EXPENSES OF LIFE
A few years ago a German economist reckoned that there were only
250,000 families in the empire whose incomes exceeded £450, a year.
There were nearly three million households living on incomes ranging
from £135 to £450, and nearly four millions with more than £90 but
less than £135. But there were upwards of five millions whose incomes
fell below £45. Since that estimate was made, Germany has grown in
wealth and prosperity; and in the big cities there is great
expenditure and luxury amongst some classes, especially amongst the
Jews who can afford it, and amongst the officers of the army who as a
rule cannot. But the bulk of the nation is poor, and class for class
lives on less than people do in England. For instance, the headmaster
of a school gets about £100 a year in a small town, and from £200 to
£300 in a big one. A lieutenant gets about £65 a year, and an
additional £12 if he has no private means. His uniform and mess
expenses are deducted from this. He is not allowed to marry on his
official income, unless he or his wife has an income of £125 in
addition to his pay, as even in Germany an army man can hardly keep up
appearances and support a wife and family on less than £190 a year. It
is quite common to hear of a clerk living on £40 or £50, or of a
doctor who knows his work and yet can only make £150. The official
posts so eagerly sought after are poorly paid; so are servants,
agricultural labourers, and artisans. When you are in Germany, if you
are interested in questions of income and expenditure, you are always
trying to make up your mind why a German family can live as
successfully on £400 as an English family on £700, for you know that
rent and taxes are high and food and clothing dear. If you are a woman
and think about it a great deal, and look at family life in as many
places and classes as you can, you finally decide that there are three
chief reasons for the great difference between the cost of life in
England and Germany. In the first place, labour is cheaper there; in
the second place, the standard of luxury and even of comfort is lower;
in the third place, the women are thriftier and more industrious than
Englishwomen. This, too, leaves out of account the most important
fact, that the State educates a man's children for next to nothing;
and drills the male ones into shape when they serve in the army.
Servants, we have seen, get lower wages than they do here, but the
real economy is in the smaller number kept. Where we pay and maintain
half a dozen a German family will be content with two, and the typical
small English household that cannot face life without its plain cook
in the kitchen and its parlour-maid in her black gown at the front
door, will throughout the German Empire get along quite serenely with
one young woman to cook and clean and do everything else required. If
she is a "pearl" she probably makes the young ladies' frocks and irons
the master's shirts to fill in her time. Germans do not trouble about
the black frock and the white apron at the front door. They will even
open the door to you themselves if the "girl" is washing or cooking.
A female servant is always a "girl" in Germany. I once heard a young
Englishwoman who had not been long in Germany ask an elderly
acquaintance to recommend a dressmaker.
"The best one in ---- is Fräulein Müller," said the elderly
acquaintance.
"But she is too expensive," said the Englishwoman, and she glanced
across the room at the lady's nieces, who were neatly and plainly
dressed. "Do girls go to Fräulein Müller?"
"Girls! Certainly not," said the lady, with the expression Germans
keep for the insane English it is their fate to encounter
occasionally.
"But that is what I want to know, ... a dressmaker girls go to ...
girls with a small allowance."
"I am afraid I cannot help you," said the lady stiffly. "I know
nothing about the dressmakers girls employ."
"Perhaps Miss Brown means 'young girls,'" said one of the nieces, who
was not as slow in the uptake as her aunt, and it turned out that this
was what Miss Brown did mean; but she had not known that in everyday
life _Mädchen_ without an adjective usually means a servant. She had
heard of _Das Mädchen aus der Fremde_ and _Der Tod und das Mädchen_,
and blundered.
I once made a German exceedingly angry by saying that the standard of
comfort was higher in England than in Germany. She said it was lower.
When you have lived in both countries and with both peoples you arrive
in the end at having your opinions, and knowing that each one you hold
will be disputed on one side or the other. "Find out what means
_Gemütlichkeit_, and do it without fail," says Hans Breitmann, but
_Gemütlichkeit_ and comfort are not quite interchangeable words. Our
word is more material. When we talk of English comfort we are thinking
of our open fires, our solid food, our thick carpets, and our
well-drilled smart-looking servants. The German is thinking of the
spiritual atmosphere in his own house, the absence, as he says, of
ceremony and the freedom of ideas. He talks of a man being _gemütlich_
in his disposition, kindly, that is, and easy going. We talk of a
house being comfortable, and when we do use the word for a person
usually mean that she is rather stout. When both you and the German
have decided that "comfort" for the moment shall mean material
comfort, you will disagree about what is necessary to yours. You must
have your bathroom, your bacon for breakfast, your table laid
precisely, your meals served to the moment, your young women in black
or your staid men to give them to you, and your glowing fires in as
many rooms as possible. The German cares for none of these things. He
would rather have his half-pound of odds and ends from the provision
shop than your boiled cod, roast mutton, and apple-tart; he wants his
stove, his double windows, his good coffee, his _kräftige Kost_, and
freedom to smoke in every corner of his house. He is never tired of
telling you that, though you have more political freedom in England,
you are groaning under a degree of social tyranny that he could not
endure for a day. The Idealist, quoted in a former chapter, is for
ever talking of the "hypocrisy" of English life, and her burning
anxiety is to save the children of certain Russian and German exiles
from contact with it. Another German tells you that our system of
collegiate life for women would not suit her countryfolk, because
they are more "individual." Each one likes to choose her own rooms,
and live as she pleases. The next German has suffered torments in
London because he had to sit down to certain meals at certain hours
instead of eating anything he fancied at any time he felt hungry, and
I suppose it is only your British _Heuchelei_ that leads you to smile
politely instead of adding, "As the beasts of the field do." But I am
always mazed, as the Cornish say, when Germans talk of their freedom
from convention. In Hamburg I was once seriously rebuked by an old
friend for carrying a book through the streets that was not wrapped up
in paper. In Hamburg that is one of the things people don't do. In
Mainz and in many other German towns there are certain streets where
one side, for reasons no one can explain, is taboo at certain hours of
the day; not of the night, but of the day. You may go to a music shop
at midday to buy a sonata, and find, if you are a girl, that you have
committed a crime. The intercourse between young people outside their
homes is hedged round with convention. German titles of address are so
absurdly formal that Germans laugh at them themselves. Their
ceremonies in connection with anniversaries and family events bristle
with convention, and offer pitfalls at every step to the stranger or
the blunderer. It is true that men do not dress for dinner every day,
and wax indignant over the necessity of doing so for the theatre in
England; but there are various occasions when they wear evening dress
in broad daylight, and an Englishman considers that an uncomfortable
convention. The truth is, that these questions of comfort and
ceremonial are not questions that should be discussed in the hostile
dogmatic tone adopted in both countries by those who only know their
own. The ceremonies that are foreign to you impress you, while those
you have been used to all your life have become a second nature. An
Englishwoman feels downright uncomfortable in her high stuff gown at
night, and a German lady brought up at one of the great German Courts
told me that when she stayed in an English country house and put on
what she called a ball dress for dinner every night, she felt like a
fool.
To come back to questions of expenditure so intimately related to
questions of comfort, it must be remembered that in an English
household there are two dinners a day: one early for the servants and
children, and one late for the grown-ups; and solid dinners cost money
even in England, where at present there is no meat famine. When
Germans dine late they don't also dine early, even where there are
children; while the kitchen dinner, that meal of supreme importance
here, is eaten when the family has finished theirs, and is as informal
as the meal a bird makes of berries. In a German household, living on
a small income, nothing is wasted,--not fuel, not food, not cleaning
materials, as far as possible not time. The _tüchtige Hausfrau_ would
be made miserable by having to pay and feed a woman who put on gala
clothes at midday, and did no work to soil them after that.
"Two girls," I once heard a German say to an Englishwoman who had just
described her own modest household which she ran, she said, with two
maids. "Two girls ... for you and your husband. But what, I ask you,
does the second one do?"
"She cleans the rooms and waits at table and opens the door," said the
Englishwoman.
"All that can one girl do just as well. I assure you it is so. There
cannot possibly be work in your household for two girls. You have told
me how quietly you live, and I know what English cooking is, if you
can call it cooking."
"You see, there must be someone to open the door."
"Why could one girl not answer the door, ... unless she was washing.
Then you would naturally go yourself."
"But it wouldn't be natural in England," said the Englishwoman. "It
would be odd. Besides, if you only have one servant, she can't dress
for lunch."
"Why should she dress for lunch?" asked the German. "My Auguste is a
pearl, but she only dresses when we have _Gesellschaft_. Then she
wears a plaid blouse and a garnet brooch that I gave her last
Christmas, and she looks very well in them. But every day ... and for
lunch, when half the work of the day is still to be done.... What,
then, does your second girl do in the afternoons?"
"She brings tea and answers the door."
"Always the door. But your husband is not a doctor or a dentist. Why
do so many people come to your door that you need a whole girl to
attend to them?"
"Oh! They don't," said the Englishwoman, getting rather worn. "There
are very few, really. It's the custom."
"Ah!" said the German, with a long deep breath of satisfaction. "So
are you English ... such slaves to custom. _Gott sei Dank_ that I do
not live in a country where I should have to keep a girl in idleness
for the sake of the door. With us a door is a door. Anyone who happens
to be near opens it."
"I know they do," said the Englishwoman, "and when a servant comes she
expects you to say _Guten Tag_ before you ask whether her mistress is
at home?"
"Certainly. It is a politeness. We are a polite nation."
"And once, when I had just come back from Germany, I said Good-morning
to an English butler before I asked if his mistress was at home, and
he thought I was mad. We each have our own conventions. That's the
truth of the matter."
"Not at all," said the German. "The truth of the matter is, that the
English are extremely conventional, and follow each other as sheep do;
but the German does what pleases him, without asking first whether his
neighbour does likewise."
This is what the German really believes, and you agree or disagree
with him according to the phase of life you look at when he is
speaking. You find that when he comes to England he honestly feels
checked at every turn by our unwritten laws, while when you go to
Germany you wonder how he can submit so patiently to the pettiness and
multiplicity of his written ones. He vaguely feels the pressure and
criticism of your indefinite code of manners; you think his elaborate
system of titles, introductions, and celebrations rather childish and
extremely troublesome. If you have what the English call manners you
will take the greatest care not to let him find this out, and in
course of time, however much you like him on the whole, you will lose
your patience a little with the individual you are bound to meet, the
individual who has England on his nerves, and exhausts his energy and
eloquence in informing you of your country's shortcomings. They are
legion, and indeed leave no room for the smallest virtue, so that in
the end you can only wonder solemnly why such a nation ever came to be
a nation at all.
"That is easily answered," says your Anglophobe. "England has arrived
where she is by seizing everything she can lay hands on. Now it is
going to be our turn."
You express your interest in the future of Germany as seen by your
friend, and he shows you a map of Europe which he has himself marked
with red ink all round the empire as it will be a few years hence.
There is not much Europe outside the red line.
"But you haven't taken Great Britain," you say, rather hurt at being
left out in this way.
"We don't want it ... otherwise, ... but India ... possibly
Australia." He waves his hands.
You look at him pensively, and suddenly see one of the great everyday
distances between your countryfolk and his. You think of a French
novel that has amused you lately, because the parents of the heroine
objected to her marriage with the hero on grounds you were quite
incapable of understanding. The young man's work was in Cochin-China,
and the young lady's father and mother did not wish her to go so far.
Never in your life have you heard anyone raise such a trivial
difficulty. You live in a dull sober street mostly inhabited by dull
sober people, but there is not one house in it that is not linked by
interest or affection, often doubly linked, with some uttermost end of
the earth. You can hardly find an English family that has not one
member or more in far countries, and so the common talk of English
people in all classes travels the width of the world in the wake of
those dear to them. But in 1900 only 22,309 Germans out of a
population of 60,400,000 emigrated from Germany, and these, says Mr.
Eltzbacher, whose figures I am quoting, were more than counterbalanced
by immigration into Germany from Austria, Russia, and Italy. It is
true that the population of Germany is increasing with immense
rapidity, and that the question of expansion is becoming a burning
one; but it is a question quite outside the strictly home politics of
this unpretending chronicle. We are only concerned with the obvious
fact that Germans settle in far countries in much smaller numbers than
we do, and that those who go abroad mostly choose the British flag and
avoid their own. It does not occur as easily to a German as to an
Englishman that he may better his fortunes in another part of the
world, or if he is an official that he will apply for a post in Asia
or Africa. He wants to stay near the Rhine or the Spree where he was
born, and to bring up his children there; and with the help of the
State and his wife he contrives to do this on an extraordinary small
income. The State, as we have seen, almost takes his children off his
hands from the time they are six years old. It brings them up for
nothing, or next to nothing; in cases of need it partially feeds and
clothes them, it even washes them. Some English humorist has said that
a German need only give himself the trouble to be born; his government
does the rest. But first his mother and then his wife do a good deal.
They are like the woman in Proverbs who worked willingly with her
hands, rose while it was night, saw well to the ways of her household,
and ate not the bread of idleness.
I have before me the household accounts of several German families
living on what we should call small incomes; and they show more
exactly than any vague praise can do the prodigies of thrift
accomplished by people obliged to economise, and at the same time to
present a respectable appearance. The first one is the budget of a
small official living with a wife and two children in a little town
where a flat on the fourth or fifth floor can be had at a low rent:--
£ s. d.
Rent 20 0 0
Fuel 3 10 0
Light 1 10 0
Clothes for the man 3 0 0
Clothes for the wife 2 0 0
Clothes for the children 1 0 0
Boots for the man 1 0 0
Boots for the wife and children 1 5 0
Repairs to boots 0 17 6
Washing and house repairs 3 0 0
Doctor 2 0 0
Newspaper 0 12 0
Charwoman 3 0 0
Taxes 2 10 0
Postage 1 4 0
Insurances 2 10 0
Amusements 3 0 0
Housekeeping 45 0 0
Sundries 3 1 0
-----------
£100 0 0
===========
The fuel allowed in this budget consists of 30 cwt. of _Steinkohlen_
at 1 mark 15 pf. the cwt., 30 cwt. of _Braunkohlen_ at 70 pf. the
cwt., and 4 cwt. of kindling at 1 mark 10 pf. the cwt. This quantity,
3 tons without the kindling, would have to be used most sparingly to
last through a long rigorous German winter, as well as for cooking and
washing in summer. The amount set apart for lights allows for one lamp
in the living room and two small ones in the passage and kitchen. The
man may have a new suit every year, one year in winter and the next
year in summer, and his suit may cost £2, 10s. His great-coat also is
to cost £2, 10s., but he can't have a new suit the year he buys one,
and it should last him at least four years. The ten shillings left is
for all his other clothes except boots, and presumably for all his
personal expenses, including tobacco, so he had better not spend it
all at once. His wife performs greater miracles still, for she has to
buy a winter gown and a summer gown, a hat and gloves, for her £2.
These are not fancy figures. The miracle is performed by tens of
thousands of German women every year. They buy a few yards of cheap
stuff and get in a sewing-woman to make it up, for as a rule they are
not nearly as clever and capable as Englishwomen about making things
for themselves. Your English maid-servant will buy a blouse length at
a sale for a few pence, make it up smartly, and wear it out in a month
of Sundays. Your German she-official will have a blouse made for her,
and it will probably be hideous; but she will wear it so carefully
that it lasts her two years. Under-raiment she will never want to buy,
as she will have brought a life-long supply to her home at marriage.
You easily figure the children who are dressed on twenty marks a year,
the girl in a shoddy tartan made in a fashion of fifty years ago with
the "waist" hooked behind, and the boy in some snuff-coloured mixture
floridly braided. But the interesting revelation of this small
official budget is in its carefully planned fare made out for a
fortnight in summer and a fortnight in winter. In winter the
_Hausfrau_ may spend about 17s. a week on her food and in summer 19s.
That leaves only 2s. a month for the extra days of the month, and for
small expenses, such as soda, matches, blacking, and condiments.
Breakfast may cost sixpence a day, and for this there is to be ¾ litre
of milk, 4 small white rolls, ½ lb. rye bread, 2 oz. of butter, 1 oz.
of coffee. Nothing is set down for sugar, and I think that most German
families of this class would not use sugar, and would eat their bread
without butter. On Sunday they have a goose for dinner, and pay 4s.
6d. for it, and though 4s. 6d. is not much to pay for a goose, it
seems an extravagant dish for this family, until you discover that
they are still dining on it on Wednesday. Not only has the _Hausfrau_
brought home this costly bird, but she has laid in a whole pound of
lard to roast with it, white bread for stuffing, and cabbage for a
vegetable. Pudding is not considered necessary after goose, and for
supper there is bread and milk for the children, and bread, butter,
cheese, and beer for the parents. On Monday they have a rest from
goose, and dine on _gehacktes Schweinefleisch_. German butchers sell
raw minced meat very cheaply, and the _Hausfrau_ would probably get as
much as she wanted for three-halfpence. On Tuesday they get back to
the goose, and have a hash of the wings, neck, and liver with
potatoes. For supper, rice cooked with milk and cinnamon. Germans use
cinnamon rather as the Spaniards use garlic. They seem to think it
improves everything, and they eat quantities of milky rice strewn with
it. On Wednesday my family has soup for dinner, a solid soup made of
goose, rice, and a pennyworth of carrots. For supper there is sausage,
bread, and beer. By the way, this official is not really
representative, for he spends nothing on tobacco, and only a penny
every other day on beer. He cannot have been a Bavarian. His wife
gives him cod with mustard sauce on Thursday, Sauerkraut and shin of
beef on Friday, and on Saturday lentil soup with sausages, an
excellent dish when properly cooked for those who want solid
nourishing food. On the following Sunday 3 pounds of beef appears, and
potato dumplings with stewed fruit, another good German mixture if the
dumplings are as light as they should be. The husband has them warmed
up for supper next day. One day he has bacon and vegetables for
dinner, and another day only apple sauce and pancakes, but at every
midday meal throughout the fortnight he has carefully planned food on
which his wife spends considerable time and trouble. He never comes
home from his work on a winter's day to have a mutton bone and watery
potatoes set before him. In summer the bill of fare provides soups
made with wine, milk, or cider; sometimes there are curds for supper,
and if they have a chicken, rice and stewed fruit are eaten with it.
But a chicken only costs this _Hausfrau_ 1 mark 20 pf., so it must
have been a small one. I have often bought pigeons for 25 pf. apiece
in Germany, and stuffed in the Bavarian way with egg and bread crumbs
they are good eating. Fruit is extremely cheap and plentiful in many
parts of Germany, but not everywhere. We have Heine's word for it that
the plums grown by the wayside between Jena and Weimar are good, for
most of us know his story of his first interview with Goethe; how he
had looked forward to the meeting with ecstasy and reflection, and how
when he was face to face with the great man all he found to say was a
word in praise of the plums he had eaten as he walked. In the
fruit-growing districts most of the roads are set with an avenue of
fruit trees, and so law-abiding are the boys of Germany, and so
plentiful is fruit in its season, that no one seems to steal from
them. I have talked with elderly Germans, who remembered buying 3
pounds of cherries for 6 kreuzers, a little more than a penny, when
they were boys. But those days are over. The small sweet-water grapes
from the vineyards of South Germany are to be had for the asking where
they are grown, and apricots are plentiful in some districts, and the
little golden plums called _Mirabellen_ that are dried in quantities
and make the best winter compote there is. When I see English grocers'
shops loaded up with dried American apples and apricots that are not
worth eating, however carefully they are cooked, I always wonder why
we do not import _Mirabellen_ instead.
Sweetbreads in the Berlin markets were about 1 mark 10 pf. each last
year, small tongues were 1 mark 10 pf. _Morscheln_, a poor kind of
fungus much used in Germany, were 65 pf. a pound, real mushrooms were
1 mark 50 pf., and the dried ones used for flavouring sauces were the
same price. Butter and milk are usually about the same price as with
us, but eggs are cheaper. You get twenty for a mark still in spring,
and I remember making an English plumcake once in a Bavarian village
and being charged 6 pf. for the three eggs I used. A rye loaf weighing
4 pounds costs 50 pf., the little white rolls cost 3 pf. each. In
Berlin last year vegetables were nearly as dear as in London, but in
many parts of Germany they are much cheaper. I know of one housewife
who fed her family largely on vegetables, and would not spend more
than 10 pf. a day on them, but she lived in a small country town where
green stuff was a drug in the market. Asparagus is cheaper than here,
for it costs 35 pf. to 40 pf. a pound, and is eaten in such quantities
that even an asparagus lover gets tired of it. Meat has risen terribly
in price of late years. In the open market you can get fillet of beef
for 1 mark 60 pf., sirloin for 90 pf., good cuts of mutton for 90 pf.
to 1 mark, and veal for 1 mark, but all these prices are higher at a
butcher's shop. Fillet of beef, for instance, is 2 marks 40 pf. a
pound there.
The budget of a family living on £250 a year does not call for so much
comment as the smaller one, because £250 is a fairly comfortable
income in Germany. Either a schoolmaster or a soldier must have risen
in his profession before he gets it; but the following estimate is
made out for a business man who does not get a house free or any other
aid from outside:--
£ s. d.
Rent 50 0 0
Fuel 7 10 0
Light 5 0 0
Clothes--husband 6 0 0
" wife 4 0 0
" children 2 10 0
Shoes 4 0 0
School fees 5 0 0
Washing 5 0 0
Repairs to linen 2 10 0
Doctor and dentist 5 0 0
Newspapers and magazines 2 0 0
Servant's wages 9 0 0
Servant's insurance and Christmas present 2 0 0
Taxes 6 0 0
Postage 1 10 0
Insurances 5 0 0
Housekeeping 90 0 0
Amusements and travelling 25 0 0
Christmas and presents 10 0 0
Sundries 3 0 0
-----------
£250 0 0
===========
On examining this budget it will occur to most people that the poor
_Hausfrau_ might spend a little more on her clothes and a little less
on her presents, and as a matter of fact even in Germany, where
Christmas is a burden as well as a pleasure, this would be done. The
next budget is the most interesting, because it is not an ideal one
drawn up for anyone's guidance, but is taken without the alteration of
one penny from the beautifully kept account book of a friend. There
were no children in the family, so nothing appears for school fees or
children's clothes. The household consisted of husband and wife and
one maid. They lived in one of the largest and dearest of German
cities, and the husband's work as well as their social position forced
certain expenses on them. For instance, they had to live in a good
street and on the ground floor; and they had to entertain a good deal.
M. Pf.
Bread 180 --
Meat 310 95
Fish and poultry 98 55
Aufschnitt 67 25
Potatoes 19 10
Vegetables 110 50
Fruit 87 95
Eggs 83 90
Milk 121 85
Butter 195 --
Lard 36 55
Flour, Gries, etc. 25 60
Sugar and treacle 66 20
Groceries 22 50
Coffee 67 --
Tea and chocolate 17 95
Drinks 159 10
Lights 30 55
Washing 126 80
Laundress 32 25
Ice 10 20
Coal and wood 170 10
Turf and other fuel 159 25
Matches 3 --
Cleaning 60 --
Furniture 4 55
Repairs 19 50
Crockery and kitchenware 38 --
Repairs 49 --
China and glass 30 5
Clothes--husband 181 20
" wife 452 85
Boots--husband 24 10
" wife 60 35
Linen 17 5
Charities 232 20
Rent 2150 --
Rent of husband's share of professional rooms 318 70
---- --
Carry forward 5839 45
M. Pf.
Brought forward 5839 45
Fares 46 10
Books 64 25
Writing materials 30 50
Charwoman and tips 85 95
Wages and servants' presents 335 50
Papers 35 25
Carpenter 125 --
Tobacco and cigars 165 90
Sundries 39 35
Photography and fishing tackle 141 10
Music lessons 15 10
Medicine 13 80
Hairdresser 2 40
Presents--family 291 75
" friends 119 --
Amusements 137 25
Travelling 736 40
Stamps 99 65
Entertaining (at Home) 232 --
Charities[2] 24 --
Subscriptions 119 80
Fire insurance 12 30
Old age insurance 10 40
---- --
8722 20
==== ==
There are some interesting points about this budget as compared with
an English one of £436. It will be seen that although meat is so dear
in Germany the weekly butcher's bill for three people was only 6s.,
fish and poultry together only 2s., and the ham sausage, etc. from the
provision shop under 1s. 6d. a week. The washing bill for the year is
low, because nearly everything was washed at home, and dear as fuel is
in Germany this household spent about £16, where an English one
presenting the same front would spend £20 to £25. Observe, too, the
amount spent on servants' wages by people who lived in a large
charmingly furnished flat, and had a long visiting list. The wife,
too, a very pretty woman and always well dressed, spent much less on
her toilet than anyone would have guessed from its finish and variety,
for she came from one of the German cities where women do dress well.
There is nearly as much difference amongst German cities in this
respect as there is amongst nations. Berlin is far behind either
Hamburg or Frankfurt, for instance. The middle-class women of Berlin
have an extraordinary affection all through the summer season for
collarless blouses, bastard tartans, and white cotton gloves with
thumbs but no fingers. In England the force of custom drives women to
uncover their necks in the evening, whether it becomes them or not,
and it is not a custom for which sensible elderly women can have much
to say. But pneumonia blouses have never been universal wear in any
country, and it is impossible to explain their apparently irresistible
attraction for all ages and sizes of women in the Berlin electric
cars. Those who were not wearing pneumonia blouses a year ago were
wearing _Reform-Kleider_, shapeless ill-cut garments usually of grey
tweed. The oddest combination, and quite a common one, was a sack-like
_Reform-Kleid_, with a saucy little coloured bolero worn over it,
fingerless gloves, and a madly tilted beflowered hat perched on a
dowdy coiffure. These are rude remarks to make about the looks of
foreign ladies, but the _Reform-Kleid_ is just as hideous and absurd
in Germany now as our bilious green draperies were on the wrong people
twenty-five years ago, and I am sure every foreigner who came to
England must have laughed at them. On the whole, I would say of German
women in general what a Frenchwoman once said to me in the most
matter-of-fact tone of Englishwomen, _Elles s'habillent si mal_.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Probably private charities.