Difficulty of Keeping this Diary.--A Big Wash.--The German Bed.--Its
Goings On.--Manners and Customs of the German Army.--B.'s Besetting
Sin.--Cologne Cathedral.--Thoughts Without Words.--A Curious Custom.
This diary is getting mixed. The truth is, I am not living as a man who
keeps a diary should live. I ought, of course, to sit down in front of
this diary at eleven o'clock at night, and write down all that has
occurred to me during the day. But at eleven o'clock at night, I am in
the middle of a long railway journey, or have just got up, or am just
going to bed for a couple of hours. We go to bed at odd moments, when we
happen to come across a bed, and have a few minutes to spare. We have
been to bed this afternoon, and are now having another breakfast; and I
am not quite sure whether it is yesterday or to-morrow, or what day it
is.
I shall not attempt to write up this diary in the orthodox manner,
therefore; but shall fix in a few lines whenever I have half-an-hour with
nothing better to do.
We washed ourselves in the Rhine at Cologne (we had not had a wash since
we had left our happy home in England). We started with the idea of
washing ourselves at the hotel; but on seeing the basin and water and
towel provided, I decided not to waste my time playing with them. As
well might Hercules have attempted to tidy up the Augean stables with a
squirt.
We appealed to the chambermaid. We explained to her that we wanted to
wash--to clean ourselves--not to blow bubbles. Could we not have bigger
basins and more water and more extensive towels? The chambermaid (a
staid old lady of about fifty) did not think that anything better could
be done for us by the hotel fraternity of Cologne, and seemed to think
that the river was more what we wanted.
I fancied that the old soul was speaking sarcastically, but B. said "No;"
she was thinking of the baths alongside the river, and suggested that we
should go there. I agreed. It seemed to me that the river--the
Rhine--would, if anything could, meet the case. There ought to be plenty
of water in it now, after the heavy spring rains.
When I saw it, I felt satisfied. I said to B.:
"That's all right, old man; that's the sort of thing we need. That is
just the sized river I feel I can get myself clean in this afternoon."
I have heard a good deal in praise of the Rhine, and I am glad to be able
to speak well of it myself. I found it most refreshing.
I was, however, sorry that we had washed in it afterwards. I have heard
from friends who have travelled since in Germany that we completely
spoiled that river for the rest of the season. Not for business
purposes, I do not mean. The barge traffic has been, comparatively
speaking, uninterfered with. But the tourist trade has suffered
terribly. Parties who usually go up the Rhine by steamer have, after
looking at the river, gone by train this year. The boat agents have
tried to persuade them that the Rhine is always that colour: that it gets
like that owing to the dirt and refuse washed down into it during its
course among the mountains.
But the tourists have refused to accept this explanation. They have
said:
"No. Mountains will account for a good deal, we admit, but not for all
_that_. We are acquainted with the ordinary condition of the Rhine, and
although muddy, and at times unpleasant, it is passable. As it is this
summer, however, we would prefer not to travel upon it. We will wait
until after next year's spring-floods."
We went to bed after our wash. To the _blase_ English bed-goer,
accustomed all his life to the same old hackneyed style of bed night
after night, there is something very pleasantly piquant about the
experience of trying to sleep in a German bed. He does not know it is a
bed at first. He thinks that someone has been going round the room,
collecting all the sacks and cushions and antimacassars and such articles
that he has happened to find about, and has piled them up on a wooden
tray ready for moving. He rings for the chambermaid, and explains to her
that she has shown him into the wrong room. He wanted a bedroom.