THE HOUSEHOLDER
Rents are high in Germany. At least, the Germans say so, and so do the
people whose books about Germany are crammed with soul-satisfying
statistics and elaborate calculations. Over-crowding, too, is said to
be worse in Germany than in English cities. But I have always seen the
rent and the crowding judged by the number of rooms and not by their
size. This is really misleading, because you could put the whole of a
small London flat into many a German middle-class dining-room or
_Wohnzimmer_. You could bring up a family in a single room I once had
for a whole summer in Thüringen for 5s. a week. It was as big as a
church, and most light and airy. One camped in bits of it. I think
rent for rent rooms in Germany are quite twice as large as in London.
In Berlin, where rent is considered wickedly high, you can get a flat
in a good quarter for £80, and for that sum you will have four large
rooms, three smaller ones, a good kitchen, an attic that serves as a
lumber-room, and a share in a laundry at the top of the house. There
will even be a bathroom with a trickle of cold water, but it is only
in the very newest and most expensive German flats that you find hot
and cold water laid on. Your drawing and dining-rooms will be
spacious, and one of them is almost sure to have a balcony looking on
the street and the pleasant avenue of trees with which it is planted.
For this rent you must either make yourself happy on the third or
fourth floor in a house without a lift, or you must find one of the
delightful "garden" dwellings behind the _Hof_; but you will have a
better home for your money than you could get in a decent part of
London. In fact, it comes to this, in spite of all the statistics in
favour of London. If you can only spend £80 on your rent you can live
in a good quarter of Berlin, near enough to the Tiergarten, close to
the Zoological Gardens, and within a tram-ride of the delightful woods
at Halensee. In London you can get a small house for £80, but it will
either be in an unattractive quarter or in a suburb. A flat, wherever
it is, must always seem a dwelling place rather than a home, but the
Germans have elected to live in flats and accept their disadvantages.
In and around all the great cities there are villas, but their number
hardly counts in comparison with the masses of tall white houses, six
storeys high for the most part, and holding within their walls all
degrees of wealth and poverty. The German villa is florid, and likes
blue glass balls and artificial fountains in its garden. It is often a
villa in appearance and several flats in reality. Its most pleasant
feature is the garden-room or big verandah, where in summer all meals
are served. Outside Hamburg, on the banks of the Elbe, the merchant
princes of the city have built themselves palaces surrounded by
splendid park-like gardens. But Hamburg, though it does not love the
English, is always accused by the rest of Germany of being English. It
certainly has beautiful gardens. So have other German cities in some
instances, but well kept gardens are not the matter of course in
Germany that they are here. You see more bare and artificial ones and
more neglected overgrown ones in an afternoon's walk than you do all
the year round in England. But I wish we could follow the German
fashion of planting all our streets with double avenues of healthy
trees. Berlin in spring seems to be set in a wood; it is so fresh and
green. The flowering shrubs, on the other hand, are not to be compared
with ours. Everyone rushes to see a few lilac bushes, and Gueldres
roses trimmed to a stiff snowball of flowers, and everyone says _Wie
Herrlich!_ but you miss the profusion of lilac, hawthorn, and laburnum
that runs riot all about London in every residential road and every
garden. Above all, you miss the English lawns. In Berlin wherever
grass is grown it looks either thin or coarse. The majority of Germans
do not dream of wanting a garden. They are content with a few palms in
their sitting-room or window boxes on their balcony. They are proud of
their window-gardening in Berlin, but I think London windows in June
are gayer and more flowery. The palms kept in German rooms attain to a
great size and number, and a palm is a favourite present. Nursery
gardeners undertake the troublesome business of repotting them every
spring, so the owners have nothing to do but water them and keep them
from draughts. There are usually so many windows in a German
sitting-room that those near the plants need never be opened in
winter; and even when the temperature sinks several degrees below zero
outside, the air of the flat is kept artificially warm, so warm that
English folk gasp and flag in it. At the first sign of winter the
outside windows, removed for the summer, are brought back again. Our
windows are unknown on the continent, and disliked by continentals who
see them here. They call them guillotine windows, and consider them
dangerous. Theirs all open like doors, so that you have four doors to
each window, and until you get used to them you find they make a
pretty clatter whenever you set them wide. But in winter they are only
opened for a few minutes every morning when the room is "aired." It is
considered extravagant to open them at other times, because the heat
would escape and more fuel would be required. I suppose everyone in
England understands that our open fireplaces are almost unknown in
Germany. They have enclosed stoves of iron or porcelain that make
little work or dirt and give no pleasure. There is no gathering round
the hearth. You sit about the room as you would in summer, for it is
evenly heated. All the beauty and poetry of fire are wanting; you have
nothing but an atmosphere that will be comfortable or asphyxiating,
according to the taste of your hosts. Years ago in South Germany you
burnt nothing but logs of wood in the old-fashioned iron stoves, and
there was some faint pleasure in listening to their crackle. You could
just see the flames too, if you stooped low enough and opened the
little stove door. But the wood burnt so quickly that it was most
difficult to keep a big room warm. Nowadays you always find the
porcelain stove that Mark Twain says looks like the family monument.
In some of these coal is burnt, or a mixture of coal and peat. Some
burn anthracite, and are considered economical. A _Füllofen_ of this
kind is kept burning night and day during the worst of the winter. It
requires attention two or three times in twenty-four hours; it is
easily regulated, and if the communicating doors are left open it
warms two or three rooms. A friend who has a large flat in Berlin told
me that there was one of these stoves in her husband's study, and that
her drawing-room which opens out of it, and which they constantly use,
had only had a fire in it five times last winter. I find on looking
at this friend's budget that she spends £16 a year on turf and other
fuel, and this seems high for a flat where so few fires were lighted.
But fuel is dear in German towns. Briquettes are largely used in
cities, small slabs of condensed coal that cost one pfennig each. It
takes about twenty-four slabs to keep a stove in during the day. The
great advantage of the _Füllofen_ over the ordinary stove is that it
keeps in all night. There are dangerous variations of temperature in a
German flat that is kept as hot as an oven all day, and allowed to
sink below zero during the night. But you hear complaints on all sides
in Germany, both of inconsiderate English people who waste fuel by
opening windows in cold weather; and of the sufferings endured by
Germans who have been in England in winter. They do not like our open
fireplaces at all, because they say they wish to be warm all over and
not in bits. "In England," they tell you solemnly, "you can be warm
either in front or at the back; but you cannot be warm on both sides
as we are here. Besides, your fireplaces make dirt and work and are
extravagant. They would not suit us." In fact, they imply that for the
French and the English they are well enough, but not for the salt of
the earth. The German kitchen stoves are certainly more practical and
economical than ours, and I never can understand why we do not fetch a
few over and try them. They are entirely enclosed, and much lower than
ours. The Berlin kitchener has one fire that is lighted for a short
time to roast a joint, and another using less fuel that heats water
and does light cooking. The sweep, who is bound by the etiquette of
his trade to wear a tall hat in Germany, does not come into your flat
at all. You hear him shout through the courtyard that he will visit
the house next day, and he works from the garrets and cellars. The
police regulate his visits as they regulate everything else in
Germany. Chimneys must be swept every six weeks in summer, and every
four weeks in winter in Berlin. Dustbins are emptied every day, and in
some towns the police make most troublesome regulations with regard to
them. The householder has to set his outside to be emptied, and the
police insist on this being done at a certain hour, neither earlier
nor later, so that if your servant happens to be careless or
unpunctual you will be repeatedly fined.
Staircases vary greatly according to the date and rent of the house.
The most modern houses in Berlin have broad front staircases with
thick carpets, and in some cases seats of "Nouveau Art" design on the
landings. In such houses you are always met on the threshold by
printed requests to wipe your feet and shut the door gently. They
don't tell you to do as you're bid. That is taken for granted, or the
police will know the reason why. There is always an uncarpeted back
staircase for servants and tradespeople, and for the tenants who
inhabit the poorer parts of the building. In houses where all the
tenants belong to the poorer classes, you find notices that forbid
children to play in the Hof, and command people not to loiter or to
make any noise on the stairs. Carpet-beating and shaking, which is
constantly and vigorously carried on, is only allowed on certain days
of the week and at certain hours. When there is a house porter he is
not as important and conspicuous as the French concierge. In my
experience he has usually gone out and thoughtfully left the front
door ajar. He is not a universal institution even in Berlin.
Taxes vary in different parts of Germany. In Saxony a man spending
£500 a year pays altogether £60 for Income tax, Municipal rates,
Water, School, and Church rates. In Berlin the Income tax is not an
Imperial (Reichs) tax, but a _Landes_ tax, and amounts to £15 on an
income of £500. Smaller incomes pay less and larger ones more, in
proportion varying from about 2 to 4 per cent. Besides this _Staats_
tax there is a municipal tax of exactly the same amount in Berlin and
Charlottenberg. But there are towns in Prussia where it is less;
others, mostly in the Western Provinces, where it is more,
considerably more in some cases. The water rate is paid by the house
owners, and the tenant pays it in his rent. There are no school taxes.
The church tax is compulsory on members of the _Landeskirche_. When a
man has no capital his income tax is levied on his yearly expenses;
but the man whose income is derived from capital pays a higher tax
than the man who has none. The German, too, pays a great deal to the
State indirectly; for nearly everything he requires is taxed. But the
three things he loves best, tobacco, beer, and music, he gets
cheap--cheaper than he can in a Free Trade country; so he pays for
everything else as best he can, and tries to look pleasant. "But the
burden is almost more than we can bear," said one thoughtful German to
me when I told him how greatly English people admired their municipal
enterprise, and the admirable provision made in Berlin for the very
poor.
Last time I went to Germany I actually made the acquaintance of one
German who did not smoke, and on various occasions I was in the
society of others who did not smoke for some hours. In the Berlin
tramcars smoking is strictly forbidden, but I did not observe that
this rule was strictly enforced. In fact, my attention was drawn to it
one day by finding my neighbour's cigar unpleasantly strong. One
cigar in a tramcar, however, is nothing at all, and should not be
mentioned. It is when a railway carriage beautifully upholstered with
crimson velvet holds you, six Germans, and one Englishman, for eight
hours on a blazing summer day, that you begin to wonder whether, after
all, you do mind smoke. To be sure, you might have travelled in a
_Nichtraucher_ or a _Damen-Coupé_, but changes are a nuisance on a
journey. Besides, you know that a _Damen-Coupé_ is always crowded, and
that the moment you open a window someone will hold a handkerchief
tearfully to her neck and say, "_Aber ich bitte meine Dame: es
zieht!_" and all the other women in the carriage will say in chorus,
"_Ja! ja! es zieht!_" and if you don't shut the window instantly the
conductor will be summoned, and he will give the case against you. So
you travel all day long with seven cigars, most of them cheap strong
ones, that their owners smoke very slowly and replace directly they
are finished. And after a time the conversation turns on smoking, and
your neighbour admits that he always lights his first cigar when he
gets up in the morning and smokes it while he is dressing. His wife
dresses in the same room and does not like it, but.... It is
unnecessary to say more. Five cigars out of six are in sympathy with
him, while you amuse yourself by wondering what revenge a wife could
take in such circumstances. A bottle of the most offensive scent in
the market suggests itself, but you look at your neighbour's profile,
and see that he is the kind of man to pitch scent he did not like out
of the window. You have heard of one German husband who did this when
his wife brought home perfumes that did not please him. And then your
memory travels back and back along the years, arriving at last at the
picture of an English nursery, in the household where a German guest
had arrived the night before. The nurses and the children are sitting
peacefully at breakfast, when there enters to them a housemaid,
scornful, scandalised, out of breath with her hurry to impart what she
had seen.
"He's a-smoking in bed," she says, "that there Mr. Hoggenheimer! He's
a-smoking in bed!"
"Some of them do," says nurse, who is a travelled person, and refuses
to be taken by surprise.
"Well, of all the nasty...."
"Sh!" says nurse, pointing to the children, all eyes and ears.
So that is all you can remember about the housemaid and Mr.
Hoggenheimer. But you remember him--a little dark man who sent you
books you could not read at Christmas, and brought you enchanting
gingerbreads covered with hundreds and thousands. You thought him
rather funny, but you liked him, and if he wanted to smoke in bed why
not? You liked toys in bed yourself, and you would have taken the dog
there if only it had been allowed. Then you come back again to the
present hour, nearly all the years of your life later, and you are in
a railway carriage with six German householders who, like Mr.
Hoggenheimer, want cigars in and out of season.
"To-morrow," you say to your Englishman; "to-morrow I shall travel in
a _Nichtraucher_."
"But then I can't smoke," he says quite truly.
"We shall not travel together."
"But that is so unsociable."
"I would rather be unsociable than suffocated," you explain. "I have
suffered tortures to-day."
"Have you? But you always say you don't mind smoke."
"In reason. Seven cigars and one woman are not reasonable. Never
again will I travel with seven cigars."
"I thought we had a pleasant journey," says the Englishman
regretfully. "That little man next to you----"
"Mr. Hoggenheimer----?"
"Was that his name?--I couldn't understand all he said, but he had an
amusing face."
"A face can be misleading," you say; "that man bullies his wife."
"How do you know?"
"He told us so. He smokes before breakfast ... while he is dressing,
... and he has no dressing room...."
The Englishman looks calm.
"They do take one into their confidence," he remarks. "My neighbour
told me that he never could eat mayonnaise of salmon directly after
roast pork, because it gave him peculiar pains. I was afraid you'd
hear him describe his symptoms; but I believe you were asleep."
"No, I wasn't," you confess; "I heard it all, and I shut my eyes,
because I knew if I opened them he'd address himself to me. I shut
them when he began talking to you about your _Magen_ and what you
ought to do to give it tone. You seemed interested."
"It's quite an interesting subject," says the Englishman, who makes
friends with every German he meets. "He is not in the least like an
Englishman," they say to you cordially,--"he is so friendly and
amiable."