HOUSEWIVES (_Continued_)
In Germany the home is furnished by the bride's parents, and the
household linen forms part of her trousseau and is marked by her
monogram. In describing the furniture of a German flat, you must first
decide whether you are going to choose one furnished to-day by a
fashionable young woman in Berlin or Hamburg; or one furnished by her
parents twenty to twenty-five years ago. Modern German furniture is
quite easily suggested to the English imagination, because some of it
looks as if the artist had visited our Arts and Crafts Exhibitions and
then made his own designs in a nightmare; while some has accepted
English inspiration and adapted itself wisely and cleverly to German
needs. To-day a German bride will have in her bedroom a wardrobe with
a big mirror, a toilet table or chest, a marble-topped washstand and
two narrow bedsteads, all of fumed wood. If she has money and
understanding the things have probably come from England, not from an
emporium, but from one of our artists in furniture whom the Germans
know better and value more highly than we do ourselves. But if she has
money only she can buy florid pretentious stuff that outdoes in
ugliness the worst productions of our "suite" sellers. Her mother,
however, probably did without any kind of toilet table or glass in
her wardrobe. Twenty years ago you occasionally saw such things in the
houses of rich people, but they were quite unusual. A small hanging
glass behind the washstand was considered enough for any _ordentliche
Frau_. Nowadays in rare cases the _ordentliche Frau_ actually has
silver brushes and powder pots and trinket boxes. But as a rule she
still does without such things; she brushes her beautiful hair with an
ivory or a wooden brush, and leaves paint and powder to ladies who are
presumably not _ordentlich_. At one time narrow brass or iron
bedsteads were introduced from England, and were used a great deal in
Germany. I remember seeing one all forlorn in a vast magnificent
palace bedroom where a fourposter hung with brocade or tapestry would
have looked more at home. But the real old-fashioned bedstead, still
much liked and formerly seen everywhere was always of wood, single and
with deep sides to hold the heavy box mattress. In Mariana Starcke's
_Travels in Europe_, published in 1833, she says of an inn in Villach,
"tall people cannot sleep comfortably here or in any part of Germany;
the beds, which are very narrow, being placed in wooden frames or
boxes, so short that any person who happened to be above five feet
high must absolutely sit up all night supported by pillows; and this,
in fact, is the way in which the Germans sleep."
I think this is a statement that will be as surprising to any German
who reads it as the statements made by Germans about England have
often been to me. It is true, however, that tall people do find the
old-fashioned German bedsteads short; and it is true that the big
square downy pillows are supported by a wedge-shaped bolster called a
_Keilkissen_. But the _Plumeau_ is what the German loves, and the
Briton hates above all things: the mountain of down or feathers that
tumbles off on cold nights and stays on on hot ones. You hate it all
the year round, because in winter it is too short and in summer it is
an oppression. Sometimes the sheet is buttoned to it, and then though
you are a traveller you are less than ever content. At the best you
never succumb to its attractions. Every spring the good German
housewife takes her maid and her _Plumeaux_ to a cleaner and sits
there while the feathers are purified by machinery and returned to
their bags. In this way she makes sure of getting back her own
feathers both in quality and quantity. Except for the _Plumeaux_ and
the want of a dressing-table and proper mirror, an ordinary German
bedroom is very comfortable and always very clean. However plain it is
you can use it partly as a sitting-room, because a sofa and a good
sized table in front of it are considered an indispensable part of its
furniture. When Germans come to England and have to live in lodgings
or poorly furnished inns, the bedrooms seem to them most comfortless
and ill provided. The poor Idealist who lived as an exile in London in
the early Victorian age describes her forlorn room with nothing in it
but a "colossal" bed, a washstand, and a chest of drawers, and though
she does not describe them, you who know London from that side can see
the half-dirty honey-combed counterpane, the untempting cotton sheets,
the worn uncleanly carpet, the grained or painted furniture with doors
and drawers that will not shut; and if you know Germany too you must
in honesty compare with it the pleasant rooms you have inhabited there
for less rent than she paid her Mrs. Quickly,--rooms with cool clean
painted floors, solid old dark elm cupboards, and bedsteads that when
you had pitched the _Plumeau_ on the floor or the sofa were inviting
because they were made with spotless home-spun linen.
What we call the drawing-room used to be extremely chill and formal in
Germany, but it has never been as hideously overloaded as English
drawing-rooms belonging to people who do not know better. The "suite"
of furniture covered with rep or brocade was everywhere, and the rep
was frequently grass-green or magenta. There was invariably a sofa and
a table in front of the sofa, and a rug or a small carpet under the
table. Even in these days this arrangement prevails and must continue
to do so while the sofa is considered the place of honour to which the
hostess invites her leading guest. If you go to Germany in ignorance
of the social importance attached to the sofa, you may blunder quite
absurdly and sit down uninvited or when your age or your sex does not
entitle you to a seat there. I was once present when an English girl
innocently chose a corner of the sofa instead of a chair, though there
were older women in the room. The hostess promptly and audibly told
her to get up, for she knew it was not an affair to pass off as a
joke. In England the question of precedence comes up chiefly at the
dinner-table. The host and hostess must send the right people together
and place them correctly too. In Germany you have to know as hostess
who is to sit on the sofa; and your decision may be complicated by the
absurd titles of your guests. For instance, one Frau Direktor may be
the wife of a post office official who had a university education, and
in Germany a university education counts; while another Frau Direktor,
though she can afford better clothes, is merely the wife of the man
who manages the factory in the next village. I have heard a story of a
Frau Kreisrichter and a Frau Actuar that ended in a life-long feud,
and it all turned on a _Kaffee Klatsch_ and the wrong woman on the
sofa. It is not easy to know what to do about these ridiculous titles
in Germany, because some people insist on them and some laugh at them
as much as we do. I once asked a lady who had the best right to know,
about using military titles instead of names: Herr Lieutenant, Herr
Major, and so on. She was quite explicit. "_Mir ist es ein Greuel_,"
she said, and went on to tell me that it was only done as one might
expect by people who did not know better, and of course by servants.
All the same, it is well to be careful and study the individual case.
I know of an American who addressed his professor as Professor Lachs.
"Where are your manners, mein Herr?" said the professor in a fury, "I
am Herr Professor Dr. Lachs to every student in this laboratory."
But when it comes to Mrs. Tax-Collector and Mrs. Organist and Mrs.
Head Master, and it does come to this quite seriously, it is difficult
for the foreigner to appraise values. The length of the titles, too,
is a stumbling-block. You may marry a harmless Herr Braun, and in
course of time become Frau Wirklichergeheimerober regierungsrath. In
this case I don't think your friends would use the whole of your title
every time they addressed you; but you would undoubtedly have a seat
on the sofa before all the small fry.
On the table in front of the sofa there used always to be a heavy
coloured cloth, and then put diamond-wise a light embroidered or lace
one. A vase of artificial or real flowers, according to taste, stood
exactly in the middle, and a few books in ornamental bindings on
either side. There would be very few ornaments, but these few would be
good of their kind, though probably hideous. Luckily the family did
not assemble here on State occasions. For every-day use there was a
_Wohnzimmer_ soberly furnished with solid well made chairs and
cupboards. Here the mistress of the house kept her palms, her
work-table, and her pet birds. Here her husband smoked his
after-dinner cigar and drank his coffee before going to his work
again. Here the elder children did their lessons for next day's
school, and here at night the family sat round one lamp,--the father
smoking, the mother probably mending, the children playing games. For
German fathers do not live at the _Kneipe_. They are occasionally to
be found with their families. When the flat was not large enough to
furnish a third sitting-room, the dining-room was used in this way. A
modern German family still lives in any room rather than the
drawing-room, but it has learned how to make a drawing-room
attractive. The odious "suite" has been abolished or dispersed, and a
lighter, less formal scheme of decoration is making its way. You see
charming rooms in Germany nowadays, but they are never quite like
English ones, even when your friends point to a wicker chair or an
Eastern carpet and tell you that they love everything English and have
furnished in the English fashion. In the first place, you do not see
piles of magazines and papers or of library books in a German
drawing-room. They would be considered scandalously untidy, and put
away in a cupboard at once. If there are cut flowers they are not
arranged as they are here. On ceremonial occasions and anniversaries
great quantities of flowers are presented, but they are mostly wired
and probably arranged in a fanciful shape. The favourite shape changes
with the season and the fashion of the moment. One year those who wish
to honour you and have plenty of money, will send you lyres and harps
made of violets, pansies, pinks, cornflowers, any flower that will
lend itself meekly to popular design. The favourite design in Berlin
one spring was a large flat sofa cushion of Guelder roses with tall
sprays of roses or carnations dancing from it. On ordinary occasions
market bunches are put into water as an English cottager puts in his
flowers, level and tightly packed. But on a festive occasion in a rich
man's house you hear of a long dinner table strewn with branches of
pink hawthorn and peonies. In fact, a riot of flowers is now
considered correct by wealthy people, but you do not find them here
and there and everywhere, whether people are wealthy or not, as you do
in England. That is partly because there are so few private gardens.
The extreme tidiness of German rooms is a constant source of surprise.
They are as guiltless of "litter" as the showrooms of a furniture
emporium. You would think that the people who live in them were never
employed if you did not know that Germans were never idle. Every bit
of embroidery has its use and its own corner. The article now being
embroidered is neatly folded inside the work-basket or work-table when
it is not in the lady's hands. The one book she is reading will be
near. Any other books she possesses will be on shelves, and probably
behind glass doors. Each chair has its place, each cushion, each
ornament. Even where there are children German rooms never look
disarranged. I can truly say I have only once seen a German room
untidy and dusty, and that was in a house with no one but a "Mamsell"
in charge; and she apologised and explained that it was to be spring
cleaned next day. There is, by the way, a curious litter of things
kept on a German sideboard in many houses,--coffee machines, silver,
useful and ornamental glass, great blue beer jugs, and suchlike; but
they are kept there with intention and not by neglectful accident.
Then the narrow corridor of a German flat is often uncomfortably
choked with articles of household use: lamps, for instance, and a
refrigerator, and the safe in which the mistress locks her food; spare
cupboards too, and neat piles of papers and magazines. It will be
inelegant, but it will be orderly and clean.
It is the way in this country to laugh at the German _Hausfrau_, and
pity her for a drudge; and it is the way with many Germans to talk as
if all Englishwomen were pleasure loving and incompetent. The less
people know of a foreign nation the greater nonsense they talk in
general, and the more cocksure they are about their own opinions. A
year ago, when I was in Germany, I asked a friend I could trust if
there really was much Anglophobia abroad except in the newspapers. She
reflected a little before she answered, for she was honest and
intelligent.
"There is none amongst people like ourselves," she said,--"people who
know the world a little. But you come across it?" She turned to her
husband.
"There are others like G.," she said. "He turns green if anyone speaks
of England, and he says Shakespeare is _dumm_. You see, he has never
been out of Germany, and has never met any English people."
So I told her about my English cook, who snorted with scorn when I
assured her Germans considered rabbits vermin and would not eat them.
"H ... ph!" she said, "I shouldn't have thought foreigners were so
particular."
The average German housewife has to keep the house going on
exceedingly small means and with inefficient help. It is her pride and
pleasure to make a little go a long way, and she can only achieve
this by working with her hands. Probably her servant cannot cook, but
she can, and it would never occur to her to let her husband and
children eat ill-prepared food because servants do not like ladies in
the kitchen. A German lady, like a princess of ancient Greece,
considers that it becomes her to do anything she chooses in her own
house, and that the most convenient household workshop is the kitchen.
The Idealist from whom I have quoted before was the daughter of a
well-known German diplomatist, and she had been used since childhood
to the atmosphere of Courts. She was an accomplished well-born woman
of the world, but she had not been a week in her sordid London
lodgings with the woman she calls Mrs. Quickly, before she blundered
in her innocent German way--into the lodging-house kitchen. Figure to
yourself the stupefaction and the indignation of Mrs. Quickly,
probably engaged, though the Idealist does not say so, in dining off
the foreign woman's beef. "I went down to the kitchen," says Fräulein
von Meysenbug, "with a muslin gown on my arm to ask for an iron so
that I could iron my gown there. The kitchen was Mrs. Quickly's true
kingdom; here she alone reigned at the hearth, for the servant was not
allowed to approach the saucepans. Mrs. Quickly looked at me with
unconcealed astonishment as I came in, but when I proffered my request
her astonishment turned to wrath. 'What!' she shrieked, 'a lady
ironing in the kitchen? That is impossible.' And with the mien of
offended majesty she snatched the gown from me, and ordered the little
maid servant to put an iron in the fire and to iron the gown; then she
turned to me and said with tragic emphasis, 'You are a foreigner. You
don't understand our English ways: we consider it extremely
unladylike for a lady to enter the kitchen, and worse still if she
wants to iron her own gown. No, ma'am, please to ring the bell when
you require anything; otherwise you will ruin my servants.' Much
ashamed of my ignorance on this higher plane of English custom,"
continues the Idealist, "I crept back to my parlour and laughed
heartily as I looked round the dirty, wretchedly furnished room, and
reflected on the abyss set by prejudice between the ground-floor and
the basement."
"How do you like your new German governess?" I once asked an English
friend who lived in the country and had just engaged a German lady for
her only daughter.
"Oh! I like her," said my friend without enthusiasm. "She is a
brilliant musician and a fine linguist and all that. But she has such
odd ideas about what a girl ought to know. The other day I actually
caught her teaching Patricia to _dust_."
"If you don't watch her," I said, "she'll probably teach Patricia to
cook."
My friend looked anxious first, and then relieved.
"I don't see how she could do that," she said. "The cook would never
have them in the kitchen for five minutes. But now you mention it, I
believe she can cook. When things go wrong she seems to know what has
been done or not done."
"That might be useful," I suggested.
"I don't see it. I expect my cook to know her work, and to do it and
not to rely on me. I've other fish to fry."
But the German housewife expects to have her fingers literally in
every pie even when by rights they should be employed elsewhere. You
hear, for instance, of a great Court functionary whose wife is so
devoted to cooking that though she has a large staff of servants she
cannot be persuaded to spend the day anywhere but in her kitchen.
Mistresses of this kind breed incapable servants, and you find, in
fact, that German maids cannot compare with our English ones in
qualities of self-reliance, method, and initiative. They mostly expect
to be told from hour to hour what to do, and very often to lend a hand
to the ladies of the household rather than to do the thing themselves.
Indeed, though the servants are on duty from morning till night more
than English servants are, in some ways they have an easier time of it
than ours, because they are used so much to run errands and go to
market. Everyone who has been in German towns can remember the hordes
of servants with baskets and big umbrellas strolling in twos and
threes along the streets in the early morning. They are never in any
hurry to get home to work again, and a good many doubtless know that
what they leave undone will be done by their mistress. The German
kitchen with its beautiful cleanliness and brightly polished copper
pans I have described, but I have not said anything yet about the
fidgety housewife who carries her _Tüchtigkeit_ to such a pitch that
she ties every wooden spoon and twirler with a coloured ribbon to hang
by against the wall. In England you hear of ladies who tie every
bottle of scent on the toilet table with a different ribbon, and that
really has more sense in it, because it must be trying to a cook's
nerves to use spoons tied with delicate ribbons that must not be
spoiled. Every housewife has dainty little holders for the handles of
saucepans when they are hot. You see them, all different shapes and
sizes, on view with the piles of kitchen cloths and the various aprons
that form part of every lady's trousseau, and if you have German
friends they probably present you with a few from time to time. I
have never noticed any pictures in a German kitchen, but there are
nearly always _Sprüche_ both in the kitchen, and the dining-room and
sometimes in the hall: rhyming maxims that are done in poker work or
painted on wood and hung in conspicuous positions--
"Wie die Küche so das Haus,
Reinlich drinnen, reinlich draus"
is a nice one; and so is
"Trautes Heim
Glück allein."
There was one in the _Lette-Haus_ or some other big institution about
an hour in the morning being worth several hours later in the day,
which would prick our English consciences more sharply than it can
most German ones, for they are a nation of early risers. Schools and
offices all open so early that a household must of necessity be up
betimes to feed its menfolk and children with bread and coffee before
their day's work. In most German towns the tradespeople do not call
for orders, but they do in Hamburg; and a friend born there told me in
a whisper, so that her husband should not hear the awful confession,
that she would never be a good "provider" in consequence. She went to
market regularly, for many housewives will not delegate this most
important business to a cook, but she had not the same eye for a tough
goose or a poor fish, perhaps not the same backbone for a bargain, as
a housewife used from childhood to these sorties. In some towns the
butcher calls over night for orders. The baker's boy brings rolls
before anyone is up, and hangs them outside the flat in one of two
bags every household possesses. After the early breakfast either the
mistress or the cook fetches what is required for the day.
When the good German housewife is not in her kitchen, English
tradition believes her to be at her linen cupboard.
"I am going to write a humble little gossiping book about German Home
Life," I said to a learned but kindly professor last spring.
"German Home Life," he said, rather aghast at my daring, for we had
only just made each other's acquaintance, and I believe he thought
that this was my first visit to Germany and that I had been there a
week. "It is a wide field," he went on. "However ... if you want to
understand our Home Life ... just look at that...."
We were having tea together in the dining-room in his wife's absence,
and he suddenly got up from table and threw back both doors of an
immense cupboard occupying the longest wall in the room. I gazed at
the sight before me, and my thoughts were too deep for words. It was a
small household, I knew. It comprised, in fact, the professor, his
beautiful young wife, and one small maid-servant; and for their
happiness they possessed all this linen: shelf upon shelf, pile upon
pile of linen, exactly ordered, tied with lemon coloured ribbons,
embroidered beyond doubt with the initials of the lady who brought it
here as a bride. The lady, it may as well be said, is a celebrated
musician who passes a great part of each winter fulfilling engagements
away from home. "But what happens to the linen cupboard when you are
away?" I asked her, later, for it was grievous to think of any
servant, even a "pearl," making hay of those ordered shelves. "I come
home for a few days in between and set things to rights again," she
explained; and then, seeing that I was interested, she admitted that
she had put up and made every blind and curtain, and had even
carpentered and upholstered an empire sofa in her drawing-room. She
showed me each cupboard and corner of the flat, and I saw everywhere
the exquisite order and spotlessness the notable German housewife
knows how to maintain. We even peeped into the professor's
dressing-room.
"He must be a very tidy man," I said, sighing and reflecting that he
could not be as other men are. "Do you never have to set things to
rights here?"
"Every half hour," she said.
These enormous quantities of linen that are still the housewife's
pride used to be necessary when house and table linen were only washed
twice a year. A German friend who entertained a large party of
children and grandchildren every week, pointed out to me that she used
eighteen or twenty dinner napkins each time they came, and that when
washing day arrived at the end of six months even her supply was
nearly exhausted. The soiled linen was stored meanwhile in an attic at
the top of the house. The wash itself and the drying and ironing all
took place up there with the help of a hired laundress. In most German
cities this custom of washing at home still prevails, but in these
days it is usually done once a month. The large attics that serve as
laundries are engaged for certain days by the families living in the
house, and one servant assisted for one day by a laundry woman washes
and irons all the house and body linen used by her employers and
herself in four weeks. It sounds impossible, but in Germany nothing
involving hard work is impossible. All the differences of life between
England and Germany, in as far as expenses are concerned, seem to come
to this in the end: that over there both men and women will work
harder for less money. On the monthly washing day the ladies of the
household do the cooking and housework, and on the following day they
help to fold the clothes and iron them.
"I am very tired," confessed a little maid-servant who had been sent
out at night to show me where to find a tram. "We got up at four
o'clock this morning, and have been ironing all day. My mistress gets
up as early, and works as hard as I do. She is very _tüchtig_, and
where there are four children and only one servant there is a good
deal to do."
Yet her mistress had asked me to supper, I reflected, and everything
had been to time and well cooked and served. The rooms had looked as
neat and orderly as usual. The _Hausfrau_ had entertained me as
pleasantly as if she had no reason to feel tired. We had talked of
English novels, and of the invasion of England by Germany; for her
husband was a soldier, and another guest present was a soldier too.
The men had talked seriously, for they were as angry with certain
English newspapers as we are over here with certain German ones. But
the _Hausfrau_ and I had laughed.
"When they come, I'm coming with them," she said.
"We will receive you with open arms," said I.