Why we went to Hanover--Something they do better abroad--The art of
polite foreign conversation, as taught in English schools--A true
history, now told for the first time--The French joke, as provided for
the amusement of British youth--Fatherly instincts of Harris--The road-
waterer, considered as an artist--Patriotism of George--What Harris ought
to have done--What he did--We save Harris's life--A sleepless city--The
cab-horse as a critic.
We arrived in Hamburg on Friday after a smooth and uneventful voyage; and
from Hamburg we travelled to Berlin by way of Hanover. It is not the
most direct route. I can only account for our visit to Hanover as the
nigger accounted to the magistrate for his appearance in the Deacon's
poultry-yard.
"Well?"
"Yes, sar, what the constable sez is quite true, sar; I was dar, sar."
"Oh, so you admit it? And what were you doing with a sack, pray, in
Deacon Abraham's poultry-yard at twelve o'clock at night?"
"I'se gwine ter tell yer, sar; yes, sar. I'd been to Massa Jordan's wid
a sack of melons. Yes, sar; an' Massa Jordan he wuz very 'greeable, an'
axed me for ter come in."
"Well?"
"Yes, sar, very 'greeable man is Massa Jordan. An' dar we sat a talking
an' a talking--"
"Very likely. What we want to know is what you were doing in the
Deacon's poultry-yard?"
"Yes, sar, dat's what I'se cumming to. It wuz ver' late 'fore I left
Massa Jordan's, an' den I sez ter mysel', sez I, now yer jest step out
with yer best leg foremost, Ulysses, case yer gets into trouble wid de
ole woman. Ver' talkative woman she is, sar, very--"
"Yes, never mind her; there are other people very talkative in this town
besides your wife. Deacon Abraham's house is half a mile out of your way
home from Mr. Jordan's. How did you get there?"
"Dat's what I'm a-gwine ter explain, sar."
"I am glad of that. And how do you propose to do it?"
"Well, I'se thinkin', sar, I must ha' digressed."
I take it we digressed a little.
At first, from some reason or other, Hanover strikes you as an
uninteresting town, but it grows upon you. It is in reality two towns; a
place of broad, modern, handsome streets and tasteful gardens; side by
side with a sixteenth-century town, where old timbered houses overhang
the narrow lanes; where through low archways one catches glimpses of
galleried courtyards, once often thronged, no doubt, with troops of
horse, or blocked with lumbering coach and six, waiting its rich merchant
owner, and his fat placid Frau, but where now children and chickens
scuttle at their will; while over the carved balconies hang dingy clothes
a-drying.
A singularly English atmosphere hovers over Hanover, especially on
Sundays, when its shuttered shops and clanging bells give to it the
suggestion of a sunnier London. Nor was this British Sunday atmosphere
apparent only to myself, else I might have attributed it to imagination;
even George felt it. Harris and I, returning from a short stroll with
our cigars after lunch on the Sunday afternoon, found him peacefully
slumbering in the smoke-room's easiest chair.
"After all," said Harris, "there is something about the British Sunday
that appeals to the man with English blood in his veins. I should be
sorry to see it altogether done away with, let the new generation say
what it will."
And taking one each end of the ample settee, we kept George company.
To Hanover one should go, they say, to learn the best German. The
disadvantage is that outside Hanover, which is only a small province,
nobody understands this best German. Thus you have to decide whether to
speak good German and remain in Hanover, or bad German and travel about.
Germany being separated so many centuries into a dozen principalities, is
unfortunate in possessing a variety of dialects. Germans from Posen
wishful to converse with men of Wurtemburg, have to talk as often as not
in French or English; and young ladies who have received an expensive
education in Westphalia surprise and disappoint their parents by being
unable to understand a word said to them in Mechlenberg. An
English-speaking foreigner, it is true, would find himself equally
nonplussed among the Yorkshire wolds, or in the purlieus of Whitechapel;
but the cases are not on all fours. Throughout Germany it is not only in
the country districts and among the uneducated that dialects are
maintained. Every province has practically its own language, of which it
is proud and retentive. An educated Bavarian will admit to you that,
academically speaking, the North German is more correct; but he will
continue to speak South German and to teach it to his children.
In the course of the century, I am inclined to think that Germany will
solve her difficulty in this respect by speaking English. Every boy and
girl in Germany, above the peasant class, speaks English. Were English
pronunciation less arbitrary, there is not the slightest doubt but that
in the course of a very few years, comparatively speaking, it would
become the language of the world. All foreigners agree that,
grammatically, it is the easiest language of any to learn. A German,
comparing it with his own language, where every word in every sentence is
governed by at least four distinct and separate rules, tells you that
English has no grammar. A good many English people would seem to have
come to the same conclusion; but they are wrong. As a matter of fact,
there is an English grammar, and one of these days our schools will
recognise the fact, and it will be taught to our children, penetrating
maybe even into literary and journalistic circles. But at present we
appear to agree with the foreigner that it is a quantity neglectable.
English pronunciation is the stumbling-block to our progress. English
spelling would seem to have been designed chiefly as a disguise to
pronunciation. It is a clever idea, calculated to check presumption on
the part of the foreigner; but for that he would learn it in a year.
For they have a way of teaching languages in Germany that is not our way,
and the consequence is that when the German youth or maiden leaves the
gymnasium or high school at fifteen, "it" (as in Germany one conveniently
may say) can understand and speak the tongue it has been learning. In
England we have a method that for obtaining the least possible result at
the greatest possible expenditure of time and money is perhaps
unequalled. An English boy who has been through a good middle-class
school in England can talk to a Frenchman, slowly and with difficulty,
about female gardeners and aunts; conversation which, to a man possessed
perhaps of neither, is liable to pall. Possibly, if he be a bright
exception, he may be able to tell the time, or make a few guarded
observations concerning the weather. No doubt he could repeat a goodly
number of irregular verbs by heart; only, as a matter of fact, few
foreigners care to listen to their own irregular verbs, recited by young
Englishmen. Likewise he might be able to remember a choice selection of
grotesquely involved French idioms, such as no modern Frenchman has ever
heard or understands when he does hear.
The explanation is that, in nine cases out of ten, he has learnt French
from an "Ahn's First-Course." The history of this famous work is
remarkable and instructive. The book was originally written for a joke,
by a witty Frenchman who had resided for some years in England. He
intended it as a satire upon the conversational powers of British
society. From this point of view it was distinctly good. He submitted
it to a London publishing firm. The manager was a shrewd man. He read
the book through. Then he sent for the author.
"This book of yours," said he to the author, "is very clever. I have
laughed over it myself till the tears came."
"I am delighted to hear you say so," replied the pleased Frenchman. "I
tried to be truthful without being unnecessarily offensive."
"It is most amusing," concurred the manager; "and yet published as a
harmless joke, I feel it would fail."
The author's face fell.
"Its humour," proceeded the manager, "would be denounced as forced and
extravagant. It would amuse the thoughtful and intelligent, but from a
business point of view that portion of the public are never worth
considering. But I have an idea," continued the manager. He glanced
round the room to be sure they were alone, and leaning forward sunk his
voice to a whisper. "My notion is to publish it as a serious work for
the use of schools!"
The author stared, speechless.
"I know the English schoolman," said the manager; "this book will appeal
to him. It will exactly fit in with his method. Nothing sillier,
nothing more useless for the purpose will he ever discover. He will
smack his lips over the book, as a puppy licks up blacking."
The author, sacrificing art to greed, consented. They altered the title
and added a vocabulary, but left the book otherwise as it was.
The result is known to every schoolboy. "Ahn" became the palladium of
English philological education. If it no longer retains its ubiquity, it
is because something even less adaptable to the object in view has been
since invented.
Lest, in spite of all, the British schoolboy should obtain, even from the
like of "Ahn," some glimmering of French, the British educational method
further handicaps him by bestowing upon him the assistance of, what is
termed in the prospectus, "A native gentleman." This native French
gentleman, who, by-the-by, is generally a Belgian, is no doubt a most
worthy person, and can, it is true, understand and speak his own language
with tolerable fluency. There his qualifications cease. Invariably he
is a man with a quite remarkable inability to teach anybody anything.
Indeed, he would seem to be chosen not so much as an instructor as an
amuser of youth. He is always a comic figure. No Frenchman of a
dignified appearance would be engaged for any English school. If he
possess by nature a few harmless peculiarities, calculated to cause
merriment, so much the more is he esteemed by his employers. The class
naturally regards him as an animated joke. The two to four hours a week
that are deliberately wasted on this ancient farce, are looked forward to
by the boys as a merry interlude in an otherwise monotonous existence.
And then, when the proud parent takes his son and heir to Dieppe merely
to discover that the lad does not know enough to call a cab, he abuses
not the system, but its innocent victim.
I confine my remarks to French, because that is the only language we
attempt to teach our youth. An English boy who could speak German would
be looked down upon as unpatriotic. Why we waste time in teaching even
French according to this method I have never been able to understand. A
perfect unacquaintance with a language is respectable. But putting aside
comic journalists and lady novelists, for whom it is a business
necessity, this smattering of French which we are so proud to possess
only serves to render us ridiculous.
In the German school the method is somewhat different. One hour every
day is devoted to the same language. The idea is not to give the lad
time between each lesson to forget what he learned at the last; the idea
is for him to get on. There is no comic foreigner provided for his
amusement. The desired language is taught by a German school-master who
knows it inside and out as thoroughly as he knows his own. Maybe this
system does not provide the German youth with that perfection of foreign
accent for which the British tourist is in every land remarkable, but it
has other advantages. The boy does not call his master "froggy," or
"sausage," nor prepare for the French or English hour any exhibition of
homely wit whatever. He just sits there, and for his own sake tries to
learn that foreign tongue with as little trouble to everybody concerned
as possible. When he has left school he can talk, not about penknives
and gardeners and aunts merely, but about European politics, history,
Shakespeare, or the musical glasses, according to the turn the
conversation may take.
Viewing the German people from an Anglo-Saxon standpoint, it may be that
in this book I shall find occasion to criticise them: but on the other
hand there is much that we might learn from them; and in the matter of
common sense, as applied to education, they can give us ninety-nine in a
hundred and beat us with one hand.
The beautiful wood of the Eilenriede bounds Hanover on the south and
west, and here occurred a sad drama in which Harris took a prominent
part.
We were riding our machines through this wood on the Monday afternoon in
the company of many other cyclists, for it is a favourite resort with the
Hanoverians on a sunny afternoon, and its shady pathways are then filled
with happy, thoughtless folk. Among them rode a young and beautiful girl
on a machine that was new. She was evidently a novice on the bicycle.
One felt instinctively that there would come a moment when she would
require help, and Harris, with his accustomed chivalry, suggested we
should keep near her. Harris, as he occasionally explains to George and
to myself, has daughters of his own, or, to speak more correctly, a
daughter, who as the years progress will no doubt cease practising
catherine wheels in the front garden, and will grow up into a beautiful
and respectable young lady. This naturally gives Harris an interest in
all beautiful girls up to the age of thirty-five or thereabouts; they
remind him, so he says, of home.
We had ridden for about two miles, when we noticed, a little ahead of us
in a space where five ways met, a man with a hose, watering the roads.
The pipe, supported at each joint by a pair of tiny wheels, writhed after
him as he moved, suggesting a gigantic-worm, from whose open neck, as the
man, gripping it firmly in both hands, pointing it now this way, and now
that, now elevating it, now depressing it, poured a strong stream of
water at the rate of about a gallon a second.
"What a much better method than ours," observed Harris, enthusiastically.
Harris is inclined to be chronically severe on all British institutions.
"How much simpler, quicker, and more economical! You see, one man by
this method can in five minutes water a stretch of road that would take
us with our clumsy lumbering cart half an hour to cover."
George, who was riding behind me on the tandem, said, "Yes, and it is
also a method by which with a little carelessness a man could cover a
good many people in a good deal less time than they could get out of the
way."
George, the opposite to Harris, is British to the core. I remember
George quite patriotically indignant with Harris once for suggesting the
introduction of the guillotine into England.
"It is so much neater," said Harris.
"I don't care if it is," said George; "I'm an Englishman; hanging is good
enough for me."
"Our water-cart may have its disadvantages," continued George, "but it
can only make you uncomfortable about the legs, and you can avoid it.
This is the sort of machine with which a man can follow you round the
corner and upstairs."
"It fascinates me to watch them," said Harris. "They are so skilful. I
have seen a man from the corner of a crowded square in Strassburg cover
every inch of ground, and not so much as wet an apron string. It is
marvellous how they judge their distance. They will send the water up to
your toes, and then bring it over your head so that it falls around your
heels. They can--"
"Ease up a minute," said George.
I said: "Why?"
He said: "I am going to get off and watch the rest of this show from
behind a tree. There may be great performers in this line, as Harris
says; this particular artist appears to me to lack something. He has
just soused a dog, and now he's busy watering a sign-post. I am going to
wait till he has finished."
"Nonsense," said Harris; "he won't wet you."
"That is precisely what I am going to make sure of," answered George,
saying which he jumped off, and, taking up a position behind a remarkably
fine elm, pulled out and commenced filling his pipe.
I did not care to take the tandem on by myself, so I stepped off and
joined him, leaving the machine against a tree. Harris shouted something
or other about our being a disgrace to the land that gave us birth, and
rode on.
The next moment I heard a woman's cry of distress. Glancing round the
stem of the tree, I perceived that it proceeded from the young and
elegant lady before mentioned, whom, in our interest concerning the road-
waterer, we had forgotten. She was riding her machine steadily and
straightly through a drenching shower of water from the hose. She
appeared to be too paralysed either to get off or turn her wheel aside.
Every instant she was becoming wetter, while the man with the hose, who
was either drunk or blind, continued to pour water upon her with utter
indifference. A dozen voices yelled imprecations upon him, but he took
no heed whatever.
Harris, his fatherly nature stirred to its depths, did at this point
what, under the circumstances, was quite the right and proper thing to
do. Had he acted throughout with the same coolness and judgment he then
displayed, he would have emerged from that incident the hero of the hour,
instead of, as happened, riding away followed by insult and threat.
Without a moment's hesitation he spurted at the man, sprang to the
ground, and, seizing the hose by the nozzle, attempted to wrest it away.
What he ought to have done, what any man retaining his common sense would
have done the moment he got his hands upon the thing, was to turn off the
tap. Then he might have played foot-ball with the man, or battledore and
shuttlecock as he pleased; and the twenty or thirty people who had rushed
forward to assist would have only applauded. His idea, however, as he
explained to us afterwards, was to take away the hose from the man, and,
for punishment, turn it upon the fool himself. The waterman's idea
appeared to be the same, namely, to retain the hose as a weapon with
which to soak Harris. Of course, the result was that, between them, they
soused every dead and living thing within fifty yards, except themselves.
One furious man, too drenched to care what more happened to him, leapt
into the arena and also took a hand. The three among them proceeded to
sweep the compass with that hose. They pointed it to heaven, and the
water descended upon the people in the form of an equinoctial storm. They
pointed it downwards, and sent the water in rushing streams that took
people off their feet, or caught them about the waist line, and doubled
them up.
Not one of them would loosen his grip upon the hose, not one of them
thought to turn the water off. You might have concluded they were
struggling with some primeval force of nature. In forty-five seconds, so
George said, who was timing it, they had swept that circus bare of every
living thing except one dog, who, dripping like a water nymph, rolled
over by the force of water, now on this side, now on that, still
gallantly staggered again and again to its feet to bark defiance at what
it evidently regarded as the powers of hell let loose.
Men and women left their machines upon the ground, and flew into the
woods. From behind every tree of importance peeped out wet, angry heads.
At last, there arrived upon the scene one man of sense. Braving all
things, he crept to the hydrant, where still stood the iron key, and
screwed it down. And then from forty trees began to creep more or less
soaked human beings, each one with something to say.
At first I fell to wondering whether a stretcher or a clothes basket
would be the more useful for the conveyance of Harris's remains back to
the hotel. I consider that George's promptness on that occasion saved
Harris's life. Being dry, and therefore able to run quicker, he was
there before the crowd. Harris was for explaining things, but George cut
him short.
"You get on that," said George, handing him his bicycle, "and go. They
don't know we belong to you, and you may trust us implicitly not to
reveal the secret. We'll hang about behind, and get in their way. Ride
zig-zag in case they shoot."
I wish this book to be a strict record of fact, unmarred by exaggeration,
and therefore I have shown my description of this incident to Harris,
lest anything beyond bald narrative may have crept into it. Harris
maintains it is exaggerated, but admits that one or two people may have
been "sprinkled." I have offered to turn a street hose on him at a
distance of five-and-twenty yards, and take his opinion afterwards, as to
whether "sprinkled" is the adequate term, but he has declined the test.
Again, he insists there could not have been more than half a dozen
people, at the outside, involved in the catastrophe, that forty is a
ridiculous misstatement. I have offered to return with him to Hanover
and make strict inquiry into the matter, and this offer he has likewise
declined. Under these circumstances, I maintain that mine is a true and
restrained narrative of an event that is, by a certain number of
Hanoverians, remembered with bitterness unto this very day.
We left Hanover that same evening, and arrived at Berlin in time for
supper and an evening stroll. Berlin is a disappointing town; its centre
over-crowded, its outlying parts lifeless; its one famous street, Unter
den Linden, an attempt to combine Oxford Street with the Champs Elysee,
singularly unimposing, being much too wide for its size; its theatres
dainty and charming, where acting is considered of more importance than
scenery or dress, where long runs are unknown, successful pieces being
played again and again, but never consecutively, so that for a week
running you may go to the same Berlin theatre, and see a fresh play every
night; its opera house unworthy of it; its two music halls, with an
unnecessary suggestion of vulgarity and commonness about them,
ill-arranged and much too large for comfort. In the Berlin cafes and
restaurants, the busy time is from midnight on till three. Yet most of
the people who frequent them are up again at seven. Either the Berliner
has solved the great problem of modern life, how to do without sleep, or,
with Carlyle, he must be looking forward to eternity.
Personally, I know of no other town where such late hours are the vogue,
except St. Petersburg. But your St. Petersburger does not get up early
in the morning. At St. Petersburg, the music halls, which it is the
fashionable thing to attend _after_ the theatre--a drive to them taking
half an hour in a swift sleigh--do not practically begin till twelve.
Through the Neva at four o'clock in the morning you have to literally
push your way; and the favourite trains for travellers are those starting
about five o'clock in the morning. These trains save the Russian the
trouble of getting up early. He wishes his friends "Good-night," and
drives down to the station comfortably after supper, without putting the
house to any inconvenience.
Potsdam, the Versailles to Berlin, is a beautiful little town, situate
among lakes and woods. Here in the shady ways of its quiet,
far-stretching park of Sans Souci, it is easy to imagine lean, snuffy
Frederick "bummeling" with shrill Voltaire.
Acting on my advice, George and Harris consented not to stay long in
Berlin; but to push on to Dresden. Most that Berlin has to show can be
seen better elsewhere, and we decided to be content with a drive through
the town. The hotel porter introduced us to a droschke driver, under
whose guidance, so he assured us, we should see everything worth seeing
in the shortest possible time. The man himself, who called for us at
nine o'clock in the morning, was all that could be desired. He was
bright, intelligent, and well-informed; his German was easy to
understand, and he knew a little English with which to eke it out on
occasion. With the man himself there was no fault to be found, but his
horse was the most unsympathetic brute I have ever sat behind.
He took a dislike to us the moment he saw us. I was the first to come
out of the hotel. He turned his head, and looked me up and down with a
cold, glassy eye; and then he looked across at another horse, a friend of
his that was standing facing him. I knew what he said. He had an
expressive head, and he made no attempt to disguise his thought.
He said:
"Funny things one does come across in the summer time, don't one?"
George followed me out the next moment, and stood behind me. The horse
again turned his head and looked. I have never known a horse that could
twist himself as this horse did. I have seen a camelopard do tricks
with his neck that compelled one's attention, but this animal was more
like the thing one dreams of after a dusty days at Ascot, followed by
a dinner with six old chums. If I had seen his eyes looking at me from
between his own hind legs, I doubt if I should have been surprised. He
seemed more amused with George if anything, than with myself. He turned
to his friend again.
"Extraordinary, isn't it?" he remarked; "I suppose there must be some
place where they grow them"; and then he commenced licking flies off his
own left shoulder. I began to wonder whether he had lost his mother when
young, and had been brought up by a cat.
George and I climbed in, and sat waiting for Harris. He came a moment
later. Myself, I thought he looked rather neat. He wore a white flannel
knickerbocker suit, which he had had made specially for bicycling in hot
weather; his hat may have been a trifle out of the common, but it did
keep the sun off.
The horse gave one look at him, said "Gott in Himmel!" as plainly as ever
horse spoke, and started off down Friedrich Strasse at a brisk walk,
leaving Harris and the driver standing on the pavement. His owner called
to him to stop, but he took no notice. They ran after us, and overtook
us at the corner of the Dorotheen Strasse. I could not catch what the
man said to the horse, he spoke quickly and excitedly; but I gathered a
few phrases, such as:
"Got to earn my living somehow, haven't I? Who asked for your opinion?
Aye, little you care so long as you can guzzle."
The horse cut the conversation short by turning up the Dorotheen Strasse
on his own account. I think what he said was:
"Come on then; don't talk so much. Let's get the job over, and, where
possible, let's keep to the back streets."
Opposite the Brandenburger Thor our driver hitched the reins to the whip,
climbed down, and came round to explain things to us. He pointed out the
Thiergarten, and then descanted to us of the Reichstag House. He
informed us of its exact height, length, and breadth, after the manner of
guides. Then he turned his attention to the Gate. He said it was
constructed of sandstone, in imitation of the "Properleer" in Athens.
At this point the horse, which had been occupying its leisure licking its
own legs, turned round its head. It did not say anything, it just
looked.
The man began again nervously. This time he said it was an imitation of
the "Propeyedliar."
Here the horse proceeded up the Linden, and nothing would persuade him
not to proceed up the Linden. His owner expostulated with him, but he
continued to trot on. From the way he hitched his shoulders as he moved,
I somehow felt he was saying:
"They've seen the Gate, haven't they? Very well, that's enough. As for
the rest, you don't know what you are talking about, and they wouldn't
understand you if you did. You talk German."
It was the same throughout the length of the Linden. The horse consented
to stand still sufficiently long to enable us to have a good look at each
sight, and to hear the name of it. All explanation and description he
cut short by the simple process of moving on.
"What these fellows want," he seemed to say to himself, "is to go home
and tell people they have seen these things. If I am doing them an
injustice, if they are more intelligent than they look, they can get
better information than this old fool of mine is giving them from the
guide book. Who wants to know how high a steeple is? You don't remember
it the next five minutes when you are told, and if you do it is because
you have got nothing else in your head. He just tires me with his talk.
Why doesn't he hurry up, and let us all get home to lunch?"
Upon reflection, I am not sure that wall-eyed old brute had not sense on
its side. Anyhow, I know there have been occasions, with a guide, when I
would have been glad of its interference.
But one is apt to "sin one's mercies," as the Scotch say, and at the time
we cursed that horse instead of blessing it.