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 gra.s.s 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 _Kurfurstendamm_. 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 _Kurfurstendamm_. 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 Kurfurst. 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-cla.s.s 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-cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s, and wear white hats. Anyone who wished to see a second-cla.s.s 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 munic.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sengers 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 gla.s.s 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 bra.s.s 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 pa.s.s through every time the door bell rings, and when she goes about her business in the front regions her brooms and pails must pa.s.s 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 _Kurfurstendamm_, 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 a.s.sured, 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 ma.s.ses 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 mult.i.tude 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt. 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 _kraftig_, 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt of his death. "He who has just pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed away had been the head of a small soap factory, and this advertis.e.m.e.nt was put in by the factory hands just beneath the one signed by all the family. Another advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.sed 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts, and a.s.sure 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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 Kopenick. 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 a.s.suredly 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess of Whitechapel was in her box, looking so lovely in cabbage green. Mrs. "d.i.c.ky" 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 pa.s.s 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 att.i.tude to Germans who have been in London, because they know what vulgar and vicious farces and musical comedies pa.s.s 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, Sh.e.l.ley, 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 a.s.sured 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 coa.r.s.e, 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 Tagliche 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 pa.s.s 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.