We are grieved at the earthly instincts of the German--A superb view, but
no restaurant--Continental opinion of the Englishman--That he does not
know enough to come in out of the rain--There comes a weary traveller
with a brick--The hurting of the dog--An undesirable family residence--A
fruitful region--A merry old soul comes up the hill--George, alarmed at
the lateness of the hour, hastens down the other side--Harris follows
him, to show him the way--I hate being alone, and follow
Harris--Pronunciation specially designed for use of foreigners.
A thing that vexes much the high-class Anglo-Saxon soul is the earthly
instinct prompting the German to fix a restaurant at the goal of every
excursion. On mountain summit, in fairy glen, on lonely pass, by
waterfall or winding stream, stands ever the busy Wirtschaft. How can
one rhapsodise over a view when surrounded by beer-stained tables? How
lose one's self in historical reverie amid the odour of roast veal and
spinach?
One day, on elevating thoughts intent, we climbed through tangled woods.
"And at the top," said Harris, bitterly, as we paused to breathe a space
and pull our belts a hole tighter, "there will be a gaudy restaurant,
where people will be guzzling beefsteaks and plum tarts and drinking
white wine."
"Do you think so?" said George.
"Sure to be," answered Harris; "you know their way. Not one grove will
they consent to dedicate to solitude and contemplation; not one height
will they leave to the lover of nature unpolluted by the gross and the
material."
"I calculate," I remarked, "that we shall be there a little before one
o'clock, provided we don't dawdle."
"The 'mittagstisch' will be just ready," groaned Harris, "with possibly
some of those little blue trout they catch about here. In Germany one
never seems able to get away from food and drink. It is maddening!"
We pushed on, and in the beauty of the walk forgot our indignation. My
estimate proved to be correct.
At a quarter to one, said Harris, who was leading:
"Here we are; I can see the summit."
"Any sign of that restaurant?" said George.
"I don't notice it," replied Harris; "but it's there, you may be sure;
confound it!"
Five minutes later we stood upon the top. We looked north, south, east
and west; then we looked at one another.
"Grand view, isn't it?" said Harris.
"Magnificent," I agreed.
"Superb," remarked George.
"They have had the good sense for once," said Harris, "to put that
restaurant out of sight."
"They do seem to have hidden it," said George.
"One doesn't mind the thing so much when it is not forced under one's
nose," said Harris.
"Of course, in its place," I observed, "a restaurant is right enough."
"I should like to know where they have put it," said George.
"Suppose we look for it?" said Harris, with inspiration.
It seemed a good idea. I felt curious myself. We agreed to explore in
different directions, returning to the summit to report progress. In
half an hour we stood together once again. There was no need for words.
The face of one and all of us announced plainly that at last we had
discovered a recess of German nature untarnished by the sordid suggestion
of food or drink.
"I should never have believed it possible," said Harris; "would you?"
"I should say," I replied, "that this is the only square quarter of a
mile in the entire Fatherland unprovided with one."
"And we three strangers have struck it," said George, "without an
effort."
"True," I observed. "By pure good fortune we are now enabled to feast
our finer senses undisturbed by appeal to our lower nature. Observe the
light upon those distant peaks; is it not ravishing?"
"Talking of nature," said George, "which should you say was the nearest
way down?"
"The road to the left," I replied, after consulting the guide book,
"takes us to Sonnensteig--where, by-the-by, I observe the 'Goldener
Adler' is well spoken of--in about two hours. The road to the right,
though somewhat longer, commands more extensive prospects."
"One prospect," said Harris, "is very much like another prospect; don't
you think so?"
"Personally," said George, "I am going by the left-hand road." And
Harris and I went after him.
But we were not to get down so soon as we had anticipated. Storms come
quickly in these regions, and before we had walked for quarter of an hour
it became a question of seeking shelter or living for the rest of the day
in soaked clothes. We decided on the former alternative, and selected a
tree that, under ordinary circumstances, should have been ample
protection. But a Black Forest thunderstorm is not an ordinary
circumstance. We consoled ourselves at first by telling each other that
at such a rate it could not last long. Next, we endeavoured to comfort
ourselves with the reflection that if it did we should soon be too wet to
fear getting wetter.
"As it turned out," said Harris, "I should have been almost glad if there
had been a restaurant up here."
"I see no advantage in being both wet _and_ hungry," said George. "I
shall give it another five minutes, then I am going on."
"These mountain solitudes," I remarked, "are very attractive in fine
weather. On a rainy day, especially if you happen to be past the age
when--"
At this point there hailed us a voice, proceeding from a stout gentleman,
who stood some fifty feet away from us under a big umbrella.
"Won't you come inside?" asked the stout gentleman.
"Inside where?" I called back. I thought at first he was one of those
fools that will try to be funny when there is nothing to be funny about.
"Inside the restaurant," he answered.
We left our shelter and made for him. We wished for further information
about this thing.
"I did call to you from the window," said the stout gentleman, as we drew
near to him, "but I suppose you did not hear me. This storm may last for
another hour; you will get _so_ wet."
He was a kindly old gentleman; he seemed quite anxious about us.
I said: "It is very kind of you to have come out. We are not lunatics.
We have not been standing under that tree for the last half-hour knowing
all the time there was a restaurant, hidden by the trees, within twenty
yards of us. We had no idea we were anywhere near a restaurant."
"I thought maybe you hadn't," said the old gentleman; "that is why I
came."
It appeared that all the people in the inn had been watching us from the
windows also, wondering why we stood there looking miserable. If it had
not been for this nice old gentleman the fools would have remained
watching us, I suppose, for the rest of the afternoon. The landlord
excused himself by saying he thought we looked like English. It is no
figure of speech. On the Continent they do sincerely believe that every
Englishman is mad. They are as convinced of it as is every English
peasant that Frenchmen live on frogs. Even when one makes a direct
personal effort to disabuse them of the impression one is not always
successful.
It was a comfortable little restaurant, where they cooked well, while the
Tischwein was really most passable. We stopped there for a couple of
hours, and dried ourselves and fed ourselves, and talked about the view;
and just before we left an incident occurred that shows how much more
stirring in this world are the influences of evil compared with those of
good.
A traveller entered. He seemed a careworn man. He carried a brick in
his hand, tied to a piece of rope. He entered nervously and hurriedly,
closed the door carefully behind him, saw to it that it was fastened,
peered out of the window long and earnestly, and then, with a sigh of
relief, laid his brick upon the bench beside him and called for food and
drink.
There was something mysterious about the whole affair. One wondered what
he was going to do with the brick, why he had closed the door so
carefully, why he had looked so anxiously from the window; but his aspect
was too wretched to invite conversation, and we forbore, therefore, to
ask him questions. As he ate and drank he grew more cheerful, sighed
less often. Later he stretched his legs, lit an evil-smelling cigar, and
puffed in calm contentment.
Then it happened. It happened too suddenly for any detailed explanation
of the thing to be possible. I recollect a Fraulein entering the room
from the kitchen with a pan in her hand. I saw her cross to the outer
door. The next moment the whole room was in an uproar. One was reminded
of those pantomime transformation scenes where, from among floating
clouds, slow music, waving flowers, and reclining fairies, one is
suddenly transported into the midst of shouting policemen tumbling
yelling babies, swells fighting pantaloons, sausages and harlequins,
buttered slides and clowns. As the Fraulein of the pan touched the door
it flew open, as though all the spirits of sin had been pressed against
it, waiting. Two pigs and a chicken rushed into the room; a cat that had
been sleeping on a beer-barrel spluttered into fiery life. The Fraulein
threw her pan into the air and lay down on the floor. The gentleman with
the brick sprang to his feet, upsetting the table before him with
everything upon it.
One looked to see the cause of this disaster: one discovered it at once
in the person of a mongrel terrier with pointed ears and a squirrel's
tail. The landlord rushed out from another door, and attempted to kick
him out of the room. Instead, he kicked one of the pigs, the fatter of
the two. It was a vigorous, well-planted kick, and the pig got the whole
of it; none of it was wasted. One felt sorry for the poor animal; but no
amount of sorrow anyone else might feel for him could compare with the
sorrow he felt for himself. He stopped running about; he sat down in the
middle of the room, and appealed to the solar system generally to observe
this unjust thing that had come upon him. They must have heard his
complaint in the valleys round about, and have wondered what upheaval of
nature was taking place among the hills.
As for the hen it scuttled, screaming, every way at once. It was a
marvellous bird: it seemed to be able to run up a straight wall quite
easily; and it and the cat between them fetched down mostly everything
that was not already on the floor. In less than forty seconds there were
nine people in that room, all trying to kick one dog. Possibly, now and
again, one or another may have succeeded, for occasionally the dog would
stop barking in order to howl. But it did not discourage him. Everything
has to be paid for, he evidently argued, even a pig and chicken hunt;
and, on the whole, the game was worth it.
Besides, he had the satisfaction of observing that, for every kick he
received, most other living things in the room got two. As for the
unfortunate pig--the stationary one, the one that still sat lamenting in
the centre of the room--he must have averaged a steady four. Trying to
kick this dog was like playing football with a ball that was never
there--not when you went to kick it, but after you had started to kick
it, and had gone too far to stop yourself, so that the kick had to go on
in any case, your only hope being that your foot would find something or
another solid to stop it, and so save you from sitting down on the floor
noisily and completely. When anybody did kick the dog it was by pure
accident, when they were not expecting to kick him; and, generally
speaking, this took them so unawares that, after kicking him, they fell
over him. And everybody, every half-minute, would be certain to fall
over the pig the sitting pig, the one incapable of getting out of
anybody's way.
How long the scrimmage might have lasted it is impossible to say. It was
ended by the judgment of George. For a while he had been seeking to
catch, not the dog but the remaining pig, the one still capable of
activity. Cornering it at last, he persuaded it to cease running round
and round the room, and instead to take a spin outside. It shot through
the door with one long wail.
We always desire the thing we have not. One pig, a chicken, nine people,
and a cat, were as nothing in that dog's opinion compared with the quarry
that was disappearing. Unwisely, he darted after it, and George closed
the door upon him and shot the bolt.
Then the landlord stood up, and surveyed all the things that were lying
on the floor.
"That's a playful dog of yours," said he to the man who had come in with
the brick.
"He is not my dog," replied the man sullenly.
"Whose dog is it then?" said the landlord.
"I don't know whose dog it is," answered the man.
"That won't do for me, you know," said the landlord, picking up a picture
of the German Emperor, and wiping beer from it with his sleeve.
"I know it won't," replied the man; "I never expected it would. I'm
tired of telling people it isn't my dog. They none of them believe me."
"What do you want to go about with him for, if he's not your dog?" said
the landlord. "What's the attraction about him?"
"I don't go about with him," replied the man; "he goes about with me. He
picked me up this morning at ten o'clock, and he won't leave me. I
thought I had got rid of him when I came in here. I left him busy
killing a duck more than a quarter of an hour away. I'll have to pay for
that, I expect, on my way back."
"Have you tried throwing stones at him?" asked Harris.
"Have I tried throwing stones at him!" replied the man, contemptuously.
"I've been throwing stones at him till my arm aches with throwing stones;
and he thinks it's a game, and brings them back to me. I've been
carrying this beastly brick about with me for over an hour, in the hope
of being able to drown him, but he never comes near enough for me to get
hold of him. He just sits six inches out of reach with his mouth open,
and looks at me."
"It's the funniest story I've heard for a long while," said the landlord.
"Glad it amuses somebody," said the man.
We left him helping the landlord to pick up the broken things, and went
our way. A dozen yards outside the door the faithful animal was waiting
for his friend. He looked tired, but contented. He was evidently a dog
of strange and sudden fancies, and we feared for the moment lest he might
take a liking to us. But he let us pass with indifference. His loyalty
to this unresponsive man was touching; and we made no attempt to
undermine it.
Having completed to our satisfaction the Black Forest, we journeyed on
our wheels through Alt Breisach and Colmar to Munster; whence we started
a short exploration of the Vosges range, where, according to the present
German Emperor, humanity stops. Of old, Alt Breisach, a rocky fortress
with the river now on one side of it and now on the other--for in its
inexperienced youth the Rhine never seems to have been quite sure of its
way,--must, as a place of residence, have appealed exclusively to the
lover of change and excitement. Whoever the war was between, and
whatever it was about, Alt Breisach was bound to be in it. Everybody
besieged it, most people captured it; the majority of them lost it again;
nobody seemed able to keep it. Whom he belonged to, and what he was, the
dweller in Alt Breisach could never have been quite sure. One day he
would be a Frenchman, and then before he could learn enough French to pay
his taxes he would be an Austrian. While trying to discover what you did
in order to be a good Austrian, he would find he was no longer an
Austrian, but a German, though what particular German out of the dozen
must always have been doubtful to him. One day he would discover that he
was a Catholic, the next an ardent Protestant. The only thing that could
have given any stability to his existence must have been the monotonous
necessity of paying heavily for the privilege of being whatever for the
moment he was. But when one begins to think of these things one finds
oneself wondering why anybody in the Middle Ages, except kings and tax
collectors, ever took the trouble to live at all.
For variety and beauty, the Vosges will not compare with the hills of the
Schwarzwald. The advantage about them from the tourist's point of view
is their superior poverty. The Vosges peasant has not the unromantic air
of contented prosperity that spoils his _vis-a-vis_ across the Rhine. The
villages and farms possess more the charm of decay. Another point
wherein the Vosges district excels is its ruins. Many of its numerous
castles are perched where you might think only eagles would care to
build. In others, commenced by the Romans and finished by the
Troubadours, covering acres with the maze of their still standing walls,
one may wander for hours.
The fruiterer and greengrocer is a person unknown in the Vosges. Most
things of that kind grow wild, and are to be had for the picking. It is
difficult to keep to any programme when walking through the Vosges, the
temptation on a hot day to stop and eat fruit generally being too strong
for resistance. Raspberries, the most delicious I have ever tasted, wild
strawberries, currants, and gooseberries, grow upon the hill-sides as
black-berries by English lanes. The Vosges small boy is not called upon
to rob an orchard; he can make himself ill without sin. Orchards exist
in the Vosges mountains in plenty; but to trespass into one for the
purpose of stealing fruit would be as foolish as for a fish to try and
get into a swimming bath without paying. Still, of course, mistakes do
occur.
One afternoon in the course of a climb we emerged upon a plateau, where
we lingered perhaps too long, eating more fruit than may have been good
for us; it was so plentiful around us, so varied. We commenced with a
few late strawberries, and from those we passed to raspberries. Then
Harris found a greengage-tree with some early fruit upon it, just
perfect.
"This is about the best thing we have struck," said George; "we had
better make the most of this." Which was good advice, on the face of it.
"It is a pity," said Harris, "that the pears are still so hard."
He grieved about this for a while, but later on came across some
remarkably fine yellow plums and these consoled him somewhat.
"I suppose we are still a bit too far north for pineapples," said George.
"I feel I could just enjoy a fresh pineapple. This commonplace fruit
palls upon one after a while."
"Too much bush fruit and not enough tree, is the fault I find," said
Harris. "Myself, I should have liked a few more greengages."
"Here is a man coming up the hill," I observed, "who looks like a native.
Maybe, he will know where we can find some more greengages."
"He walks well for an old chap," remarked Harris.
He certainly was climbing the hill at a remarkable pace. Also, so far as
we were able to judge at that distance, he appeared to be in a remarkably
cheerful mood, singing and shouting at the top of his voice,
gesticulating, and waving his arms.
"What a merry old soul it is," said Harris; "it does one good to watch
him. But why does he carry his stick over his shoulder? Why doesn't he
use it to help him up the hill?"
"Do you know, I don't think it is a stick," said George.
"What can it be, then?" asked Harris.
"Well, it looks to me," said George, "more like a gun."
"You don't think we can have made a mistake?" suggested Harris. "You
don't think this can be anything in the nature of a private orchard?"
I said: "Do you remember the sad thing that happened in the South of
France some two years ago? A soldier picked some cherries as he passed a
house, and the French peasant to whom the cherries belonged came out, and
without a word of warning shot him dead."
"But surely you are not allowed to shoot a man dead for picking fruit,
even in France?" said George.
"Of course not," I answered. "It was quite illegal. The only excuse
offered by his counsel was that he was of a highly excitable disposition,
and especially keen about these particular cherries."
"I recollect something about the case," said Harris, "now you mention it.
I believe the district in which it happened--the 'Commune,' as I think it
is called--had to pay heavy compensation to the relatives of the deceased
soldier; which was only fair."
George said: "I am tired of this place. Besides, it's getting late."
Harris said: "If he goes at that rate he will fall and hurt himself.
Besides, I don't believe he knows the way."
I felt lonesome up there all by myself, with nobody to speak to. Besides,
not since I was a boy, I reflected, had I enjoyed a run down a really
steep hill. I thought I would see if I could revive the sensation. It
is a jerky exercise, but good, I should say, for the liver.
We slept that night at Barr, a pleasant little town on the way to St.
Ottilienberg, an interesting old convent among the mountains, where you
are waited upon by real nuns, and your bill made out by a priest. At
Barr, just before supper a tourist entered. He looked English, but spoke
a language the like of which I have never heard before. Yet it was an
elegant and fine-sounding language. The landlord stared at him blankly;
the landlady shook her head. He sighed, and tried another, which somehow
recalled to me forgotten memories, though, at the time, I could not fix
it. But again nobody understood him.
"This is damnable," he said aloud to himself.
"Ah, you are English!" exclaimed the landlord, brightening up.
"And Monsieur looks tired," added the bright little landlady. "Monsieur
will have supper."
They both spoke English excellently, nearly as well as they spoke French
and German; and they bustled about and made him comfortable. At supper
he sat next to me, and I talked to him.
"Tell me," I said--I was curious on the subject--"what language was it
you spoke when you first came in?"
"German," he explained.
"Oh," I replied, "I beg your pardon."
"You did not understand it?" he continued.
"It must have been my fault," I answered; "my knowledge is extremely
limited. One picks up a little here and there as one goes about, but of
course that is a different thing."
"But _they_ did not understand it," he replied, "the landlord and his
wife; and it is their own language."
"I do not think so," I said. "The children hereabout speak German, it is
true, and our landlord and landlady know German to a certain point. But
throughout Alsace and Lorraine the old people still talk French."
"And I spoke to them in French also," he added, "and they understood that
no better."
"It is certainly very curious," I agreed.
"It is more than curious," he replied; "in my case it is
incomprehensible. I possess a diploma for modern languages. I won my
scholarship purely on the strength of my French and German. The
correctness of my construction, the purity of my pronunciation, was
considered at my college to be quite remarkable. Yet, when I come abroad
hardly anybody understands a word I say. Can you explain it?"
"I think I can," I replied. "Your pronunciation is too faultless. You
remember what the Scotsman said when for the first time in his life he
tasted real whisky: 'It may be puir, but I canna drink it'; so it is with
your German. It strikes one less as a language than as an exhibition. If
I might offer advice, I should say: Mispronounce as much as possible, and
throw in as many mistakes as you can think of."
It is the same everywhere. Each country keeps a special pronunciation
exclusively for the use of foreigners--a pronunciation they never dream
of using themselves, that they cannot understand when it is used. I once
heard an English lady explaining to a Frenchman how to pronounce the word
Have.
"You will pronounce it," said the lady reproachfully, "as if it were
spelt H-a-v. It isn't. There is an 'e' at the end."
"But I thought," said the pupil, "that you did not sound the 'e' at the
end of h-a-v-e."
"No more you do," explained his teacher. "It is what we call a mute 'e';
but it exercises a modifying influence on the preceding vowel."
Before that, he used to say "have" quite intelligently. Afterwards, when
he came to the word he would stop dead, collect his thoughts, and give
expression to a sound that only the context could explain.
Putting aside the sufferings of the early martyrs, few men, I suppose,
have gone through more than I myself went through in trying to I attain
the correct pronunciation of the German word for church--"Kirche." Long
before I had done with it I had determined never to go to church in
Germany, rather than be bothered with it.
"No, no," my teacher would explain--he was a painstaking gentleman; "you
say it as if it were spelt K-i-r-c-h-k-e. There is no k. It is--." And
he would illustrate to me again, for the twentieth time that morning, how
it should be pronounced; the sad thing being that I could never for the
life of me detect any difference between the way he said it and the way I
said it. So he would try a new method.
"You say it from your throat," he would explain. He was quite right; I
did. "I want you to say it from down here," and with a fat forefinger he
would indicate the region from where I was to start. After painful
efforts, resulting in sounds suggestive of anything rather than a place
of worship, I would excuse myself.
"I really fear it is impossible," I would say. "You see, for years I
have always talked with my mouth, as it were; I never knew a man could
talk with his stomach. I doubt if it is not too late now for me to
learn."
By spending hours in dark corners, and practising in silent streets, to
the terror of chance passers-by, I came at last to pronounce this word
correctly. My teacher was delighted with me, and until I came to Germany
I was pleased with myself. In Germany I found that nobody understood
what I meant by it. I never got near a church with it. I had to drop
the correct pronunciation, and painstakingly go back to my first wrong
pronunciation. Then they would brighten up, and tell me it was round the
corner, or down the next street, as the case might be.
I also think pronunciation of a foreign tongue could be better taught
than by demanding from the pupil those internal acrobatic feats that are
generally impossible and always useless. This is the sort of instruction
one receives:
"Press your tonsils against the underside of your larynx. Then with the
convex part of the septum curved upwards so as almost--but not quite--to
touch the uvula, try with the tip of your tongue to reach your thyroid.
Take a deep breath, and compress your glottis. Now, without opening your
lips, say 'Garoo.'"
And when you have done it they are not satisfied.