no means as rich as it used to be. Fodder was scarce, and every one used
his milch cow as oxen now, far more than formerly. He set out at four
every morning of his life, covered twenty miles, or more than twice what
he had before the war, and sometimes could not fill his four cans at
that. Up to a few months before he had had an assistant—an English
prisoner. He never tired of singing the praises of “my Englishman,” as
he called him. He worked some reference to him into every sentence, each
time displaying his fangs in his pleasure at the recollection. “My
Englishman” had come to him in 1915. He was a bank clerk at home and
knew no more of farming than a child. But he had learned quickly, and to
speak German as well—a sad German it must have been indeed if he had
copied from the dialect of the region. For months at a time “my
Englishman” had driven the milk route alone, while _he_ remained at home
to work in the fields. Run away! Nonsense! He had told people he had
never enjoyed himself half so much in London. He had promised to come
back after peace. He stayed until two months after the armistice. His
last words were that he knew he could never endure it to sit all day on
a stool, in a stuffy office, after roaming the hills of Bavaria nearly
four years. On Sundays he went miles away to visit other Englishmen.
French prisoners went where they liked, too; no one ever bothered them.
They had all left in January, in a special train. Yes, most of them had
been good workmen, “my Englishman” especially. They had labored with the
women in the fields when the men were away, and helped them about the
house. They had always been friendly, sometimes _too_ friendly. Did I
see that little boy across the street, there in front of the widow’s
cloth-shop? Every one knew he was English. But what could you expect,
with husbands away sometimes for years at a time?
[Illustration: WOMEN AND OXEN—OR COWS—WERE MORE NUMEROUS THAN MEN AND
HORSES IN THE FIELDS]
[Illustration: THE BAVARIAN PEASANT DOES HIS BAKING IN AN OUTDOOR OVEN]
[Illustration: WOMEN CHOPPING UP THE TOPS OF EVERGREEN TREES FOR FUEL
AND FODDER]
[Illustration: THE GREAT BREWERIES OF KULMBACH NEARLY ALL STOOD IDLE]
Pegnitz boasted a large iron-foundry and a considerable population of
factory hands. Rumor had it that this class held more enmity toward
citizens of the Allied powers than the rural population, that it would
even be dangerous for me to mix with them. I took pains, therefore, to
stroll toward the foundry gate as the workmen were leaving, at six. They
toiled eight hours a day, like all their class throughout Germany now,
but took advantage of the change to sleep late, “like the capitalists,”
beginning their labors at eight and taking two hours off at noon. I
picked out an intelligent-looking workman and fell into conversation
with him, deliberately emphasizing the fact that I was an American. A
considerable group of his fellows crowded around us, and several joined
in the conversation. But though two or three scowled a bit when my
nationality was whispered through the gathering, it was evidently merely
a sign that they were puzzling to know how I had come so far afield so
soon after the signing of the armistice. Far from showing any enmity,
they evinced a most friendly curiosity, tinged only once or twice with a
mild and crude attempt at sarcasm which the others at once scowled down.
Several wished to know how wages were in their line in America,
particularly whether our workmen had forced “the capitalists” to grant
the eight-hour day, and several inquired how soon I thought it would be
possible to emigrate—how soon, that is, that enough ships would be
released from military service to bring fares down within reach of a
working-man’s purse. Not one of them seemed to suspect that there might
be other difficulties than financial ones. Then, of course, the majority
deluged me with questions as to when America would actually begin to
send fats and foodstuffs and raw materials for their factories and—and
tobacco. There was little suggestion of under-nourishment in this
gathering, though, to be sure, none of them seemed overfed. They looked
hardy and fit; the faces under the red-banded, visorless caps that
covered a majority of the heads showed few signs of ill health. It is
not so much the factory hands themselves, with their out-of-work
pensions even when labor is lacking, who suffer from the stagnation of
Germany’s industries, as the hangers-on of the factory class—the
busy-time helpers, the unprovided women and children, the small
shopkeepers who depend on this class for their clientèle.
XV
MUSIC STILL HAS CHARMS
A broad highway offering several fine vistas brought me at noon to
Bayreuth. The street that led me to the central square was called
Wagnerstrasse and passed directly by the last home of the famous
composer. As soon as a frock-tailed hotel force had ministered to my
immediate necessities I strolled back to visit the place. Somewhere I
had picked up the impression that it had been turned into a museum, like
the former residences of Goethe and Schiller. Nearly a year before, I
recalled the Paris papers had announced the death of Frau Wagner, and
certainly the Germans would not allow the home of their great musician
to fall into other hands. I turned in at the tall grilled gate, fastened
only with a latch, and sauntered along the broad driveway, shaded by
magnificent trees that half hid the wide house at the end of it. This
was a two-story building in reddish-yellow brick, rectangular of façade
under its almost flat roof, the door gained by a balustraded stone
veranda without covering and with steps at either end. A large bust, not
of the composer, as I had fancied at a distance, but of his royal
companion, Ludwig, stared down the driveway at my approach. As I paused
to look at this the only person in sight glanced up at me with what
seemed an air between anger and surprise. He was an aged gardener,
shriveled in form and face, who was engaged in watering the masses of
flowers of many species that surrounded the house on every side.
Something in his manner, as he set down his watering-pot and shuffled
toward me, plus the absence of any of the outward signs of a public
place of pilgrimage, suggested that I was in the wrong pew.
“Does some one _live_ here?” I hazarded, lamely.
“Certainly, the Wagner family,” he replied, sharply, glaring at me under
bushy eyebrows.
“But—er—Frau Wagner being dead, I thought....”
“Frau Wagner is as alive as you or I,” he retorted, staring as if he
suspected me of being some harmless species of maniac.
“Frau Cosima Wagner, wife of the composer?” I persisted, smiling at what
seemed to be the forgetfulness of an old man; “why, my dear fellow, her
death was in the papers a year ago....”
“_Frau Cosima Wagner, jawohl, mein Herr_,” he retorted. “As I cut
flowers for her room every morning and see her every afternoon, I
suppose I know as much about it as the papers. It was quite another Frau
Wagner who died last year; and the fool newspapers seldom know what they
are talking about, anyway. Then there is....”
His voice had dropped to a whisper and I followed the gaze he had turned
into the house. Over the veranda balustrade a bareheaded man stared down
at us like one who had been disturbed from mental labors, or an
afternoon nap, by our chatter. He was short and slight, yet rather
strongly built, too, with iron-gray hair and a smooth-shaven face. A
photograph I had seen somewhere suddenly rose to the surface of my
memory and I recognized Siegfried Wagner, son of the musician, whose
existence I had for the moment forgotten. Having glared us into silence,
he turned abruptly and re-entered the house.
“Herr Siegfried and his wife and his two children live here also,” went
on the gardener, in a whisper that was still harsh and uninviting,
“and....”
But I was already beating a discreet retreat, resolved to make sure of
my ground before I marched in upon another “museum.”
I turned down the next side-street, passing on the corner the house of
Herr Chamberlain, the Englishman who married Frau Wagner’s daughter,
and, farther on, the former home of Liszt, not the least of the old
lady’s acquaintances, then unexpectedly found myself again looking in
upon the Wagner residence. The high brick wall had suddenly ended and
the iron-grilled fence that followed it disclosed flower-gardens and
house in their entirety. It was an agreeable dwelling-place, certainly,
flanked front and rear with forest-like parks in which birds sang
constantly, and set far enough back from the main street so that its
noises blended together into what, no doubt, the composer would have
recognized as music.
But I had no intention of spying upon a private residence. I turned my
face sternly to the front and hurried on—until a sound between a cough
and a hiss, twice repeated, called my attention once more to the
flower-plots behind the grill. The aged gardener was worming his way
hurriedly toward me and beckoning me to wait. When only an upright iron
bar separated us he whispered hoarsely, still in his curiously
unwelcoming tone:
“If you wish to see the Wagner grave, turn down that next opening into
the park and come back this way through it. I will be at the gate to let
you in.”
He had the back entrance to the Wagner estate unlocked when I reached it
and led the way around a mass of flowering bushes to the plain flat slab
of marble without inscription under which the composer lies buried in
his own back yard. But for the house fifty yards away it would have been
easy to imagine oneself in the depth of a forest. The old gardener
considered his fee earned when he had showed me the grave, and he
answered my questions with cold brevity. He had held his present
position for thirty-eight years. Of course he had known Herr Richard.
Hadn’t he seen and talked with him every day for many years? No, there
was nothing unusual about him. He was like any other rich man, except
that he was always making music. It was plain that the gardener thought
this a rather foolish hobby. He spoke of his former master with that
slight tinge of scorn, mingled with considerable pride at the importance
of his own position, which servants so often show in discussing
employers whom the world considers famous, and changed the subject as
soon as possible to the all-engrossing scarcity of food. Even Herr
Siegfried and his family suffered from that, he asserted. He was still
grumbling hungrily when he pocketed what pewter coins I had left and,
locking the gate, shuffled back to his watering-pots.
The outwardly ugly Wagner opera-house on a hillock at the farther end of
town was as dismal in its abandonment as most cheap structures become
that have stood five years unoccupied and unrepaired. There was nothing
to recall the famous singers and the international throngs from kings to
scrimping schoolma’ams from overseas, who had so often gathered here for
the annual Wagner festival. A few convalescing soldiers lounged under
the surrounding trees; from the graveled terrace one had an
all-embracing view of Bayreuth and the rolling hills about it. But only
a few twittering birds broke the silence of a spot that had so often
echoed with the strident strains of all the musical instruments known to
mankind.
The change from a country town of three thousand to a city of thirty
thousand emphasized once more the disadvantage, in the matter of food,
of the urban dweller. The hotel that housed me in Bayreuth swarmed with
waiters in evening dress and with a host of useless flunkies, but its
dining-room was no place for a tramp’s appetite. The scarcity was made
all the more oppressive by the counting of crumbs and laboriously
entering them in a ledger, which occupied an imposing personage at the
door, after the fashion of Europe’s more expensive establishments. In a
Bavarian _Gasthaus_ a dinner of meat, potatoes, bread, and perhaps a
soup left the most robust guest at peace with the world for hours
afterward. I ordered the same here, but when I had seen the “meat” I
quickly concluded not to skip the fish course, and the sight of that
turned my attention once more to the menu-card. When I had made way with
all it had to offer, from top to bottom, I rose with a strong desire to
go somewhere and get something to eat. It would probably have been a
vain quest, in Bayreuth. Yet my bill was more than one-fourth as much as
the one hundred and twenty-four marks I had squandered during my first
week on the road in Bavaria.
The hotel personnel was vastly excited at the announcement of my
nationality. To them it seemed to augur the arrival of more of my
fellow-countrymen, with their well-filled purses, to be the rebeginning
of the good old days when tips showered upon them. Moreover, it gave
them an opportunity to air their opinions on the “peace of violence” and
the Allied world in general. They were typically German opinions, all
carefully tabulated under the customary headings. The very errand-boys
bubbled over with impressions on those unescapable Fourteen Points; they
knew by heart the reasons why the proposed treaty was “inacceptable” and
“unfulfillable.” But the final attitude of all was, “Let’s stop this
foolish fighting and get back to the times of the annual festival and
its flocks of tourists.”
The Royal Opera House next door announced a gala performance that
evening. I got my ticket early, fearful of being crowded away from what
promised to be my first artistic treat in a fortnight. I took pains to
choose a seat near enough the front to catch each detail, yet far enough
away from the orchestra not to be deafened by its Wagnerian roar—and
when I arrived the orchestra seemed to have been dead for years! The
place it should have occupied was filled with broken chairs and
music-racks black with age, and resembled nothing so much as
grandfather’s garret. A single light, somewhat more powerful than a
candle, burned high up under the dome of the house and cast faint, weird
flickers over its dusty regal splendor. For some reason the place was
cold as an ice-house, though the weather outside was comfortable, and
the scattered audience shivered audibly in its scanty _Ersatz_ garments.
It was without doubt the most poorly dressed, unprepossessing little
collection of hearers that I had ever seen gathered together in such an
edifice. One was reminded not merely that the textile-mills of Bayreuth
had only paper to work with now, but that soap had become an
unattainable luxury in Germany. Plainly _das Volk_ had taken over the
exiled king’s playhouse for itself. Even the ornate old royal loge was
occupied by a few patched soldiers and giggling girls of the appearance
of waitresses. But to what purpose? Surely such an audience as this
could not find entertainment in one of Germany’s classics! Alas! it was
I who had been led astray! The promising title of the play announced was
mere camouflage. Who perpetrated the incomprehensible, inane rubbish on
which the curtain finally rose, and why, are questions I willingly left
to the howling audience, which dodged back and forth, utterly oblivious
of the fact that the Royal Opera House had been erected before
theater-builders discovered that it was easier to see between two heads
than through one. Surely German _Kultur_, theatrically at least, was on
the down-grade in Bayreuth.
A few miles out along a highway framed in apple blossoms next morning I
overtook a group of some twenty persons. The knapsacks on their backs
suggested a party of “hamsterers,” but as I drew nearer I noted that
each carried some species of musical instrument. Now and again the whole
group fell to singing and playing as they marched, oblivious to the
stares of the peasants along the way. I concluded that it was my duty to
satisfy my curiosity by joining them, and did so by a simple little
ruse, plus the assistance of my kodak. They were a _Sängerverein_ from
Bayreuth. Each holiday they celebrated by an excursion to some
neighboring town, and this was _Himmelsfahrt_, or Assumption Day. The
members ranged from shy little girls of twelve to stodgy men and women
of fifty. The leader was a blind man, a veteran of the trenches, who not
only directed the playing and singing, with his cane as a baton, but
marched briskly along the snaky highway without a hint of assistance.
There were a half-dozen discharged soldiers in the glee club, but if
anything this increased the eagerness with which I was welcomed. Their
attitude was almost exactly what would be that of a football team which
chanced to meet a rival player a year or so after disbanding—they were
glad to compare notes and to amuse themselves by living over old times
again. For a while I deliberately tried to stir up some sign of anger or
resentment among them; if they had any personal feelings during the
contest they had now completely faded out of existence. One dwarfish,
insignificant, whole-hearted little fellow, a mill-hand on week-days,
had been in the same sector as I during the reduction of the St.-Mihiel
salient. Unless we misunderstood each other’s description of it, I had
entered the dugout he had lived in for months a few hours after he so
hastily abandoned it. He laughed heartily at my description of the food
we had found still on the stove; he had been cook himself that morning.
Every one knew, he asserted, that the St.-Mihiel attack was coming, two
weeks before it started, but no one had expected it that cold, rainy
morning. On the strength of the coincidence we had discovered, he
proposed me as an honorary member of the _Verein_ for the day, and the
nomination was quickly and unanimously accepted.
We loafed on through the perfect early-summer morning, a soloist
striking up on voice and instrument now and then, the whole club joining
frequently in some old German song proposed by the blind leader, halting
here and there to sit in the shade of a grassy slope, pouring pellmell
every mile or two into a _Gasthaus_, where even the shy little girls
emptied their half-liter mugs of beer without an effort. One of the
ex-soldiers enlivened the stroll by giving me his unexpurgated opinion
of the Prussians. They “hogged” everything they could lay their hands
on, he grumbled. Prussian wounded sent to Bavaria had been fed like
princes; Bavarians who were so unfortunate as to be assigned to
hospitals in Prussia—he had suffered that misfortune himself—had been
treated like cattle and robbed even of the food sent them from home. He
“had no use for” _die verdammten Preussen_, from any viewpoint; it was
their “big men” who had started the war in the first place, but.... No,
indeed, Bavaria could not afford to separate from Prussia. She had no
coal of her own and she had no seaport. Business interests were too
closely linked together through all the Empire to make separation
possible. It would be cutting their own throats.
Toward noon we reached the village of Neudrossenfeld, where the _Verein_
had engaged for the day a rambling old country inn, with a spacious
dance-hall above an outdoor _Kegelbahn_ for those who bowled, and a
shady arbor overlooking a vast stretch of rolling summer landscape for
those who did not, in the garden at the rear. Other glee clubs, from
Kulmbach and another neighboring city, had occupied the other two
_Gasthäuser_ and every even semi-public establishment. The town
resounded from one end to the other with singing and playing, with
laughter and dancing, with the clatter of ninepins and the rattle of
table utensils. A lone stranger without glee-club standing would have
been forced to plod on, hungry and thirsty. I spent half the afternoon
in the shady arbor. Several of the girls were well worth looking at; the
music, not being over-ambitious, added just the needed touch to the
languid, sun-flooded day. One could not but be struck by the innocence
of these typically Bavarian pleasures. Not a suggestion of rowdyism,
none of the questionable antics of similar gatherings in some other
lands, marred the amusements of these childlike holiday-makers. They
were as gentle-mannered as the tones of the guitars, zithers, and
mandolins they thrummed so diligently, with never a rude word or act
even toward hangers-on like myself. Yet there was a bit less gaiety than
one would have expected. Even the youthful drifted now and then into
moods of sadness—or was it mere apathy due to their long lack of
abundant wholesome food?
The philosophical old landlord brought us a word of wisdom with each
double-handful of overflowing beer-mugs. “If ever the world gets
reasonable again,” he mused, “the good old times will come back—and we
shall be able to serve real beer at the proper price. But what ideas
people get into their _Schädels_ nowadays! They can never let well
enough alone. The moment man gets contented, the moment he has
everything as it should be, he must go and start something and tumble it
all into a heap again.”
A rumor broke out that cookies were being sold across the street. I
joined the foraging-party that quickly fled from the arbor. When we
reached the house of the enterprising old lady who had mothered this
brilliant idea it was packed with clamoring humanity like the scene of
the latest crime of violence. At intervals a glee-clubber catapulted out
of the mob, grinning gleefully and tenaciously clutching in one hand a
paper sack containing three of the precious _Kuchen_, but even with so
low a ration the producer could not begin to make headway against the
feverish demands. I decided that I could not justly add my extraneous
competition in a contest that meant so much more to others and, taking
my leave of the _Sängerverein_, struck off again to the north.
A middle-aged baker from Kulmbach, who had been “hamstering” all day,
with slight success, fell in with me. He had that pathetic,
uncomplaining manner of so many of his class, seeming to lay his
misfortunes at the door of some power too high to be reached by mere
human protest. The war had left him one eye and a weakened physique. Two
_Ersatz_ teeth gleamed at me dully whenever his wan smile disclosed
them. He worked nights, and earned forty-eight marks a week. That was
eighteen more than he had been paid before the war, to be sure, and the
hours were a bit shorter. But how was a man to feed a wife and three
children on forty-eight marks, with present prices; would I tell him
that? He walked his legs off during the hours he wished to be sleeping,
and often came home without so much as a potato. There were a dozen or
so in his rucksack now, and he had tramped more than thirty kilometers.
I suggested that the apples would be large enough on the trees that
bordered our route to be worth picking in a couple of months. He gave me
a startled glance, as if I had proposed that we rob a bank together. The
apples along public highways, he explained patiently, were property of
the state. No one but those the government sent to pick them could touch
them. True, hunger was driving people to strange doings these days.
Guards patrolled the roads now when the apples began to get ripe.
Peasants had to protect their potato-fields in the same manner. He,
however, would remain an honest man, no matter what happened to him or
to his wife and his three children. The apparently complete absence of
country police was one of the things I had often wondered at during my
tramp. The baker assured me that none were needed, except in harvest
time. He had never seen a kodak in action. He would not at first believe
that it could catch a picture in an instant. Surely it would need a
half-hour or so to get down all the details! Queer people Americans must
be, to send men out through the world just to get pictures of simple
country people. Still he wouldn’t mind having a trade like that
himself—if it were not for his wife and his three children.