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 litre of milk, 4 small white rolls, lb. rye bread, 2 oz. of b.u.t.ter, 1 oz.
of coffee. Nothing is set down for sugar, and I think that most German families of this cla.s.s would not use sugar, and would eat their bread without b.u.t.ter. 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, b.u.t.ter, 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 quant.i.ties 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 quant.i.ties 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. b.u.t.ter 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 quant.i.ties 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 250 a year does not call for so much comment as the smaller one, because 250 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:--
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 Amus.e.m.e.nts and travelling 25 0 0 Christmas and presents 10 0 0 Sundries 3 0 0 ----------- 250 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 b.u.t.ter 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 gla.s.s 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 -- Amus.e.m.e.nts 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 436. 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 16, where an English one presenting the same front would spend 20 to 25. 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-cla.s.s women of Berlin have an extraordinary affection all through the summer season for collarless blouses, b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 a.s.sociate 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 a.s.sertions, 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 b.u.t.ter 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 Oth.e.l.los. But it must not be supposed that one or two strangers const.i.tute 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 a.s.sembled 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 gla.s.ses of lemonade or _Bowle_. When you get home you do not want any supper, and you are quite hoa.r.s.e, 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 gla.s.ses 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 gla.s.ses 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 b.u.t.tered roll, each with its sc.r.a.p 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 quant.i.ties 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.ses they wore neat clothes and had quiet, modest manners. The older people often let them drink out of their gla.s.ses, 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 compet.i.tions 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 cla.s.s of peasants.
In Berlin the better cla.s.s 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 b.u.t.terfly nets and contain entomological specimens.
But they are usually in the hands of a stout alpaca-clad middle-cla.s.s mater-familias, who looks rather anxious and fl.u.s.tered while she herds her flock and hunts for a garden with the announcement, "Hier konnen 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 ma.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses, 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 cla.s.sical 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 _Erzahlungen_ 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 cla.s.s. 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 Freischutz_, _Don Juan_, _Oberon_, or _Die Zauberflote_. In fact, all through the winter the upper and middle cla.s.ses make the play and the opera their favourite Sunday pastime. The lower cla.s.ses 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 _Stammgaste_ (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 gla.s.ses 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.dless 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 n.o.ble work of art. She confessed with embarra.s.sment 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 cla.s.ses. 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 inst.i.tutions. 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 G.o.ds, 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 coa.r.s.e animal natures of the only half-human beings became coa.r.s.er and more animal through the degrading pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sage 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 h.e.l.ls. How you can call yourself a religious people--it is Satanic...."