authorities at Frankfort, and Mr. Ives, the American Vice-Consul, is
doing all in his power to get us leave to go. The Superintendent of
the Inhalatorium is most kind and sympathetic. She inquired why I had
not been there for three days, and when I told her "Gar kein Geld" (no
money) was the cause, she cried with real feeling, "Schrecklich!"
(terrible). Any thing to do with money or the want of it appeals to
the Teutonic mind, although the Germans sneer at us for being a nation
of shopkeepers. There are two words we hope never to hear again,
"Kultur" and "Unser." "Unser Deutschland," "Unser Kaiser," "Unser
Kultur." How weary and trite are these! What an extraordinary mixture
the Germans are, brave, conceited, sentimental, prosaic, patriotic,
and yet no people so soon lose their national characteristics, and
become citizens of another country as Germans. Many of their
intellectual poses are absolutely morbid. They adore Ibsen as a
playwright and despise Goldsmith and Sheridan; they worship Gauguin,
and the school of Impressionists, and have little appreciation
nowadays for pre-Raphaelitism. They are intensely and truly musical,
and it is amazing, taking into consideration their extraordinary lack
of humour, that they should be such accomplished students of
Shakespeare, but of real wit or humour the German possesses not an
atom. Take, for instance, the modern novels of Suderman, of Rudolph
Herzog, of Rudolph Stratz, of Bernard Kellerman, of Paul Heyse, and
you will find intense seriousness, tragedy, pathos, masterly drawing
of character, and absolutely no fun from cover to cover. As for the
"Fliegende Blaetter," the German "Punch," it is the sickliest imitation
of humour possible to conceive. Foremost in science, the German is yet
a neophyte in the graces and arts of life. What cooking! what clothes!
_September 22nd._--If we may believe such good news we are to be
released from this irksome life, and set at liberty next Saturday. Our
joy is much damped, however, by hearing that none of the men are to be
allowed to leave, and, of course, their wives stay with them. Mr. Ives
has made a special journey to Berlin on behalf of our poor men, but
the authorities are obdurate.
People say that the loss of life in this terrible war is beyond belief
as far as the Germans are concerned. To hide this the Emperor requests
that no one shall wear mourning for the dead until the war is over.
Also, no complete catalogues of casualties are issued, only lists for
each kingdom, or duchy, so that the bulk of the people have no idea of
the waste of life. The wounded being so numerous, the doctors now have
little time to attend to them on the spot, and therefore they are put
into trains and sent off to "Lazaretts" sometimes before even their
wounds are washed. A Belgian lady who had a special police permit to
go to Frankfort, returned this afternoon in a train full of wounded
soldiers. One of these was put into her carriage. He had been badly
shot in the arm; his sleeve was soaked with blood, and that had
coagulated; his wound had never been washed, and French earth was
still on his boots, and yet he had been sent in this condition from
Rheims to Giessen!
_September 23rd._--Terrible news! A telegram was posted up in the town
this morning, saying that three English "Panzerkreuzers" had been sunk
by one German submarine. Of course the church bells pealed, and the
flags came out, and the children sang "Nun danket alle Gott," because
950 brave Englishmen had gone under. We are much depressed, and our
depression is aggravated by the want of occupation here. We dare not
sketch for fear of being "verhaftet" (arrested). It is no good writing
because every scrap of paper will be taken from us on the frontier;
nobody I know plays bridge, and so I read and walk all day long. Miss
H---- tells me that a rude young clerk in the "Loewen-Apotheke" refused
to talk English to her this morning, "You will have to learn German
now, because we shall be in London within a fortnight," said he! No
German I have yet known foresees any other result of this war but
success. The Fatherland Commissariat, according to the Italian papers,
leaves much to be desired. The unfortunate soldiers are almost
starving, and often live for days together on raw carrots, turnips,
herbs, or any other vegetable they can root up out of the ground. The
doctors are puzzled because men have died of such seemingly slight
wounds. One case seemed so incomprehensible that an autopsy was
decided on, and a raw root with fragments of earth upon it was found
in the poor creature's stomach. The Russians left at 5 a.m. this
morning, men and women. It is more than hard that our poor men should
be left behind. Lady M----, who has been ill, and her daughter, an
invalid lady, and her maid, were given special passes to go a couple
of days ago. Miss M---- and Miss G---- went to the police station
armed with these passes, and requested to have their passports back.
"The Demon" curtly refused. "But you _must_ give them to us," said
Miss M----. "Don't say _muessen_ to me!" said "the Demon," "_bitten_
is the word!" (Don't say _must_ to me, _beg_ is the word).
_September 24th._--Joyfully packing! A last meeting was held at the
"Prince of Wales' Hotel" where kind Mr. S---- presided, and we all
received instructions for our journey, and our long detained
passports!
Fifty women and children go. We sleep in Frankfort, and cross from
Flushing to Folkestone. Oh! that terrible mined sea, and the
"untersuchung" of the Frontier. I tremble for this Diary, all letters
I have destroyed.
FRANKFORT, _September 25th._--We are still in the enemy's country of
course, but have come out of our prison Altheim. All were early at the
Bahn-Hof. There for the last time, please God! we found our old horror
the Chief of Police. He had a long paper in his hand, and read out our
names; "Hamilton?" "Here!" "Your passport?" (which he scrutinised as
if he had never seen such a thing before), and so on. As we got our
precious papers back we passed through the barrier, where our tickets
were clipped, and on to the platform above. The train when it came in
was crammed with soldiers, and we were advised to wait two hours for
the next, but (to a woman) we all preferred travelling third, or even
fourth class, rather than remain another hour where we had suffered so
much. Miss G---- told me afterwards that she had travelled with two
German men, who cursed England up and down, using the most horrible
language about her.
Presently a wounded soldier came into the carriage, and they asked him
where he had been fighting. "On the Western Frontier," said he.
"With the French?"
"Yes."
"Did you see the English?"
"No."
"Of course not! They had all run away. Cowards, cowards!"
These are the things which make life so unendurable in an enemy's
land. I was sent here to the "Hessicher-Hof," which, although it
masquerades under another name, I had no difficulty in recognising as
the former "Englischer-Hof." Miss H---- went to the "Hotel Bristol,"
and when she got there found over the door the one word "Hotel." What
we women should have done without the able committee who arranged all
details for us with such kindness and thoroughness, I cannot imagine.
_September 28th._--There were few tears shed when we steamed out of
Frankfort two days ago on our way to home and freedom. It was
wonderful to feel that we might talk above a whisper in the
railway-carriage; amazing that we had not to scrutinize carefully
every corner to be sure no spies lurked there, and most delightful of
all to know that we had got beyond the reach of the Demon of the
Burg-Strasse. Egotistically enough we went over in retrospect our
anxieties, disappointments and miseries. Should we ever get rid of
that evil shadow, we wondered, which had darkened so cruelly two weary
months of our lives!
Now and then we looked out of the windows with distaste--agreed that
the outskirts of Frankfort were hideous with their obtrusive and
insistent collection of factory chimneys; and shuddered at the distant
and beautiful background of mountain and forest, to us so teeming
with painful memories. We exclaimed at the unsightliness of the huge
skeleton lettering proclaiming to all the world that a _maschinen-Fabrik_
was below. Even when we entered a bucolic region of modest gardens and
saw nothing more aggressive than cabbages and turnips, we turned away
from the sight with aversion. Yet the villages are picturesque enough,
and so are the towns. Timber-framed and gabled houses, steeply pitched
red roofs and stunted grey and mossy church spires, certainly make no
unpleasing picture. In happier days I have admired the grape-vines
meandering over the whitewashed cottages, and marvelled at the
monotony of taste which furnished every window-ledge with exactly four
pots of scarlet geraniums. Now, nothing pleased us that was German;
scenery, architecture or people! "This," we said to ourselves, is "the
sunny Rhineland through which we are passing, and we see no obvious
signs as we go by of the struggle which is devastating Belgium and
menacing France." At the first station, however, we realised that
Germany was indeed at war. Red Cross nurses seemed everywhere. Long
tables were spread with snowy cloths and bore coffee urns, zwiebacks,
hoernchen and huge bowls of steaming soup ready for the poor wounded as
they pass through. Now and then pale bandaged faces looked out at us
from passing trains, and men on crutches hobbled by, and the horrors
of mutilating war came home to us all. At Goch we had to show our
passports, and have our luggage examined, but the reality proved not
nearly so bad as our imaginings, and on the whole the officials were
kind and courteous compared to our Altheim demon. The sun was setting
blood-red behind a distant line of black forest when we left Goch and
our enemies and imprisonment behind us and entered the Land of Promise.
We had all been saddened in the morning to learn that Mr. Ives'
strenuous efforts to get permission for the men left behind to go
soon, had met with a curt refusal from the Commandant at Frankfort.
"When England returns our men, not before, and she had better be quick
about it," said he. But how true is Rochefoucauld's cynical
epigram--"Nous avons tous assez de force pour supporter les maux
d'Autrui!" Even our sympathy with, and sorrow for, those left in
Altheim could not damp the joy we felt to be free again; and when we
quitted Goch, the German frontier station, I thought how blessed would
be that day when "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and
their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up a sword
against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall
sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree; and none shall
make them afraid."
GERMAN TRAVEL NOTES
"TAKIN' NOTES"
He who knows his Rhine and loves it must take of its charms in small
doses, or satiety is the outcome. There are those, of course, who can
travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, "'Tis all barren"; but the
ordinarily intelligent traveller may find much to delight and interest
on the banks of the Rhine, always provided that he suits his mood to
his environment, and takes but little of Rhine scenery at a time. For
surely between Coblentz and Bingen there is an iteration as regards
castles and ruins which is downright wearisome. Do we not between
these points find Lahneck, Marksburg, Sterrenberg, Liebenstein, The
Mouse, Rheinfels, The Cat, Schoenburg, Gutenfels, The Pfalz, Stahleck,
Furstenberg, Hohneck, Sooneck, Falkenburg, Rheinstein, and Ehrenfels?
Moreover, there is an affinity of form and colour and, indeed, of
situation between all these which produces the effect of perpetual
repetition. And we owe Byron a grudge for having written such trite
words as "the castled crag" in relation to the Rhine, since no
commonplace mind of the present day acquainted with his works but has
fallen back on "the castled crag" to describe Drachenfels or Marksburg
or Rheinfels, because, forsooth, its own English is too limited to
supply a better adjective. So it is that conventional and inadequate
English is perpetuated and individual force and expression are lost
because people accept the ideas of others and will not seek language
to convey their own.
All of which above prosing is the result of a day on the Rhine when
the thermometer registered 74 deg. to 84 deg. in the shade, and a white vapour
hid the banks of the river from Koeln till close on Bonn. At Bonn a
huge party of "personally-conducted" American tourists came on board.
Their sharp, keen, eager, shrewd faces and shrill voices proclaimed
their nationality at the outset. They were all obviously outside the
pale of Society, and their thirst for information and keen interest in
their surroundings were amazing. One learned before long that they had
"done" the Paris Exhibition and meant to have a "look in" at most
European countries before sailing from Naples. They took the whole
ship into their confidence before a quarter of an hour had passed; and
we shared alike in thrilling intelligences conveyed through the medium
of Baedeker's pages. "The castled crag" resounded from one end of the
boat to the other; and as for Roland and Hildegunde, the tragedy of
their lives was discussed, and exclaimed over, and lamented, until,
happily, a bend of the river hid Nonnenwerth from sight.
In emphatic contrast to the nervous alertness of the Yankee was the
spectacle of the middle-class German and his ways. He sat by his
plain, stout, ill-dressed Frau, with his back to the scenery, and ate.
Occasionally he spoke in monosyllables: more often he drank; but the
end and object of his Rhine trip seemed to be that of consuming as
much food as lay within the limits of possibility. What Nemesis has in
store for him and those of his manner of life I can only imagine!
At a table near us sat three women and two men. Directly we left Koeln
a waiter set forth trays in front of them laden with coffee,
zwiebacks, hoernchens, and eggs. This meal over, they sat sleepily
blinking their eyes, whisking away flies, and mopping the moisture
from their faces until the sound of "Eis! meine Herrschaften!" "Bier!
meine Herrschaften!" roused them from their lethargy. Ices and beer
and cherries and peaches successively filled up the weary hours until
"the tocsin of the soul, the dinner bell," carried joy to their
hearts. I can never forget the rapturous look of anticipation and
satisfaction which those stolid middle-class Teutonic countenances
wore when "Mittagsessen" was announced. They shook off their normal
and habitual torpidity, and cheerfully elbowed their neighbours,
nearly tumbling down the companion-ladder in their eagerness to be
first in the field. They lost no time over the unlovely detail of
tucking a corner of their napkins down their necks, and smoothing its
folds over their protuberant persons; and they studied the
Speise-Karte with a conscientiousness that was worthy of a better
cause.
Dinner began with a tolerably good soup, followed by tough roast beef,
cut in thick slices and garnished with carrots, peas and beans. Next
came veal, equally uneatable, and then a surprise in the shape of
Rhine salmon; after which followed chicken, salad, and _compote_.
Finally, a stodgy pudding, sufficiently satisfying, and dessert. Not
one item of the menu was neglected by the five. They calmly and
conscientiously and readily ate through the Speise-Karte from start to
finish. Then they returned to deck, only to order coffee and ices, and
called for a bottle of champagne, three of light Rhine wine, and a
plateful of peaches; out of which they brewed a cup, ladling it from a
Taunus ware bowl into their long Munich glasses, and sipping it lazily
all the afternoon between such trifles as Kuchen and fresh relays of
cherries. They ate and drank from Koeln to Bingen with rare intervals
of dozing, and I never once saw any of the party take the faintest
interest in the Rhine, so far as its banks were concerned.
It was a relief to turn from such grossness to its antithesis in the
shape of two American ladies who sat near us. They were
well-preserved, well-bred spinsters under forty. Everything about them
was dainty and exquisitely neat. I likened them in my mind to bowls of
dried rose-leaves--the freshness gone, the perfume left. Such was
their intense and intelligent interest in travel that, rather than
lose a timber-framed village or historic castle, a vineyard or
watch-tower, they abstained from lunch and picnicked lightly on deck
off tea and eggs and hoernchen. They knew the legends of the Rhine as
you and I know (or ought to know) our Prayer-Books. They had studied
the history of Germany, and mastered the intricacies alike of the
Thirty Years' War and of the Hohenzollern pedigree; and they talked
well, expressing their ideas in good Saxon words; at times, perhaps a
trifle pedantic, but never offensively so.
As the day wore on the temperature became almost overpowering. The
water reflected a blinding glare, and a heat like that of a burning
fiery furnace was radiated from the engines. I was wondering whether a
hammock in a cool English garden would not have been more desirable,
when I heard a plaintive, uneducated American voice behind me ask a
question of its mate which exactly embodied my own unuttered
sentiments:
"What _I_ want to know, Jake, is: Is this pleasure, or ain't it? Did
we come here to enjoy ourselves, or what?"
JAKE: "Wall, I guess you ain't used to travelling around, my dear, and
you don't understand it. Oh, yes" (with an obvious effort), "this is
real fust-class pleasure, this is!"
MRS. JAKE: "Wall, I'm darned! I'd as lief be in our store."
JAKE: "Sakes alive! You _do_ surprise me! Think what Keren-Happuch
Jones will say when you mention casual on your return something that
happened when you was sailing up the Rhine. She'll die of envy, she
will, and spite to think you've seen more'n her."
MRS. JAKE (cheered somewhat): "Wall, I reckon, Jake, there's summat in
that. Keren-Happuch don't like anyone to do what she don't do."
JAKE: "And then, my dear, think of your noo bonnet from Paris! That'll
be another pill for Keren-Happuch to swallow."
MRS. JAKE: "My! Yes! I don't think much of Europe, anyway, but I could
never have bought that bonnet in Baltimore. But, Jake, do look on the
map and tell me when we get to Heidelberg."
JAKE: "It ain't any good my lookin', my dear, for I wasn't raised to
these sort of things, and I'm darned if I know where to find it."
A groan from Mrs. Jake, followed by: "Wall, I reckon when I find
myself again in No. 9, Mount Mascal Street, I won't want to go
travelling around even to cut out Keren-Happuch Jones."
I came to the rescue at this point, and showed the good lady where
Heidelberg lay. She was a hard-featured, plain woman of some
thirty-eight summers, her hair was dragged back uncompromisingly from
her forehead, and there were no "adulteries of art" about either
coiffure or costume.
"You see," she said apologetically, "Jake here and me are travelling
around, and the only way we can get on is to ask for a ticket to a
place, and never stop travelling till we get there. We speak German
all right because my parents were Germans, and Jake was born in
Germany; but he don't know much about it because he was only two years
old when he left it eight-and-thirty years ago. We thought we'd like
to see the Paris Exposition, but my! it ain't to be compared to the
Chicago Exhibition, and as for Paris, it can't come up to Noo York,
and these river steamers ain't a patch on the Hudson River boats, and
I don't think much of Europe anyway."
Jake, a good-looking, gentle-mannered man, tried to soften the
asperity of his wife's strictures without success. He evidently adored
her.
"The way we travel," resumed Mrs. Jake, "is to think of a place we've
heard of, and to ask for a ticket to it. Now, we'd heard of Paris and
Cologne, and Heidelberg, and Baden, and Dresden, and Berlin, and
Hamburg, but we don't know now how they come--see? So we hev' to go
cavortin' around to find out which to take next. A gentleman way back
at Cologne"--she pronounced it "Klon"--"told me Heidelberg came next.
I quite thought Baden was near Hamburg, and that we should take it
last; but they tell me it ain't, and that, you see, has upset all our
calculations. Guess you're a Londoner, anyway; thought so by your
accent!"
When we left the steamer at Bingen, the last I heard of Mrs. Jake was
a plaintive moan:
"Guess I don't think much of Europe, anyway, and I wouldn't come
again, not even to cut out Keren-Happuch!"
OF SOME FELLOW TRAVELLERS AND THE CATHEDRAL OF MAINZ.
"Ja Wohl! Frau Rittergutsbesitzer. I have lived in the Herr
Professor's house for five-and-thirty years. I have pickled his
cabbage and preserved his fruit. I have minced with my own hand the
pork for his sausages before they had mincing-machines in
Schleswig-Holstein. I have seen personally to the smoking of his hams
and fish. I make his Apfelkuchen and Nusskuchen myself, and do not buy
them in the shop, like that lazy Hausfrau opposite us at No 2, who
comes from that God-forgotten country England, where all the women are
so badly brought up. I grant you that what I do is no more than the
duty of every God-fearing German _Haushaelterin_; none the less, I do
not mean all my work to go for nothing, and I will not be ousted by a
hussy! In the time of the _vielbedauerten_ mother (Frau Regierungsrat
Lenbach) I had no worries about his matrimonial affairs; she looked
after those. But _sieh mal_, Frau Riedel, now the care of him is on my
shoulders. He has no more idea of taking care of himself than a baby!
He is exactly like that learned man--I think it was our great
Neander--who was running out of his college one day and ran into a
cow; so he pulled off his hat and said, '_Gnaedige Frau, ich bitte um
Verzeihung_' ('Gracious lady, I beg your pardon'), and went on; and
the week after he came tearing round the same corner, thinking, I
suppose, of those heathen gods and goddesses whose pictures shame a
modest woman to look at, and he ran up against a lady, so he cried
out: '_Oh! du dumme Kuh! warum kommst du mir immer in den Weg?_' ('Oh,
you stupid cow, why will you always get in my way?') Yes, my Herr
Professor is just like that--quite as stupid, though they call him so
wise and clever; and what chance has a born innocent like he is
against a designing spinster of forty-five who makes him presents of
_Weihnachtstollen_ at Christmas, _Oster-Eier_ at Easter, and
_Geburtstagstorte_ on his birthday? I ask you what chance of escape a
poor _Junggeselle_ has?
"Told him she wanted to marry him! Not I. Why, _liebe Frau_, I have
not lived sixty-five and a half years in this world for nothing! If I
let him suppose she was in love with him, that would be the very way
to make him like her. So as I laid the cloth for the Herr Professor's
_Abendtisch_, I remarked casually that Fraeulein Bettine Meyer was not
at all a bad sort of woman really, and that she had some excellent
qualities, if only she did not make herself so ridiculous. 'How
ridiculous?' says he, sitting up. 'What does she do ridiculous, I
should like to know?' 'Why, wears a false front and curls bought at
Frau Koelsch's shop,' says I. 'Poor thing, she can't make herself look
young and beautiful, whatever she does, and Frau Rittmeister Bernstorf
was laughing at her the other day, and at the high heels and at the
stuffing the _Schneiderin_ round the corner puts into her gowns to
cover the angular bones! She would look much more respectable,' said
I, 'if she would brush her scanty grey locks back, and smooth them
with pomatum as I do, and wear a black lace _Muetze_ over them, instead
of making herself the laughing-stock of Schleswig.' And away I walked.
And the Professor ate no supper that night, and next day he left for
his _Ferienausflug_, and never called to say good-bye to Fraeulein
Meyer; and so I put the extinguisher on that little candle just as its
flame was beginning to burn up, and--why! here we are at Mainz."