I am accustomed punctually to discharge my obligations in what may be
called celestial directions, holding it to be every man’s duty not to
put a millstone round a weaker vessel’s neck by omitting to set a good
example. Also, in the best sense of the word, I am a religious man. Did
not Bismarck say, and has not the saying become part and parcel of the
marrow of the nation, “We Germans fear God and nothing else in the
world”? In exactly, I should say, the same way and degree as Bismarck
was, am I religious. At Storchwerder, where I am known, I go to church
every alternate Sunday and allow myself to be advised and cautioned by
the pastor, willing to admit it is his turn to speak and recognizing
that he is paid to do so, but reserving to myself the right to put him
and keep him in his proper place during the fourteen secular days that
divide these pious oases. Before our daily dinner also I say grace, a
rare thing in households where there are no children to look on; and if
I do not, as a few of the stricter households do, conduct family prayers
every day, it is because I do not like them.
There is, after all, a limit at which duty must retire before a man’s
personal tastes. We are not solely machines for discharging obligations.
I see perfectly clearly that it is most good and essential that one’s
cook and wife should pray together, and even one’s orderly, but I do not
see that they require the assistance and countenance of the gentleman of
the house while they do it.
I am religious in the best and highest sense of the word, a sense that
soars far above family prayers, a sense in no way to be explained, any
more than other high things are explainable. The higher you get in the
regions of thought the more dumb you become. Also the more quiescent.
Doing, as all persons of intellect know, is a very inferior business to
thinking, and much more likely to make one hot. But these cool
excursions of the intellect are not to be talked about to women and the
lower classes. What would happen if they too decided to prefer
quiescence? For them creeds and churches are positive necessities, and
the plainer and more definite they are the better. The devout poor, the
devout mothers of families, how essential they are to the freedom and
comfort of the rest. The less you have the more it is necessary that you
should be contented, and nothing does this so thoroughly as the doctrine
of resignation. It would indeed be an unthinkable calamity if all the
uneducated and the feeble-minded, the lower classes and the women,
should lose their piety enough to want things. Women, it is true, are
fairly safe so long as they have a child once a year, which is Nature’s
way of keeping them quiet; but it fills me with nothing short of horror
when I hear of any discontent among the male portion of the proletariat.
That these people should have a vote is the one mistake that great and
peculiarly typical German, the ever-to-be-lamented Bismarck, made. To
reflect that power is in the hands of such persons, any power, even the
smallest shred of it, alarms me so seriously that if I think of it on a
Sunday morning, when perhaps I had decided to omit going to church for
once and rest at home while my wife went, I hastily seize my parade
helmet and hurry off in a fever of anxiety to help uphold the pillars of
society.
Indeed it is of paramount necessity that we should cling to the Church
and its teaching; that we should see that our wives cling; that we
should insist on the clinging of our servants; and these Sunday morning
reflections occurring to me as I look back through the months to that
first Sunday out of our Fatherland, I seem to feel as I write (though it
is now December and sleeting) the summer breeze blowing over the grass
on to my cheek, to hear the small birds (I do not know their names)
twittering, and to see Frau von Eckthum coming across the field in the
sun and standing before me with her pretty smile and telling me she is
going to church and asking whether I will go too. Of course I went too.
She really was (and is, in spite of Storchwerder) a most attractive
lady.
We went, then, together, Jellaby safely away at the veterinary
surgeon’s, Edelgard following behind with the two fledglings, who had
achieved an unusually clean appearance and had more of the budding
maiden about them than I had yet observed, and Lord Sigismund and Mrs.
Menzies-Legh remaining with our patient, who had recovered enough to sit
in a low chair in the shade and be read aloud to. Let us hope the book
was virile. But I greatly doubt it, for his wife’s voice in the peculiar
sing-song that seems to afflict the voice of him who reads verses,
zigzagged behind us some way across the field.
After our vagrant life of the last few days it seemed odd to be walking
respectably along with no horse to lead, presently joining other
respectable persons bent on the same errand. They seemed to know we were
the dusty caravaners who had trudged past the afternoon before, and we
were well stared at. In the church, too, an imposing lady in the pew in
front of us sat sideways in her corner and examined us with calm
attention through her eye-glass both before the service
[Illustration: _An imposing lady in the pew in front of us sat sideways
in her corner and examined us with calm attention_]
began and during it whenever the sitting portions of the ritual were
reached. She was, we afterward discovered, the lady of the manor or
chief lady in the place, and it was in one of her fields we were
camping. We heard that afternoon from the farmer that she had privately
visited our camp the evening before with her bailiff and his dogs and
observed us, also with the aid of her eye-glass, over the hedge as we
sat absorbed round our supper, doubtful whether we were not a circus and
ought not instantly to be moved on. I fancy the result of her scrutiny
in church was very satisfactory. She could not fail to see that here she
had to do with a gentleman of noble birth, and the ladies of the party,
in pews concealing their short skirts but displaying their earrings,
were seen to every advantage. I caught her eye so repeatedly that at
last, quite involuntarily, and yielding to a natural instinct, I
bowed--a little, not deeply, out of considerations of time and place.
She did not return my bow, nor did she after that look again, but
attended during the rest of the service to her somewhat neglected
devotions.
My hearers will be as much surprised as I was, though not half so tired,
when I tell them that during the greater part of the service I was
expected to remain on my knees. We Germans are not accustomed to our
knees. I had certainly never used mine for praying purposes before; and
inquiry later on elicited the information that the singular nation
kneels every night by its beds before getting into them, and says
prayers there too.
But it was not only the kneeling that shocked me (for if you ache and
stiffen how can you properly pray! As Satan no doubt very well knew when
he first put it into their heads to do it)--it was the extraordinary
speed at which the service was run through. We began at eleven, and by a
quarter to twelve we were, so to speak, ejected shriven. No flock can
fatten on such a diet. How differently are the flocks of the Fatherland
fed! There they grow fat indeed on the ample extemporizations of their
pastor, or have every opportunity of doing so if they want to. Does he
not address them for the best part of an hour? Which is not a moment too
long for a meal that is to last seven days.
The English pastor, arrayed in white with two meaningless red ribbons
down his back, preached for seven minutes, providing as I rapidly
calculated exactly one minute’s edification for each day of the week
until the following Sunday. Alas, for the sheep of England! That is to
say, alas from the mere generally humane point of view, but not
otherwise alas, for their disadvantage must always be our gain, and a
British sheep starved into socialism and civil war is almost more
valuable to us than a German sheep which shall be fat with faith.
The pastor, evidently a militant man, preached against the sin of
bigotry, which would have been all very well as far as it went and
listened to by me with the tolerance I am accustomed to bring to bear on
pulpit utterances if he had not in the same breath--there was hardly
time for more than one--called down heaven’s wrath on all who attend the
meetings or services of forms of faith other than the Anglican. These
other forms include, as I need not point out, the Lutheran. Really I
found it difficult to suppress a smile at the poor man’s folly. I longed
for Luther (a thing I cannot remember ever to have done before) to rise
up and scatter the blinded gentleman out of his pulpit. But hardly had I
got as far as this in my thoughts than a hurried benediction, a hasty
hymn, a rapid passing round of the English equivalent for what we call
God’s box, ended the service. Genuinely shocked at this
breathlessness--and you, my hearers, who know no other worship than that
leisurely one in Storchwerder and throughout our beloved Prussian land
(I do not allude to Roman Catholics beyond saying, in a spirit of
tolerant humanity, poor things), that worship which fills the entire
morning, that composed and comfortable worship during which you sit
almost the whole time so that no fatigue of the feet or knees shall
distract your thoughts from the matter in hand, you who join sitting in
our chorales, slow and dignified settings of ancient sentiments with
ample spaces between the verses for the thinking of appropriate thoughts
in which you are assisted by the meditative organ, and stand, as men
should who are not slaves, to pray, you will, I am sure, be shocked
too--I decided that here no doubt was one of the keys to the manifest
decadence of the British character. Reverence and speed can never go
together. Irreverence in the treatment of its creeds is an inevitable
sign that a nation is well on that downward plane which jerks it at last
into the jaws of (say) Germany. Well, so be it. Though irreverence is
undoubtedly an evil, and I am the first to deplore it, I cannot deplore
it as much as I would if it were not going to be the cause of that
ultimate jerking. And what a green and fruitful land it is! _Es wird gut
schmecken_, as we men of healthy appetite say.
We walked home--an expression that used to strike me as strangely
ironical when home was only grass and hedges--discussing these things.
That is, I discussed and Frau von Eckthum said Oh? But the sympathy of
the voice, the implied agreement with my views, the appreciation of the
way I put them, the perfect mutual understanding expressed, all this I
cannot describe even if I would to you prejudiced critics.
Edelgard went on ahead with the two young girls. She and I did not at
this point see much of each other, but quite enough. Being human I got
tired sometimes of being patient, and yet it was impossible to be
anything else inside a caravan with walls so thin that the whole camp
would have to hear. Nor can you be impatient in the middle of a field:
to be so comfortably you must be on the other side of at least a hedge;
so that on the whole it was best we should seldom be together.
With Frau von Eckthum, on the other hand, I never had the least desire
to be anything but the mildest of men, and we walked home as
harmoniously as usual to find when we arrived that, though we had in no
way lingered, the active pastor was there before us.
With what haste he must have stripped off his ribbons and by what short
cuts across ditches he had reached the camp so quickly I cannot say, but
there he was, ensconced in one of the low chairs talking to the
Menzies-Leghs as though he had known them all his life.
This want of ceremony, this immediate familiarity prevailing in British
circles, was a thing I never got used to. With us, first of all, the
pastor would not have come at all, and secondly, once come, he would
still have been in the stage of ceremonious preface when we arrived, and
only emerged from his preliminary apologies to enter into the series of
prayers for forgiveness which would round off his visit. Thus there
would be no time so much as to reach the ice, far less to break it, and
I am conservative enough and aristocratic enough to like ice: it is such
an excellent preservative.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh was feeding her invalid with biscuits and milk. “Have
some?” said she to the pastor, holding out a cup of this attractive
beverage without the least preliminary grace of speech.
He took it, for his part, without the least preliminary ceremony of
polite refusal which would call forth equally polite pressure on her
side and end with a tactful final yielding on his; he took it without
even interrupting his talk to Menzies-Legh, and stretching out his hand
helped himself to a biscuit, though nobody had offered him one.
Now what can be the possible future of a nation deliberately discarding
all the barriers of good manners that keep the natural brute in us
suppressed? Ought a man to be allowed to let this animal loose on
somebody else’s biscuit-plate? It seems to me the hedge of ceremony is
very necessary if you would keep it out, and it dwells in us all alike
whatever country we may belong to. In Germany, feeling how near the
surface it really is, we are particular and careful down to the smallest
detail. Experience having taught us that the only way to circumvent it
is to make the wire-netting, so to speak, of etiquette very thick, we do
make it thick. And how anxiously we safeguard our honour, keeping it
first of all inside these high and thick nets of rules, and then holding
ourselves ready on the least approach to it to rise up and shed either
our own or (preferably) somebody else’s blood in its defense. And apart
from other animals, the rabbit of Socialism, with its two eldest
children, Division of Property and Free Love, is kept out most
effectually by this netting. Jellabies and their like, tolerated so
openly in Britain, find it difficult to burrow beneath the careful and
far-reaching insistence on forms and ceremonies observed in other
countries. Their horrid doctrines have little effect on such an armour.
Not that I am not modern enough and large minded enough to be very
willing to divide my property if I may choose the person to divide it
with. All those Jewish bankers in Berlin and Hamburg, for instance--when
I think of a division with them I see little harm and some comfort; but
to divide with my orderly, Hermann, or with the man who hangs our
breakfast rolls in a bag on the handle of our back door every morning,
is another matter. As for Free Love, it is not to be denied that there
are various things to be said for that too, but not in this place. Let
me return. Let me return from a subject which, though legitimate enough
for men to discuss, is yet of a somewhat slippery complexion, to the
English pastor helping himself to our biscuits, and describe shortly how
the same scene would have unrolled itself in a field in the vicinity of
Storchwerder, supposing it possible that a party of well-born Germans
should be camping in one, that the municipal authorities had not long
ago turned them out after punishing them with fines, and that the pastor
of the nearest church had dared to come hot from his pulpit, and intrude
on them.
Pastor, approaching Menzies-Legh and his wife (translated for the nonce
into two aristocratic Germans) with deferential bows from the point at
which he first caught their eyes, and hat in hand:
“I entreat the _Herrschaften_ to pardon me a thousand times for thus
obtruding myself upon their notice. I beg them not to take it amiss. It
is in reality an unexampled shamelessness on my part, but--may I be
permitted to introduce myself? My name is Schultz.”
He would here bow twice or thrice each to the Menzies-Leghs, who after
staring at him in some natural surprise--for what excuse could the man
possibly have?--get up and greet him with solemn dignity, both bowing,
but neither offering to shake hands.
Pastor, bowing again profoundly, and still holding his hat in his hand,
repeats: “My name is Schultz.”
Menzies-Legh (who it must be remembered is for the moment a noble
German) would probably here say under his breath: “And mine, thank God,
is not”--but probably not quite loud enough (being extremely correct)
for the pastor to hear, and would then mention his own name, with its
title, Fürst Graf, or Baron, explaining that the lady with him was his
wife.
More bows from the pastor, profounder if possible than before.
Pastor: “I beseech the _Herrschaften_ to forgive my thus appearing, and
fervently hope they will not consider me obtrusive, or in any way take
it amiss.”
Mrs. Menzies-Legh (now a Gräfin at the least): “Will not the Herr Pastor
seat himself?”
Pastor, with every appearance of being overcome: “Oh, a thousand
thanks--the gracious lady is too good--if I may really be permitted to
sit--an instant--after so shamelessly----”
He is waved by Menzies-Legh, as he still hesitates, with stately
courtesy, into the third chair, into which he sinks, but not until he
sees the _Herrschaften_ are in the act of sinking too.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh, gracefully explaining Menzies-Legh’s greenness and
silence: “My husband is not very well to-day.”
Pastor, with every sign of liveliest interest and compassion: “Oh, that
indeed makes me sorry. Has the Herr Graf then perhaps been over-exerting
himself? Has he perhaps contracted a chill? Is he suffering from a
depressed stomach?”
Menzies-Legh, with a stately wave of the hand, naturally unwilling to
reveal the real reason why he is so green: “No--no.”
Mrs. Menzies-Legh: “I was about to refresh him a little with milk. May I
be permitted to pour out a droplet for the Herr Pastor?”
Pastor, again bowing profusely: “The gracious one is much too good. I
could not think of permitting myself----”
Mrs. Menzies-Legh: “But I beg you, Herr Pastor--will you not drink just
a little?”
Pastor: “The gracious one is really very amiable. I would not, however,
be the means of depriving the _Herrschaften_ of their----”
Mrs. Menzies-Legh: “But Herr Pastor, not at all. Truly not at all. Will
you not allow me to pour you out even half a glassful? After the heat of
your walk? And the exertion of conducting the church service?”
Pastor, struggling to get up from the low chair, bow, and take the
proffered glass of milk at one and the same time: “Since the gracious
one is so gracious----”
He takes the glass with a deep bow, having now reached the stage when,
the preliminaries demanded by perfect courtesy being on each side
fulfilled, he is at liberty to do so, but before drinking its contents
turns bowing to Menzies-Legh.
Pastor: “But may I not be permitted to offer it to the Herr Graf?”
Menzies-Legh, with a stately wave of the hand: “No--no.”
Pastor, letting himself down again into the chair with another bow and
the necessary caution, the glass being in his hand: “I do not dare to
think what the _Herrschaften’s_ opinion of me must be for intruding in
this manner. I can only entreat them not to take it amiss. I am aware it
is an unexampled example of shamelessness----”
Mrs. Menzies-Legh, advancing with the plate of biscuits: “Will the Herr
Pastor perhaps eat a biscuit?”
The pastor again shows every sign of being overcome with gratitude, and
is about to embark on a speech of thanks and protest before permitting
himself to take one when Baron von Ottringel and party appear on the
scene, and we get to the point at which they really did appear.
Now what could be more proper and graceful than the whole of the above?
It will be observed that there has been no time whatever for anything
but politeness, no time to embark on those seas of discussion, sometimes
foolish, often unsuitable, and always sooner or later angry, on which an
otherwise budding acquaintanceship so frequently comes to grief. We
Germans of the upper classes do not consider it good form to talk on any
subject that is likely to make us lose our tempers, so what can we talk
about? There is hardly anything really safe, except to offer each other
chairs. But used as I am to these gilt limits, elegant frames within
which it is a pleasure to behave like a picture (my friends will have
noticed and pardoned my liking for metaphor) it will easily be imagined
with what disapproval I stood leaning on my umbrella watching the scene
before me. Frau von Eckthum had gone into her caravan. Edelgard and the
girls had disappeared. I alone approached the party, not one of which
thought it necessary to introduce me or take other notice of my arrival.
They were discussing with amusing absorption a subject alluded to as the
Licensing Bill, which was, I gathered, something heating to do with
beer, and were weaving into it all sorts of judgments and opinions that
would have inflamed a group of Germans at once. Menzies-Legh was too
much interested, I suppose, to go on being green, anyhow, his greenness
was all gone; and the pastor sawed up and down with his hand, in which
he clasped the biscuit no one had suggested he should take. Mrs.
Menzies-Legh, sitting on the grass (a thing no lady should ever do when
a gentleman she sees for the first time is present--“May she the second
time?” asked Mrs. Menzies-Legh, when I laid this principle down in the
course of a later conversation, to which I very properly replied that
you cannot explain nuances, but only feel them), joined in just as
though she were a man herself--I mean, with her usual air of
unchallenged equality of intelligence, an air that would have diverted
me if it had not annoyed me too much. And they treated her, too, as
though she were an equal, listening attentively to what she had to say,
which, of course, inflates a poor woman and makes it difficult for her
to arrive at a right estimate of herself.
This is how that absurd sexlessness, the Suffragette, has been able to
come into existence. I heard a good deal about her the first day of the
tour, but on discovering how strongly I felt on the subject, they kept
off it, not liking, I suppose, to have their views knocked out of
recognition by what I said. I did not, be it understood, deign to argue
on such a topic: I just said a few things which frightened them off it.
And, indeed, who can take a female Suffragette seriously? Encouraged, I
maintain, to begin with by being treated too well, she is like the
insolent and pampered menial of a rich and careless master, and the more
she gets the more she demands. Storchwerder does not possess a single
example of the species, and very few foreigners come that way to set a
bad example to our decent and contented ladies. Once, I recollect, by
some strange chance the makings of one did get there, an Englishwoman on
some wedding journey expedition or other, a young creature next to whom
I sat at a dinner given by our Colonel. I was contemplating her with
unconcealed pleasure, for she was quite young and most agreeably
rounded, and was turning over the collection of amusing trifles I keep
stored in my mind for purposes of conversation with attractive ladies
when, before I had either selected one or finished my soup, she began to
talk to me in breathless German about an Education Bill our Reichstag
was tearing itself to pieces over.
Her interest could not have been keener if she had been a deputy herself
with the existence of her party depending on it. She had her own views
about it, all cut and dried; she explained her husband’s, which differed
considerably; and she was anxious to hear mine. So anxious was she that
she even forgot to smile when speaking to me--forgot, that is, that she
was a woman and I a man able, if inclined, to admire her.
I remember staring at her a moment in unfeigned astonishment, and then,
leaning back in my chair, giving myself up to uncontrollable mirth.
She watched me with surprise, which made me laugh still more. When I
could speak she inquired whether any one at the table had said anything
amusing, and seemed quite struck on my assuring her that it was she
herself who was amusing.
“I am?” said she; and a faint flush enhanced her prettiness.
“Yes--you and the Education Bill together,” said I, again overcome with
laughter. “It is indeed an amusing mixture. It is like,” I added, with
happy readiness of compliment, “a rose in an inkpot.”
“But is that amusing?” she asked, not in the least grateful for the
flattery, and with a quite serious face.
She had had her little lesson, however, and she did not again talk
politics. Indeed, she did not again talk at all, but turned to the
gentleman on her other side, and left me nothing to look at but a sweet
little curl behind a sweet little ear.
Now if she had been properly brought up to devote herself to the woman’s
function of pleasing, how agreeably we could have discoursed together
about that curl and that ear, and kindred topics, branching off into all
sorts of flowery and seductive byways of compliment and insinuation,
such as the well-trained young woman thoroughly enjoys and understands.
I can only trust the lesson I gave her did her good. It certainly cured
her of talking politics to me.
Listening to the English pastor heating himself over the Licensing Bill
which, with all politics, is surely as distinctly outside the pastoral
province as it is outside the woman’s, I remembered this earlier
success, and not caring to stand there unnoticed any longer thought I
would repeat it. I therefore began to laugh, gently at first, as though
tickled by my thoughts, then more heartily.
They all stopped to look at me.
“What is the joke, Baron?” asked Menzies-Legh, scowling up.
“Forgive me, Pastor,” said I, taking off my hat and bowing--he for his
part only stared--“but we are accustomed in my country (which, thank
God, is Germany!) never to connect clergymen with politics, the
inevitable wranglings of which make them ill-suited as a study for men
whose calling is purely that of peace. So firmly is this feeling rooted
in our natures that it is as amusing to me to see a gentleman of your
profession deeply interested in such questions as it would be to see--to
see----”
I cast about for a simile, but nothing occurred to me at the moment (and
they were all sitting waiting) than the rose and inkpot one, so I had to
take that.
And Mrs. Menzies-Legh, just as obtusely as the little bride of years
ago, asked, “But is that amusing?”
Before I could reply Menzies-Legh got up and said he must write some
letters; the pastor got up too and said he must hurry off to a class;
and Lord Sigismund, as I approached the vacated chair next to him, and
was about to drop into it, said he felt sure Menzies-Legh had no stamps,
and he must go and lend him some.
Looking up from the grass on which she still sat, Mrs. Menzies-Legh
patted it and said, “Come and sit on this nice soft stuff, dear Baron. I
think men are tiresome things, don’t you? Always rushing off somewhere.
Tell me about the rose and the inkpot. I do see, I think, that
they’re--they’re funny. Why did the vicar remind you of them? Come and
sit on the grass and tell me.”
But I had no desire to sit on grass with Mrs. Menzies-Legh, as though we
were a row of turtle doves, so I merely said I did not like grass, and
bowing slightly, walked away.