THE BACKFISCH
The word is untranslatable, though my dictionary translates it.
Backfisch, m. fried fish; young girl; says the dictionary. In Germany
a woman does not arrive at her own gender till she marries and becomes
somebody's _Frau_. Woman in general, girl, and miss are neuter; and
the fried-fish girl is masculine. But if one little versed in German
wished to tell you that he liked a fried sole, and said _Ich liebe
einen Backfisch_, it might lead to misunderstandings. The origin of
the word in this application is dubious. Some say it means fish that
are baked in the oven because they are too small to fry in pans; but
this does not seem a sensible explanation to anyone who has seen
white-bait cooked. Others say it means fish the anglers throw back
into the water because they are small. At any rate, the word used is
to convey an impression of immaturity. A _Backfisch_ is what English
and American fashion papers call a "miss." You may see, too, in German
shop windows a printed intimation that special attention is given to
_Backfisch Moden_. It is a girl who has left school but has not cast
off her school-girl manners; and who, according to her nation and her
history, will require more or less last touches.
Miss Betham-Edwards tells us that a French girl is taught from
babyhood to play her part in society, and that the exquisite grace
and taste of Frenchwomen are carefully developed in them from the
cradle. An English girl begins her social education in the nursery,
and is trained from infancy in habits of personal cleanliness and in
what old-fashioned English people call "table manners." An
Englishwoman, who for many years lived happily as governess in a
German country house, told me how on the night of her arrival she
tried out of politeness to eat and drink as her hosts did; and how the
mistress of the house confided to her later that she had disappointed
everyone grievously. There were daughters in the family, and they were
to learn to behave at table in the English way. That was why the
father, arriving from Berlin, had on his own initiative brought them
an English governess; for the English are admitted by their
continental friends to excel in this special branch of manners, while
their continental enemies charge them with being "ostentatiously" well
groomed and dainty. The truth is, that if you have lived much with
both English and Germans, and desire to be fair and friendly to both
races, you find that your generalisations will not often weigh on one
side. The English child learns to eat with a fork rather than with a
spoon, and never by any chance to put a knife in its mouth, or to
touch a bone with its fingers. The German child learns that it must
never wear a soiled or an unmended garment or have untidy hair. I have
known a German scandalised by the slovenly wardrobe of her well-to-do
English pupil, and I have heard English people say that to hear
Germans eat soup destroyed their appetite for dinner. English girls
are not all slovens, and nowadays decently bred Germans behave like
other people at table. But untidiness is commoner in England than in
Germany, and you may still stumble across a German any day who,
abiding by old customs, puts his knife in his mouth and takes his
bones in his hands. He will not only do these things, but defend them
vociferously. In that case you are strongly advised not to eat a dish
of asparagus in his company.
Your modern German _Backfisch_ may be a person of finish and wide
culture. You may find that she insists on her cold tub every morning,
and is scandalised by your offer of hot water in it. She has seen
Salome as a play and heard Salome as an opera. She has seen plays by
G.B.S. both in Berlin and London. She does not care to see Shakespeare
in London, because, as she tells you, the English know nothing about
him. Besides, he could not sound as well in English as in German. She
has read Carlyle, and is now reading Ruskin. She adores Byron, but
does not know Keats, Shelley, or Rossetti. Tennyson she waves
contemptuously away from her, not because she has read him, but
because she has been taught that his poetry is "bourgeois." Her
favourite novels are _Dorian Gray_ and _Misunderstood_. She dresses
with effect and in the height of fashion, she speaks French and
English fluently, she has travelled in Italy and Switzerland, she
plays tennis well, she can ride and swim and skate, and she would
cycle if it was not out of fashion. In fact, she can do anything, and
she knows everything, and she has been everywhere. Your French and
English girls are ignorant misses in comparison with her, and you say
to yourself as you watch her and humbly listen to her opinions,
delivered without hesitation and expressed without mistakes: "Where is
the German _Backfisch_ of yesteryear?"
"Did you ever read _Backfischchen's Leiden und Freuden_?" you say to
her; for the book is in its 55th edition, and you have seen German
girls devouring it only last week; German girls of a different type,
that is, from your present glittering companion.
"That old-fashioned inferior thing," she says contemptuously. "I
believe my mother had it. That is not literature."
You leave her to suppose you could not have made that discovery for
yourself, and you spend an amusing hour over the story again, for
there are occasions when a book that is not "literature" will serve
your purpose better than a masterpiece. The little book has
entertained generations of German girls, and is presumably accepted by
them, just as _Little Women_ is accepted in America or _The Daisy
Chain_ in England. The picture was always a little exaggerated, and
some of its touches are now out of date; yet as a picture of manners
it still has a value. It narrates the joys and sorrows of a young girl
of good family who leaves her country home in order to live with an
aunt in Berlin, a facetious but highly civilised aunt who uses a large
quantity of water at her morning toilet. All the stages of this toilet
are minutely described, and all the mistakes the poor countrified
_Backfisch_ makes the first morning. She actually gets out of bed
before she puts on her clothes, and has to be driven behind the bed
curtains by her aunt's irony. This is an incident that is either out
of date or due to the genius and imagination of the author, for I have
never seen bed curtains in Germany. However, Gretchen is taught to
perform the early stages of her toilet behind them, and then to wash
for the first time in her life in a basin full of water. She is
sixteen. Her aunt presents her with a sponge, and observes that the
civilisation of a nation is judged by the amount of soap it uses. "In
much embarrassment I applied myself to this unaccustomed task,"
continues the ingenuous _Backfisch_, "and I managed it so cleverly
that everything around me was soon swimming. To make matters worse, I
upset the water-jug, and now the flood spread to the washstand, the
floor, the bed curtains, even to my clothes lying on the chair. If
only this business of dressing was over," she sighs as she is about to
brush her teeth, with brushes supplied by her aunt. But it is by no
means over. She is just going to slip into a dressing-gown, cover her
unbrushed hair with a cap, and so proceed to breakfast, when this
exacting aunt stops her: actually desires her to plait and comb her
hair at this hour of the morning, and to put on a tidy gown.
Gretchen's gown is extremely untidy, and on that account I will not
admit that the portrait is wholly lifelike. In fact, the author has
summed up the sins of all the _Backfisch_ tribe, and made a single
_Backfisch_ guilty of them. But caricature, if you know how to allow
for it, is instructive. Mr. Stiggins is a caricature, yet he stands
for failings that exist among us, though they are never displayed
quite so crudely. "Go and brush your nails," says the aunt to the
niece when the girl attempts to kiss her hand; and the _Backfisch_
uses a nail-brush for the first time in her life.
Then the two ladies sit down to breakfast. Gretchen fills the cups too
full, soaks her roll in her coffee, and drinks out of her saucer. Her
aunt informs her that "coffee pudding" is not polite, and can only be
allowed when they are by themselves; also that she must not drink out
of the saucer. "But we children always did it at home," says Gretchen.
"I can well believe it," says the aunt. "_Everything is permitted to
children._" The italics are mine.
An aunt who has such ideas about the education of the young is
naturally not surprised when at dinner-time she has to admonish her
niece not to wipe her mouth with her hand, not to speak with her
mouth full, to eat her soup quietly, to keep her elbows off the table,
not to put her fingers in her plate or her knife in her mouth, and not
to take her chicken into her hands on ceremonial occasions.
"My treasure," says the aunt, "as you know, we are going to dinner
with the Dunkers to-morrow. Be good enough not to take your chicken
into your hands. Here at home I don't object to it, but the really
correct way is to separate the meat from the bone with the knife and
fork."
The docile _Backfisch_ says _Jawohl, liebe Tante_, and feels that this
business of becoming civilised is full of pitfalls and surprises.
Never in her life has she eaten poultry without the assistance of her
fingers. When she gets to the dinner-party she is fortunate enough to
sit next to her bosom friend, who starts in horror and whispers "With
a knife, Gretchen," when Gretchen is just about to dip her fingers in
the salt. The _Backfisch_ is truly anxious to learn, but she feels
that the injunctions of society are hard, and says it is poor sport to
eat your chicken with a knife and fork, because the best part sticks
to the bones. Then her friend stops her from drinking fruit syrup out
of her plate, and her neighbour on the other side, a stout guzzler who
has not been taught by his aunt to eat properly, encourages Gretchen
to drink too much champagne.
After these early adventures the education of the _Backfisch_ proceeds
quickly. She has to learn at her aunt's tea-parties not to fill cups
to overflowing in sheer exuberance of hospitality; and she is also
instructed not to press food on people. "In good society," says the
aunt, "people decline to eat because they have had enough, and not
because they require pressing." She is obliged also to discourage
Gretchen from waiting too attentively on the young men who visit at
the house; and Gretchen, who does not care about young men, but only
yearns to be serviceable, devotes herself in future to the old ladies,
their foot-stools, their knitting, and their smelling bottles. This
touch is one of many that makes the book, in spite of its obvious
shortcomings, valuable as a picture of German character and manner. It
is impossible to imagine Gretchen in a French or English story of the
same class. The French girl would be more adroit and witty; the
English girl would expect young men to wait on her; and neither of
them would gush as Gretchen did about her old ladies. "My readiness to
serve them knew no bounds. To arrange their seats to their liking, to
give them stools for their feet and cushions for their backs, to rush
for their shawls and cloaks, to count the rows in their knitting, to
help them pick up their stitches, to thread their needles, to wind
silk or wool, to peel fruit, to run for smelling bottles and cold
water,--all these things I did with delight the instant my watchful
eye discovered the smallest wish, and I was always cordially thanked."
Tastes differ. Some old ladies would be made quite uncomfortable by
such fussy attentions. The _Backfisch_ goes on to say that she was
equally assiduous in waiting on the old gentlemen. She picked up
anything they dropped, polished their spectacles for them, and
listened to their dull stories when no one else would. I consider the
portrait of Gretchen in this story a literary triumph. I can see the
girl; I can hear her voice and laugh. I know exactly how she behaved
and what the old ladies and gentlemen said to her, how she dressed and
how she did her hair; not because the author tells me just these
things, but because her type is as true to life to-day as it was
thirty years ago. As a contrast to her, a fine young lady from the
city presently joins the household, and the aunt does not have to
provide her with a tooth-brush. The new arrival wears blue satin
slippers, drinks her chocolate in bed, and cannot dress without the
help of a maid. In this way the author shows you that girls brought up
in cities are superfine rather than savage, and that you are not to
suppose the ordinary German _Backfisch_ is like her little heroine
from the provinces.
The truth of the matter is, that no one nowadays has such manners as
the _Backfisch_ had when she first came from the wilds; at least, no
one of her class, even if they have grown up in Hinter-Pommern. But if
you travel in Germany next week and stay in small towns and country
places, you will still meet plenty of people who take their poultry
bones in their fingers and put their knives in their mouths. If they
are men you will see them use their fork as a dagger to hold the meat
while they cut it up; you will see them stick their napkins into their
shirt collars and placidly comb their hair with a pocket comb in
public; if they are women and at a restaurant, they will pocket the
lumps of sugar they have not used in their coffee. But if you are in
private houses amongst people of Gretchen's type you will see none of
these things. A German host still pulls the joint close to him
sometimes or stands up to carve, and a German hostess still presses
you to eat, still in the kindness of her heart piles up your plate.
But this embarrassing form of hospitality is dying out. As Gretchen's
aunt said, people in good society recognise that a guest refuses food
because he does not want it. Some years ago, when you had satisfied
your hunger and declined more, your German friends used to look
offended or distressed, and say _Sie geniren sich gewiss_. This is a
difficult phrase to translate, because the idea is one that has never
taken root in the English mind, _Sich geniren_, however, is a
reflective verb, a corruption of the French verb _se gêner_, and what
they meant was that you really wanted a third potato dumpling but did
not like to say so. Whether your reluctance was supposed to proceed
from your distrust of your host's hospitality or shame at your own
appetite, is not clear; in either case it was taken, is even to-day
still often taken, for artificial. To accept a portion of an untouched
dish was considered a sign that you came from "a good house" where no
one grudged or wished to save the food put on the table; and formerly
you could not refuse sugar in your tea without being commended for
your economy. You are still invited to eat tarts and puddings in
Germany with what we consider the insufficient assistance of a
tea-spoon, but I have never been in a private house where salt-spoons
were not provided. You never used to find them in inns of a plain
kind, and unless you were known to be English and peculiar you were
not provided with more than one knife and fork for all the courses of
a _table d'hôte_. You would see your German neighbours putting theirs
aside as a matter of course when their plates were removed.
On the whole, then, the celebrated picture of the _Backfisch_, though
it is overloaded, bears some relation to the facts of life in Germany:
not only in the episodes that make the early chapters entertaining,
but all through the story in atmosphere, in the little touches that
give a story nationality. When the excellent Gretchen has been
civilised she spends a great deal of time in the kitchen, and soon
knows all the duties of the complete housekeeper; while, when the
frivolous Eugenie becomes _Braut_ she cannot cook at all. But
frivolous as she is, she recognises that marriage is unthinkable
without cooking, and straightway sets to work to learn. Then, too,
the _Backfisch_ is the ideal German maiden, cheerful, docile, and
facetious; and constantly on the jump (_springen_ is the word she
uses) to serve her elders. Middle-aged Germans used to have a most
tiresome way of expecting girls to be like lambs in spring, always in
the mood to frisk and caper: so that a quiet or a delicate girl had a
bad time with some of them. _Ein junges Mädchen muss immer heiter
sein_, they would say reproachfully. But it does not follow that you
are always _heiter_ just because you are not twenty yet; especially in
Germany, where girls are often anæmic and have headaches. However,
perhaps the modern German maiden does not allow her elders to be so
silly.
There are some other ways, too, in which my _Backfisch_ of thirty
years ago is typical of German womanhood both then and now. She is as
good as gold, she is devoted to duty not to pleasure, and she is as
guileless as a child. You know that when she marries she will be
faithful unto death; you know that her husband and her children will
call her blessed. These things come out quite naturally, almost
unconsciously, in the little story that is "not literature," and which
for all that is so truly and deeply German in its quality and tone.
This Gretchen of the schoolroom, this caricature of the country
cousin, is akin in her simplicity, sweetness, and depth of nature to
that other Gretchen whose figure lives for ever in the greatest of
German poems. Just as the women of Shakespeare and the women of Miss
Austen are subtly kin to each other, inasmuch as they are English
women, so Goethe's girl and the girl of the poor little schoolroom
story are German in every pulse and fibre. And this national essence,
the honesty, goodness, and sweetness of the girl, are the real
things, the things to remember about her. Those little matters of the
toilet and the table will soon be out of date, are out of date already
in the greater part of Germany. As a picture of forgotten manners they
will always be amusing, just as it is amusing to read an
eighteenth-century English story of school life, in which the young
ladies fought and bit and scratched each other and were whipped and
sent to bed.