WANDERINGS IN GERMANY
Years and years ago, when Luther was giving us, or rather demanding of
us, two strong legs and an obstinate "No" when it was our duty to say
"No," there were thousands of young men in Germany who had wheelbarrows,
and, I trust, the two strong legs; they were called _Handwerksburschen_,
traveling apprentices, a name that remains intact with their counterpart
of our day. The apprentices in honorably quitting their masters--I fear,
sometimes before honor had become a definite part of their moral
baggage--would put their bits of tools into the wheelbarrows, the
masters would give them a _glückauf_, and away the young men would go
over Europe, studying their trades in different countries, and getting
acquainted with life in towns, villages and fields. In the main, they
were earnest inquirers of their kind, seeking comparative wisdom and a
friendly acquaintance with the _Chaussee_.
Luther has long since gone, and with him the _Handwerksbursch_ of his
time. The _Chaussee_ has given away to the fourth-class railway car, and
the wheelbarrow and kit of tools to a stingy knapsack. The
_Handwerksbursch_ still has two legs, as a rule, but he hates to use
them.
Such good nature and fellowship as must have prevailed among Luther's
traveling apprentices could also be found among the students of the
time. They took to the _Chaussee_, saw men, cities and things, and their
vacation over, returned to their lectures and books. Like the
_Handwerksbursch_, however, they have found their accounting with the
present, and to-day are quite as much at home in the fourth-class car as
were their predecessors on the _Chaussee_.
In course of time it came my turn to make one of the students' tours of
Germany. The _Semester_ was over, a friendly companion was at hand, and,
for a _Rundreise_ excursion, we had sufficient money in our pockets. It
may or may not have been a sop to _Die Ferne_ that I undertook this
jaunt, but I think now that it was merely a well-timed outing in order
that _Die Ferne_ should not be consciously considered. Here again, as so
often before and since, credit must be given to my mother. She seemed to
know to the hour almost, the time when it was necessary for me to jump
out of harness and take to the open again.
My companion on this first exploration of Germany was a gentleman
considerably older than myself. He was a stalwart Norwegian, perhaps
forty years of age, with a burly blond beard, a great "bundle of hair,"
as the tramps say, and a pugnacious belief in the prohibition of the
liquor traffic. Physically, Nietzsche's _guter grosser blondes Mensch_
was found in him to a nicety. Some months before my arrival in Berlin,
he appeared at my mother's door one evening and said in a western nasal
drawl: "Glad to meet you. Believed in your sister-in-law's principles,
and thought I'd come around and call."
My mother saw in him at first merely the typical Prohibitionist with a
long rehearsal of the reasons why, if need be, one should go dry in a
waterless, but alcoholic neighborhood. A partial rehearsal there was,
and then the tall, blond man from "Minnesoty" got to talking most
interestingly about the university, philosophy, religion, Norway--and
Ibsen. He spoke also of his native language, of literature in general,
and of men in "Minnesoty" who were trying to make a new Norwegian
literature.
Ibsen was much discussed at the time, and "Nora" was the talk of the
town. It had become almost an affair of state whether Nora did right in
leaving her home, and decidedly a matter of etiquette whether a husband
should, or should not, offer a disappearing wife an umbrella on a rainy
night. (The "Doll's House," as I saw it, presumed a storm outside.)
Ibsen was living in Munich in those days.
Our friend, the Norwegian, wrote to Ibsen, and asked him whether he
would receive two Americans anxious to pay their respects to him. It had
been decided that the Norwegian and I should make _Rundreise_ together,
and Munich was included in our itinerary. Ibsen replied to the
Norwegian's letter in very neat handwriting, that he was usually at home
in the Maximilian strasse at eleven o'clock, and that callers usually
looked in on him at that hour. There was no conventional etiquette about
the note; we were not even told that we should be welcome. The small
missive might have been a dentist's "time card" so far as it expressed
any sentiment. But scrupulously to the point it certainly was. Later
Ibsen told us that so many people wrote to him that he had been
compelled to boil his correspondence down as much as possible.
The journey to Munich in company with the Norwegian was very similar to
all students' outings, and need not be described in detail here. The
talk with Ibsen, our unheard of abstemiousness in restaurants, and the
pains that we were at to see everything on a five pfennig tipping basis,
were the only special features of the trip.
[Illustration: Madam Willard. Josiah Flynt's Grandmother]
On leaving Berlin we resolved to go as far as our allowance would
permit, into the Tyrol if possible, and we thought that our mileage
could be prodigiously increased if we drank water with our meals, and
"looked the other way" when more than five pfennigs was wanted as
_Trinkgeld_. The Norwegian never once swerved in living up to this
programme, but I fell from grace at times. The looks and "faces" that we
got from guides, palace lackeys and waiters were specimens that, could
we have drawn them, would make a very interesting gallery to look over
to-day. But, alas! neither one of us could sketch, all that we have now
is the remembrance. During the six weeks or more that we traveled we saw
disappointment, distrust, hatred and pugnaciousness in all the
different shades and colorings which the German countenance is equal to.
The Norwegian said that he enjoyed such sights, but there were moments
when I begged off, and tipped as I saw fit. It made no difference to the
Norwegian, however, whether the service rendered was a two-hour
chaperoning through a great castle, or a mere response to a question.
Five pfennigs remained his limit in the tipping line to the end, and I
doubt whether his entire bill on this score came to over three marks.
His non-alcoholic régime nearly got us into serious trouble in Nürnberg.
As had been our custom in other towns, we had selected a modest
restaurant at the noon hour, and called for the regular meal. Although
we did not order beer, it was served to us, but left untouched. When we
came to pay our reckoning we called the waiter's attention to the beer
item, saying that we would not pay it as the beer had not been asked
for. Such a hubbub and pow-wowing as then began I have never seen over
two glasses of beer. The proprietor came, the other waiters also, and
even some of the guests labored with us in the matter.
"But it is the custom, _Meine Herren_," the landlord kept saying, to all
of which the Norwegian returned a determined "No." It might or might not
be the custom, and whether it was or not, did not make a particle of
difference; he was not going to pay for something that he had neither
wanted nor asked for.
The upshot of the arguing was that we picked up our grips and started to
leave. The burly proprietor snatched my bag away from me in the hallway.
The Norwegian sprang at him with an oath--the first and last I ever
heard him use.
"Damn you!" he hissed through his teeth. "I'll break every bone in your
body," and I think he would have fulfilled the contract had the
proprietor given him a chance. The latter dropped my bag, and fled back
into the restaurant for reinforcements. But, by the time he was ready
for war again, we were in the street, and the landlord contented himself
with calling us swindlers and pigs. I make no doubt that later there was
a protracted discussion in the restaurant about the matter, and that for
many a day afterward the _Starumgäste_, who had witnessed the affair,
made beery conjectures as to our nationality and education. Whatever
their final decision may have been, the Norwegian had carried his point.
Alone, I doubt whether my independence would have been so assertive, but
I was glad at the time to have witnessed a successful revolt against the
tyrannical German _Getränkezwang_.
What Ibsen, whom we saw in his home a few days later, would have said to
this episode, is hard to conjecture. Very possibly he might have told us
that we were in the wrong in going to such a place, that we should have
sought out a vegetarian eating-place--the teetotaler's refuge, when the
_Bierzwang_ is to be avoided. He very frankly told us, however, what he
thought of Prohibition as a cure-all for the liquor traffic problem. The
Norwegian had asked his opinion in the matter and he got it. This is
about what Ibsen said:
"You can't make people good by law. Only that which a man does of his
own free will and because he knows that it is the _right_ thing to do,
counts in this world. Legislating about morals is at best a sorry
makeshift. Men will have to learn to legislate for themselves without
any state interference, before human conduct is on a right basis."
This deliverance on the part of Ibsen came in its turn with other topics
on which he expressed himself during our interview with him. We had
called at his home at the suggested hour--eleven--and had been
immediately shown into the parlor, I think it was. Pretty soon Ibsen
strolled in. I should have recognized him without trouble anywhere. The
long, defiant hair pushed back from his forehead, the silky side
whiskers, the inevitable spectacles, the tightly closed lips, the long
coat--these things had all been brought out prominently in his
photographs, and were unmistakable. At the time he was the most famous
literary man I had ever met, and he was easily the most talked about
dramatist in Europe. I was much impressed by this fact, and for the
moment probably looked at him as if it was the last chance to see a
great public character that I was to have. The Norwegian took the event
more calmly, walking up to Ibsen with his great hand outstretched as if
to an older brother. The two men looked each other well in the
eyes--their eyes were strikingly similar in color and shape--passed
greetings in Norwegian, and then I was introduced.
"And what is it that you want?" Ibsen asked bluntly enough, motioning to
the sofa, he himself taking a chair. From his manner and curtness of
speech he might have been taken for a doctor during calling hours. He
was friendly after a fashion, but the fashion was as if he had long
since finished with making intimate acquaintances, and henceforth meant
to hold the world at a distance. He looked "business" to the last
degree.
As the conversation progressed he thawed a little, and was not quite so
reserved. But throughout our two visits with him--there was a second
call on the next day--he at least _answered_ questions as if he were on
the witness stand, and had been cautioned by his counsel not to
overstate things.
When questioning us as well as when volunteering an opinion which was
not in direct reply to a query, he was not so painfully cautious.
The Norwegian had prepared a list of questions threateningly long, to
put to the old gentleman, but he religiously went through it from
beginning to end. He quizzed him about everything and everybody, it
seemed, from Prohibition, the Kaiser, Bismarck, Scandinavia, Russia and
general European politics, to family matters, his manner of writing, his
forthcoming play, and about numberless obscure passages in his earlier
dramas. Ibsen took the blows as they fell, dodging, as I have said, when
he felt like it, but receiving them in the main quite stolidly. Many of
the questions were killed almost before they were delivered, by a frown
or a gesture. Speaking about the alleged obscure passages in his books,
he said: "They may be there, but I did not mean them to be obscure. For
a time I used to answer letters from persons who wanted me to explain
this or that sentence, but I had to give up the job--it got so
enervating. I make my words as plain as I know how. Most of my readers
comprehend me, I trust."
Ibsen used Norwegian when fencing with my companion, but with me he very
kindly resorted to German, asking me in quite a fatherly way about my
family, my travels and studies and my opinion of Germany. Occasionally
he would smile, and then we saw the man at his best. Crabbed and curt he
might be at times, but behind that genial smile there was without doubt
a very kind nature, and I was sure of it then and have been ever since.
In the years that are to come much will be written about Ibsen, the
writer, the pessimist, the sociological surgeon, and what not, but
nothing that has been or is still to be written about him will ever
succeed in revealing to me the man, as that friendly chat in his home in
Munich. An experience, by the way, which may possibly prove that my
friend, Mr. Arthur Symons, was correct in an argument we had some years
ago in London, about personal interviews or "sittings" with famous
people, particularly writers. At the time I advanced the opinion that
writers, if they were worth while at all, proved their worth best in
what they wrote, and not in what they said, that their books and not
their physical presence were what ought to interest. Symons held that he
had never read an author who would not have been _more_ interesting to
him (Symons) had he been able to meet and talk with him. More about
Symons later on. His books and personal friendship are both valuable to
me, but for very different reasons. I seldom think of Symons, the man,
when I read his essays and verses, and I only infrequently think of his
books, or of him as a literary man at all, when we are together.