PRAGUE.
When a man wakes up in the morning and can’t quite make out where he is,
and the first thing that catches his eyes as they wander inquiringly
round an unfamiliar bedroom is an electric bell, and underneath it these
words:
‘Na sklepnika, rate 1 nou;
Na panskou, rate 2 kráte;
Na poshluhu, rate 3 kráte;’
he may fairly be excused if he feels like a stranger in a strange land.
It will probably dawn upon him that somewhere amid these printed
specimens of an unknown tongue there is lurking a request that if he
wants the waiter he will ring once; that if he requires the chambermaid
he will ring twice; and that if he needs the services of the boots he
will ring thrice. This is what gradually shaped itself in my mind when I
woke up the other morning in Prague, and found myself face to face with
the Bohemian or Czechish language.
My earliest recollections of Prague are associated with a piece of
well-thumbed music which used to lie about on a piano, and was something
to do with a battle. Later on it cropped up occasionally in the
schoolroom in connection with a gentleman named Huss, who got into
trouble early in the Fourteens; but the world-famous old town fairly
burnt itself into my memory in the now almost forgotten lines of poor
Prowse, ‘Nicholas’ of _Fun_:
‘The longitude’s rather uncertain,
The latitude’s equally vague;
But that person I pity who knows not the city,
The beautiful city of Prague.’
It was not of the Bohemia over which Francis Josef reigns to-day that
the young poet sang, but of that vaster Bohemia which in years gone by
was the happy land of the children of art, of letters, and of song. ‘La
Vie de Bohème’ exists no more. The old Bohemians have turned their backs
upon their tents, and live in stucco villas. They have crushed the clay
pipe under the heels of their patent-leather boots, and taken to
cigarettes. They have ceased to herd together in the bonds of
brotherhood; they go into Society and eye each other superciliously when
they get crushed together on the staircases of the nobility.
But, though the old rhyme has lost its reason, it was the one that came
back to me first when I found myself in the real Prague of the true
Bohemians. These Bohemians, too, have their song, though I doubt if
that, too, has not grown old and a little out of fashion. The old
national ditty, _Kde domof mug_, began something like this:
‘Where is my house--where is my home?
Streams among the meadows creeping,
Brooks from rock to rock are leaping;
Everywhere bloom spring and flowers
Within this paradise of ours;
There--‘tis there, the beauteous land,
Bohemia, my fatherland!’
A beauteous land it undoubtedly is, but the language has peculiarities
which are not calculated to make it grateful and comforting to the
traveller who has to take it on after he is past his first youth.
When I arose and donned my clothes and oped my chamber-door in Prague to
let in the ‘sklepnik’ with my coffee and _brödchen_, I had just two days
to learn the language, see everything, and be off to Vienna. So,
although my sklepnik was busy and the bells were ringing for him all
over the house, I held on to him and insisted upon him giving me a short
lesson in Czechish. But when I found that even his own name when you
call him is not the same name as when you speak of him, and that he
became in the course of five minutes’ conversation sklepnick,
sklepnickee, sklepnicka, sklepniko, etc., I let him go and take other
people their breakfast, and got on with mine.
My panskou was so good-looking that I had serious thoughts of writing a
song in her honour, entitled ‘The Prettiest Panskou in Prague,’ and
getting somebody to put it into Czechish, that I might send it to her
anonymously next Valentine’s Day; but I heard that she was engaged to be
married to the poshluhu on the third-floor, and so another example was
added to my famous collection of ‘Songs without Words.’
Before I went out to see the sights of Prague I gave myself just a few
minutes further private instruction in the language of the land, and sat
down with a dictionary and a pipe in front of the printed notice in my
bedroom. This time I selected for study the following startling passage:
‘Racte pouzy ucty kancelári stvrzone vyplácenti! Pokrmy a napoje v
jidelne oderbrane buatez tamtez zaplaceny.’ I worried at it with my
German Czechish dictionary until I felt that if there was any insanity
in my family history I should develop the latent Deemingism in my
system, and possibly bury the sklepnik, the panskou, and the poshluhu
under the same cement; and then I sent for my guide. My guide was a
Bohemian who acquired English early in the sixties in the goldfields of
California. He has lost a good deal of it since. ‘Honyrabble zir!’ he
said, ‘dat mean, your honour. Dat vat you eats and drinks underneath ze
stairs pays for itself dere at ze times, honyrabble zir.’ After a few
minutes of serious reflection, I solved this further problem: Racte
pouzy ucty kancelári, etc., meant that all meals taken in the restaurant
should be paid for at the time, and not put on the bill.
When you have sufficiently admired Prague itself, and recognised the
fact that it is ‘picturesquely situated on the banks of the Moldau’
(vide guide-books), the first thing you do is to explore the venerable
Hradshin, or Capitol. High on the Hradshin Hill stands the Archbishop’s
Palace, the Schwarzenberg Palace, and the palace of the Emperor, and the
famous cathedral dedicated to St. Vitus. On the hottest day of this
present May, with thunder threatening and never a breath of air blowing,
did I pant through palaces and crawl around cathedrals with the
Californian-Bohemian. Many were the wonders that he showed me, and at
least a hundred times that day did he call me ‘honyrabble zir.’ At last
I became so worn out that it was almost with relief that I saw him
suddenly slip up on a stone and turn his ankle. I am afraid he was in
great pain; but his ardour and his pace were alike moderated after that,
and I was saved from an apoplectic stroke following on over-exertion on
a blazing hot day. After the accident, I offered him one arm and hired a
native to give another; and between us we led him slowly around the
Hradshin, and I allowed him to explain as much as I wanted to know, and
then bore him away in triumph to something else. While he was a free
agent his lectures were interminable, and he kept me for three-quarters
of an hour looking at a brick wall in St. Vitus’s because a Jew boy had
been buried behind it some centuries previously.
There are two legends, or perhaps I should say historical facts, which
follow you all over Prague--the story of St. John of Nepomuk and the
story of Slavata and Martinitz. From the moment you land in Prague to
the moment you leave it the names of these three gentlemen are dinned
into your ears with damnable iteration. I happened to be in Prague on
the eve of the great annual fête of St. John of Nepomuk, and so I had an
extra dose of him.
Of course you know the story of the patron saint of Bohemia. You
remember that Johanko von Nepomuk was a great preacher in Prague in the
fourteenth century. He became almoner to King Wenzel or Venzeslaus IV.,
the great German Emperor, and King of Bohemia, and confessor to the
Queen. The Queen soon afterwards began to look depressed, and tears were
often in her eyes. King Wenzel was annoyed. ‘Charlotte,’ he said, ‘why
are you always in the blues? It gives me the hump. Cheer up, old lady,
or tell me what is the matter.’ The Queen only shook her head and
sniffed. Then Wenzel swore several oaths of the period, and went off to
the Rev. Mr. Johanko von Nepomuk and said to him, ‘Look here, your
reverence, the Queen confesses to you, so you know what is the matter
with her, and why she is always snivelling and howling!’ (He was a
brutal fellow was Wenzel, and very coarse in his conversation.) ‘Now,
then, is it because I bully her, or has she got a love affair--eh, old
chap? Own up!’ The Rev. Johanko frowned and shook his head.
‘The secrets of the confessional are sacred. Go to!’
The wicked Wenzel didn’t go to, as you will presently see. He went nap.
Soon afterwards, at a royal dinner-party, a capon came up, and the King
got a slice from the breast that was slightly underdone. Whereupon, in a
rage, he seized the capon, hurled it on the floor, and jumped upon it.
(I fancy he suffered with his liver, this Wenzel, and was subject to
neurotic blizzards.) Then he sent for the cook and had him spitted alive
and roasted in front of his kitchen fire. ‘And see that he is better
done than this capon,’ was the King’s final instruction to the cookers
of the cook.
The Rev. Mr. Nepomuk, when he heard of this, gave the King a piece of
his mind, for which impertinence he was put into prison, and, while
there, the King sent for him and said, ‘Now, my friend, are you going to
tell me what the Queen confessed?’ ‘Certainly not, sire,’ replied
Nepomuk, although, after what had happened to the cook, he guessed his
refusal would get him into trouble. It did. Every effort of the King
having failed to shake the determination of the rev. gentleman, he was
one day seized by soldiers, bound hand and foot, and flung over the big
bridge into the Moldau.
King Wenzel fancied no one would know what had become of Nepomuk; but a
miracle happened. When the rev. gentleman fell into the water the water
retired, and the bed of the river was dry for three days. The body was
recovered, and to-day it is in a glass coffin enclosed in a solid silver
one in the cathedral on the Hradshin. The saint has moreover in the
cathedral a solid silver monument, and silver angels holding golden
lamps of immense value hover over his shrine. I shall not forget that
silver monument for many a long day. I was so entranced with it that I
let the Californian-Bohemian tell me stories about Nepomuk that would
have caused the Marines to shake their heads, and it wasn’t until he had
called me ‘honyrabble zir’ for the fourteenth time that at last I took
his arm and led him limping away.
Ever since this occasion St. Nepomuk has been the patron saint of
bridges (he was canonized by Benedict XIII.), and in Bohemia and some
parts of Austria his fête-day is kept with the wildest rejoicings. Oddly
enough, though the people of Prague always sing ‘St. Nepomuk, protect
me’ when they cross a bridge, the bridge from which he was thrown--the
glorious Karlsbrücke--- was broken down, and the middle of it carried
away, by the great floods of 1890. A wooden bridge does duty while the
grand old structure is being rebuilt. As I crossed the portion of the
old stone bridge which is still standing I saw a huge gilt altar,
erected almost at the point where the arches have been swept away. It
was surrounded by hundreds of lamps, and mighty banks of flowers were
piled around it. This was the altar to St. Nepomuk, which was being
prepared for May 16. On that day thousands of pilgrims come from all
parts of Bohemia to visit the bridge, and do honour to the saint. This
year they found that the patron saint of bridges had allowed his own
bridge to come to grief.
This St. Nepomuk Day in Prague is something you must see to understand.
The streets are a dense mass of gay revellers and happy pilgrims from
dawn till midnight. All the quaint national costumes of Bohemia light up
the beflagged and beflowered thoroughfares. All day long the merry lads
and lasses sing Bohemian songs, and dance Bohemian dances in the
streets, the squares, and the parks. At night fireworks blaze up from
all parts of the town, and a million extra lights make the glorious city
on the Moldau a never-to-be-forgotten spectacle.
I lingered in Prague for the fête of St. Nepomuk, and I saw a sight
which I shall remember all my days without referring either to notebook
or diary. Good old St. Nepomuk! If he had not been thrown over the
Karlsbrücke I should not have seen the Bohemian national fête. King
Wenzel, I owe you one!
The National Theatre in Prague, where only plays and operas in the
Czechish language are performed, is one of the finest in Europe. I saw
there a Czechish opera entitled ‘Prodaná Nevěsta,’ or ‘The Sold Bride.’
At the ‘Národni Divadlo,’ or National Theatre, the operas are staged in
a manner which excites the admiration even of our own Sir Augustus, and
the chorus works as I have never seen a chorus work before. Everybody
enters into the business of the scene, and fills it up, and the illusion
is absolutely perfect.
As they thought it worth while to make an exhibition of theatrical
programmes at the Vienna Exhibition, I may as well give you a little bit
of a Prague programme (no charge), just to show you how it looks. Here
is the one for which in a private box I paid ten kreuzers, and which an
old lady obligingly stuck on to the velvet with a pin to prevent its
falling over.
PRODANÁ NEVĚSTA.
Komická zpěvohra o třech jednáních. Hudbu složil BEDŘICH SMETANA. Slova
od K. Sabiny.
OSOBY:
Krušina, sedlák p. ryt. Skramlík.
Ludmila, jeho manželka sl. Vykoukalova.
Mařenka, jejich dcera sl. Veselá.
Mícha, statkář p. Viktorin.
Háta, jeho manželka pí. Klánová-Panznerova.
Vašek, jejich syn p. Krössing.
Jeník, selský hoch p. Veselý.
Kecal, dohazovač p. Heš.
Komediant, principál p. Mošna.
Esmeralda, jeho dcera sl. Cavallarova.
Ind án, komediant druhý p. Pulc.
První } selský kluk { p. Mušek
Druhý } { sl. Vobořilova
Selská chasa, komedianti, kluci.
Děj v čas pouti na české vesnici.
Coming home from the Divadlo I lost myself, and had a bad quarter of an
hour wandering around small back streets and trying to ask my way in
Czechish. The theatres begin at half-past six in Prague, some of them as
early as five, so that soon after ten there are very few people in the
streets. It was half-past ten when I succeeded in getting out of a
labyrinth of byways into what looked like a main thoroughfare, and then
there was not a soul to be seen--not even a Prague policeman with
ostrich feathers in his hat. I wondered how on earth I should get to my
hotel, for I hadn’t the faintest idea where it was, and one street was
very like another to me. I wandered up and down for a quarter of an
hour, hoping a belated wayfarer would come along, but I only met a
couple of cats swearing at each other in Czechish, and they fled at my
approach.
What was I to do? I didn’t feel inclined to wander about Prague all
night. Suddenly a brilliant idea occurred to me. I saw a red light over
a door, and outside a bell, with the German for night bell written below
it. A doctor lived there. I hesitated a moment, and then I rang it.
Presently a gentleman put his head out of an upper window and addressed
me in Czechish. I replied in German that I didn’t understand the
language. Then he asked me what I wanted in German. I replied, ‘Advice;
I am not well. Please come down and feel my pulse and look at my
tongue.’ He closed the window, came down and opened the front-door, and
asked me to come in. ‘No, thank you,’ I said; ‘I am in a hurry. Come
under the lamp-post.’ He came under the lamp-post, looked at my tongue,
felt my pulse, and said that I was only a little bilious. I had better
go to the chemist’s and get some antibilious pills. ‘Thank you, doctor,’
I said. ‘What is your fee?’ He told me his fee was three gulden for a
night consultation. I paid the money, and then I said to him: ‘And now,
doctor, if you will kindly tell me which is my way to the Hôtel Royal, I
shall be much obliged to you.’ The doctor gave me minute directions,
bowed, put my three gulden in the pocket of his dressing-gown, and went
back to bed; and I went back to my hotel and did ditto.
It was rather an expensive method of asking your way, but what are you
to do when you are lost in a town where everybody goes to bed at ten,
and not a living soul reappears in the streets till the next morning? I
don’t know whether the policemen go to bed, but I didn’t see one about.
Perhaps they were all having pipes round a quiet corner.
Messrs. Slavata and Martinitz owe their immortality to their having been
victims of that excellent Bohemian method of getting rid of an enemy
which is called ‘po starotshesku.’ There is a splendid simplicity about
the process. It merely consists of taking your enemy by the legs and
throwing him out of the window. The higher the window the better for you
and the worse for your enemy. Slavata and Martinitz were flung out of
the window of a high tower in which the Council Chamber was situated.
Although both fell actually on their heads, they figuratively fell on
their feet, for a heap of manure received them safely and broke the news
that they had arrived at their destination gently to them. They escaped
and lived for some years afterwards, but the religious party in whose
cause they had made themselves objectionable kept their memory green,
and to-day in Prague, after you have honoured St. John of Nepomuk, you
are expected to pay homage to the memory of Slavata and Martinitz.
After I had finished the Hradshin, and wandered through the royal
palace, I had to lead my guide through the palace of Wallenstein, where
he pointed out to me all the mementoes of the mighty general of the
Thirty Years’ War in the famous halls. By this time I was so dog-tired
that I began to hate Bohemia, and almost to think unkind things about
St. John of Nepomuk; and when my guide wanted me to take him over
another church, I rose up and politely intimated to him that if he asked
me to see anything else that day I would give him a chance of
immortality by throwing him into the Moldau at the very spot where
Nepomuk perished. I think he saw I meant it, so he allowed me to put him
in a carriage and take him home.
I have only hummed one air since I came into Austria, and that is, ‘Oh,
them gulden slippers.’ They give you your gulden in a banknote, and a
gulden is not quite two shillings. The astonishing rapidity with which
those guldens became gulden slippers must be seen to be believed.
Cabmen, railway porters, restaurant waiters, and the people generally
who expect tips, never have any change, and it is cheaper to give the
gulden than to wait while they go to the Bank of Austria to get it
changed. If they have change it is of such a character that you are
better without it. Eating cheap tinned peas, the colour of the
O’Flaherty floral abomination, is a harmless amusement compared with
keeping the small coin currency of the Austrian Empire in your pocket
with chocolate creams, peppermints, cough lozenges, digestive tablets,
and other delicacies of the season.