly froze and stiffened at the approach
+of English friends whose national manner they wished to assume. In
+England we are not conscious of having a stiff frozen manner, and we
+never dream that everyone has the same manner. It takes a foreigner to
+perceive this; and so in Germany it takes a foreigner to appreciate
+and even to see the characteristic trifles that give a nation a
+complexion of its own.
+
+Some of the most comfortable hotels in Germany are the smaller ones
+supported entirely by Germans. A stray Englishman, finding one of
+these starred in Baedeker and put in the second class, may try it from
+motives of economy, but in many of them he would only meet merchants
+on their travels and the unmarried men of the neighbourhood who dine
+there. In such establishments as these the _table d'hote_ still more
+or less prevails, while if you go to fashionable hotels you dine at
+small tables nowadays and see nothing of your neighbours. The part
+played during dinner by the hotel proprietor varies considerably. In a
+big establishment he is represented by the _Oberkellner_, and does not
+appear at all. The _Oberkellner_ is a person of weight and standing;
+so much so that when you are in a crowded beer garden and can get no
+one to attend to you, you call out _Ober_ to the first boy waiter who
+passes, and he is so touched by the compliment that he serves you
+before your turn. But in a real old-fashioned German inn you have
+personal relations with the proprietor, for he takes the head of his
+table and attends to the comfort of his customers as carefully as if
+they were his guests. This used to be a universal custom, but you only
+find it observed now in the Sleepy Hollows of Germany. I have stayed
+in a most comfortable and well-managed hotel where the proprietor and
+his brother waited on their guests all through dinner, but never sat
+down with them. There were hired men, but they played a subordinate
+part. In small country inns the host still arrives in the garden when
+your meal is served, asks if you have all you want, wishes you _guten
+Appetit_, and after a little further conversation waddles away to
+perform the same office at some other table. Except in the depths of
+the country where the inn-keepers are peasants, a German hotel-keeper
+invariably speaks several languages, and has usually been in Paris and
+London or New York. His business is to deal with the guests and the
+waiters, and to look after the cellar and the cigars; while his wife
+or his sister, though she keeps more in the background than a French
+proprietress, does just as much work as a Frenchwoman, and, as far as
+one can judge, more than any man in the establishment. She
+superintends the chambermaids and has entire care of the vast stock of
+linen; in many cases she has most of it washed on the premises, and
+she helps to iron and repair it. She buys the provisions, and sees
+that there is neither waste nor disorder in the kitchen; she often
+does a great part of the actual cooking herself. When I was a girl I
+happened to spend a winter in a South German hotel of old standing,
+kept for several generations in the same family, and now managed by
+two brothers and a sister. The sister, a well-educated young woman of
+twenty-five, used to get up at five winter and summer to buy what was
+wanted for the market, and one day she took me with her. It was a
+pretty lesson in the art of housekeeping as it is understood and
+practised in Germany. All the peasant women in the duchy could not
+have persuaded my young woman to have given the fraction of a farthing
+more for her vegetables than they were worth that day, or to take any
+geese except the youngest and plumpest. She went briskly from one part
+of the market to the other, seeming to see at a glance where it was
+profitable to deal this morning. She did not haggle or squabble as
+inferior housewives will, because she knew just what she wanted and
+what it was prudent to pay for it. When she got home she sat down to a
+second breakfast that seemed to me like a dinner, a stew of venison
+and half a bottle of light wine; but, as she said, hotel keeping is
+exhausting work, and hotel-keepers must needs live well.
+
+At some hotels in this part of Germany wine is included in the charge
+for dinner, and given to each guest in a glass carafe or uncorked
+bottle. It is kept on tap even in the small wayside inns, where you
+get half a litre for two or three pence when you are out for a walk
+and are thirsty. If you dislike thin sour wine you had better avoid
+the grape-growing lands and travel in Bavaria, where every country
+inn-keeper brews his own beer. Many of these small inns entertain
+summer visitors, not English and Americans who want luxuries, but
+their own countryfolk, whose purses and requirements are both small.
+As far as I know by personal experience and by hearsay, the rooms in
+these inns are always clean. The bedding all over Germany is most
+scrupulously kept and aired. In country places you see the mattresses
+and feather beds hanging out of the windows near the pots of
+carnations every sunny day. The floors are painted, and are washed all
+over every morning. The curtains are spotless. In each room there is
+the inevitable sofa with the table in front of it, a most sensible and
+comfortable addition to a bedroom, enabling you to seek peace and
+privacy when you will. If you wander far enough from the beaten track,
+you may still find that all the water you are supposed to want is
+contained in a good-sized glass bottle; but if you are English your
+curious habits will be known, and more water will be brought to you in
+a can or pail. My husband and I once spent a summer in a Thuringian
+inn that had never taken staying guests before, and even here we found
+that the proprietress had heard of English ways, and was willing, with
+a smile of benevolent amusement, to fill a travelling bath every day.
+This inn had a summer house where all our meals were served as a
+matter of course, and where people from a fashionable watering-place
+in the next valley came for coffee or beer sometimes. The household
+itself consisted of the proprietress, her daughter, and her
+maidservant, and during the four months we spent there I never knew
+them to sit down to a regular meal. They ate anything at any time, as
+they fancied it. The summer house in which we had our meals was large
+and pleasant, with a wide view of the hills and a near one of an old
+stone bridge and a trout stream. The trees near the inn were limes,
+and their scent while they were in flower overpowered the scent of
+pines coming at other times with strength and fragrance from the
+surrounding forest. The only drawback to our comfort was a hornets'
+nest in an old apple-tree close to the summer-house. The hornets used
+to buzz round us at every meal, and at first we supposed they might
+sting us. This they never did, though we waged war on them fiercely.
+But no one wants to be chasing and killing hornets all through
+breakfast and dinner, so we asked the maid of the inn what could be
+done to get rid of them. She smiled and said _Jawohl_, which was what
+she always said; and we went out for a walk. When we came back and sat
+down to supper there were no hornets. _Jawohl_ had just stood on a
+chair, she said, poured a can of water into the nest, and stuffed up
+the opening with grass. She had not been stung, and we were not
+pestered by a hornet again that summer. I have sometimes told this
+story to English people, and seen that though they were too polite to
+say so they did not believe it. But that is their fault. The story as
+I have told it is true. We found immense numbers of hornets in one
+wild uninhabited valley where we sometimes walked that summer, but we
+were never stung.
+
+The proprietress of this inn, like most German women, was a fair cook.
+Besides the inn she owned a small brewery, and employed a brewer who
+lived quite near, and showed us the whole process by which he
+transferred the water of the trout stream into foaming beer. His
+mistress had no rival in the village, and the village was a small one,
+so sometimes the beer was a little flat. When _Jawohl_ brought a jug
+from a cask just broached, she put it on the table with a proud air,
+and informed us that it was _frisch angesteckt_. We once spent a
+summer in a Bavarian village where a dozen inns brewed their own beer,
+and it was always known which one had just tapped a cask. Then
+everyone crowded there as a matter of course. In all these country
+inns there is one room with rough wooden tables and benches, and here
+the peasants sit smoking their long pipes and emptying their big mugs
+or glasses, and as a rule hardly speaking. They do not get drunk, but
+no doubt they spend more than they can afford out of their scanty
+earnings.
+
+In the Bavarian village the inns were filled all through the summer
+with people from Nuremberg, Erlangen, Augsburg, Erfurth, and other
+Bavarian towns. The inn-keeper used to charge five shillings a week
+for a scrupulously clean, comfortably furnished room, breakfast was
+sixpence, dinner one and two-pence, and supper as you ordered it. For
+dinner they gave you good soup, _Rindfleisch_, either poultry or roast
+meat, and one of the _Mehlspeisen_ for which Bavaria is celebrated,
+some dish, that is, made with eggs and flour. There was a great
+variety of them, but I only remember one clearly, because I was
+impressed by its disreputable name. It was some sort of small pancake
+soaked in a wine sauce, and it was called _versoffene Jungfern_. Most
+of these inns kept no servants, and except in the Kurhaus there was
+not a black-coated waiter in the place. Our inn-keeper tilled his own
+fields, grew his own hops, and brewed his own beer; and his wife,
+wearing her peasant's costume, did all the cooking and cleaning,
+assisted by a daughter or a cousin. When you met her out of doors she
+would be carrying one of the immense loads peasant women do carry up
+hill and down dale in Germany. She was hale and hearty in her middle
+age, and always cheerful and obliging. At that inn, too, we never had
+a meal indoors from May till October. Everything was brought out to a
+summer-house, from which we looked straight down the village, its
+irregular Noah's Ark-like houses, and its background of mountains and
+forest.
+
+When you first get back to England from Germany, you have to pull
+yourself together and remember that in your own country, even on a hot
+still summer evening, you cannot sit in a garden where a band is
+playing and have your dinner in the open air, unless you happen to be
+within reach of Earl's Court. In German towns there are always numbers
+of restaurants in which, according to the weather, meals can be served
+indoors or out. You see what use people make of them if, for instance,
+you happen to be in Hamburg on a hot summer night. All round the basin
+of the Alster there are houses, hotels, and gardens, and every public
+garden is so crowded that you wonder the waiters can pass to and fro.
+Bands are playing, lights are flashing, the little sailing boats are
+flitting about. The whole city after its day's work has turned out for
+air and music and to talk with friends. And as you watch the scene you
+know that in every city, even in every village of the empire, there is
+some such gala going on: in gardens going down to the Rhine from the
+old Rhenish towns; in the gardens of ancient castles set high above
+the stifling air of valleys; in the forest that comes to the very edge
+of so many little German towns; even in the streets of towns where a
+table set on the pavement will be pleasanter than in a room on such a
+night as this. You can sit at one of these restaurants and order
+nothing but a cup of coffee or a glass of beer; or you can dine, for
+the most part, well and cheaply. If you order a _halbe Portion_ of
+any dish, as Germans do, you will be served with more than you can eat
+of it. The variety offered by some of the restaurants in the big
+cities, the excellence of the cooking, the civilisation of the
+appointments, and the service, all show that the German must be the
+most industrious creature in the world, and the thriftiest and one of
+the cleverest. In London we have luxurious restaurants for people who
+can spend a great deal of money, but in Berlin they have them for
+people who cannot spend much. That is the difference between the two
+cities. How Berlin does it is a mystery. In the restaurants I have
+seen there is neither noise nor bustle nor garish colours nor rough
+service nor any other of the miseries we find in our own cheap
+eating-houses. In one of them the walls were done in some kind of
+plain fumed wood with a frieze and ceiling of soft dull gold. In
+another each room had a different scheme of colour.
+
+"So according to your _Stimmung_ you will choose your room," said the
+friends who took me. "To-night we are rather cheerful. We will go to
+the big room on the first floor. That is all pale green and ivory."
+
+"You have nothing like this in England," said the artist as we went up
+the lift. "It is terrible in England. When I asked for my lunch at
+three or four o'clock I was told that lunch was over. _Das hat keinen
+Zweck_,--I want my lunch when I am hungry."
+
+"But you are terribly behindhand in some ways in Berlin," I said, for
+I knew the artist liked an argument. "In London you can shop all
+through the night by telephone. It is most convenient."
+
+"Have you ever done it?"
+
+"I'm not on the telephone, and I am generally asleep at night. But
+other people...."
+
+"_Verrueckt_," said the artist. "Who in his senses wants to do shopping
+at night? Now look at this room, and admit that you have nothing at
+all like it."
+
+The first swift impression of the place was that Liberty had brought
+his stuffs, his furniture, and his glass from London and set up as a
+restaurateur in Berlin. The whole thing was certainly well done. It
+was not as florid and fussy as our expensive restaurants. The colours
+were quiet, and the necessary draperies plain. The glass was thin and
+elegant; so were the coffee cups; and the table linen was white and
+fine. Nothing about it, however, would be worth describing if it had
+been expensive. But the menu, which covered four closely printed
+pages, showed that the most expensive dish offered there cost one and
+threepence, while the greater number cost ninepence, sixpence, or
+threepence each. The hungry man would begin with crayfish, which were
+offered to him prepared in ten various ways; for the Germans, like the
+French, are extremely fond of crayfish. He would have them in soup,
+for instance, or with asparagus, with salad or dressed with dill. Then
+he would find the week's bill of fare on his card, three or four
+dishes for each day, some cooked in small casseroles and served so to
+any guest who orders one. If it was a Friday he could have a ragout of
+chicken in the Bremen style, or a slice from a Hamburg leg of mutton
+with cream sauce and celery salad, or ox-tongue cooked with young
+turnips. If he was a Catholic he would find two kinds of fish ready
+for him,--trout, cooked blue, and a ragout of crayfish with asparagus
+and baked perch. But these are just the special dishes of the day, and
+he is not bound to try them. There are seven kinds of soup, including
+real turtle, and it is not for me to say how real turtle can be
+supplied in Berlin for 30 pfennig. There are seven kinds of fish and
+too many varieties of meat, poultry, salads, vegetables and sweets,
+both hot and cold, to count. A man can have any kind of cooking he
+fancies, too; his steak may be German, Austrian, or French; he can
+have English roast beef, Russian caviare, a Maltese rice pudding,
+apples from the Tyrol, wild strawberries from a German forest, all the
+cheeses of France and England, a Welsh rarebit, and English celery.
+The English celery is as mysterious as the real turtle, for it was
+offered in June. Pheasants and partridges, I can honestly say,
+however, were not offered. Under the head of game there were only
+venison, geese, chickens, and pigeons.
+
+I am sorry now that when I dined at this restaurant I did not order
+real turtle soup, _Roast beef Engl. mit Schmorkartoffeln_, celery, and
+a Welsh rarebit, because then I should have discovered whether these
+old British friends were recognisable in their Berlin environment. But
+it was more amusing at the time to ask for ham cooked in champagne and
+served with radish sauce, and other curious inviting combinations.
+
+"But at home," I said to the artist,--"at home we just eat to live. We
+have a great contempt for people who pay much attention to food."
+
+"I stayed in an English house last year, and never did I hear so much
+about food," said he. "One would eat nothing but grape-nuts and
+cheese, and another swore by toast and hot water and little
+_Pastetchen_ of beef, and the third would have large rice puddings,
+and the fourth asked for fruit at every meal, and the fifth said all
+the others were wrong and that he wanted a good dinner. The poor
+hostess would have been distracted if she had not been one of those
+who love a new fad and try each one in turn. Also there were two
+eminent physicians in the house, and one of these drank champagne
+every night, while the other would touch nothing but Perrier and said
+champagne was poison. Directly we sat down we discussed these things,
+... and everyone assured me that if I tried his regime I should
+improve in health most marvellously."
+
+"Which did you try?" I asked.
+
+"The good dinner and the champagne, of course. But I did not find they
+affected my health one way or the other."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+LIFE IN LODGINGS
+
+
+As rents are high in Germany, it is usual for people of small means to
+let off one or two rooms, either furnished or unfurnished. But it is
+not usual to supply a lodger with any meal except his coffee and rolls
+in the morning. If you wish to take lodgings in a German town, and
+work through the long list of them in a local paper, you will probably
+find no one willing to provide for you in the English fashion.
+
+"Cooking!" they say with horror,--"cooking! You want to eat in your
+room. No. That can we not undertake. Coffee in the morning, yes; and
+rolls with it and butter and even two eggs, but nothing further. Just
+round the corner in the _Koenigstrasse_ are two very fine restaurants,
+where the _Herrschaften_ can eat what they will at any hour of the
+day, and for moderate prices."
+
+If you insist, the most they will promise, and that not willingly, is
+to provide you with a knife and fork and a tablecloth for a pyramid of
+courses sent hot from one of the very fine adjacent restaurants for 1
+mark or 1 mark 20 pf. Supper in Germany is the easiest meal in the day
+to provide, as you buy the substantial part of it at a
+_Delikatessenhandlung_, and find that even a German landlady will
+condescend to get you rolls and butter and beer. This sounds like the
+Simple Life, to be sure; but if you are in German lodgings for any
+length of time you probably desire for one reason or the other to lead
+it. The plan of having your dinner sent piping hot from a restaurant in
+nice clean white dishes rather like monster souffle dishes is not a bad
+one if the restaurant keeps faith with you. It is rather amusing to
+begin at the top with soup and work through the various surprises and
+temptations of the pyramid till you get to _Biskuit-Pudding mit Vanille
+Sauce_ at the bottom. But in nine cases out of ten the restaurant fails
+you, sends uneatable food, is absurdly unpunctual or says plainly it
+can't be bothered. Then you have to wander about and out of doors for
+your food in all weathers and all states of health. This is amusing for
+a time, but not in the long run. It is astonishing how tired you can
+get of the "very fine" restaurants within reach, of their waitresses,
+their furniture, their menus, and their daily guests. At least, this is
+so in a small town where the best restaurant is not "very fine,"
+although both food and service will be better than in an English town
+of the same size. If you are in Berlin and can go to the good
+restaurants, there you will be in danger of becoming a gourmet and
+losing your natural affection for cold mutton.
+
+In a university or a big commercial town it is easy to get rooms for
+less than we pay in England; but in a small _Residenz_ I have found it
+difficult. There were rooms to let, but no one wanted us, because we
+were not officers with soldier servants to wait on us; nor did we want
+to engage rooms as the officers did for at least six months. In fact,
+we found ourselves as unpopular as ladies are in a London suburb where
+all the lodging-house keepers want "gentlemen in the city" who are
+away all day and give no trouble. At last, after searching through
+every likely street in the town, we found a dentist with exuberant
+manners, who said he would overlook our shortcomings, and allow us to
+inhabit his rooms at a high price on condition we gave no trouble. We
+said we never gave trouble anywhere, and left both hotels and
+lodging-houses with an excellent character, so the bargain was
+concluded. I saw that his wife was not a party to it, but he overruled
+her, and as he was a big red-faced noisy man, and she was a small rat
+of a woman, I thought he would continue to do so. One is always making
+these stupid elementary mistakes about one's fellow-creatures. But a
+little later in the day I had occasion to call at the rooms to
+complete some arrangement about luggage, and then the wife received me
+alone. I asked her if she could put a small table into a room that
+only had a big one. I forget why I wanted it.
+
+"Table!" she said rudely. "What can you want another table for? Isn't
+that one enough?"
+
+"I should like another," I said,--"any little one would do."
+
+"I don't keep tables up my sleeve," said she. "You see what you can
+have, ... just what is there. If it doesn't suit you...."
+
+"But it does suit me," I said hurriedly, for the search had been long
+and exhausting, and the rooms were pleasant enough. I thought we need
+not deal much with the woman.
+
+"No meals except coffee in the morning; you understand that?" she said
+in a truculent tone.
+
+"Oh yes, I understand. We shall go out at midday and at night.
+Afternoon tea I always make myself with a spirit lamp...."
+
+Never in my life have I been so startled. I thought the woman was
+going to behave like a rat in a corner, and fly at me. She shook her
+fist and shouted so loud that she brought the dentist on the scene.
+
+"_Spiritus_," she screamed. "_Spiritus--Spiritus leid' ich nicht._"
+
+"Bless us!" I said in English. "What's the matter?"
+
+"_Was ist's?_" said the dentist, and he looked downright frightened.
+
+"_Sie will kochen_," said his wife, shaking her fist at me again. "She
+has a spirit lamp. She wants to turn my beautiful _bestes Zimmer_ into
+a kitchen. She will take all the polish off my furniture, just as the
+last people did when they cooked for themselves."
+
+"Cooked!" I said. "Who speaks of cooking?--I spoke of a cup of tea."
+
+"_Spiritus leid' ich nicht_," shrieked the woman.
+
+"No," said the dentist, "we can't have cooking here."
+
+"_Spiritus leid'_...."
+
+But I fled. Luckily, we had not paid any rent in advance. I made up my
+mind that I would never confess to my small harmless Etna in German
+lodgings again, and would bolt the door while I boiled water for tea
+in it. We found rooms after another weary search, but they were
+extremely noisy and uncomfortable. We had to take them for six weeks,
+and could only endure them for a fortnight, and though we paid them
+the full six weeks' rent when we left, they charged us for every jug
+of hot water we had used, and added a _Trinkgeld_ for the servant.
+
+"We did not engage to pay extra either for hot water or for
+_Trinkgeld_," we said, turning, as worms will even in a _Residenz_,
+where everyone is a worm who is not _Militaer_.
+
+"But _Englaender_ never give a _Trinkgeld_. That is why we have put it
+in the bill. The girl expects it, and has earned it."
+
+"The girl will have it," we said; "but we shall give it her ourselves.
+And what have you to say about the hot water?"
+
+"Without coal it is impossible to have hot water. We let you our
+rooms, but we did not let you our coal. It is quite simple. Have you
+any other complaint to make?"
+
+We had, but we did not make them. We went to one of the big cities,
+where the civilian is still a worm, but where he has a large number
+and variety of other worms to keep him company. In Berlin or Hamburg
+or Leipzig there are always furnished rooms delighted to receive you.
+There may be a difficulty, however, if you are a musician. The police
+come in with their regulations; or your fellow-lodgers may be students
+of medicine or philosophy, and driven wild by your harmonies. I knew a
+young musician who always took rooms in the noisiest street in Berlin,
+and practised with his windows open. He said the din of electric
+trams, overhead trains, motor cars, and heavy lorries helped his
+landlady and her family to suffer a Beethoven sonata quite gladly.
+
+One of the insoluble mysteries of German life is the cheapness of
+furnished lodgings as compared with the high rent and rates. To be
+sure, the landlady does not cook for you, and the bed-sitting-room is
+not considered sordid in Germany. In fact, the separate sitting-room
+is almost unknown, though it is easy to arrange one by shifting some
+furniture. The pattern of the room and its appointments hardly vary in
+any part of Germany, though of course the size and quality vary with
+the price. If you take a small room you have one straight window, and
+if you take a large one you have several. Or you may have a broad
+balcony window opening on to a balcony. You have the parqueted or
+painted floor, the porcelain stove, the sofa, the table, the wooden
+bedstead, and the wooden hanging cupboard wherever you are. It is
+always sensible, comfortable furniture, and usually plain. When people
+over there know no better they buy themselves tawdry horrors, just as
+they do here. The German manufacturers flood the world with such
+things. But people who let lodgings put their treasures in a sacred
+room they call _das beste Zimmer_, and only use on festive occasions.
+They fob you off with old-fashioned stuff they do not value, a roomy
+solid cupboard, a family sofa, a chest of drawers black with age, and
+a hanging mirror framed in old elm-wood; and if it were not for a
+bright green rep tablecloth, snuff-coloured curtains, and a wall paper
+with a brown background and yellow snakes on it, you would like your
+quarters very well indeed. Rooms are usually let by the month, except
+in watering-places, where weekly prices prevail. In Leipzig you can
+get a room for 10s. a month. It will be a parterre or a fourth-floor
+room, rather gloomy and rather shabby, but a possible room for a
+student who happens to be hard up. For L1 a month you can get a room
+on a higher floor, and better furnished, while for L1, 10s. a month in
+Hamburg I myself have had two well-furnished rooms commanding a fine
+view of the Alster, and one of them so large that in winter it was
+nearly impossible to keep warm. Then my Hamburg friends told me I was
+paying too much, and that they could have got better lodgings for less
+money. They were nearer the sky than I should like in these days, but
+the old German system of letting the higher flats in a good house for
+a low rent benefits people who care about a "select" neighbourhood and
+yet cannot pay very much. The modern system of lifts will gradually
+make it impossible to get a flat or lodgings in a good street without
+paying as much for the fifth floors as for the first.
+
+You do not see much of a German landlady, as she does not cater for
+you. She is often a widow, and when you know the rent of a flat you
+wonder how she squeezes a living out of what her lodgers pay her. She
+cannot even nourish herself with their scraps, or warm herself at a
+kitchen fire for which they pay. Some of them perform prodigies of
+thrift, especially when they have children to feed and educate. At the
+end of a long severe winter, when the Alster had been frozen for
+months, I found out by chance that my landlady, a sad aged widow with
+one little boy, had never lighted herself a fire. She let every room
+of her large flat, except a kitchen and a _Kammer_ opening out of it.
+The little food she needed she cooked on an oil stove, at night she
+had a lamp, and of course she never by any chance opened a window. She
+said she could not afford coals, and that her son and she managed to
+keep warm. The miracle is that they both kept alive and well. Another
+German landlady was of a different type, a big buxom bustling
+creature, who spent most of the day in her husband's coal sheds,
+helping him with his books and taking orders. Although she was so busy
+she undertook to cook for me, and kept her promise honourably; and she
+cooked for herself, her husband, and their work-people. She used
+sometimes to show me the huge dishes of food they were about to
+consume, food that was cheap to buy and nourishing to eat, but
+troublesome to prepare. She did all her own washing too, and dried it
+in the narrow slip of a room her husband and she used for all
+purposes. I discovered this by going in to see her when she was ill
+one day, and finding rows of wet clothes hung on strings right across
+her bed. I made no comment, for nothing that is an outrage of the
+first laws of hygiene will surprise you if you have gone here and
+there in the byways of Germany. An English girl told me that when she
+was recovering from a slight attack of cholera in a Rhenish _Pension_,
+they were quite hurt because she refused stewed cranberries. "_Das
+schadet nichts, das ist gesund_," they said. I could hear them say it.
+Only the summer before a kindly hotel-keeper had brought me a ragout
+of _Schweinefleisch_ and vanilla ice under similar circumstances. The
+German constitution seems able to survive anything, even roast goose
+at night at the age of three.
+
+A _Pension_ in Germany costs from L3 a month upwards. That is to say,
+you will get offers of a room and full board for this sum, but I must
+admit that I never tried one at so low a rate, and should not expect
+it to be comfortable. Rent and food are too dear in the big towns to
+make a reasonable profit possible on such terms, unless the household
+is managed on starvation lines. To have a comfortable room and
+sufficient food, you must pay from L5 to L7 a month, and then if you
+choose carefully you will be satisfied. The society is usually
+cosmopolitan in these establishments, and the German spoken is a
+warning rather than a lesson. It is not really German life that you
+see in this way, though the proprietress and her assistants may be
+German. In most of the university towns some private families take
+"paying guests," and when they are agreeable people this is a
+pleasanter way of life than any _Pension_.
+
+Before you have been in Germany a fortnight the police expects to know
+all about you. You have to give them your father's Christian and
+surname, and tell them how he earned his living, and where he was
+born; also your mother's Christian and maiden name, and where she was
+born. You must declare your religion, and if you are married give your
+husband's Christian and surname; also where he was born, and what he
+does for a living. If you happen to do anything yourself, though, you
+need not mention it. They do not expect a woman to be anything further
+than married or single. But you must say when and where you were last
+in Germany, and how often you have been, and why you have come now,
+and what you are doing, and how long you propose to stay. They tell
+you in London you do not need a passport in Germany, and they tell you
+in Berlin that you must either produce one or be handed over for
+inquiry to your Embassy. Last year when I was there I produced one
+twenty-three years old. I had not troubled to get a new one, but I
+came across this, quite yellow with age, and I thought it might serve
+to make some official happy; for I had once seen my husband get
+himself, me, and our bicycles over the German frontier and into
+Switzerland, and next morning back into Germany, by showing the
+gendarmes on the bridge his C.T.C. ticket. I cannot say that my
+ancient passport made my official exactly happy. Twenty-three years
+ago he was certainly in a _Steckkissen_, and no doubt he felt that in
+those days, in a world without him to set it right, anything might
+happen.
+
+"Twenty-three years," he bellowed at the top of his voice, for he saw
+that I was _fremd_, and wished to make himself clear. We are not the
+only people who scream at foreigners that they may understand.
+"Twenty-three years. But it is a lifetime."
+
+It was for him no doubt. I admitted that twenty-three years was--well,
+twenty-three years, and explained that I had been told at a
+_Reisebureau_ that a passport was unnecessary.
+
+"They know nothing in England," he said gloomily. "With us a passport
+is necessary; but what is a passport twenty-three years old?"
+
+I admitted that, from the official point of view, it was not much, and
+he made no further difficulties. As a rule you need not go to the
+police bureau at all. The people you are with will get the necessary
+papers, and fill them in for you; but I wanted to see whether the
+German jack-in-office was as bad as his reputation makes him. Germans
+themselves often complain bitterly of the treatment they receive at
+the hands of these lower class officials.
+
+"I went to the police station," said a German lady who lived in
+England, and was in her own country on a visit. "I went to _anmelden_
+myself, but not one of the men in the office troubled to look up. When
+I had stood there till I was tired I said that I wished someone to
+attend to me. Every pen stopped, every head was raised, astounded by
+my impertinence. But no one took any notice of my request. I waited a
+little longer, and then fetched myself a chair that someone had left
+unoccupied. I did not do it to make a sensation. I was tired. But
+every pen again stopped, and one in authority asked in a voice like
+thunder what I made here. I said that I had come to _anmelden_ myself,
+and he began to ask the usual questions with an air of suspicion that
+was highly offensive. You can see for yourself that I do not look like
+an anarchist or anything but what I am, a respectable married woman of
+middle age. I told the man everything he wanted to know, and at every
+item he grunted as if he knew it was a lie. In the end he asked me
+very rudely how long a stay I meant to make in Germany.
+
+"Not a day longer than I can help," I said; "for your manners do not
+please me."
+
+All the pens stopped again till I left the office, and when I got
+back to my mother she wept bitterly; for she said that I should be
+prosecuted for _Beamtenbeleidigung_ and put in prison.
+
+"But the really interesting fact about the system is that it doesn't
+work," said a German to me; "when I wanted my papers a little while
+ago I could not get them. Nothing about me could be discovered.
+Officially I did not exist."
+
+Yet he had inherited a name famous all over the world, was a
+distinguished scientific man himself, and had been born in the city
+where his existence was not known to the police.
+
+"Take care you don't go in at an _Ausgang_ or out at an _Eingang_,"
+said an Englishman who had just come back from Berlin. "Take care you
+don't try to buy stamps at the Post Office out of your turn. Remember
+that you can't choose your cab when you arrive. A policeman gives you
+a number, and you have to hunt amongst a crowd of cabs for that
+number, even if it is pouring with rain. Remember that the police
+decides that you must buy your opera tickets on a Sunday morning, and
+stand _queue_ for hours till you get them. If you have a cold in your
+head, stay at home. Last winter a man was arrested for sneezing
+loudly. It was considered _Beamtenbeleidigung_. The Englishwoman who
+walked on the grass in the Tiergarten was not arrested, because the
+official who saw her died of shock at the sight, and could not perform
+his duty."
+
+Wherever you go in Germany you hear stories of police interference and
+petty tyranny, and it is mere luck if you do not innocently transgress
+some of their fussy pedantic regulations. In South Germany I once put
+a cream jug on my window-sill to keep a little milk cool for the
+afternoon. The jug was so small and the window so high that it can
+hardly have been visible from the street, but my landlady came to me
+excitedly and said the police would be on her before the day was out
+if the jug was left there. The police allowed nothing on a window-sill
+in that town, lest it should fall on a citizen's head. Each town or
+district has its own restrictions, its own crimes. In one you will
+hear that a butcher boy is not allowed on the side-path carrying his
+tray of meat. If a policeman catches him at it, he, or his employer,
+is fined. In another town the awning from a shop window must not
+exceed a certain length, and you are told of a poor widow, who, having
+just had a new one put up at great expense, was compelled by the
+police to take the whole thing down, because the flounce was a quarter
+of an inch longer than the regulations prescribed. You hear of a poor
+man laboriously building a toy brick wall round the garden in his
+_Hof_, and having to pull it to pieces because "building" is not
+allowed except with police permission. In some towns the length of a
+woman's gown is decided in the _Polizeibureau_, and the officers fine
+any woman whose skirt touches the ground. In one town you may take a
+dog out without a muzzle; in another it is a crime. A merchant on his
+way to his office, in a city where there was a muzzling order, found
+to his annoyance, one morning, that his mother's dog had followed him
+unmuzzled. He had no string with him, he could not persuade the dog to
+return, and he could not go back with it, because he had an important
+appointment. So he risked it and went on. Before long, however, he met
+a policeman. The usual questions were asked, his name and address were
+taken, and he was told that he would be fined. Hardly had he got to
+the end of the street when he met a second policeman. He explained
+that the matter was settled, but this was not the opinion of the
+policeman. Was the dog not at large, unmuzzled, on his the
+policeman's beat? With other policemen he had nothing to do. The dog
+was his discovery, the name and address of the owner were required,
+and there was no doubt, in the policeman's mind, that the owner would
+have to pay a second fine. The merchant went his ways, still followed
+by an unmuzzled unled dog. Before long he met a third policeman, gave
+his name and address a third time, and was assured that he would have
+to pay a third time.
+
+"_Dann war es mir zu bunt_," said the merchant, and he picked up the
+dog and carried it the rest of the way to his office. When he got
+there he sent it home in a cab.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+SUMMER RESORTS
+
+
+If you choose to leave the railroad you may still travel by diligence
+in Germany, and rumble along the roads in its stuffy interior. As you
+pass through a village the driver blows his horn, old and young run
+out to enjoy the sensation of the day, the geese cackle and flutter
+from you in the dust, you catch glimpses of a cobble-stoned
+market-place, a square church-tower with a stork's nest on its summit,
+Noah's Ark-like houses with thatched or gabled roofs, tumble-down
+balconies, and outside staircases of wood. Sometimes when the official
+coach is crowded you may have an open carriage given you without extra
+charge, but you cannot expect that to happen often; nor will you often
+be driven by postillion nowadays. Indeed, for all I know the last one
+may have vanished and been replaced by a motor bus. You can take one
+to a mountain inn in the Black Forest nowadays, over a pass I
+travelled a few years ago in a mail coach. In those times it was a
+jog-trot journey occupying the long lazy hours of a summer morning. I
+suppose that now you whizz and hustle through the lovely forest
+scenery pursued by clouds of dust and offended by the fumes of petrol,
+but no doubt you get to your destination quicker than you used. The
+pleasantest way to travel in Germany, if you are young and strong, is
+on your feet. It is enchanting to walk day after day through the cool
+scented forest and sleep at night in one of the clean country inns.
+You must choose your district and your inn, for if you went right off
+the traveller's track and came to a peasant's house you would find
+nothing approaching the civilisation of an English farmhouse. But in
+most of the beautiful country districts of Germany there are fine
+inns, and there are invariably good roads leading to them. This way of
+travelling is too tame for English people as a rule. They laugh at the
+broad well-made path winding up the side of a German mountain, and
+still more at the hotel or restaurant to be found at the top. From the
+English point of view a walk of this kind is too tame and easy either
+for health or pleasure. But the beauty of it, especially in early
+summer, can never be forgotten; and so it is worth while, even if you
+are young and cherish a proper scorn for broad roads and good dinners.
+You would probably come across some dinners that were not good, tough
+veal, for instance, and greasy vegetables. The roads you would have to
+accept, and walk them if you choose in tennis shoes. Indeed, you would
+forget the road and eat the dinner unattending; for all that's made
+would be a green thought in a green shade for you by the end of the
+day, and as you shut your eyes at night you would see forest, forest
+with the sunlight on the young tips of the pines, forest unfolding
+itself from earth to sky as you climbed hour after hour close to the
+ferns and boulders of the foaming mountain stream your pathway
+followed, forest too on the opposite side of the valley, with wastes
+of golden broom here and there, and fields of rye and barley swept
+gently by the breeze. You may walk day by day in Germany through such
+a paradise as this, and meet no one but a couple of children gathering
+wild strawberries, or an old peasant carrying faggots, or the
+goose-girl herding her fussy flock. You may even spend your summer
+holiday in a crowded watering-place, and yet escape quite easily into
+the heart of the forest where the crowd never comes. The crowd sits
+about on benches planted by a _Verschoenerungsverein_ within a mile of
+their hotel, or on the verandah of the hotel itself. Some of the
+benches will command a view, and these will be most in demand. Those
+that are nearly a mile away will be reached by energetic elderly
+ladies, and at dinner you will hear that they have been to the
+Rabenstein this morning, and that the _Aussicht_ was _prachtvoll_ and
+the _Luft herrlich_, but that they must decline to go farther afield
+this afternoon as the morning's exertions have tired them. But some of
+_die Herren_ say they are ready for anything, and even propose to
+scale the mountain behind the hotel and drink a glass of beer at the
+top. You readily agree to go with them, for by this time you know that
+even if you are a poor walker you can toddle half way up a German hill
+and down again; and the hotel itself has been built high above the
+valley. But after dinner you find that nearly everyone disappears for
+a siesta, while the few who keep outside are asleep over their coffee
+and cigar. Even _Skat_ hardly keeps awake the three _Herren_ who
+proposed a walk; and your friend the Frau Geheimrath Schultze warns
+you solemnly against the insanity of stirring a step before sundown;
+for summer in South Germany is summer indeed. The sun comes suddenly
+with power and glory, bursting every sheathed bud and ripening crops
+in such a hurry that you walk through new mown hayfields while your
+English calendar tells you it is still spring. Later in the year the
+heat is often intense all through the middle of the day, and the young
+men who make their excursions on foot start at dawn, so that they may
+arrive at a resting place by ten or eleven. "For many years our boys
+have wandered cheaply and simply through their German Fatherland,"
+says a leaflet advertising a society that organises walking tours for
+girls; Saturday afternoon walks, Sunday walks, and holiday walks
+extending over six or eight days. "Simplicity, cheerful friendly
+intercourse, gaiety in fresh air, these are the companions of our
+pilgrimage.... We wish to provide the German nation with mothers who
+are at home in woods and meadows, who have learned to observe the
+beauties of nature, who have strengthened their health and their
+perceptions of everything that is great and beautiful by happy
+walks.... Anyone _wanderfroh_ who has been at a higher school or who
+is still attending one is eligible. The card of membership only costs
+3 marks for a single member and 4 marks for a whole family. Some of
+the excursions are planned to include brother pilgrims, and their
+character is gay and cheerful, without flirting or coquetry, a genuine
+friendly intercourse between girls and boys, young men and maidens, a
+pure and beautiful companionship such as no dancing lesson and no
+ballroom can create, and which is nevertheless the best training for
+life." So nowadays gangs of girls, and even mixed gangs of boys and
+girls, are to swarm through the pleasant forests of Germany, ascend
+the easy pathways of her mountains, and fill her country inns to
+overflowing. How horrified the little _Backfisch_ would have been at
+such a suggestion, how unmaidenly her excellent aunt would have deemed
+it, how profoundly they would both have disapproved of any exercise
+that heightens the colour or disturbs the neatness of a young lady's
+toilet. I myself have heard German men become quite violent in their
+condemnation of Englishwomen who play games or take walks that make
+them temporarily dishevelled. It never seemed to occur to them that a
+woman might think their displeasure at her appearance of less account
+than her own enjoyment. "No," they said, "ask not that we should
+admire Miss Smith. She has just come in from a six hours' walk with
+her brother. Her face is as red as a poppy, her blouse is torn, and
+her boots are thick and muddy."
+
+As a matter of fact, I had not asked them to admire Miss Smith. I knew
+that the lady they admired was arch, and had a persuasive giggle.
+Nevertheless I tried to break a lance for my countrywoman.
+
+"You will see," I assured them, "she will remove the torn blouse and
+the muddy boots; and when she comes down her face will be quite pale."
+
+"But she often looks like that," said one of the men. "At least once a
+day she plays a game or takes a walk that is more of a strain on her
+appearance than it should be. A young woman must always consider what
+effect things have on her appearance."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why?--Because she is a woman. There is no sense in a question like
+that. It goes back to the beginning of all things. It is unanswerable.
+Every young woman wishes to please."
+
+"But is it not conceivable," I asked, "that a young woman may
+sometimes wish to please herself even at the expense of her
+appearance. Miss Smith assures me that she enjoys long walks and
+games,--oh, games that you have not seen her play here--hockey, for
+instance, and cricket."
+
+"_Verrueckt!_" said the men in chorus. "A young woman should not think
+of herself at all. The Almighty has created her to please us, and it
+does not please us when she wears muddy boots and is as red as a
+poppy; at least, not while she is young. When she is married, and her
+place is in the kitchen, she may be as red as she pleases. That is a
+different matter."
+
+"Is it?" I said, and I wanted to ask why again; but I held my tongue.
+Some questions, as they said, lead one too far afield.
+
+The majority of visitors at a German watering-place take very little
+exercise of any kind. They sit about the forest as our seaside
+visitors sit about the sands, and though they cannot fill in their
+mornings by sea bathing, there are often medicinal baths that take as
+much time. Then the _Badearzt_ probably prescribes so many glasses of
+water from his favourite spring each day, and a short walk after each
+glass, and a long rest after the midday dinner. Dinner is the really
+serious business of the day, and often occupies two hours. Where there
+is still a _table d'hote_ it is a tedious, noisy affair, conducted in
+a stuffy room, and even if you are greedy enough to like the good
+things brought round you wish very soon that you were on a Cumberland
+fell-side with a mutton sandwich and a mountain stream. You wish it
+even although you hate mutton sandwiches and like meringues filled
+with Alpine strawberries and whipped cream; for the clatter and the
+clack going on around you, and the asphyxiating air, bring on a
+demoralising somnolence that you despise and cannot easily throw off.
+You sit about as lazily as anyone else half through the golden
+afternoon, drink a cup of coffee at four o'clock, look at mountains of
+cake, and then start for the restaurant, which is said to be _eine
+gute Stunde_ from the hotel. You find, as you expected, that you
+saunter gently uphill on a broad winding road through the forest, and
+that you have a charming walk, but not what anyone in this country
+would call exercise till they were about seventy. In case you should
+be weary you pass seats every hundred yards or so, and when you have
+made your ascent you are received by a bustling waiter or a waitress
+in costume, who expects to serve you with beer or coffee before you
+venture down the hill again. By the time you get back to the hotel
+everyone is streaming in to supper, which is not as long as dinner,
+but quite as noisy. After supper everyone sits about the verandah or
+the garden. The men play cards, and smoke and drink coffee and Kirsch,
+the married women talk and do embroidery, the maidens stroll about in
+twos and threes or sit down to Halma. There are never many young men
+in these summer hotels, and the few there are herd with the older men
+or with each other more than young men do in this country. What we
+understand by flirtation is not encouraged, unless it is almost sure
+to lead to marriage; and what the Germans understand by flirtation is
+justly considered scandalous and reprehensible. For the Germans have
+taken the word into use, but taken away the levity and innocence of
+its meaning. They make it a term of serious reproach, and those who
+dislike us condemn the shocking prevalence of Flirt (they make a noun
+of the verb) in our decadent society.
+
+The _Pension_ price at a German summer hotel varies from four to
+fifteen marks, according to the general style of the establishment and
+the position of the rooms engaged. In one frequented by Germans the
+sitting-rooms are bare and formal, and as English visitors are not
+expected no English papers are taken. The season begins in June and
+lasts till the end of September, and you must be a successful
+hotel-keeper yourself to understand how so much can be provided for so
+little, miles away from any market. Many of these summer hotels have
+been built high up in the forest, and with no others near them. Some
+are run as a speculation by doctors. There is hardly a woman or girl
+in Germany who has not needed a _Kur_ at some time of her life, or who
+does not need one every year if she has money and pretty gowns. The
+_Badereise_ and everything connected with it serves the German
+professional humorist much as the mother-in-law and the drop too much
+serve the English one, perennially and faithfully. For the wife is
+determined to have her _Badereise_, and the husband is not inclined to
+pay for it, and the family doctor is called in to prescribe it. The
+artifices and complications arising suggest themselves, and to judge
+by the postcards and farces of Germany never weary the public they are
+designed to amuse.
+
+In Berlin, when the hot weather comes, you see the family luggage and
+bedding going off to the sea-coast, for people who take a house take
+part of their bedding with them. There is so little seaside and so
+much Berlin that prices rule high wherever there is civilised
+accommodation. In Ruegen L1 a week per room is usual, and the room you
+get for that may be a very poor one. In most German watering-places,
+both on the coast and in the forest, you can have furnished rooms if
+you prefer them to hotel life, but as a rule you must either cook your
+own dinner or go out to a hotel for it. The cooking landlady is as
+rare in the country as in the town. Then in some places, at Oberhof,
+for instance, high upon the hills above Gotha, there are charming
+little furnished bungalows. Friends of mine go there or to one of the
+neighbouring villages every year, and never enter a hotel. They either
+take a servant with them, or find someone on the spot to do what is
+necessary. When there are no mineral waters or sea baths to give a
+place importance, Germans say they have come there to do a _Luftkur_.
+A delightful Frenchwoman who has written about England lately is
+amused by our everlasting babble about a "change." This one needs a
+change, she says, and that one is away for a change, and the other
+means to have a change next week. So the Germans amuse us by their
+eternal "cures." One tries air, and the other water, and the next
+iron, and the fourth sulphur, while the number and variety of nerve
+cures, _Blutarmut_ cures, diet cures, and obesity cures are
+bewildering. It is difficult to believe that life in a hotel can cure
+anyone anywhere. However, in Germany, if you are under a capable
+_Badearzt_, there may be some salvation for you, since he orders your
+baths, measures your walks, and limits your diet so strictly. At one
+of the well-known places where people who eat too much all the year
+round go to reduce their figures, there is in the chief hotels a table
+known as the _Corpulententisch_, and a man who sits there is not
+allowed an ounce of bread beyond what his physician has prescribed.
+
+But the German _Luxusbad_, the fashionable watering-place where the
+guests are cosmopolitan and the prices high--Marienbad, Homburg,
+Karlsbad, Schwalbach, Wiesbaden--all these places are as well known to
+English people as their own Bath and Buxton. Homburg they have
+swallowed, and I have somewhere come across a paragraph from an
+English newspaper objecting to the presence of Germans there. It is
+the quiet German watering-place where no English come that is
+interesting and not impossible to find. During the summer I spent in a
+Bavarian forest village I only saw one English person the whole time,
+except my own two or three friends. I heard the other day that the
+village and the life there have hardly altered at all, but that some
+English people have discovered the trout streams and come every year
+for fishing. In my time no one seemed to care about fishing. You went
+for walks in the forest. There was nothing else to do, unless you
+played _Kegel_ and drank beer; for it was only a _Luftkur_. There was
+no _Badearzt_ and no mineral water. To be sure, there were caves, huge
+limestone caves that you visited with a guide the day after you
+arrived, and never thought about again. There were various ruined
+castles, too, in the neighbourhood that made a goal for a drive in
+cases where there was a restaurant attached, and not far off there was
+a curious network of underground beer-cellars that I did not see, but
+which seemed to attract the men of our party sometimes. There were
+several inns in the straggling village, for the place lay high up
+amongst the dolomite hills of Upper Franconia, and people came there
+from the neighbouring towns for _Waldluft_. The summer I was there
+Richard Wagner passed through with his family, and we saw him more
+than once. He stayed at the Kurhaus, a hotel of more pretentions than
+the village inns, for it had a good sized garden and did not entertain
+peasants. My inn, recommended by an old Nuremberg friend, was owned
+and managed by a peasant proprietor, his wife, their elderly daughter,
+and two charming orphan grandchildren in their early teens. The
+peasant customers had as usual a large rough room to themselves, the
+town guests had their plain bare _Speisesaal_, and we Britishers
+possessed the summer house; so we were all happy. The whole glory of
+the place was in the forest; for it was not flat sandy forest that has
+no undergrowth, and wearies you very soon with its sameness and its
+still, oppressive air. It was up hill and down dale forest, full of
+lovely glades, broken by massive dolomite rocks; the trees not set in
+serried rows, but growing for the most part as the birds and the wind
+planted them; a varied natural forest tended but not dragooned by man.
+The flowers there were a delight to us, for we arrived early enough in
+the year to find lilies of the valley growing in great quantities
+amongst the rocks, while a little later the stream and pathways were
+bordered by oak and beech fern and by many wild orchises that are rare
+now with us. It was not here, however, but in another German forest,
+where, one day when I had no time to linger, I met people with great
+bunches of the _Cypripedium calceolus_ that they had gathered as we
+gather primroses. At the Bavarian watering-place we had the whole
+forest as much to ourselves as the summer house, for no one seemed to
+wander farther than the seats placed amongst the trees by the
+_Verschoenerungsverein_.
+
+    "Warum willst du weiter schweifen
+    Sieh das Gute liegt so nah,"
+
+says Goethe, and most Germans out for their summer holiday seem to
+take his advice in the most literal way, and find their happiness as
+near home as they possibly can.
+
+When you begin to think about the actual process of travelling in
+Germany, the tiresome business of getting from the city to the forest
+village, for instance, you at once remember both the many complaints
+you have heard Germans make of our system, or rather want of system,
+and the bitter scorn poured on German fussiness by travelling Britons.
+The ways of one nation are certainly not the ways of another in this
+respect. Directly I cross the German frontier I know that I am safe
+from muddle and mistakes, that I need not look after myself or my
+luggage, that I cannot get into a wrong train or alight at a wrong
+station, or suffer any injury through carelessness or mismanagement.
+Everything is managed for me, and on long journeys in the corridor
+trains things are well managed. But your carriage is far more likely
+to be unpleasantly crowded in Germany than in England; and as
+hand-luggage is not charged for, the public takes all it can, and
+fills the racks, the seats, and the floor with heavy bags and
+portmanteaux. In bygone years the saying was that none travelled first
+class save fools and Englishmen, but nowadays Germans travel in their
+own first-class carriages a good deal. The third-class accommodation
+is wretched, more fit for animals than men. In some districts there
+are fourth-class uncovered seats on the roof of the carriages, but I
+have only seen these used in summer. When I was last in Germany a year
+ago there was much excitement and indignation over certain changes
+that were to make travelling dearer for everyone. All luggage in the
+van was to be paid for in future, first-class fares were to be raised,
+and no return tickets issued.
+
+But you must not think that when you have bought a ticket from one
+place to another you can get to it by any train you please. "I want
+the 10.15 to Entepfuhl," you say to the nearest and biggest official
+you can see; and he looks at your ticket.
+
+"_Personenzug_," he says in a withering way,--"the 10.15 is an
+express."
+
+You say humbly that you like an express.
+
+"Then you must get an extra ticket," he says, "This one only admits
+you to slow trains."
+
+So you get your extra ticket, and then you wait with everyone else in
+a big room where most people are eating and drinking to wile away the
+time. Don't imagine that you can find your empty train, choose your
+corner, and settle yourself comfortably for your journey as you can in
+England. You are well looked after, but if you are used to England
+you never quite lose the impression in Germany that if you are not an
+official or a soldier you must be a criminal, and that if you move an
+inch to right or left of what is prescribed you will hear of it. Just
+before the train starts the warders open your prison doors and shout
+out the chief places the train travels to. So you hustle along with
+everyone else, and get the best place you can, and are hauled out by a
+watchful conductor when you arrive. If it is a small station there is
+sure to be a dearth of porters, but you get your luggage by going to
+the proper office and giving up the slip of paper you received when it
+was weighed. Never forget, as I have known English people do, that you
+cannot travel in Germany without having your luggage weighed and
+receiving the _Schein_ for it. If you lose the _Schein_ you are
+undone. I cannot tell you exactly what would happen, because it would
+be a tragedy without precedent, but it is impossible that German
+officials would surrender a trunk without receiving a _Schein_ in
+exchange; at least, not without months of rigmarole and delay. Even
+when it is the official who blunders the public suffers for it. We
+were travelling some years ago from Leipzig to London when the guard
+examining our tickets let one blow away. Luckily some German gentlemen
+in the carriage with us saw what happened, gave us their addresses,
+and offered to help us in any way they could. But we had to buy a
+fresh ticket and trust to getting our money back by correspondence.
+Six months later we did get it back, and this is an exact translation
+of the letter accompanying it:--
+
+     "In answer to your gracious letter of the 26th September, we
+     inform your wellbornship, respectfully, that the Ticket
+     Office here is directed, in regard to the ticket by you on
+     the 23rd of September taken, by the guard in checking lost
+     ticket Leipzig-London via Calais 2nd class, the for the
+     distance Hanover to London outpaid fare of 71 m. 40 pf. by
+     post to you to refund."
+
+One must admire the mind that can compose a sentence like that without
+either losing its way or turning dizzy.
+
+But if you want to see what Germans can give you in the way of order
+and comfort you must leave the railroad and travel in one of their big
+American liners. Even if you are not going to America, but only from
+Hamburg to Dover, it is well worth doing. The interest of it begins
+the day before, when you take your trunks to the docks and see the
+steerage passengers assembled for their start. They are a strange
+gipsy-looking folk, for the most part from the eastern frontier of
+Germany, bare-footed and wearing scraps of brighter colours than
+western people choose. When we arrived the doctor was examining their
+eyes in an open shed, and we saw them huddled together in families
+waiting their turn. There was no weeping and wailing as there is when
+the Irish leave their shores. These people looked scared by the bustle
+of departure, and concerned for the little children with them, and for
+their poor bundles of clothes; but they did not seem unhappy. In the
+luggage bureau itself you came across the emigrant upsides with
+fortune, the successful business German returning to America after a
+summer holiday in his native land, and speaking the most hideously
+corrupt and vulgar English ever heard. The most harsh and nasal
+American is heavenly music compared with nasal American spoken by a
+German tongue. The great ship was crowded with people of this type,
+and the resources of Europe could hardly supply them with the
+luxuries they wanted. We had a special train next day to Cuxhaven, and
+an army of blue-coated white-gloved stewards to meet us on the
+platform, and a band to play us on board. Our private rooms were hung
+with pale blue silk and painted with white enamel and furnished with
+satin-wood; the passages had marble floors; there were quantities of
+flowers everywhere, and books, and the electric light. In fact, it was
+the luxurious floating hotel a modern liner must be to entice such
+people as those I saw in the luggage bureau to travel in it. The meals
+were most elaborate and excellent; and I feel sure that any royal
+family happening to travel incognito on the ship would have been
+satisfied with them. But my neighbours at table were not. "We shall
+not dine down here again," said one of them, speaking with the twang I
+have described. "After to-night we shall have all our meals in the
+Ritz Restaurant." I looked at her reflectively, and next day after
+breakfast I stood on the bridge and looked at the other emigrants. The
+women were singing an interminable droning mass, the men sat about on
+sacks and played cards, the bare-footed children scuttled to and fro.
+
+"One day some of these people will come back in a _Luxus_ cabin," said
+a German acquaintance to me.
+
+"And they will dine in the Ritz Restaurant, because our dinner is not
+good enough for them," I prophesied.
+
+Directly we got to Dover every feature of our arrival helped us to
+feel at home. There was a batch of large good-natured looking
+policemen, whose function I cannot explain, but it was agreeable to
+see them again. There was no order or organisation of any kind to
+protect and annoy you. The authorities had thoughtfully painted the
+letters of the alphabet on the platform where the luggage was
+deposited, and you were supposed to find your own trunks in front of
+your own letter. I, full of German ideas still, waited a weary time
+near my letter. "You'll never get them that way," said an English
+friend. "You'd much better go to the end of the platform and pick them
+out as you can." So I went, and found a huge pile of luggage pitched
+anyhow, anywhere, and picked out my own, seized a porter, made him
+shoulder things, and followed him at risk to life and limb. All the
+luggage leaving Dover was being tumbled about at our feet, and when we
+tried to escape it we fell over what had arrived. Porters were rushing
+to and fro with trunks, just as disturbed ants do with eggs, but in
+this case it was the German passengers who felt disturbed. They were
+not used to such ways. When they had to duck under a rope to reach the
+waiting train they grew quite angry, and said they did not think much
+of the British Empire. But there was worse to come for us all.
+Breakfast on board had been early and a fog had delayed our arrival.
+We were all hungry and streamed into the refreshment room. We filled
+it.
+
+"What is there to eat?" said one.
+
+The young woman with the hauteur and detachment of her calling did not
+speak, but just glanced at a glass dish under a glass cover. There
+were two stale looking ham sandwiches.
+
+"Well," says my Englishman, when I tell him this true story--"we are
+not a greedy nation."
+
+"But how about the trunks that were not under their right letters?" I
+ask.
+
+"Who in his senses wants to find trunks under letters?" says he. "The
+proper place for trunks is the end of the platform. Then you can tear
+out of the train and find yours first and get off quickly. When you
+are all dragooned and drilled an ass comes off as well as anyone else.
+You place a premium on stupidity."
+
+"But that is an advantage to the ass," I say; "and in a civilised
+State why should the ass not have as good a chance as anyone else?"
+
+The argument that ensues is familiar, exhausting, and interminable.
+"An ass is an ass wherever he lives," says someone at last; and
+everyone is delighted to have a proposition put forward to which he
+can honestly agree.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+PEASANT LIFE
+
+
+The peasant proprietors of Southern Germany are a comfortable,
+prosperous class. "A rich peasant" begins your comic story as often as
+"a rich Jew." The peasants own their farms and a bit of forest, as
+well as a vineyard or a hop garden. They never pretend to be anything
+but peasants; but when they can afford it they like to have a son who
+is a doctor, a schoolmaster, or a pastor. Unless you have special
+opportunities you can only watch peasant life from outside in Germany,
+for you could not stay in a Bauernhaus as you would in a farmhouse in
+England. At least, you could not live with the family. In some of the
+summer resorts the peasants make money by furnishing bedrooms and
+letting them to _Herrschaften_, but the _Herrschaften_ have to get
+their meals at the nearest inn. The inner life of the peasant family
+is rougher than the inner life of the farmer's family in England,
+though their level of prosperity is as high, possibly higher. You
+cannot imagine the English farmer and his wife putting on costly and
+picturesque mediaeval costumes every Sunday and solemnly marching to
+church in them; but the German Bauer still does this quite simply and
+proudly. In some parts of the Black Forest every valley has its own
+costume, so that you know where a man lives by the clothes he wears.
+There is one valley where all the girls are pretty, and on festive
+occasions or for church they wear charming transparent black caps with
+wings to them. There is another valley where the men are big-boned and
+blackavised, with square shaven chins and spare bodies, rather like
+our English legal type; and they go to church in scarlet breeches,
+long black velvet coats, and black three-cornered hats. Their
+women-folk wear gay-coloured skirts and mushroom hats loaded with
+heavy poms-poms. In Cassel there are most curious costumes to be seen
+still on high days and holidays; from Berlin, people go to the
+Spreewald to see the Wendish peasants, and in Bavaria there is still
+some colour and variety of costume. But everywhere you hear that these
+costumes are dying out. The new generation does not care to label
+itself, for it finds _staedtische Kleider_ cheaper and more convenient.
+The Wendish girls seem to abide by the ways of their forefathers, for
+they go to service in Berlin on purpose to save money for clothes.
+They buy or are presented with two or three costumes each year, and
+when they marry they have a stock that will last a lifetime and will
+provide them with the variety their pride demands. For they like to
+have a special rig-out for every occasion, and a great many changes
+for church on Sundays. In Catholic Germany a procession on a saint's
+day seems to have stepped down from a stained-glass window, the
+women's gowns are so vivid and their bodies so stiff and angular. But
+to see the German peasantry in full dress you must go to a
+_Kirchweih_, a dance, or a wedding.
+
+You can hardly be in Germany in summer without seeing something of
+peasants' weddings, and of the elaborate rites observed at them.
+Different parts of the empire have different ways, and even in one
+district you will find much variety. We saw several peasant weddings
+in the Black Forest one summer, and no two were quite alike. Sometimes
+when we were walking through the forest we met a _Brautwagen_: the
+great open cart loaded with the furniture and wedding presents the
+bride was taking as part of her dowry to her new home. It would be
+piled with bedding, wooden bedsteads, chests of drawers, and pots and
+pans; and gay-coloured ribbons would be floating from each point of
+vantage. Sometimes the bridal pair was with the cart, the young
+husband in his wedding clothes walking beside the horse, the bride
+seated amongst her possessions. Sometimes a couple of men in working
+clothes, probably the bridegroom and a friend, were carrying the
+things beforehand, so that the new home should be ready directly after
+the wedding. We happened to be staying in the Black Forest when our
+inn-keeper's daughter was going to marry a young doctor, the son of a
+rich peasant in a neighbouring valley, and we were asked to the
+wedding. Our landlord ran two inns, the one in which we stayed and
+another a dozen miles away, which was managed by his wife and
+daughters. The wife's hotel was in a fashionable watering-place, and
+offered a smarter background for a wedding than the one in our
+out-of-the-world little town. It is the proper moment now for you to
+object that this could not have been a "peasant" wedding at all, and
+has no place in a picture of peasant life; and I concede that the
+bride and bridegroom, their parents, and certain of their friends all
+wore _staedtische Kleider_. The bride was in black silk, and the
+bridegroom in his professional black coat. But nearly all the guests
+were peasants, and wore peasant costume; and the heavy long-spun
+festivities were those usual at a peasant's wedding. We started with
+our bicycles at six o'clock in the morning, and soon found ourselves
+in a straggling procession of carts and pedestrians come from all the
+valleys round. The main road was like a road on a fair day. Everyone
+knew that there was to be a _Hochzeit_ at R., a big splendid
+_Hochzeit_, and everyone who could afford the time and the money was
+going to eat and drink and dance at it. Everyone was in a holiday
+mood, and all along the lovely forest road we exchanged greetings with
+our fellow-guests and gathered scraps of information about the feast
+we were on our way to join. Every inn we passed had set out extra
+tables, and expected extra custom that day, and when we got to one
+within a mile of R. we found the garden crowded. People were ready by
+this time for their second breakfast, and were having it here before
+making their appearance at the wedding. We were hungry and thirsty
+ourselves, so we sat down under the shade of trees and ate _belegtes
+Butterbrot_ and drank Pilsener as our neighbours did. We arrived at R.
+just in time to remove the dust of the road, and then walk, as we
+found our hosts expected us to do, in the wedding procession. First
+came the bride and bridegroom, and then a long crocodile of
+bridesmaids, all wearing the curious high bead wreaths possessed by
+every village girl of standing in this part of Germany. We witnessed
+the civil ceremony, but though I have been present at several German
+civil weddings I remember as little about them as about a visit to the
+English District Council Office where I have sometimes been to pay
+taxes. In both cases there is a bare room, an indifferent official,
+some production of official papers, and the thing is done. When the
+bride and bridegroom had been made legally man and wife they headed
+the waiting procession again, and proceeded to the church for the
+real, the religious ceremony. It was packed with people, and the
+service, which was Catholic, lasted a long time. When it was over
+everyone streamed back to the hotel, and as soon as possible the
+_Hochzeitsmahl_ began; but though we were politely bidden to it we
+politely excused ourselves, for we knew that the feast would last for
+hours and would be more than we could bear. Till evening, they said,
+it would last, and there would be many speeches, and it was a broiling
+summer day. The guests we perceived to be a mixed company of peasants
+in costume, of inn-keepers and their families in ordinary clothes, and
+of university students in black coats who were removed from the
+peasantry by their education, but not by birth and affection. The
+invited guests sat down to dinner in the _Speisesaal_, but the hotel
+garden was crowded with country people who paid for what they
+consumed. The dinner served to us and to others out here was an
+unusually good one, so we discovered that people who attend a wedding
+unasked get a spectacle, a dance, and extra fine food for their money.
+Towards the end of the afternoon before we left R. we looked in at the
+ballroom, where dancing had begun already.
+
+At another peasant's wedding in the Black Forest we saw some quaint
+customs observed that were omitted at R. In this case the bride and
+bridegroom were themselves peasants, and wore the costume of their
+valley. The bride was said to be well endowed, but she was extremely
+plain. Amongst German peasants, however, beauty hardly counts. What a
+woman is worth to a man, he reckons partly in hard cash and partly in
+the work she can do. There were two charmingly pretty girls in the
+Bavarian village where we once spent a summer, but we were told that
+they had not the faintest chance of marriage, because, though they
+belonged to a respectable family, they were orphans and dowerless.
+Auerbach's enchanting story of _Barfuessele_, in which the village
+Cinderella marries the rich peasant, is a fairy story and not a
+picture of real life. The feast at this second wedding we saw must
+have cost a good deal, for it was prepared at our hotel for a large
+crowd of guests and lasted for hours. It was an agitating wedding in
+some of its aspects. The day before we had been startled at irregular
+but frequent intervals by loud gunshots, and we were told that these
+were fired in welcome of the wedding guests as they arrived. When the
+bride appeared with her _Brautwagen_ and an escort of young men there
+was a volley in her honour. We did not go to church to see that
+wedding, as we were not attracted by the bridal pair; but we watched
+the crowd from our windows, and as it was a wet day, endured the
+sounds of revelry that lasted for hours after the feast began. There
+was no dancing at this marriage, and as each batch of guests departed
+a brass band just outside our rooms played them a send-off. It was a
+jerky irritating performance, because the instant the object of their
+attentions disappeared round the turn of the hill they stopped short,
+and only began a new tune when there was a new departure. We were
+rather glad when the day came to an end. In the Black Forest you
+always know where there is a wedding, because two small fir trees are
+brought from the forest decked with flying coloured streamers of paper
+or ribbon, and set on either side of the bride's front door.
+
+The German peasant loves his pipe and his beer, and on a Sunday
+afternoon his game of _Kegel_; but on high days and holidays he likes
+to be dancing. He and she will trudge for miles to dance at some
+distant village inn. You meet them dressed in their best clothes,
+walking barefoot and carrying clean boots and stockings. How they can
+dance in tight boots after a long hot walk on a dusty road, you must
+be a German peasant yourself to understand. The dance I remember best
+took place in a barn belonging to a village inn in Bavaria. I went
+with several English friends to look on at it, and the men of our
+party danced with some of the village girls. The room was only lighted
+by a few candles, and it was so crowded that while everyone was
+dancing everyone was hustled. But we were told that anyone who chose
+could "buy the floor" for a time by giving sixpence or a shilling to
+the band. Two of the Englishmen did this, and the crowd looked on in
+solemn approval while they waltzed once or twice round with the pretty
+granddaughters of our hosts. It was a scene I have often wished I
+could paint, the crowd was so dense, and the faces, from our point of
+view, so foreign. The candles only lifted the semi-darkness here and
+there, but where their light fell it flashed on the bright-coloured
+handkerchiefs which the women of this village twisted round their
+heads like turbans, and pinned across their bosoms. I think it is
+absurd, though, to say that German peasants dance well. They enjoy the
+exercise immensely, but are heavy and loutish in their movements, and
+they flounder about in a grotesque way with their hands on each
+other's shoulders. At a _Kirchweih_ they dance in the open air.
+
+A _Kirchweih_ is a feast to celebrate the foundations of the village
+church, and it takes the form of a fair. The preparations begin the
+day before, when the roundabouts and shooting booths are put up in the
+appointed field. On the day before the _Kirchweih_ in our Bavarian
+village I found the inn-keeper's wife cooking what we call Berlin
+pancakes in a cauldron of boiling fat, the like of which I have never
+seen before or since for size. It must have held gallons. All day long
+she stood there throwing in the cinnamon flavoured batter, and taking
+out the little crisp brown balls. They are, it seems, a favourite
+dainty at a Bavarian _Kirchweih_, and must be provided in large
+quantities. On the fair field itself the food offered by the
+stall-keepers seemed to be chiefly enormous slabs of shiny gingerbread
+made in fanciful shapes, such as hearts, lyres, and garlands, cheap
+sweetmeats, and the small boiled sausages the artless German eats in
+public without a knife and fork.
+
+The _Kirchweih_ is the chief event of the summer in a German village,
+and is talked of for weeks beforehand. The peasants stream in from all
+the villages near, and join in the dancing and the shooting matches.
+When the day is fine and the fair field has a background of wooded
+hills, you see where the librettists of pre-Wagnerian days went for
+their stage effects. All the characters of many a German opera are
+there correctly dressed, joining in the songs and dances, shooting for
+wagers, making love, sometimes coming to blows. But you may look on at
+a _Kirchweih_ from morning till night without seeing either horseplay
+or drunkenness. Not that the German peasant is an opera hero in his
+inner life. He is a hard-working man, God-fearing on the whole, stupid
+and stolid often, narrowly shrewd often, having his eye on the main
+chance. When he is stupid but not God-fearing he dresses himself and
+his wife in their best clothes, puts his insurance papers in his
+pockets, sets his thatched house on fire, and goes for a walk. Then he
+is surprised that he is caught and punished. Fires are frequent in
+German villages, and in a high wind and where the roofs are of straw
+destruction is complete sometimes. You often come across the blackened
+remains of houses, and you always feel anxious about the new
+buildings that will replace them. It is a good deal to say, but I
+believe our own jerry-builders are outdone in florid vulgarity by
+German villadom, and the German atrocities will last longer than ours,
+because the building laws are more stringent. But the old _Bauernhaus_
+still to be seen in most parts of the Black Forest is dignified and
+beautiful. The Swiss chalet is a poor gim-crack thing in comparison.
+Sometimes the German house has a shingled roof, and sometimes a
+thatched roof dark with age, and it has drooping eaves and an outside
+staircase and balcony of wood. It shelters the farm cattle in the
+stables on the ground floor, and the family on the upper floor, and in
+the roof there are granaries. But the beautiful old thatched roofs are
+gradually giving place to the slate ones, because they burn so easily,
+and fire, when it comes, is the village tragedy. I can remember when a
+fire in a big German commercial town was proclaimed by a beating drum,
+the noisy parade of fire-men, the clanging of bells, and all the
+hullaballoo that panic and curiosity could make. But last year, in
+Berlin, looking at houses like the tower of Babel, I said something of
+fire, and was told that no one felt nervous nowadays, the arrangements
+for dealing with it were so complete.
+
+"People just look out of the window, see that there is a fire next
+door, or above or beneath them, and go about their business," said my
+hosts. "They know that the fire brigade will do their business and put
+it out."
+
+I did not see a fire in Berlin, so I had no opportunity of witnessing
+the remarkable coolness of the Berliner in circumstances the ordinary
+man finds trying; but I saw a fire in my Bavarian village, and there
+were not many cool people there. The summons came in the middle of the
+night with the hoarse insistent clanging of the church bell, the
+sudden start into life of the sleeping village, the sounds in the
+house and in the street of people astir and terrified. Then there came
+the brilliant reflection of the flames in the opposite windows, and
+the roar and crackle of fire no one at first knew where. It was only a
+barn after all, a barn luckily detached from other buildings. Yet when
+we got into the street we found most of the population removing its
+treasures, as if danger was imminent. All the beds and chairs and pots
+and pans of the place seemed to be on the cobble-stones, and the women
+wailed and the children wept. "But the village is not on fire," we
+said. "It may be at any moment," they assured us, and were scandalised
+by our cold-bloodedness. For we had not carted our trunks into the
+street, but hastened towards the burning barn to see if we could help
+the men and boys carrying water. The weather was still and the barn
+isolated, so we knew there was no danger of the fire spreading. But
+the villagers were too excitable and too panic-stricken to be
+convinced of this. All their lives they had dreaded fire, and when the
+flames broke out so near them they thought that their houses were
+doomed.
+
+Next to fire the German peasant hates beggars and gipsies. We were six
+months in the Black Forest and only met one beggar the whole time, and
+he was a decent-looking old man who seemed to ask alms unwillingly.
+But in some parts of Germany there are a great many most
+unpleasant-looking tramps. The village council puts up a notice that
+forbids begging, and has a general fund from which it sends tramps on
+their way. But it does not seem able to deal with the caravans of
+gipsies that come from Hungary and Bohemia. In a Thuringian village we
+came down one morning to find our inn locked and barricaded as if a
+riot was expected, and an attack. Even the shutters were drawn and
+bolted. "_Was ist denn los?_" we asked in amazement, and were told
+that the gipsies were coming.
+
+"But will they do you any harm?" we asked.
+
+"They will steal all they can lay hands on," our landlady assured us.
+She was a widow, and her brewer, the only man in her employ, was, we
+supposed, standing guard over his own house. We thought the panic
+seemed extreme, but we had never encountered Hungarian gipsies on the
+warpath, and we did not know how many were coming. So, after assuring
+our excited little Frau that we would stand by her as well as we
+could, we went to an upper window to watch for the enemy. Presently
+the procession began, a straggling procession of the dirtiest,
+meanest-looking ruffians ever seen. There was waggon after waggon,
+swarming with ragamuffins of both sexes and all ages. The men were
+mostly on foot, casting furtive glances to right and left, evident
+snappers-up of unconsidered trifles, truculent, ragged, wearing
+evil-looking knives by their sides. During their transit the village
+had shut itself up, as Coventry did for Godiva's ride. When we all
+ventured forth again the talk was of missing poultry and rifled fruit
+trees. The geese had luckily started for their day on the high
+pastures before the bad folk came; for in a German village there is
+always a gooseherd. Sometimes it is a little boy or girl, sometimes an
+old woman, and early in the morning whoever has the post collects the
+whole flock, drives it to a chosen feeding ground, spends the day
+there, and brings it back at night. It must be a contemplative life,
+and in dry weather pleasant. I think it would suit a philosopher if he
+could choose his days. In our Franconian village the gooseherd was a
+little boy, vastly proud of his job. Every morning, long before we
+were up, he would stride past our windows piping the same tune, and at
+the sound of it every goose in the village would waddle out from her
+night quarters and join the cackling fussy crowd at his heels. Every
+evening as dusk fell he came back again, still piping the same tune,
+and then the geese would detach themselves in little groups from the
+main body and find their own homes as surely as cows do.
+
+Every rural district of Germany has its own novelist. Fritz Reuter,
+Frenssen, Rosegger, Sudermann all write of country life in the places
+they know best. In Hauptmann's beautiful plays you see the peasant
+through a veil of poetry and mysticism. Auerbach, I am told, is out of
+fashion. His stories end well mostly, his construction one must admit
+is childish, and his characters change their natures with the
+suddenness of a thunderbolt to suit his plot. Yet when I have
+_Sehnsucht_ for Germany, and cannot go there in reality, I love to go
+in fancy where Auerbach leads. He takes you to a house in the Black
+Forest, and you sit at breakfast with the family eating _Haferbrei_
+out of one bowl. You know the people gathered there as well as if you
+had been with them all the summer, and you know them now in winter
+time when the roads are deep in snow and a wolf is abroad in the
+forest. The story I am thinking of was published in 1860, and I
+believe that there are no wolves now in the Black Forest. But as far
+as one outside peasant life can judge, I doubt whether anything else
+has changed much. You hear the history of the _Grossbauer_, the rich
+farmer of the district whose breed is as strong and daring as the
+breed of the Volsungs. Seven years ago the only son and heir of this
+forest magnate, Adam Roettman, loved a poor girl called Martina, and
+their child Joseph is now six years old. Adam is still faithful to
+Martina, but his parents will not consent to their marriage, and
+insists on betrothing him to an heiress as rich as he will be,
+Heidenmueller's Toni. The whole village looks on at the romance and
+sides with Martina; for Adam's mother, _die wilde Roettmaennin_, is one
+of those stormy viragoes I myself have met amongst German women. She
+masters her husband and son with her temper. She is so rich that she
+has more _Schmalz_ than she can use, and so mean that she would rather
+let it go bad than give it to the poor. At midnight, when the roads
+are deep in snow, she sends for the _Pfarrer_, and when he risks his
+life and goes because he thinks she is dying, he finds she is merely
+bored and wanted his company; for she has been used to think that she
+could tyrannise over all men because she was richer and more
+determined than most. Next day she gets up, orders her husband and son
+to put on Sunday clothes, and well wrapped up in _Betten_ drives with
+them to the _Heidenmuehle_, where Adam is formally betrothed to Toni.
+The girl knows all about Martina, but she consents because she would
+marry anyone to escape from her stepmother, who treats her cruelly,
+and in order to hurt her feelings has given her mother's cup to the
+_Knecht_. After the betrothal the two fathers sit together and drink
+hot spiced wine, the two mothers gossip together, and the _Brautpaar_
+talk sadly about Martina, who should be Adam's wife, and Joseph who is
+his child. At last Adam could bear it no longer. He would go straight
+to Martina, he said, and he would be with Toni again before the
+Christmas tree was lighted; and then he would either break with Toni
+or feel free to marry her. "The bride stared at Adam with amazement as
+he put on his grey cloak and his fur cap and seized his pointed stick.
+He looked both handsome and terrible." For he is one of the heroes
+Germans love, a giant who once held a bull by its horns while Martina
+escaped from it, who is called the _Gaul_, because for a wager he once
+carried the cart and the load a cart horse should have carried, and
+who on this wild winter night meets the wolf in the forest and kills
+it with his stick. So you see him striding through the snow-bound
+forest to the village where Martina lives, dragging the wolf after
+him, as strong as Siegfried, as credulous as a child, ready to believe
+that the voices of his father and his child both looking for him in
+the snow are witches' voices. But when he gets to the village he finds
+that his child, so long disowned and disregarded, is really lost, and
+is looking for him in the snow. The hatter who tramps from village to
+village hung with hats met him, and tried to turn him back. But the
+child said he had come out to find his father, and must go on. Then
+every man in the village assembles at the _Pfarrhaus_, and, led by the
+_Pfarrer's_ brother-in-law (an eventual husband for Heidenmueller's
+Toni), sets out to find Joseph in the snow. Before they start Adam
+vows before the whole community that whether the child is alive or
+dead nothing shall ever part him again from Martina, and when he has
+made this vow you see the whole company depart in various directions
+carrying torches, ladders, axes, and long ropes. Meanwhile the child,
+after some alarms and excursions, meets three angels (children
+masquerading), who take him with them to the mill where Toni has just
+lighted the Christmas tree. She rescues Joseph from _die wilde
+Roettmaennin_, and that same night, her father dying of his carouse, she
+becomes a rich heiress and free of her wicked stepmother. Joseph's
+hostile grandfathers, after a fight in the snow, make friends, the
+obliging _Pfarrer_ marries Adam and Martina at midnight, and soon
+after the _wilde Roettmaennin_ who will not be reconciled leaves this
+world. So everyone who deserves happiness gets it. But though you only
+half believe in the story you have been in the very heart of the Black
+Forest, the companion of its people, the observer of their most
+intimate talk and ways. You have heard the women gossip at the well,
+you have made friends with Leegart the seamstress, who believes that
+quite against her will she is gifted with supernatural powers. There
+is Haespele, too, who made Joseph his new boots, and would marry
+Martina if he could; and there is David, the father of Martina, who
+was hardly kept from murdering his daughter when she came home in
+disgrace, and whose grandson becomes the apple of his eye. The whole
+picture of these people is vivid and enchanting, touched with quaint
+detail, veined with the tragedy of their lives, glowing with the warm
+human qualities that knit them to each other. The South German loves
+to tell you that his country is _ein gesegnetes Land_, a blessed
+country, flowing with milk and honey; and whether you are reading
+Auerbach's peasant stories or actually staying amongst his peasant
+folk, you get this impression of their natural surroundings. Nature is
+kind here, grows forest for her people on the hill-tops, and wine,
+fruit and corn in her sheltered valleys, ripens their fruit in summer,
+gives them heavy crops of hay, and sends soft warm rain as well as sun
+to enrich their pastures.
+
+In the eastern provinces of Germany the conditions of life amongst the
+poor are most unhappy. Here the land belongs to large proprietors, and
+until modern times the people born on the land belonged to the
+landlords too. No man could leave the village where he was born
+without permission, and he had to work for his masters without pay.
+Even in the memory of living men the whip was quite commonly used. In
+her most interesting account of a Silesian village,[3] Gertrud
+Dyhrenfurth says that the present condition of the peasantry in this
+region compares favourably with former times, but she admits that they
+are still miserably overworked and underpaid. They are no longer
+legally obliged to submit to corporal punishment, nor can they be
+forced to live where they were born, and as they emigrate in large
+numbers, scarcity of labour has brought about slightly improved
+conditions for those remaining. But a man's wage is still a mark a day
+in summer and 90 pf. in winter. A woman earns 60 pf. in summer and 50
+pf. in winter. Besides receiving these wages, a family regularly
+employed lives rent free and gets a fixed amount of coal, and at
+harvest time some corn and brandy. You cannot say the family has a
+house or cottage to itself, because the system is to build long
+bare-looking barracks in which numbers of working families herd like
+rabbits in a warren. In modern times each family has a kitchen to
+itself, so there is one warm room where the small children can be kept
+alive. In former times there was a general kitchen, and in the rooms
+appointed to each family no heating apparatus; therefore, if the
+children were not to die of cold, they had to be carried every morning
+to the kitchen, where there was a fire. The present plan has grave
+disadvantages, as in one room the whole family has to sleep, eat,
+wash, and cook for themselves and for the animals in their care. The
+furniture consists of two or three bedsteads with straw mattresses and
+feather plumeaux, shelves for pots and pans, a china cupboard with
+glass doors, a table in the window, and wooden benches with backs.
+This installation is quite luxurious compared with that of a
+milkmaid's or a stablemaid's surroundings sixty or seventy years ago.
+"Her home consisted of a plank slung from the stable roof and
+furnished with a sack of straw and a plumeau. Her small belongings
+were in a little trunk in a wooden niche, her clothes in a chest that
+stood in the garret." Here is the life history of an unmarried working
+woman of eighty-six born in a Silesian village. When she left school
+she was apprenticed to a thrasher, with a yearly wage of four thalers,
+besides two chemises and two aprons as a Christmas present. Even in
+those days this money did not suffice for clothing, although even in
+winter the women wore no warm under-garments. Quite unprotected, they
+waded up to the middle in snow.... In summer the girl was in the barn
+and at work by dawn; in winter they threshed by artificial light. A
+bit of bread taken in the pocket served as breakfast. The first warm
+meal was taken at midday. When the farm work was finished there was
+spinning to do till 10 o'clock.
+
+This woman "bettered herself" as she grew older till she was earning
+35 thalers (L5, 5s. 0d.) a year; she accustomed herself to live on
+this sum, and when wages increased, to put by the surplus. So in her
+old age she is a capitalist, has saved enough for a decent funeral,
+for certain small legacies, and for such an amazing luxury as a tin
+foot-warmer. The family she faithfully served for so many years allows
+her coal, milk and potatoes, and when necessary pays for doctor and
+medicine. Her weekly budget is as follows--
+
+                                       Pf.
+  Rent                                 50
+  Bread                                25
+  Rolls                                 5
+                                       __
+                 Carried forward       80
+
+                                       Pf.
+                 Brought forward       80
+  1/4 lb. butter                       25
+  1/4 lb. coffee and chicory           25
+  Sugar                                15
+  1 lb. flour                          14
+  Salt                                  1
+  Light                                10
+  Washing                               5
+                                   ------
+                                   1m. 75
+                                   ======
+
+Meat is of course out of the question, and in discussing another
+budget Fraeulein Dyhrenfurth shows that a family of eight people could
+only afford three quarters of a pound a week. Their yearly expenses
+amounted to 455 m. 26 pf., so each one of the eight had to be fed and
+clothed for about 1s. 1d. a week. Women are still terribly overworked
+in the fields. They used to begin at four o'clock in the morning, and
+go on till nine at night,--a working day, that is, of seventeen hours
+for a wife and the mother of a family. When the family at the mansion
+had the great half-yearly wash, the village women called in to help
+began at midnight, and stood at the washtub till eight o'clock next
+evening, twenty hours, that is, on end. In 1880 the working day was
+shortened, and only lasts now from five in the morning till seven at
+night, with a two hours' pause for dinner and shorter pauses for
+breakfast and vesper. But, on the other hand, women do work now that
+only men did in former times. The threshing of corn has fallen
+entirely into their hands, and they follow a plough yoked with oxen.
+Both kinds of work are heavy and unpleasant. But women are glad to get
+the threshing in winter time when other work fails, and it is often on
+this account that the proprietors do not introduce threshing machines.
+
+At certain times of the year Poles swarm over the frontier into the
+eastern provinces of Germany, but Fraeulein Dyhrenfurth says that they
+do not work for lower wages. The women have no house-keeping to do,
+and can therefore give more hours to field labour. One woman prepares
+a meal for a whole gang of her country people, and they live almost
+entirely on bread, potatoes, and brandy. They do not mix with the
+Germans, but spend their evenings and Sundays in playing the
+harmonium, dancing, and drinking. They return every year, are always
+foreigners in Germany, and are very industrious, religious, contented,
+and cheerful, but inclined to drink and fight.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] _Ein schlesisches Dorf und Rittergut_, von Gertrud Dyhrenfurth.
+Leipzig, Duncker und Humblot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+HOW THE POOR LIVE
+
+
+Poverty in German cities puts on a more respectable face than it does
+in London or Manchester. It herds in the cellars and courtyards of
+houses that have an imposing frontage; and when it walks out of doors
+it does not walk in rags. But you only have to look at the pinched
+faces of the children in the poorer quarters of any city to know that
+it is there. They are tidier and cleaner than English slum children,
+but they make you wish just as ardently that you were the Pied Piper
+and could pipe them all with you to a land of plenty. It would require
+more experience and wider facts than I possess to compare the
+condition of the poor in England and Germany, especially as the
+professed economists and philanthropists who make it their business to
+understand such things disagree with each other about every detail. If
+you talk to Englishmen, one will tell you that the German starves on
+rye bread and horse sausage because he is oppressed by an iniquitous
+tariff; and the next will assure you that the German flourishes and
+fattens on the high wages and prosperous trade he owes entirely to his
+admirable protective laws. If you talk to the Anglophobe, he will tell
+you that the dirt, drunkenness, disease, and extravagance of the
+English lower classes are the sin and scandal of the civilised world;
+that it is useless for you to ask where the poor live in Berlin,
+because there are no poor. Everyone in Germany is clean, virtuous,
+well housed, and well-to-do. If you talk to an honest, reasonable
+German, he will recognise that each country has its own difficulties
+and its own shortcomings, and that both countries make valiant efforts
+to fight their own dragons. He will tell you of the suffering that
+exists amongst the German poor crowded into these houses with the
+imposing fronts, and of all that statecraft and philanthropy are
+patiently trying to accomplish. Doctor Shadwell, in his most valuable
+and interesting book _Industrial Efficiency_, says that the American
+has to pay twice as much rent as the English working man, and that
+rents in Germany are nearer the American than the English level. As
+wages are lower in Germany than in England, and as meat and groceries
+are decidedly dearer, it is plain that the working man cannot live in
+clover. Doctor Shadwell gives an example of a smith earning 1050
+marks, and having to pay 280 for rent. He had a wife and two children,
+and Doctor Shadwell reckoned that the family to make two ends meet
+must live on 37 pf. per head per day; the prison scale per head being
+80 pf. I know a respectable German charwoman who earns 41 marks a
+month, and pays 25 marks a month for her parterre flat in the _Hof_.
+She lets off all her rooms except the kitchen, and she sleeps in a
+place that is only fit for a coal-hole. A work-girl pays her 6 marks a
+month for a clean tidy bedroom furnished with a solid wooden bedstead,
+a chest of drawers, a sofa, and a table. This girl works from 7.30 to
+6 in a shop, she pays the charwoman 10 pf. for her breakfast, 10 pf.
+weekly for her lamp, and another 10 pf. for the use and comfort of the
+kitchen fire at night. Her dinner of soup, meat, and vegetables the
+girl gets at a _Privatkueche_ for 40 pf. So the workgirl's weekly
+expenses for food, fire, and lodging are 5 marks 20 pf., but this does
+not give her an evening meal or afternoon coffee. The charwoman
+reckoned that she herself only had 15 marks a month for food, fire,
+light, and clothes; but she got nearly all her food with the families
+for whom she worked. She was a cheerful, honest body, and though she
+slept in a coal-hole was apparently quite healthy. She looked forward
+to her old age with tranquillity, because before long she would be in
+receipt of a pension from the State, a weekly sum that with her habits
+of thrift and industry would enable her to live.
+
+A German lady who chooses to teach in a _Volksschule_, because she
+thinks the _Volk_ more interesting than Higher Daughters, described a
+home to me from which one of her pupils came. The parents had eight
+children, and the family of ten lived in two rooms. That is a state of
+things we can match in England, unhappily. But my friend described
+this home, not on account of its misery, but for the extraordinary
+neatness and comfort the mother maintained in it. "Every time I go
+there," said my friend, who lived with her father and sister in a
+charming flat,--"every time I go there I say to the woman, if only it
+looked like this in my home"; and there was no need for me to see the
+rooms to understand what she meant; for I know the air of order and
+even of solidity with which the poorest Germans will surround
+themselves if they are respectable. They have very few pieces of
+furniture, but those few will stand wear and tear; they prefer a clean
+painted floor to a filthy carpet, and they are so poor that they have
+no pence to spend on plush photograph frames. I cannot remember what
+weekly wage this family existed on, but I know that it seemed quite
+inadequate, and when I asked if the children were healthy as well as
+clean and tidy, my friend admitted that they were not. In spite of the
+brave struggle made by the parents, it was impossible to bring up a
+large family on such means, and the maladies arising from insufficient
+food, fire, and clothing afflicted them. The case is, I think, a
+typical one. English people are always impressed when they visit
+German cities by the tidy clothes poor people wear, and if they are
+shown the right interiors, by their clean tidy homes. But you need
+most carefully and widely collected facts and figures to judge how far
+the children of a nation are suffering from poverty. It was found, for
+instance, in one German city, that out of 1472 children examined in
+the elementary schools, 63 per cent. of the girls and 60 per cent. of
+the boys were _nicht voellig normal_.
+
+Moreover, there are whole classes of poor people in Germany whose
+homes are not tidy and comfortable, who are crowded into cellars and
+courtyards, and who have neither time nor strength for the decencies
+of life. The "Sweater" flourishes in Berlin as well as in London, and
+his victims are as overworked as they are here. He is usually a Jew,
+it is said in Berlin, but I will not guarantee the truth of that, for
+I have not observed that the Jew is anywhere a harder task-master than
+the Christian. As Berlin grew, these spiders of society increased in
+numbers, finding it easy and profitable to employ home workers and
+spare themselves the expenses of factories and of insurance. Women who
+could not go out to work were tempted by the chance offered them of
+earning a trifle at home, and woman-like never paused to reckon
+whether it was worth earning. As the city gets larger every evil
+connected with the system increases. The worst paid are naturally the
+incompetent rough peasant women who swarm into Berlin from the
+country districts, because they think that it will be easier to sit at
+a machine than to labour in the fields. These people have to buy their
+machines and their cotton at high prices from their employers, and
+then they get 10 pf. for making a blouse. A lady who spends her life
+in working amongst poor people told me that many of them worked for
+nothing in reality, because the trifle they earned only just paid the
+difference between the food they had to buy ready cooked and the food
+they might with more leisure prepare at home. They pay high rents for
+wretched homes, L15, for instance, for a kitchen and one room in a
+dark courtyard. Under L13 it is impossible to get anything in the
+poorest quarter of Berlin.
+
+"The house itself looked respectable enough from outside," says Frau
+Buchholz, when she went to see a girl who had just married a poor man;
+"but oh! those steep narrow stairs that I had to mount, those wretched
+entrances on each floor, the miserable door handles, the sickly
+bluish-grey walls, the shaky banisters! It was easy to see that the
+outside had been devised with a view to investors, and the inside for
+poverty." In houses of this class there are often three courtyards,
+one behind each other, all noisy and badly kept. The conditions of
+life in such circumstances are no better than in our own notorious
+slums, but a slum seven storeys high, and presenting a decent front to
+the world, does not suggest the real misery behind its regular row of
+windows, nor does the quiet well-swept street give any picture of the
+rabbit warren in the courtyards at the back. In the enormous
+"confection" trade of Berlin the home-workers are nearly all widows
+and mothers of families, as the unmarried girls prefer to go to
+factories. A skilled hand can earn a fair wage at certain seasons of
+the year, as the demand for skilled work in this department always
+exceeds the supply. But the average wage of the unskilled worker is
+only 10 marks a week, while it sinks as low as 4 marks for petticoats,
+aprons, and woollen goods. A corset maker, who has learned her trade,
+can only make from 8 to 10 marks a week in a factory, while a woman
+who sits at home and covers umbrellas gets 1 mark 50 pf. _a dozen_
+when the coverings are of stuff, and slightly more when they are of
+silk. The extreme poverty of these home-workers is a constant subject
+of inquiry and legislation, but for various reasons it is most
+difficult to combat. The market is always over-crowded, because, badly
+paid as it is, the work is popular. Women push into it from the middle
+classes for the sake of pocket-money, and from the agrarian classes
+because they fancy a city life. Efforts are being made to organise
+them, and especially to train the daughters of these women to more
+healthy and profitable trades. I went over a small _Volkskueche_ in
+Berlin, and was told that there were many like it established by
+various charitable agencies, and that the effect of them was to make
+the children ready to go into service; a life that has some drawbacks,
+but should at any rate be wholesome and civilising,--a better
+preparation for marriage, too, than to sit like a slattern over a
+machine all day, and buy scraps of expensive ready-made food, because
+both time and skill are wanting for anything more palatable. In the
+kitchen I visited there were sixteen children from the poorest
+families in the neighbourhood, and, assisted by a superintendent and
+two teachers, they were preparing a dinner that cost 30 pf. a head for
+250 people. The rooms were clean and plainly furnished. A small
+laundry business was run in connection with the kitchen, so that the
+girls should be thoroughly trained to wash and iron as well as to
+cook. Of late years the working classes of Berlin have adopted what
+they call _Englische Tischzeit_, and no one who knows the ways of the
+English artisan will guess that the German means _late dinner_. He now
+does his long day's work, I am told, on bread alone, and has the one
+solid meal in the twenty-four hours when he gets home at night. _Durch
+Arbeiten_, he calls it, and people interested in the welfare of the
+poor say it is bad for all concerned, but especially bad for the
+children, who come in too exhausted to eat, and for the women, who
+have to cook and clean up when the day's business should be nearly
+done. It is quite characteristic of some kinds of modern Germans that
+they should in a breath condemn us, imitate us, and completely
+misunderstand our ways.
+
+The business women of Germany have organised themselves. _Der
+Kaufmaennische Verband fuer Weibliche Angestellte_ was founded by Herr
+Julius Meyer in 1889, and, beginning with 50 members, numbered 17,000
+in 1904. Its aim has been to improve the conditions of life for women
+working in shops and businesses, to carry on their education, and to
+help them when ill or out of work. It began by opening commercial
+schools for women, where they could receive a thorough training in
+book-keeping, shorthand, typewriting, and other branches of office
+work. These have been a great success, have been imitated all over
+Germany, and have led to an expansion of the law enforcing on girls
+attendance at the State continuation schools. The society was founded
+to remedy some crying abuses amongst women employed in shops and
+offices, a working day of seventeen hours, for instance, dismissal
+without notice, no rest on Sundays, no summer holiday, and not only a
+want of seats but an actual prohibition to sit down even when
+unemployed. All these matters the society, which has become a powerful
+one, has gradually set right. A ten-hours' day for grown-up women,
+and eight hours for those under age, the provision of seats, an 8
+o'clock closing rule, a month's notice on either side, some hours of
+rest on Sunday, and a summer holiday are all secured to members of the
+organisation. The system of "living in" does not obtain in Germany.
+Shops may only open for five hours on Sundays now, and large numbers
+do not open at all. They may only keep open after ten on twenty days
+in the year. Other reforms the society hopes to bring about in time;
+and meanwhile it occupies itself both in finding work for members who
+are out of place, and in protecting those who are sick and destitute.
+
+The ladies of Germany have taken to philanthropic work with
+characteristic energy and thoroughness. There is one society in Berlin
+that has 700 members, some of whom devote their whole time to their
+poor neighbours. I am not going to give the name of the society; so I
+may describe one of its secretaries, who personified the best modern
+type of German woman. She was about 27, a dark-haired, slim,
+serious-looking person with delicate Jewish features and beautiful
+grey eyes; a girl belonging to the wealthy classes, and able if she
+had chosen to lead a life of frivolity and pleasure. But she had
+chosen instead to give herself to the sick, the afflicted, the needy,
+and even to the sinning; for she was a moving spirit of the
+organisation that dives down into the depths of the great city, and
+rescues those who have gone under. Her society also does a great deal
+for the children of the very poor, not only for babies in creches, but
+for those who go to school. The members help these older ones with
+their school work, and when the children are free teach them to wash,
+cook, and sew, and to play open-air games. They teach the blind, they
+look after the deserted families of men in prison, and the older
+members act as guardians to illegitimate children; for in Germany
+every illegitimate child must have a guardian, and women are now
+allowed to act in this capacity. The secretary said they found no
+difficulty in getting both married and single women to take up these
+good works.
+
+"What do the parents say when their daughters take it up?" I asked,
+for I could not picture the German girl as I had always known her
+going out into the highways and byways of the city, leaving her
+cooking, her music, her embroidery, and her sentiment, and battling
+with the hideous realities of life amongst the sick, the poor, and the
+more or less wicked of the earth.
+
+"The parents don't like it," my girl with the honest eyes admitted.
+"When girls have worked for us some time they often refuse to marry;
+at least, they refuse the arranged marriages proposed to them. But we
+cannot stop on that account. If a girl does not wish to marry in this
+way it is better that she should not. No good can come of it."
+
+Then she went on to tell me how well it was that a child born to
+utmost shame and poverty should have a woman of the better classes
+interested from the beginning in its welfare, and responsible for its
+decent upbringing. It implied contact with various officials, of
+course, but she said that the ladies who took this work in hand met
+with courtesy and support everywhere.
+
+You have only to place this type of young woman beside the
+_Backfisch_, who represents an older type quite fairly, to understand
+how far the modern German girl has travelled from the traditional
+lines. If you can imagine the _Backfisch_ married and mentally little
+altered in her middle age, you can also imagine that she would find a
+daughter with the new ideas upsetting. At present both types are
+living side by side, for there are still numbers of women of the old
+school in Germany, women who passively accept the life made for them
+by their surroundings, whether it suits their needs or not; and who
+would never strike out a path for themselves, even if by doing so they
+could forget their own troubles in the troubles of others.
+
+The State and Municipal establishments for the poor and sick have been
+so much described lately, that everyone in England must be acquainted
+with all that Berlin does for its struggling citizens. There are, of
+course, large hospitals and sanatoriums for consumption; and the
+admirable system of national insurance secures help in sickness to
+every working man and woman, as well as a pension in old age. "The
+club doctor and dispensary as we have them here do not exist," say the
+Birmingham Brassworkers in their pamphlet. "In their stead leading
+doctors and specialists (with very few exceptions) are at the service
+of the working man or woman."
+
+"Yes," said a leading doctor to me when I quoted this; "we get about
+three half-pence for a consultation, and we find them the most
+impossible people in the community to satisfy. As they get medical
+advice for nothing they run from one doctor to another, and consult a
+dozen about some simple ailment that a student could set right. We all
+suffer from them." So that is the other side of the question.
+
+But Berlin certainly manages its Submerged Tenth both more humanely
+and more wisely than we manage ours. It begins, as one thinks any
+civilised country must, by separating those who will not work from
+those who cannot. The able-bodied beggar, the drunkard, and other
+vagrants are sent to a house of correction and made to work. The
+respectable poor are not driven to herd with these people in Germany.
+They receive shelter and assistance at institutions reserved for the
+deserving. In one of these old married people who cannot support
+themselves are allowed to spend the evening of their lives together.
+Anyone desiring to know more about the charitable institutions of
+Berlin will find a most interesting account of them in the pamphlet
+written by the Birmingham Brassworkers, and published by P.S. King &
+Son. The bias of the authors is so strongly German that when you have
+read to the end you begin to lean in the opposite direction, and look
+for the things we manage better over here. "In 1900," they say, "there
+was such a shortage of houses (in Berlin) that 1500 families had to be
+sheltered in the Municipal Refuge for Homeless People." That is surely
+a worse state of affairs than in London. But when you walk through
+London or a London suburb in winter, and are pestered at every
+crossing and corner by able-bodied young beggars of both sexes, you
+begin to agree with the brassworkers. Berlin is clear of beggars and
+crossing-sweepers all the year round, and you know that as far as
+possible they are classified and treated according to their deserts.
+It is not possible for the individual bent on his own business to know
+at a glance whether he will encourage vice by giving alms or behave
+brutally to a deserving case by withholding them. The decision should
+never be forced upon him as it is in England every day of his life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+BERLIN
+
+
+Once upon a time a German got hold of Aladdin's lamp, and he summoned
+the Djinn attendant on the lamp. "Build me a city of broad airy
+streets," he bade him, "and where several streets meet see that there
+is an open place set with trees and statues and fountains." All the
+houses, even those that the poor inhabit, are to be big and white and
+shining, like palaces; but the real palaces where princes shall live
+may be plain and grey. There are to be pleasure grounds in the midst
+of the city, but they are to be woods rather than parks, because even
+you and the lamp cannot make grass grow in this soil and climate. In
+the pleasure grounds, and especially on either side of one broad
+avenue, there are to be sculptured figures of kings and heroes, larger
+than life and as white as snow. The Djinn said it would be easy to
+build the city in a night as the German desired, but that the
+sculpture could not be hurried in this way, because artists would have
+to make it, and artists were people who would not work to order or to
+time. The German, however, said he was master of the lamp, and that
+the city must be ready when he wanted it early next morning. So the
+Djinn set to work and got the city ready in a night, sculpture and
+all. But when he had finished he had not used half the figures and
+garlands and other stone ornaments he had made. If he had been in
+England he might have reduced them in size, and given them to an
+Italian hawker to carry about on his head on a tray. But he knew that
+hawkers would not be allowed in the city he had built. So, as he was
+rather tired and anxious to be done, he quickly made one more long,
+broad street stretching all the way from the pleasure ground in the
+centre of the city to the forest that begins where the city ends; and
+on every house in the street he put figures and garlands and gilded
+balconies and ornamental turrets, as many as he could. The effect when
+he had finished pleased him vastly, and he said it was the finest
+street in the city, and should be called the _Kurfuerstendamm_. His
+master and all the Germans who came to live in it agreed with him.
+They gave large rents for a flat in one of the houses, and when they
+went to London and saw the smoky dwarfish houses there they came away
+as quickly as possible and rubbed their hands and were happy, and said
+to each other, "How beautiful is our _Kurfuerstendamm_. We have as many
+turrets as we have chimneys, and we have garlands on our balconies of
+green or gilded iron, and some of us have angelic figures made of red
+brick, so that the angelic faces are checked with white where the
+bricks are joined together."
+
+"But it does not become anyone from England to criticise the
+architecture and sculpture of a foreign country," I said to the artist
+who told me the story of the lamp. "Our own is notoriously bad."
+
+"It is not you who will criticise ours," he answered. "By your own
+confession, you know nothing whatever of architecture and sculpture,
+and when people know nothing they should either keep silence or ask
+for information in the best quarter. You have my authority for saying
+that the architects and sculptors of Berlin would have been better
+employed building dog-kennels."
+
+"But I rather like your wide cheerful streets," I objected, "and your
+tall clean houses. Our houses...."
+
+"Your houses are little black boxes in which people eat and sleep.
+They do not pretend to anything. Ours pretend to be beautiful, and are
+ridiculous. Moreover, in England there are men who can build beautiful
+houses. You do not employ them much. You prefer your ugly little
+boxes. But they are there. I know their names and their work."
+
+"But what do you think of our statues?" I asked him.
+
+"I don't think of them," he said; "I prefer to think of something
+pleasant. When I am in London I spend every hour I have at the docks."
+
+"I like the _Sieges-Allee_," I said boldly,--"it is so clean and
+cheerful."
+
+"It was made for people who look at sculpture from that point of
+view," said my friend.
+
+I hardly know where an artist finds inspiration in the streets of
+Berlin. It really makes the impression of a city that has sprung up in
+a night, and that is kept clean by invisible forces. The great breadth
+of the streets, the avenues of trees everywhere, and the many open
+places make it pleasant; but you look in vain for the narrow lanes and
+gabled houses still to be found in other German towns, and you are not
+surprised when Americans compare it with Chicago, because it is so new
+and busy. It is indeed the city of the modern German spirit, and what
+it has of old tradition and old social life lies beneath the surface,
+hidden from the eye of the stranger. There is Sans-Souci, to be sure,
+and Frederick the Great, and the Grosser Kurfuerst. There is the double
+line of princes on either side of the _Sieges-Allee_. But modern
+Berlin dates from 1870, and so do all good Berliners, whatever their
+age may be. They are proud of their young empire and of their big
+city, and of doing everything in the best possible way. There is
+unceasing flux and growth in Berlin, so that descriptions written a
+few years ago are as out of date as these impressions must be soon.
+For instance, I had counted steadfastly on finding three things there
+that I cannot find at home: first and second-class cabs, hordes of
+soldiers everywhere, and policemen who would run a sword through you
+if you looked at them; and of all these I was more or less
+disappointed.
+
+I did get hold of a second-class cab on my arrival in Berlin, but it
+nearly came to pieces on the way, and I never saw another during my
+stay there. The cabs are all provided with the taximeter now, so that
+the fare knows to a fraction what is due to the driver; and the
+drivers are of the first class, and wear white hats. Anyone who wished
+to see a second-class cab would have to make inquiries, and find a
+stand where some still languish, but before long the last of them will
+probably be preserved in a museum. Cabs are not much used in Berlin,
+because communication by the electric cars is so well organised. The
+whole population travels by them, the whole city is possessed by them.
+If it is to convey a true impression, a description of Berlin should
+run to the moan of them as they glide everlastingly to and fro. You
+can hardly escape their noise, and not for long their sight. Even the
+Tiergarten, the Hyde Park of Berlin, is traversed by them, which is as
+it should be in a municipal republic. This is what the Germans call
+their city, for they are not conscious themselves of living under an
+autocracy or of being in any sense of the word less free than, let us
+say, the English, a point of view most puzzling to an English person,
+who is conscious from the moment he crosses the German frontier of
+being governed for his good. But it is pleasant on a summer morning
+to be carried through the shady avenues of the Tiergarten in an open
+car, whether it is an autocracy or a republic that arranges it for
+you; and you reflect that in this and a thousand other ways Germany is
+an agreeable country even if it is not a free one; especially for "the
+people" who have small means, and are able to drive through the chief
+pleasure ground of their city for a penny. The conductors of the cars
+are obliged to announce the name of the next halting-place, so that
+passengers alighting may get up in time and step off directly, but on
+no account before the car stops. Nothing is left to chance or muddle
+in Berlin, and unless you are a born fool you cannot go astray. If you
+are a born fool you ask a policeman, as you would at home, and find
+another dear illusion shattered. He does not draw his sword, he is
+neither gruff nor disobliging. He greets you with the military salute,
+and calls you gracious lady. Then he answers your question if he can.
+If not he gets out the little guide book he carries, and patiently
+hunts up the street or the building you want. He is usually a
+good-natured rosy faced young man with a fair moustache, and he will
+do anything in the world for you except control the traffic. That with
+the best will in the world he cannot do. So he stands in the midst of
+it and smiles. Sometimes he sits amidst it on a horse and looks
+solemn. But he never impresses himself on it. There is a story of a
+policeman who went to London to learn from our men what to do, and who
+bemoaned his fate when he got back. "I hold up my hand in just the
+same way," he said, "and then the people run and the horses run, and
+there's a smash and I get put in prison." The Berliners themselves say
+that they are not accustomed yet, as we have been for years, to regard
+the police as their well-liked and trusted servants, and to obey
+their directions willingly. However this may be, there is at present
+only one safe way of getting to the opposite side of a busy street in
+Berlin, and that is to wait till a crowd gathers and charges across it
+in a bunch like a swarm of bees.
+
+Berlin is never asleep, and it is as light by night as by day. It is
+much pleasanter for a woman without escort to come out of the theatre
+there than in London. She will find crowds of respectable people with
+her, and they will not depart in their own cabs and carriages. They
+will crowd into the electric cars, and she must know which car she
+wants and crowd with them. The worst that can happen to her will be to
+find her car over-crowded, and in that case she must not expect a man
+to give her his seat. I have seen a young German lady make an old lady
+take her place, but I have never known men yield their seats to women.
+You do not see as many private carriages in Berlin in a week as you do
+in some parts of London in an hour. Even in front of the Opera House
+very few will be in waiting; and there is no fashionable hour for
+riding and driving in the Tiergarten. I know too little about horses
+to judge of those that were being ridden, or driven in private
+carriages; but the miserable beasts in cabs and carts force the most
+ignorant person to observe and pity them. They look as if they were on
+their way to the knacker's yard, and very often as if they must sink
+beneath the load they are compelled to carry. It is comforting to
+reflect that horses will doubtless soon be too old-fashioned for
+Berlin, and that all the cabs and vans of the future will be motors.
+The cars run early enough in the morning for the workmen, and late
+enough at night for people who have had supper at a popular restaurant
+after the theatre or a glass of beer at one of the _Zelten_, the
+garden restaurants that in the time of Frederick the Great were really
+tents, and where the Berliners flocked then as they do now to hear a
+band, look at the trees of the Tiergarten, and enjoy light
+refreshments. When you get back to your house from such gaieties you
+find it locked and in darkness, but though there is a "portier" you do
+not disturb him by calling out your name as you would in Paris. In
+modern houses there is electric light outside each floor that you
+switch on for yourself, and you have a race with it that you lose
+unless you are active; but you soon learn to feel your way up to the
+next light when you are left in darkness. The Berlin "portier" is not
+as much in evidence as the Paris concierge. He opens the door to
+strangers, but if you stay or live in the house you are expected to
+carry two heavy keys about with you, one for the street door and one
+for the flat. The modern doors have some machinery by which they shut
+themselves noiselessly after you. You hear a great deal more said
+about "nerves" in Germany than in England, and yet Germans seem to be
+amazingly indifferent to noise. They will not tolerate the brass bands
+and barrel-organs that pester us, but that is because they are fond of
+music. Screaming voices, banging doors, and the clatter of kitchens
+and business premises seem not to trouble them at all. Most houses in
+Berlin are five or six storeys high, and are built round the four
+sides of a small paved court. No one who has not lived in such a
+house, and in a room giving on the court, can understand how every
+sound increases and reverberates. Footsteps at dawn sound as if the
+seven-leagued boots had come, and were shod with iron. You whisper
+that the kitchen on a lower floor in an opposite corner looks well
+kept, and the maid hears what you say and looks at you smiling. I
+knew that the back premises of these big German hives might harbour
+any social grade and almost any industry, and for a long time I vowed
+that some one must live in our court whose business it was to hammer
+tin, and that he hammered it most late at night and early in the
+morning. I had not heard anything like the noise since I had lived in
+a high narrow German street paved with cobble-stones, and occupied
+just opposite my windows by a brewer whose vans returned to him at
+daybreak and tumbled empty casks at his door. But I never discovered
+my tin merchant in Berlin, and in time I had to admit that my hosts
+were right. The noise I complained of was made by the cook washing up
+in the opposite kitchen. I should not have noticed it if I had been a
+sensible person, and slept with my curtains drawn and my double
+windows tight shut.
+
+Of course, there are some quiet streets in Berlin, and there are
+charming homes in the "garden-houses." Some of the quadrangles are
+built round a garden instead of a paved yard, and then you can get a
+quiet pleasant flat with a balcony that looks on a garden instead of a
+street. The traditional plan of a Berlin flat is most inconvenient and
+unpractical. In old-fashioned houses, and even in houses built sixteen
+years ago or less, you find that one of the chief rooms is the only
+thoroughfare between the bedrooms near the kitchen premises and the
+rooms near the front door. Anyone occupying one of these back rooms,
+which are often good ones, can only get to the front door by way of
+this thoroughfare, where he will usually find the family gathered
+together; the maid, too, must pass through every time the door bell
+rings, and when she goes about her business in the front regions her
+brooms and pails must pass through with her. The window of this room,
+which is known as a _Berliner Zimmer_, is always in one corner and
+lights it insufficiently. The Berliners themselves recognise its
+disadvantages, but I like to describe it, because I observe amongst the
+Germans of to-day a fierce determination to destroy and deny everything
+a foreigner might call a little absurd, even if it is characteristic;
+so I feel sure that if I go to Berlin a few years hence there will not
+be a _Berliner Zimmer_ left in the city, and no Berliner will ever have
+seen or heard of one; nor will the flat doors have the quaint little
+peepholes through which the maid's eye may be seen appraising you
+before she lets you in. The newest houses, those in the
+_Kurfuerstendamm_, for instance, have every "improvement"--central
+heating, lifts, gas cooking stoves, sinks for washing up, and bathrooms
+that are a reality and not a mere appearance. These bathrooms, I am
+assured, can be used without several hours' notice and the anxious
+superintendence of the only person, the head of the family as a rule,
+who understands the heating apparatus. Berlin, like Mr. Barrie's
+Admirable Crichton, has found out how to lay on hot and cold. It has
+found out about electric light too, and it might teach London how to
+use the telephone. Berlin talks to its friends by telephone as a matter
+of course, asks them how they are, if they enjoyed the _Fest_ last
+night, whether if you call on Tuesday they will be at home. Perhaps
+when Mr. Wells goes to Berlin he will forsee a reaction, a revolt
+against the incessant insistent bell that respects no occupation and
+allows no undisturbed rest. It is a hurried generation that uses the
+telephone so much, for the letter boxes are emptied eighteen times in
+twenty-four hours, and if the post is not quick enough or a telegram
+too expensive for all you want to say you can send a card by the tube
+post.
+
+Berlin is not the city of soldiers that the English fancy pictures it.
+English people, English little boys, for instance, who would like to
+see all their lead soldiers come to life, must go to one of the
+smaller garrison towns, where in every street and every square they
+will watch men on the march and at drill. In those quarters of Berlin
+not occupied by barracks the population is civilian. You see the grey
+and the dark blue uniforms everywhere, but not in masses and not at
+work. The people rush like children to follow the guard changed at the
+Schloss every day; just as they might in London, where soldiers are a
+rare spectacle. In a smaller town the army is more evidently in
+possession. It fills the restaurants, occupies the front row of the
+stalls at the opera, prevails in public gardens, and holds the
+pavement against the world. But Berlin to all appearances belongs to
+its citizens, and provides for their profit and convenience. They fill
+its multitude of houses. They say they make its laws and order its
+progress. At any rate they live in an agreeable, well-managed city,
+full of air and light, and kept so clean that most other cities seem
+slovenly and grimy by comparison. To go suddenly from Berlin to
+Hamburg, for instance, gives you a shock; though Hamburg is
+incomparably more attractive and delightful. But in Hamburg you may
+see bits of paper lying about, and dust on the pavement. In Berlin
+there is no dust, and no one has ever seen an untidy bit of paper
+there. It is to be hoped that no one ever travels direct from Berlin
+to London. What would he think of Covent Garden Market? There are
+markets in Berlin, at least a dozen of them, but by midday they are
+swept and garnished. You would not find a leaf of parsley or an end of
+string to tell you where one had been.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+ODDS AND ENDS
+
+
+The most amusing columns in German daily papers are those devoted to
+family advertisement. There you find the prolix intimate announcements
+of domestic events compared with which the first column of the _Times_
+is so bare, so _nichtssagend_.
+
+    "The birth of a second son is announced with joy by Dr
+        Johann Weber and Wife Martha, born Hansen."--Dresden,
+        22 May 1907.
+
+    "Emil Harzdorf and wife Magdalene, born Klaus, have the
+        honour to announce the birth of a strong
+        girl."--Hamburg, 26 May 1907.
+
+Boy babies are nearly always _stramm_, the girl babies are _kraeftig_,
+and the parents are _hocherfreut_, as they should be. Engagements and
+marriages are advertised more simply, and your eye is not caught by
+them as it is by the big black bordered paragraphs that inform the
+world that someone has just left it.
+
+    "To-day, in consequence of a stroke of apoplexy, my deeply
+        loved husband, our dear father, grandfather,
+        father-in-law, brother, and uncle fell asleep. In the
+        name of the survivors, Olga Wagner, born
+        Richter.--Leipzig, 23 May 1907."
+
+This is a curt announcement compared with many. When the deceased has
+occupied any kind of official post, or has been an employer of labour,
+a long register of his many virtues accompanies the advertisement of
+his death. "He who has just passed away was an exemplary chief, a
+fatherly friend and adviser, who by his benevolence erected an
+everlasting monument to himself in the hearts of his colleagues and
+subordinates." He who had just passed away had been the head of a
+small soap factory, and this advertisement was put in by the factory
+hands just beneath the one signed by all the family. Another
+advertisement on the same page expresses thanks for sympathy, "on the
+death of my dear wife, our good mother, grandmother, mother-in-law,
+aunt, sister-in-law, and cousin, Frau Angelika Pankow, born Salbach."
+
+A German friend who had to undergo an operation last year wrote just
+before to tell me she expected to come through safely. "If not," she
+said, "you'll receive a card like this"--
+
+  "Yesterday passed away
+    Adelaide Deminski, born Weigert,
+      Her heart-broken
+                        Husband
+                        Grandmother
+                        Father
+                        Mother
+                        Sons
+                        Daughters
+                        Sons-in-law
+                        Daughters-in-law
+                        Brothers
+                        Sisters
+                        Brothers-in-law
+                        Sisters-in-law
+                        Uncles
+                        Aunts
+                        Cousins";
+
+for Germans themselves laugh at these advertisements, and assure the
+inquiring foreigner that their vogue has had its day. But if the
+inquiring foreigner looks at the right papers he will find as many as
+ever. You will also find matrimonial advertisements in papers that are
+considered respectable.
+
+But when you turn to the news columns for details of some event that
+is startling the world, whether it is a crime, an earthquake, a
+battle, or a royal wedding, you find a few lines that vex you with
+their insufficiency. Our English papers have pages about a German
+coronation, German manoeuvres, German high jinks at Koepenick. But when
+I wanted to see what happened in London on our day of Diamond Jubilee
+I found five lines about Queen Victoria having driven to St. Paul's
+accompanied by her family and some royal guests. I was in a country
+inn at the time, and the paper taken there was one taken everywhere in
+the duchy. It is a great mistake to think that German newspaper
+hostility to England dates from the Transvaal War. The same journal
+that spared five lines to the Jubilee gave a column to a question
+asked by one of our parliamentary cranks about the ill-treatment of
+natives by Britons in India. The question was met by a complete and
+convincing denial, but we had to turn to our English papers to find
+that recorded. The ---- _Tageblatt_ printed the question with
+comments, and suppressed the denial. As long ago as 1883, when there
+was cholera in Egypt, a little Thuringian paper we saw weekly had
+frenzied articles about the evil English who were doing all they could
+to bring the scourge to Germany. I think we had refused some form of
+quarantine that modern medical science considers worse than useless.
+The tone of the press all through the Transvaal War did attract some
+attention in this country, and since then from time to time we are
+presented with quotations from abusive articles about our greed, our
+perfidy, and our presumption. I am not writing as a journalist, for I
+know nothing whatever of journalism; but as a member of the general
+public I believe that we are inclined to overrate the importance of
+these amenities, because we overrate the part played by the newspaper
+in the average German household. One can only speak from personal
+experience, but I should say that it hardly plays a part at all.
+Whatever Tageblatt is in favour with the _Hausherr_ comes in every
+morning, and is stowed away tidily in a corner till he has time to
+look at it while he drinks his coffee and smokes his cigar. If the
+ladies of the household are inclined that way they look at it too. But
+there really is not much to look at as a rule. These paragraphs about
+the wicked British that seem so pugnacious when they are printed on
+solid English paper in plain English words, are often in a corner with
+other political paragraphs about other wicked nations. At times of
+crisis, when the leading papers are attacking us at great length, the
+Germans themselves will talk of _Zeitungsgeschrei_ and shrug their
+shoulders. It is absurd to deny the existence of Anglophobia in
+Germany, because you can hardly travel there without coming across
+isolated instances of it. But these isolated instances will stand out
+against a crowded background of people from whom you have received the
+utmost kindness and friendship; and of other people with whom your
+relations have been fleeting, but who have been invariably civil.
+Unfortunately the German Anglophobe is a creature of the meanest
+breed, and he impresses himself on the memory like a pain; so that one
+of him looms larger than fifty others, just as the moment will when
+you had your last tooth out, and not the summer day that went before
+and after. The truth is, that we are on the nerves of certain
+Germans. You may live for ever in an English family and never hear a
+German mentioned. You would assuredly not hear the nation
+everlastingly discussed and scolded. As far as we are concerned, they
+are welcome to their own manners, their own ways, and their own
+opinions. If they would only take their stand on these and leave ours
+alone we could meet on equal terms. But that is the one thing this
+particular breed of German cannot do. He must be always arguing with
+you about the superiority of his nation to yours, and you soon think
+him the most tiresome and offensive creature you ever met. In private
+life you can usually avoid him and seek out those charming German
+people who, even if their Tageblatt teaches them that they should hate
+England, will never extend their hatred to the English stranger within
+their gates, and who will admit you readily and kindly to their
+pleasant unaffected lives. Germany is full of such people, whatever
+the German newspapers are saying.
+
+Presumably every country has the press that suits it, and in one
+respect German journalism is more dignified and estimable than our
+own. It does not publish columns of silly society gossip, or of
+fashions that only a duchess can follow and only a kitchen-maid can
+read. Nor would the poorest, smallest provincial Tageblatt descend to
+the depths of musical criticism in which one of our popular dailies
+complacently flounders all through the London season.
+
+"I cannot tell you much about last night's Wagner opera, because to my
+great annoyance the auditorium was dark nearly all the time. Once when
+we were allowed to see each other for a moment I noticed that the
+Duchess of Whitechapel was in her box, looking so lovely in cabbage
+green. Mrs. 'Dicky' Fitzwegschwein was in the stalls with a ruby
+necklace and a marvellous coat of rose velours spangled in diamonds,
+and on the grand tier I saw Lady 'Bobby' Holloway, who is of course
+the daughter-in-law of Lord Islington, in black net over silver, quite
+the dernier cri this season, and looking radiant over her sister Lady
+Yolande's engagement to the Duke of Bilgewater. Richter conducted with
+his usual brilliance, and the new Wotan sang with great elan, although
+he was obviously suffering from a cold in his head."
+
+It is impossible to imagine Berlin waking some winter morning to find
+such a "criticism" as this on its breakfast table. In Germany, people
+who understand music write about music, and people who understand
+about fashions write about fashions, and the two subjects, both of
+them interesting and important, are kept apart. Society journalists
+who write about Lady Bobbies and Mrs. Fitzwegschweins do not exist yet
+in Germany, and so far the empire seems to worry along quite
+comfortably without them. I once asked a well-known English journalist
+who is of German birth, why one of our newspaper kings did not set up
+a huge, gossipy, frivolous paper in Berlin, and it was explained to me
+that it would be impossible, because the editor and his staff would
+probably find themselves in prison in a week. What we understand by
+Freedom of the Press does not exist there.
+
+On the other hand, books and pamphlets are circulated in Germany that
+would be suppressed here; and the stage is freer than our own. _Monna
+Vanna_ had a great success in Berlin, where Mme. Maeterlinck played
+the part to crowded audiences. _Salome_ is now holding the stage both
+as a play and with Richard Strauss' music as an opera; Gorky's
+_Nachtasyl_ is played year after year in Berlin. Both French and
+German plays are acted all over Germany that could not be produced in
+England, both because the censor would refuse to pass them and because
+public opinion would not tolerate them, unless, to be sure, they were
+played in their own tongues. It is most difficult to explain our
+attitude to Germans who have been in London, because they know what
+vulgar and vicious farces and musical comedies pass muster with us,
+and indeed are extremely popular. It is only when a play touches the
+deeps of life and shows signs of thought and of poetry that we take
+fright, and by the lips of our chosen official cry, "This will never
+do." Tolstoy, Ibsen, Gorky, Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Hauptmann, and
+Otto Ernst are the modern names I find on one week's programme cut
+from a Berlin paper late in spring when the theatrical season was
+nearly over. Besides plays by these authors, one of the State theatres
+announced tragedies by Goethe, Schiller, and a comedy by Moliere. _The
+Merchant of Venice_ was being played at one theatre and _A Midsummer
+Night's Dream_ at another; there were farces and light operas for some
+people, and Wagner, Gluck, and Beethoven at the Royal Opera House for
+others. The theatre in Germany is a part of national life and of
+national education, and it is largely supported by the State; so that
+even in small towns you get good music and acting. The Meiningen
+players are celebrated all over the world, and everyone who has read
+Goethe's Life will remember how actively and constantly he was
+interested in the Weimar stage. At a _Stadt-Theater_ in a small town
+two or three operas are given every week, and two or three plays. Most
+people subscribe for seats once or twice a week all through the
+winter, and they go between coffee and supper in their ordinary
+clothes. Even in Berlin women do not wear full dress at any theatre.
+In the little towns you may any evening meet or join the leisurely
+stream of playgoers, and if you enter the theatre with them you will
+find that the women leave their hats with an attendant. You are in no
+danger in Germany of having the whole stage hidden from you by flowers
+and feathers.
+
+Shakespeare is as much played as Goethe and Schiller, and it is most
+interesting and yet most disappointing to hear the poetry you know
+line upon line spoken in a foreign tongue. Germans say that their
+translation is more beautiful and satisfying than the original
+English; but I actually knew a German who kept Bayard Taylor's _Faust_
+by his bedside because he preferred it to Goethe's. I think there is
+something the matter with people who prefer translated to original
+poetry, but I will leave a critic of standing to explain what ails
+them. I have never met a German who would admit that Shakespeare was
+an Englishman. They say that his birth at Stratford-on-Avon was a
+little accident, and that he belongs to the world. They say this out
+of politeness, because what they really believe is that he belongs to
+Germany, and that as a matter of fact Byron is the only great poet
+England has ever had. I am not joking. I am not even exaggerating.
+This is the real opinion of the German man in the street, and it is
+taught in lessons in literature. An English girl went to one of the
+best-known teachers in Berlin for lessons in German, and found, as she
+found elsewhere, that the talk incessantly turned on the crimes of
+England and the inferiority of England.
+
+"You have had two great names," said the teacher,--"two and no more.
+That is, if one can in any sense of the word call Shakespeare an
+English name ... Shakespeare and Byron, ... then you have finished.
+You have never had anyone else, and Shakespeare has always belonged
+more to us than to you."
+
+The English girl gasped, for she knew something of her own literature.
+
+"But have you never heard about Chaucer," she asked, "or of the
+Elizabethans, or of Milton, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth...?"
+
+"_Reden Sie nicht, reden Sie nicht!_" cried the teacher,--"I never
+allow my pupils to argue with me. Shakespeare and Byron ... no, Byron
+only, ... then England has done."
+
+You still find Byron in every German household where English is read
+at all, and no one seems to have found out what fustian most of his
+poetry really was. Ruskin and Oscar Wilde are the two popular modern
+authors, and the novel-reading public chooses, so several booksellers
+assured me, Marion Crawford and Mrs. Croker. I could not hear a word
+anywhere of Stevenson or Rudyard Kipling, but I did come across one
+person who had enjoyed _Richard Feverel_.
+
+"Your English novels are rather better than they used to be, are they
+not?" said a lady to me in good faith, and I found it a difficult
+question to answer, because I had always believed that we had a long
+roll of great novelists; but then, I had also thought that England had
+a few poets.
+
+The most popular German novels are mostly translated into English, and
+all German novels of importance are reviewed in our papers. So English
+people who read German know what a strong reaction there is against
+the moonshine of fifty years ago. The novels most in vogue exhibit the
+same coarse, but often thoughtful and impressive, realism that
+prevails on the stage and in the conversation and conduct of some sets
+of people in the big cities. The _Tagebuch einer Verlorenen_ has sold
+75,000 copies, and it is the story of a German _Kamelliendame_
+compared with whom Dumas' lady is moonshine. It is a haunting picture
+of a woman sinning against the moral and social law, and no one with
+the least sense or judgment could put it on the low level of certain
+English novels that sell because they are offensive, and for no other
+reason in the world. _Aus guter Familie_, by Gabrielle Reuter, is
+another remarkable novel, and I believe it has never been translated
+into English. It presents the poignant tragedy of a woman's life
+suffocated by the social conditions obtaining in a small German town
+where a woman has no hope but marriage, and if she is poor no chance
+of marriage. It is one of the most sincere books I ever read. _Das
+Taegliche Brot_, Klara Viebig's story of servant-life in Berlin, is
+another typical novel of the present day, and that has been translated
+for those amongst us who do not read German. I choose these three
+novels for mention because they are written by women, and because they
+are brilliant examples of the modern tone amongst women. If you want
+the traditional German qualities of sentiment, poetry, formlessness,
+and dreamy childlike charm, you must read novels written by men.
+
+I have said very little about music in Germany, because we all know
+and admit that it reaches heights there no other nation can approach.
+An Englishman writing about Germany lately says that you often hear
+very bad music there, but I think his experience must have been
+exceptional and unfortunate. I am sure that Germans do not tolerate
+the vapid dreary drawing-room songs we listen to complacently in this
+country; for in England people often have beautiful voices without any
+musical understanding, or technical facility without charm. I suppose
+such cases must occur amongst Germans too, and in the end one speaks
+of a foreign nation partly from personal experience, which must be
+narrow, and partly from hearsay. I have met Germans who were not
+musical, but I have never met any who were pleased with downright bad
+music. On the whole, it is the art they understand best, the one in
+which their instinctive taste is sure and good. You would not find
+that the Byron amongst composers, whoever he may be, was the one they
+set up for worship. Nor do you find the street of a German city or
+suburb infested with barrel-organs. There is some kind of low dancing
+saloon or _cafe chantant_ called a Tingl-Tangl where I imagine they
+have organs and gramaphones and suchlike horrors, but then unless you
+chance to pass their open windows you need not endure their strains.
+In England, even if we are fond of music, and therefore sensitive to
+jarring sounds and maudlin melodies, yet in the street we cannot
+escape the barrel-organ nor in the house the drawing-room songs. As if
+these were not enough, we now invite each other to listen to the
+pianotist and the pianola.
+
+"I will explain my country to you," said the artist one day when I had
+expressed myself puzzled by the curious gaps in German taste, and even
+in German knowledge; by their enthusiasm for the second rate in poetry
+and literature, and by their amazing uncertain mixture of information
+and blank complacent ignorance. For when an Englishman says "Goethe!
+Schiller!--Was is das?" you are not surprised. It is just what you
+expect of an Englishman, and for all that he may know how to build
+bridges and keep his temper in games and argument. But when a German
+teacher of literature tells you Byron is the only English poet, and
+when the whole nation neglects some of our big men but runs wild over
+certain little ones, you listen eagerly for any explanation
+forthcoming. "We have _Wissen_," said the artist, "we have _Kunst_;
+but we have no _Kultur_."
+
+I did not recover from the shock he gave me till the evening, when I
+saw the professor of philosophy and aesthetics.
+
+"The artist says that you have no _Kultur_," I told him; for I wanted
+to see how he received a shock.
+
+"The artist speaks the truth," said the professor calmly. I have never
+met anyone more civilised and scholarly then he was himself; and I set
+a high value on his opinion.
+
+"What is _Kultur_?" I asked.
+
+"One result of it is a fine discrimination," he replied, "a fine
+discrimination in art, in conduct, and in manner."
+
+"Are you not the most intellectual people in the world?" I said
+reproachfully.
+
+He seemed to think that had nothing to do with it.
+
+"Are you still worrying your head about _Kultur_?" said the artist
+next time I saw him. "Then I will explain a little more to you. I, as
+you know, am extremely _anti-Semite_."
+
+"I am sure that is not a proof of _Kultur_," I said hurriedly.
+
+"It is not a proof of anything. It is a result. Nevertheless I
+perceive that if it were not for the Jews there would be neither art
+nor literature in Germany. They create, they appreciate, they support,
+and although we affect to despise them we invariably follow them like
+sheep. What they admire we admire; what they discover we see to be
+good. But ... I told you I was _anti-Semite_, ... though they have
+most of the brains in the country, they have little _Kultur_. One of
+us who is as stupid as an ox, ... most of us are as stupid as oxen,
+... may have more, ... but because he is stupid he cannot impose his
+opinion on the multitude."
+
+"Do you mean that the Jews set the fashion in art and literature, and
+that they sometimes set a bad one?" I asked
+
+"That is exactly what I mean."
+
+It was a curious theory, and I will not be responsible for its truth.
+But there is no doubt that in every German town artistic and literary
+society has its centre amongst the educated Jews. They are most
+generous hosts, and it is their pleasure to gather round them an
+aristocracy of genius. The aristocracy that is perfectly happy without
+genius would as a rule not enter a Jew's house; though the poorer
+members of the aristocracy often marry a Jew's daughter. Where there
+is inter-marriage some social intercourse is presumably inevitable.
+But the social crusade against Jews is carried on in Germany to an
+extent we do not dream of here. The Christian clubs and hostels
+exclude them, Christian families avoid them, and Christian insults are
+offered to them from the day of their birth. "What do you use those
+long lances for?" said the wife of a Jewish professor to a young man
+in a cavalry regiment. "_Damit hetzen wir die Juden_," said he, with
+the snarl of his kind; and he knew very well that the lady's husband
+was a Jew. I have been told a story of a Jewish girl being asked to a
+Court ball by the Emperor Frederick, and finding that none of the men
+present would consent to dance with her. I have heard of girls who
+wished to ask a Jewish schoolmate to a dance, and discovered that
+their Christian friends flatly refused to meet anyone of her race. How
+any Christians contrive to avoid it I do not understand, for wherever
+you go in Germany some of the great scholars, doctors, men of science,
+art, and literature, are men of Jewish blood. The press is almost
+entirely in their hands, and when there is a scurrilous artist or a
+coarse picture your friends explain it by saying that the tone of
+that special paper is _juedisch_. The modern campaign against Jews
+began nearly thirty years ago, when a Court chaplain called Stoecker
+startled the world by the violence of his invective. But the fire he
+stirred to flame must have been smouldering. He and his followers gave
+the most ingenuous reasons for curtailing Jewish rights and privileges
+in Germany, one of which was the provoking fact that Jewish boys did
+more brilliantly at school than Christians. The subject bristles with
+difficulties, and no one who knows the German Jew intimately will wish
+to pose him as a persecuted saint. The Christian certainly makes it
+unpleasant for him socially, but in one way or the other he holds his
+own. I have seen him vexed and offended by some brutal slight, but his
+keen sense of humour helps him over most stiles. So no doubt does his
+sense of power. "They will not admit me to their clubs or ask my
+daughters to their dances," said a Jewish friend, "but they come to me
+for money for their charities." And I knew that half the starving poor
+in the town came to his wife for charity, and that she never sent one
+empty away.
+
+When a very clever, sensitive, numerically small race has lived for
+hundreds of years cheek by jowl with a dense brutal race that has
+never ceased to insult and humiliate it, you cannot be surprised if
+those clever but highly sensitive ones become imbued in course of time
+with a painful undesirable conviction that the brutes are their
+superiors. So you have the spectacle in Germany of Jews seeking
+Christian society instead of avoiding it; and you hear them boast
+quite artlessly of their _christlicher Umgang_. They would really
+serve their people and even themselves more if they refused all
+_christlicher Umgang_ until the Christians had learned to behave
+themselves. An Englishwoman living in Berlin told me that once as she
+came out of a concert hall an officer standing in the crowd stared at
+her and said, so that everyone could hear: "At last! a single face
+that is not a _juedischer Fratz_." The concert, you will understand,
+must have been a good one, and therefore largely attended by a Jewish
+audience. Possibly the officer who so much disliked his surroundings
+had married a Jewish heiress and was waiting for his wife. Such things
+happen. During the worst times of Stoecker's campaign a woman with
+Jewish features could hardly go out unescorted; and even now, though
+it is not openly expressed, you can hardly fail to catch some note of
+sympathy with the Russian persecution of the Jews. The deep helpless
+genuine horror felt in England at the pogroms is felt in a fainter way
+in Northern Germany.
+
+Meanwhile the Jewish woman of the upper classes takes her revenge by
+knowing how to dress. In German cities, when you see a woman who is
+"exquisite," slim that is and graceful, dainty from head to foot and
+finely clad, then you may vow by all the gods that she has Jewish
+blood in her.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+  Page 4, l. 26. _Wunderkind_: a prodigy.
+
+  Page 8, l. 5. _Wickelkinder_: infants in swaddling clothes.
+
+  Page 9, l. 26. _Mamsell_: supervising housekeeper.
+
+  Page 11, l. 13. _Die Kunst im Leben des Kindes_: art in the life
+    of the child.
+
+  Page 12, l. 14. _Pestalozzi Froebel Haus_: named for the two great
+    educators, Pestalozzi and Froebel.
+
+  Page 12, l. 31. _pf._: _pfennig_, a quarter of a cent.
+
+  Page 13, l. 22. _Das Recht des Kindes_: the right of the child.
+
+  Page 16, l. 2. _Gymnasium_: school where Latin and Greek are
+    taught (humanistic education).
+
+  Page 16, l. 2. _Real-Gymnasium_: school where Latin, modern
+    languages, mathematics, science, and history are taught. No
+    Greek.
+
+  Page 16, l. 3. _Ober-Real Schule_: school where mathematics,
+    science, history, French, and English are taught.
+
+  Page 16, l. 3. _Real-Schule_: a school which prepares for
+    practical life, not for the university; modern languages are
+    included in the curriculum.
+
+  Page 17, l. 7. _Abiturienten_: graduates from a Gymnasium or
+    Ober-Real Schule.
+
+  Page 17, l. 14. _mark_: a quarter of a dollar.
+
+  Page 17, l. 19. _Flachsmann als Erzieher_: Flachsmann as a
+    pedagogue.
+
+  Page 19, l. 8. _Evangelisch_: Protestant.
+
+  Page 20, l. 19. _Schauspielhaus_: theatre.
+
+  Page 20, l. 21. _Was ist das?_ what is that?
+
+  Page 20, l. 26. _Hoehere Toechterschule_: high school for girls.
+
+  Page 21, l. 33. _Ober Lehrerin_: high grade teacher.
+
+  Page 22, l. 14. _Lyceen_: school where Latin and Greek is taught.
+
+  Page 22, l. 14. _Ober-Lyceen_: school preparing for the
+    university.
+
+  Page 22, l. 31. _Allgemeine deutsche Frauenverein_: Universal
+    League of German Women.
+
+  Page 23, l. 10. _Allgemeine deutsche Lehrerinnen-Verein_:
+    Universal League of German Teachers.
+
+  Page 23, l. 13. _Real-Kurse fuer Maedchen und Frauen_: courses for
+    girls and women outside of those found in the school system, and
+    preparing for the university.
+
+  Page 24, l. 11. _Gymnasialkurse_: the above plan organised into
+    preparatory schools for women for the university.
+
+  Page 26, l. 12. _Stift_: private or state school with board and
+    residence. Also an endowed home for gentlewomen, with certain
+    privileges--either with or without a school for girls.
+
+  Page 30, l. 7. _Volkschule_: public school.
+
+  Page 30, l. 9. _Nicht voellig normal_: rather weak intellectually,
+    abnormal.
+
+  Page 32, l. 24. _Schulrat_: superintendent of schools.
+
+  Page 33, l. 12. _Waldschule_: forest school in open air.
+
+  Page 34, l. 16. _Griesbrei_: porridge made of farina.
+
+  Page 34, l. 21. _Nudelsuppe_: soup of noodles. Vermicelli soup.
+
+  Page 36, l. 8. _Ich liebe einen Backfisch_: I love a girl in her
+    teens.
+
+  Page 36, l. 20. _Backfisch-Moden_: fashions for misses.
+
+  Page 38, l. 33. _Backfischen's Leiden und Freuden_: Sorrows and
+    Joys of a Backfisch.
+
+  Page 41, l. 12. _Jawohl, liebe Tante_: yes, certainly, dear aunt.
+
+  Page 43, l. 34. _Sie geniren sich gewiss_: you are surely too shy.
+
+  Page 44, l. 34. _Braut_: betrothed.
+
+  Page 45, l. 9. _Ein junges Maedchen muss immer heiter sein_: young
+    girl must always be cheerful.
+
+  Page 48, l. 13. _Privatdocenten_: private lecturer.
+
+  Page 51, l. 9. _Volkslieder_: folk songs.
+
+  Page 51, l. 9. _Trinklieder_: drinking songs.
+
+  Page 51, l. 34. _Burschenschaft_: students' corporation.
+
+  Page 52, l. 8. _Alte Herren Abende_: old gentlemen's (former
+    students) evenings.
+
+  Page 53, l. 14. "_Auf die Mensur_": Ready, begin!
+
+  Page 54, l. 9. _raisonniren_: to reason, to argue, to dispute, to
+    scold about.
+
+  Page 54, l. 9. _geniren_: to embarrass, to trouble.
+
+  Page 54, l. 13. _Der Bier Comment_: beer drinking custom; the
+    commanding phrase for a drink called Salamander.
+
+  Page 54, l. 20. _Bierdurst_: beer thirst.
+
+  Page 54, l. 23. _Kneiptafel_: a kind of club table, where men
+    generally spend evenings drinking beer and joining in songs.
+
+  Page 55, l. 27. "_Silentium fuer einen Biergalopp, ich bitte den
+    noetigen Staff anzuschaffen_": Silence for a beer gallop; please
+    provide the necessary stuff.
+
+  Page 56, l. 19. _Kommers_: students' festival evening, drinking
+    bout.
+
+  Page 56, l. 22. _In vollem Wichs_: in full dress.
+
+  Page 56, l. 27. "_Sauft alle mit einander_": Drink all together.
+
+  Page 65, l. 2. _Stammtisch_: a club table, where every member has
+    a reserved seat.
+
+  Page 67, l. 15. "_Man soll_," etc.: "One ought to so bring up
+    women," said Siegfried, the champion, "that they omit all
+    unnecessary talk. Forbid it your wife. I will do the same with
+    mine. Really I am ashamed of such an arrogant custom."
+
+  Page 67, l. 22. "_Das hat mich_," etc.: "I repented it
+    immediately," said the noble woman. "On this account he beat my
+    body black and blue; because I talked too much he was disturbed
+    in his spirit: this did revenge the champion wise and good."
+
+  Page 69, l. 22 _Ritterschaft_: knighthood.
+
+  Page 71, l. 31. _Lette Verein_: Lette Association.
+
+  Page 72, l. 21. _Leipziger Allerlei_: a kind of mixed pickles.
+
+  Page 73, l. 25. _eine Stuetze_: a helper for the housewife.
+
+  Page 78, l. 1. _Memoiren einer Idealistin_: Memoirs of an
+    Idealist.
+
+  Page 80, l. 24. _Schadchan_: Jewish business match-maker or
+    marriage broker.
+
+  Page 82, l. 8. _Aus guter Familie_: of good family.
+
+  Page 83, l. 15. _In freier Ehe_: in free love.
+
+  Page 85, l. 7. _Alte Schloss_: old castle.
+
+  Page 85, l. 8. _nicht wahr?_ is that not so?
+
+  Page 85, l. 26. _Ausflug_ or _Landpartie_: excursion trip in the
+    country.
+
+  Page 86, l. 13. "_Die Verlobung_," etc.: The engagement of their
+    daughter Pauline to Mr. Henry Schmidt, barrister Dr. jur., in
+    Berlin, is announced respectfully by Privy Counsellor of
+    Government Dr. Eugene Brand, Royal Director of Gymnase, and Mrs.
+    Helene, born Engel. Stuttgart, in June, 1906. 7 Tiergarten.
+
+  Page 86, l. 23. "_Meine Verlobung_," etc.: I have the honor
+    respectfully to announce my engagement with Miss Pauline Brand,
+    daughter of the Royal Director of Gymnase, Privy Counsellor of
+    Government Dr. Eugen Brand and his honorable wife Helene, born
+    Engel. Dr. jur. Heinrich Schmidt, barrister Referendar. Berlin,
+    in June, 1906. Kurfuerstendam 2000.
+
+  Page 88, l. 2. _Brautpaar_: bride and bridegroom on the wedding
+    day, betrothed couple.
+
+  Page 88, l. 12. _Wilkommen, du glueckseliges Kind_: Welcome, you
+    happy child.
+
+  Page 88, l. 15. _ruehrend_: touching.
+
+  Page 88, l. 15. _innig_: hearty, fervent.
+
+  Page 89, l. 16. _Aussteurer_: trousseau, also household endowment
+    of money.
+
+  Page 91, l. 2. "Wir winden dir":
+
+  THE FREE SHOOTER
+
+    The bridal wreath for thee we bind,
+      With silken thread of azure;
+    In wedded days, oh, mayst thou find
+      Full store of hope and pleasure.
+
+    I've planted thyme and myrtle sweet,
+      They grew in my garden;
+    But when shall I my true love meet,
+      How long will he delay yet?
+
+    Full seven years the maiden span,
+      The snow-white web augmenting;
+    The veil is clear like a web,
+      And green the wreath in her hair.
+
+    When lo! her true love came at last,
+      When seven years had passed,
+    Because her lover married her
+      She has deserved her wreath.
+
+  Page 94, l. 7. _Freie Trauungen_: free marriages.
+
+  Page 94, l. 20. _Sozialdemokratischer Verband_: society of
+    democratic socialists.
+
+  Page 98, l. 1. _Tafel-Lieder_: table songs.
+
+  Page 98, l. 22. _Hoch_: Hurrah.
+
+  Page 99, l. 8. _"Wie ist doch,"_ etc.:
+
+    How highly is the Uncle blest;
+    To-day the bridal wreath adorns the aunt.
+
+  Page 99, l. 11. "_Liebe Gaeste_," etc.:
+
+    Dear guests, will you all
+    Arise with pleasure--
+    Hail to the bridal pair--
+    May they prosper.
+
+  Page 99, l. 25. _Hochzeits-Tafel_: wedding meal.
+
+  Page 101, l. 2. "_Geschiedene Leute scheiden fort und fort_":
+    divorced people sever forever.
+
+  Page 101, l. 14. _unwirtlichen_: inhospitable, barren.
+
+  Page 102, l. 11. "_Buergerliches Gesetzbuch_": citizen's law book,
+    code.
+
+  Page 103, l. 10. _Wohnzimmer_: living room.
+
+  Page 104, l. 5. _Hof_: court; yard.
+
+  Page 105, l. 9. _Wie Herrlich_: how splendid.
+
+  Page 106, l. 26. _Fuellofen_: stove, a self-feeder.
+
+  Page 109, l. 13. _Landeskirche_: National church.
+
+  Page 110, l. 7. _Nichtraucher_: no smoking allowed.
+
+  Page 110, l. 7. _Damen-Coupe_: for ladies only (in railway).
+
+  Page 110, l. 12. _Aber ich bitte, meine Dame: es zieht, ja, ja, es
+    zieht_: but please, madame, there is a draught, yes, yes, there
+    is a draught.
+
+  Page 112, l. 25. _Magen_: stomach.
+
+  Page 113, l. 24. _Mein armer Karl_: My poor Charles.
+
+  Page 113, l. 24. _Kueken mit Spargel_: spring chicken with
+    asparagus.
+
+  Page 114, l. 13. _Frikassee von Haehnchen mit Krebsen_: fricassee
+    of chicken with crabs.
+
+  Page 114, l. 23. _perfekte Koechin_: experienced cook.
+
+  Page 116, l. 12. "_Dienen lerne_," etc.:
+
+    Early a woman should learn to serve, for that is her calling;
+    Since through service alone she finally comes to governing,
+    Comes to the due command that is hers of right in the household.
+    Early the sister must wait on her brother, and wait on her parents;
+    Life must be always with her a perpetual coming and going,
+    Or be a lifting and carrying, making and doing for others.
+    Happy for her be she accustomed to think no way is too grievous,
+    And if the hours of the night be to her as the hours of the daytime;
+    If she find never a needle too fine, nor a labour too trifling;
+    Wholly forgetful of self, and caring to live but in others!
+
+  Page 117, l. 31. "_Par une recontre_," etc.: "By a strange
+    chance," says Monsieur Taine, "women are more feminine and men
+    more masculine here than elsewhere. The two natures go to
+    extremes, the one to boldness, to a spirit of enterprise and
+    opposition, to a character that is warlike, imperious, and
+    rough; the other to gentleness, self-denial, patience,
+    inexhaustible affection. Here woman yields completely, a thing
+    unknown in foreign lands, especially in France, and looks upon
+    obedience, pardon, adoration as an honour and a duty, without
+    desiring or striving for anything beyond subordinating herself
+    and becoming daily more absorbed in him whom she has chosen of
+    her own accord and for all time. It is this instinct, an old
+    Germanic instinct, that those great delineators of instinct all
+    paint in a high light!... The spirit of this race is at once
+    primitive and serious. Among women simplicity lasts longer than
+    it does elsewhere. They are slower in losing respect, and in
+    weighing values and characters; they are less ready to suspect
+    evil and to analyse their husbands.... They have not the
+    cleverness, the advanced ideas, the assured behaviour, the
+    precocity which with us turns a young girl into a sophisticated
+    woman and a queen of society in six months. A secluded life and
+    obedience are easier for them. More yielding and more sedentary,
+    they are at once more reserved, more self-centred, more disposed
+    to gaze upon the noble dream that they call duty."
+
+  Page 118, l. 28. "_Voir la peinture_," etc.: "Depiction of this
+    character is to be seen in all English and German literature,"
+    he says in a footnote. "The closest of observers, Stendhal,
+    thoroughly impregnated with Italian and French ideas and
+    customs, is amazed at sight of it. He understands nothing of
+    this kind of devotion, 'of this slavery which English husbands
+    have had the cleverness to impose upon their wives under the
+    name of duty.' These are 'customs of the seraglio.'"
+
+  Page 121, l. 5. _lese majeste_: high treason.
+
+  Page 124, l. 5. _ordentliche Frau_: respectable woman.
+
+  Page 127, l. 8. "_Mir ist ein Greuel_": it is a horror for me.
+
+  Page 127, l. 23. _Frau Wirklichergeheimerober regierungsrath_:
+    Mrs. privy chief counsellor of government.
+
+  Page 130, l. 26. _dumm_: silly, stupid.
+
+  Page 133, l. 22. _Tuechtigkeit_: capability.
+
+  Page 134, l. 7. "_Wie die Kueche_," etc.: when the kitchen is
+    clean, the whole house is clean. Neat indoors, neat outdoors.
+
+  Page 134, l. 10. "_Trautes Heim_," etc.:
+
+    There is no place like home.
+    My home is my castle.
+
+  Page 141, l. 6. _Unsinn ... Quatsch_: nonsense, rubbish.
+
+  Page 141, l. 9. _Das hat keinen Zweck_: that is of no use.
+
+  Page 141, l. 27. _Herrschaft_: master and mistress and their
+    family.
+
+  Page 143, l. 21. _Gesinde-Dienstbuch_: servant's book of
+    reference.
+
+    For Anna Schmidt.
+    From Rheinbeck.
+    Age (geboren, born) June 20, 1885.
+    Stature, slender.
+    Eyes, gray.
+    Nose and mouth ordinary.
+    Hair, dark blond.
+    Especial characteristics.
+
+---------------+-----------+--------+-------+------------+------------
+NAME, VOCATION,|           |DAY OF  |DAY OF |REASON OF   |CERTIFICATE
+AND ADDRESS OF |BEARER IS  |ENTERING|LEAVING|LEAVING--   |AND REMARKS
+THE EMPLOYER   |ACCEPTED AS|SERVICE |SERVICE|REFERENCE   |OF POLICE
+---------------+-----------+--------+-------+------------+------------
+Widow Auguste  |Servant    |Oct. 20,|Jan. 2,|Wished a    |Seen
+Knoblauch      |           |1901    |1902   |change      |(_Place and
+               |           |        |       |Conduct     | date, with
+               |           |        |       |good        |official
+               |           |        |       |            |stamp and
+               |           |        |       |            |signature_)
+---------------+-----------+--------+-------+------------+------------
+Boretzky, Post |Housemaid  |Feb. 2, |Oct. 2,|Is dismissed|
+Restaurant, 2  |           |1902    |1904   |because of  |
+Baeren Street   |           |        |       |unbecoming  |
+               |           |        |       |behaviour,  |
+               |           |        |       |but is      |
+               |           |        |       |diligent and|
+               |           |        |       |honest      |
+---------------+-----------+--------+-------+------------+------------
+
+  Page 148, l. 3. _Speiseschrank_: pantry.
+
+  Page 151, l. 23. _Kammer_: little chamber.
+
+  Page 159, l. 11. _eine jute Jabe Jottes_: a good gift of God.
+
+  Page 164, l. 5. _Mehlspeise_: farinaceous dish.
+
+  Page 164, l. 5. _Spetzerle_: a sort of dumpling.
+
+  Page 164, l. 9. _Leibgericht_: favourite dish.
+
+  Page 164, l. 9. _Rote Gruetze_: literally "red gruel."
+
+  Page 168, l. 7. _Torten_: tarts.
+
+  Page 169, l. 15. _Beamtenbeleidigung_: offence against an
+    official.
+
+  Page 170, l. 19. _Baumkuchen_: cake baked on a spit.
+
+  Page 179, l. 26. _Das Maedchen aus der Fremde_: the Strange Maiden.
+
+  Page 179, l. 27. _Der Tod und das Maedchen_: Death and the Maiden.
+
+  Page 180, l. 10. _gemuetlich_: comfortable, agreeable, cosy.
+
+  Page 180, l. 25. _kraeftige Kost_: nourishing food.
+
+  Page 181, l. 7. _Heuchelei_: hypocrisy.
+
+  Page 182, l. 22. _tuechtige Hausfrau_: experienced housewife.
+
+  Page 183, l. 12. _Gesellschaft_: society, a "party."
+
+  Page 183, l. 28. _Gott sei Dank_: God be thanked.
+
+  Page 183, l. 33. _Guten Tag_: good day.
+
+  Page 187, l. 22. _Steinkohlen_: mineral coal, anthracite.
+
+  Page 187, l. 22. _Braunkohlen_: lignite, brown coal.
+
+  Page 189, l. 8. _gehacktes Schweinefleisch_: choppy pork.
+
+  Page 195, l. 21. _Reform-Kleider_: reform dresses.
+
+  Page 195, l. 34. _Elles s'habillent si mal_: they dress so badly.
+
+  Page 200, l. 4. _Spruch_: motto.
+
+  Page 200, l. 16. _Meringuetorte_: pastry with whipped cream.
+
+  Page 201, l. 29. _Bowle_: punch.
+
+  Page 201, l. 33. _Kaffee-Klatsch mit Schleppe_ (train): a coffee
+    party in grand style.
+
+  Page 203, l. 16. _Gefrorenes_: ice cream.
+
+  Page 203, l. 35. _Pumpernickel_: Westphalian rye bread.
+
+  Page 207, l. 8. _Katzenjammer_: moral depression--the
+    blues--seediness after drunken debauch.
+
+  Page 207, l. 27. _Hier koennen Familien Kaffee kochen_: here
+    families are allowed to cook coffee.
+
+  Page 216, l. 17. _ein falsches Volk_: false people.
+
+  Page 222, l. 16. _Schenkwirte_: tavern keepers.
+
+  Page 223, l. 15. _Schoppen_: a pint.
+
+  Page 227, l. 3. _Oberkellner_: head waiter, head steward.
+
+  Page 231, l. I. _frisch angesteckt_: fresh on tap.
+
+  Page 231, l. 20. _Rindfleisch_: boiled beef.
+
+  Page 231, l. 26. _versoffene Jungfern_: drunken maidens.
+
+  Page 233, l. 1. _halbe Portion_: half a portion.
+
+  Page 233, l. 20. _Stimmung_: mood, humour.
+
+  Page 233, l. 27. _Das hat keinen Zweck_: of no use, end, etc.;
+    what difference does that make?
+
+  Page 234, l. i. _Verrueckt_: crazy, mad.
+
+  Page 235, l. 16. _Schmorkartoffeln_: stewed potatoes baked in
+    butter.
+
+  Page 235, l. 28. _Pastetchen_: small pies, patties.
+
+  Page 237, l. 13. _Koenigstrasse_: King's Road.
+
+  Page 237, l. 14. _Herrschaften_: patrons.
+
+  Page 237, l. 23. _Delikatessenhandlung_: delicatessen shop.
+
+  Page 240, l. 3. _Spiritus leid' ich nicht_: I will not allow
+    alcohol.
+
+  Page 240, l. 29. _Trinkgeld_: tips.
+
+  Page 242, l. 10. _das beste Zimmer_: best room, salon.
+
+  Page 244, l. 8. _Das schadet nichts, das ist gesund_: never mind,
+    it is healthful.
+
+  Page 245, l. 27. _fremd_: strange.
+
+  Page 245, l. 33. _Reisebureau_: office of information for
+    travellers.
+
+  Page 246, l. 14. _anmelden_: announce, report.
+
+  Page 247, l. 13. _Ausgang_: exit.
+
+  Page 247, l. 14. _Eingang_: entrance.
+
+  Page 249, l. 10. _Dann war es mir zu bunt_: it was too much for
+    me, it goes too far.
+
+  Page 252, l. 6. _Verschoenerungsverein_: society for
+    embellishments.
+
+  Page 252, l. 13. _Aussicht_: view.
+
+  Page 252, l. 13 _prachtvoll_: splendid.
+
+  Page 252, l. 13. _Luft herrlich_: lovely air.
+
+  Page 252, l. 16. _die Herren_: the gentlemen.
+
+  Page 253, l. 15. _wanderfroh_: fond of travelling.
+
+  Page 255, l. 13. _Badearzt_: physician of a watering place.
+
+  Page 255, l. 31. _eine gute Stunde_: a good hour's walk.
+
+  Page 257, l. 3. _Kur_: medical treatment.
+
+  Page 257, l. 5. _Badereise_: sojourn at a bathing place for the
+    benefit of the waters.
+
+  Page 258, l. 1. _Luftkur_: open air cure.
+
+  Page 258, l. 9. _Blutarmut_: anaemia.
+
+  Page 258, l. 18. _Corpulententisch_: table of the corpulents.
+
+  Page 259, l. 4. _Kegel_: ninepins.
+
+  Page 259, l. 17. _Waldluft_: forest air.
+
+  Page 259, l. 28. _Speisesaal_: dining room.
+
+  Page 260, l. 16. "_Warum willst_," etc.:
+
+    Why do you wander elsewhere
+    When happiness is so near?
+
+  Page 261, l. 25. _Personenzug_: local train.
+
+  Page 262, l. 16. _Schein_: bill, receipt.
+
+  Page 268, l. 17. _staedtische Kleider_: city dress.
+
+  Page 268, l. 31. _Kirchweih_: annual festival in commemoration of
+    the consecration of church.
+
+  Page 269, l. 4. _Brautwagen_: wedding coach.
+
+  Page 270, l. 6. _Hochzeit_: wedding.
+
+  Page 270, l. 19. _belegtes Butterbrot_: sandwiches.
+
+  Page 271, l. 5. _Hochzeitsmahl_: wedding meal.
+
+  Page 271, l. 16. _Speisesaal_: dining room.
+
+  Page 277, l. 2. _Was ist denn los?_ what is the matter?
+
+  Page 278, l. 18. _Sehnsucht_: yearning.
+
+  Page 278, l. 21. _Haferbrei_: oat meal.
+
+  Page 279, l. 8. _Schmalz_: suet, lard.
+
+  Page 279, l. 11. _Pfarrer_: priest, clergyman, parson.
+
+  Page 279, l. 18. _Betten_: beds.
+
+  Page 279, l. 19. _Heidenmuehle_: mill on the heath.
+
+  Page 279, l. 24. _Knecht_: manservant.
+
+  Page 291, l. 19. _Volkskueche_: public kitchen.
+
+  Page 292, l. 2. _Tischzeit_: hours for meals.
+
+  Page 292, l. 6. _Durch Arbeiten_: through work.
+
+  Page 292, l. 16. _Der Kaufmaennische Verband fuer Weibliche
+    Angestellte_: Merchant Association for Employed Women.
+
+  Page 298, l. 13. _Kurfuerstendam_: elector's dyke.
+
+  Page 303, l. 1. _Zelten_: tents.
+
+  Page 305, l. 1. _Berliner Zimmer_: a room with one window.
+
+  Page 307, l. 5. _nichtssagend_: trifling, of little value.
+
+  Page 307, l. 12. _stramm_: robust, vigorous.
+
+  Page 307, l. 13. _kraeftig_: strong, healthy, sturdy.
+
+  Page 307, l. 13. _hocherfreut_: delighted, highly pleased.
+
+  Page 310, l. 21. _Zeitungsgeschrei_: newspaper clamour.
+
+  Page 315, l. 8. _Reden sie nicht_: don't talk.
+
+  Page 318, l. 2. _Kultur_: culture.
+
+  Page 319, l. 22. _Damit hetzen wir die Juden_: therewith we stir
+    up the Jews.
+
+  Page 320, l. 33. _christlicher Umgang_: to be in company of
+    Christians.
+
+  Page 321, l. 5. _juedischer Fratz_: Jewish phiz.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+Advertisements, 85, 307
+
+Allotment gardens, 207
+
+Anglophobia, 5, 119, 130, 184, 309-311
+
+Art in the nursery, 11
+
+Auerbach, 272-278
+
+
+_Backfischen's Leiden und Freuden_, 38-43
+
+Baden, 6, 22 (see also Black Forest)
+
+_Badereise_, 255-260
+
+Bathrooms, 103, 305
+
+Bavaria, 228, 231, 258, 273, 275
+
+Beds, 124, 229
+
+Beggars, 276, 295
+
+Berlin--
+  Electric cars, 300
+  Fire-brigade, 275
+  Flats and houses, 103-108
+  Froebel Haus, 12
+  Ladies' clubs, 75
+  Philanthropy, 293
+  Registry offices, 142
+  Restaurants, 233
+  Sculptures, 297
+  Shops, 167-170, 174
+  Students, 57
+  Sunday excursions, 207
+  Taxes, 109
+
+_Berliner Zimmer_, 305
+
+_Bestes Zimmer_, 242
+
+Betham-Edwards, Miss, 36
+
+Betrothals, 85-91
+
+_Bier Comment_, 54-56
+
+Birmingham brass workers, 295
+
+Black Forest, 162, 171, 205, 220, 267 ff., 276
+
+_Brautpaar_, 87
+
+Budgets, household, 187-194, 283
+
+_Buergerliches Gesetzbuch_, 102
+
+_Burschenschaft_, 51
+
+Byron, 38, 314
+
+
+Cellar-shops, 170
+
+Charlottenberg Forest School, 32
+
+Christmas, 176
+
+Church tax, 109
+
+Confirmation, 78-80
+
+Cooking classes, 72
+
+_Corps-Studenten_, 51-53
+
+Cotta, Frl. v., 21
+
+Cottbus Market, 174
+
+_Creches_, 10, 33
+
+
+_Dienstbuch_, 142-145
+
+Divorce, 100
+
+Doctors, 9, 31, 72, 295
+
+Doecker system, 33
+
+Drawing-rooms, 126
+
+Drunkenness, 206
+
+Duels, students', 51-53
+
+Dyhrenfurth, Gertrud, 282
+
+
+Economy, 130, 178, 188, 243, 287
+
+Eltzbacher, O., 93, 185
+
+Emigration, 185, 263
+
+Emperor Wilhelm II., 70, 218, 220
+
+Empress Friedrich, 21, 71
+
+
+Family life, 61, 65, 128
+
+_Flachsmann als Erzieher_, 17
+
+Flats, 103, 123, 130, 304
+
+Food--
+  Family meals, 154
+  Fish, 161
+  Free food, 31, 50
+  Goose, 162
+  Meat, 160
+  _Mehlspeisen_, 164, 231
+  _Nudeln_, 159
+  _Ochsenfleisch_, 155
+  Recipes, 159-165
+  _Rothe Gruetze_, 164
+  Supper, 158, 203
+  Tea, 158
+  Vegetables, 163
+
+Freiburg Market, 173
+
+Fuel, 106, 187
+
+Furniture, 123-126
+
+
+"Garden houses," 304
+
+Gardens, 104
+
+"German Home Life," 8, 93
+
+Gipsies, 276
+
+Goethe, 116, 260
+
+_Gymnasium_, 15-19
+
+Gymnastics, 31, 34, 220
+
+
+Hamburg--
+  Life, 105, 155, 232
+  Lodgings, 242
+  Markets, 174
+  Servants' dress, 138
+  Sports, 219
+
+Heidelberg, 51-53
+
+_Hof_, the, 104, 108
+
+Home-workers, 289-291
+
+Hospitality, 43, 196 ff., 210
+
+Hospitals, 295
+
+Housekeeping budgets, 187-194, 283
+
+House-porter, 108, 303
+
+
+_Idealistin, Memoiren einer_, 78, 125, 131, 139, 180, 212-214
+
+Illegitimate children, 93, 294
+
+Incomes, 48, 177;
+  and see Economy
+
+Inns and Innkeepers, 227-232
+
+
+Jews, 50, 80, 289, 319-321
+
+_Joseph im Schnee_, 278-281
+
+
+_Kaffee Klatsch_, 90, 200-202
+
+_Kindergarten_, 12-14
+
+_Kirchweih_, 273
+
+Kitchens, 34, 107, 132-134, 146
+
+_Kneipe_, 54-56, 64, 128
+
+_Kommers_, 56
+
+
+Ladies' clubs, 75-77
+
+_Landes_ tax, 109
+
+Lange, Frl. Helene, 22-27
+
+Laundry work, 136
+
+_Leipziger Messe_, 175
+
+_Lette-Verein_, 71-75
+
+Linen, 135-137
+
+Lodgings, 237 ff.
+
+Loeper-Housselle, Marie, 23
+
+Luggage on railways, 261
+
+Lyceum Club, 76
+
+Lyceum, Victoria, 21
+
+
+Marketing, 133-228
+
+Markets, 173-176, 306
+
+Marriage--
+  Arranged, 68, 80-82
+  Ceremony, 94 ff.
+  Proposal, 84
+  Revolt against, 66, 83
+
+Muenchhausen, Frau K., 167
+
+Music, 31, 206, 303, 316
+
+
+Newspapers, 307-312
+
+Novels, 315
+
+Nurseries, 9-11
+
+
+Oberhof, 257
+
+Opera, 209
+
+Outdoor life, 222
+
+
+Peasants' costume, 268
+  Dances, 272-274
+  Weddings, 269-272
+
+Pensions, old age, 30, 150
+
+Pestalozzi Froebel Haus, 12
+
+Philanthropy, 293-296
+
+Police regulations, 108, 151, 169, 245-249
+
+_Polterabend_, 92
+
+Professors' salaries, 48
+
+Prussia--
+  Cost of schools, 17
+  Free schools, 31
+  Taxes, 109
+
+
+Railway travelling, 260-263
+
+Religious teaching, 19
+
+Religious belief, 211-216
+
+Rents, 103
+
+Restaurants, 233-235
+
+Reuter, Gabrielle, 82
+
+Riehl on women, 57 ff.
+
+Ruegen, 257
+
+
+_Salamander_, 56
+
+Saxony, 108
+
+Scenery, 250 ff.
+
+Schadchan, 80
+
+Schlegel, Caroline, 95
+
+Schmidt, Auguste, 23
+
+Schools--
+  Cost of, 17
+  Elementary, 29-31
+  Forest, 32-35
+  Kinds of, 16, 20, 22
+  Lessons, 18
+  Medical inspection, 31, 34
+  Music in, 31
+  Religious teaching in, 19
+
+Servants--
+  Bedrooms, 151
+  Costumes, 10, 138, 183
+  Dances, 148
+  Gratuities, 145, 149
+  Meals, 147
+  Pensions, 150
+  Wages, 140, 145
+
+Shadwell, Dr., 287
+
+Shakespeare, 314
+
+Shops--
+  Cellar, 170
+  In Berlin, 167-170
+  In Black Forest, 171
+
+Silesian village, 282-285
+
+Skittles, 222
+
+Sofa, 126
+
+Sports, winter, 220
+
+State tax, 109
+
+_Steckkissen_, 7
+
+_Stifte_, 27, 69-71, 76
+
+Stoves, 106-108
+
+Students, 47 ff.
+
+_Stuetze der Hausfrau_, 73, 151
+
+Summer resorts, 250 ff.
+
+Sundays, 205 ff.
+
+"Sweating," 289-291
+
+Swimming-baths, 219
+
+
+_Tafel-Lieder_, 97-99
+
+Taine, M., 117, 149
+
+Taxes, 108
+
+Teachers' seminaries, 21
+
+Theatres, 208-210, 312-314
+
+Thuringia, 229, 276
+
+Tidiness, 37, 128-130, 135, 306
+
+Titles, 126
+
+Toys, 11
+
+_Trousseaux_, 89, 123, 140
+
+
+Universities, 47 ff.
+
+
+_Verein_, 221
+
+Victoria Lyceum, 21
+
+Viebig, Klara, 141, 170, 316
+
+Village fires, 274-276
+
+Visits, 196-200
+
+_Volkskueche_, 291
+
+
+Walking tours, organised, 253
+
+Weddings, 92 ff., 268-272
+
+_Weibliche Angestellte_, 292
+
+Wertheim, 167-170
+
+_Wickelkinder_, 8
+
+Windows, 105
+
+Winter sports, 220
+
+Women--
+  Dress, 154, 195
+  Legal position, 101
+  Modern, 66, 82-84
+  Riehl on, 57 ff.
+  Single, 60-62, 75, 81
+  Treatment of, 60, 63, 65, 117-122
+  Working, 287 ff.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page  23: Allegemeine replaced with Allgemeine            |
+    | Page  71: '400,000 odd women' replaced with               |
+    |           '400,000-odd women'                             |
+    | Page  94: bridgroom replaced with bridegroom              |
+    | Page 127: 'It it not easy' replaced with                  |
+    |           'It is not easy'                                |
+    | Page 141: knowledgable replaced with knowledgeable        |
+    | Page 164: Rothe Gruetze replaced with Rote Gruetze          |
+    | Page 184: extremly replaced with extremely                |
+    | Page 191: 'fairly comfortably income' replaced with       |
+    |           'fairly comfortable income'                     |
+    | Page 223: Brauehaus replaced with Braeuhaus                 |
+    | Page 253: preceptions replaced with perceptions           |
+    | Page 277: amazment replaced with amazement                |
+    | Page 301: 'it is an autocracy or are public' replaced     |
+    |           with 'it is an autocracy or a republic'         |
+    | Page 318: anti-Semit replaced with anti-Semite            |
+    | Page 327: Burgerliches replaced with Buergerliches         |
+    | Page 330: Braunkolen replaced with Braunkohlen            |
+    | Page 330: gahacktes replaced with gehacktes               |
+    | Page 331: Delicatessenhandlung replaced with              |
+    | Page 334: Dyrenfurth replaced with Dyhrenfurth            |
+    | Page 336: 'Stueze der Hausfrau' replaced with              |
+    |           'Stuetze der Hausfrau'                           |
+    | Page 336: Ruegen replaced with Ruegen                      |
+    | Page 336: Vereine replaced with Verein                    |
+    | Page 336: Weibliche Angestelle replaced with              |
+    |           Weibliche Angestellte                           |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Home Life in Germany, by Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
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