sees you fat of figure, an Adam's apple struggling with your every
vowel, ponderous of temperament. It sees you a sullen and varicose
mistress, whose draperies hang heavy and ludicrous from a pudgy form. It
sees you a portly, pursy, foolish Undine struggling awkwardly from out a
cyclopean vat of beer. It hears your music in the ta-tata-tata-ta-ta of
your "_Ach, du lieber Augustin_" alone; the sum of your sentiment in
your "_Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten_." Wise American
journalists, commissioned to explore your soul, have returned
characteristically to announce that you "In your German way" (_American
synonyms: elephantine, phlegmatic, stodgy, clumsy, sluggish_) seek
desperately to appropriate, in ferocious lech to be metropolitan, the
"spirit of Paris" (_American synonyms: silk stockings, "wine," Maxim's,
jevousaime, Rat Mort_). Announce they also your "mechanical" pleasures,
your weighty light-heartedness, your stolid, stoic essay to take unto
yourself, still in tigerish itch to be cosmopolitan, the
frou-frouishness of the flirting capital over the frontier. Wise old
philosophers! Translating you in terms of your palaces of prostitution,
your Palais de Danse, your Admirals-Casinos; translating you in terms of
your purposely spurious Victorias, your Riche Cafés, your Fledermauses.
As well render the spirit of Vienna in the key of the Kärntnerstrasse at
eleven of the Austrian night; as well play the spirit of Paris in the
discords of its Montmartre, in the leaden pitch of its Pré Catélan at
sunrise. Sing of London from the Astor Club; sing of New York from its
Bryant Park at moontide, its Rector's, its ridiculous Café San Souci and
its Madam Hunter's. 'Twere the same.
Pleasure in the mass, incidentally, is perforce ever mechanical; a levee
at Buckingham Palace, a fête on the velvet terraces sloping into the
Newport sea, a Coney Island gangfest, a city's electric den of gilt and
tinsel.
But the essence of a city is never here. Berlin, in the wanderlust of
its darkened heavens, is not the ample-bosomed, begarneted,
crimson-lipped Minna angling in its gaudy dance decoy in the
Behrenstrasse; nor the satin-clad, pencilled-eyed Amelie ogling from her
"reserved" table in the silly sham called Moulin Rouge; nor yet the more
baby-glanced, shirtwaisted Ertrude laughing in the duntoned Café Lang.
Berlin is not she who beckons by night in the Friedrichstrasse; nor the
frowsy she who sings in the _bier-cabarets_ that hover about the
Lichtprunksaal. Berlin, under the stars, is the sound of soldiers
singing near the arch of the Brandenburger Tor, the peaceful _bauer_ and
his frau Hannah and his young daughters Lilla and Mia lodged before
their _abend bier_ at a bare table on the darker side of the far
Jägerstrasse. Berlin, when skies are navy blue, is Heinrich, gallant
rear private of Regiment 31, publicly and with audible ado encircling
the waist of his most recent _engel_ on a bench in the Linden
promenade--Berlin, in the Inverness of night, is Hulda, little Alsatian
rebel--a rebel to France--a rebel to the Vosges and the
vineyards--Hulda, the provinces behind her, and in her heart, there to
rule forever, the spirit of the capital of Wilhelm der Grösste. For the
spirit of Berlin is the laughter of a pretty, clean and healthy
girl--not the neurotic simper of a devastated ware of the Madeleine
highway, not the raucous giggle of a bark that sails Piccadilly, not the
meaningfull and toothy beam of a fair American badger--none of these. It
is a laugh that has in it not the motive power of Krug and Company or
Ruinart _père et fils_; it smells not of suspicioned guineas to be
enticed; it is not an answer to the baton of necessity. There's heart
behind it--and it means only that youth is in the air, that youth and
steaming blood and a living life, be the world soever stern on the
morrow, are a trinity invincible, unconquerable--that the music is good,
the seidel full. Ah, Berlin--ah, Hulda--ah, youth ... ah, youth, what
things you see that are not, that never will be, never were; foolish,
innocent, splendid youth!
An end to such so tender philosophies, such so blissful ruminations.
For even now the _kutsche_ has drawn us up before the door of Herr
Kempinski's victual studio, running from the Leipzigerstrasse through to
the Krausenstrasse and constituting what is probably the largest stomach
Senate and House of Representatives in the seven kingdoms. Here, in the
multitudinous _säle_--the Mosel-saal, the Berliner-saal, the huge
Grauer-saal, the Burgen-saal, the Alter-saal, the Erker-saal, the
Gelber-saal, the Cadiner-saal, the Eingangs-saal, the Durchgangs-saal,
the Brauner-saal and the various other chromatic and geographical
saals--one may listen in dyspeptic Anglo-Saxon abashment to such a
concerto of down-going _suppen_ and _coteletten_ and _gemüse_ and
down-gurgling Laubenheimer and Marcobrunner and Zeltinger and
Brauneberger as one may not hear elsewhere in the palatinates. And here,
in the preface to the night, one may prehend while again eating (for in
Germany, you must know, one's eating is limited in so far as time and
occasion are concerned only by the locks of the alimentary canal and the
contumacy of the intestines) the grand democracy of this kaiser city.
For in this giant eating hall that would hold a round half-dozen New
York restaurants and still offer ample elbow room for the dissection of
a knuckle and the wielding of a stein, one observes a vast and
heterogeneous commingling of the human breed such as may not be observed
outside an American charity ball. At one table, a lieutenant of Uhlans
with his _mädel_ of the moment, at another a jolly old _spitzbub'_
sending with a loose jest a girl from the chorus of the Theater des
Westens into blushes--and being sent himself in return with a looser. At
another (one removed from that of a duo of palpable daughters of joy
engaged in a desperate hand-to-hand encounter with a colossal _roastbif
englisch mit Leipziger allerlei_) a family man _with_ his family. At
still another, another family man with his. At another, the Salome from
the Königliches Opernhaus--at another a noted _advokat_--at another, two
little girls (they can't he more than sixteen years old) enjoying their
meal and their bottle of Rhenish wine undisturbed, unogled, unafraid.
But why need to pursue the catalogue? This, too, is Berlin. Not the
Berlin of Herr Adlon's inn, gilded with the leaf of Broadway and the
Strand to flabbergast and ensnare the American snooper--not the Berlin
of the Bristol, with its imitation cocktails--not the Berlin of the
Esplanade, gaudy dump of the Bellevuestrasse, with its sugar tongs,
finger bowls and kindred criteria of degeneracy--not this Berlin; but
the real Berlin of the German people, warm-hearted, mindful only of its
own affairs, all-understanding, all-sympathetic, all-human--its larynx
eternally beseeching liquid succour, its stomach eternally demanding
chow. And, too--and note this well--not the Berlin of the rouged menu
and silk-stockinged _kellner_, not the trumped-up Berlin of the
vaselined vassal, of the bowing _oberkellner_, not the Berlin of the
affected canteloupe (3,50 m.) and the affected biscuit tortoni (2,40
m.)--but the Berlin of _beinfleisch im kessel mit Meerrettich_ (90 pf.),
the Berlin of _kräftbruhe mit nudeln_ (40 pf.)--the Berlin of Mamsch and
Traube.
And now I am again in the streets of the city, rattling with the racing
flotilla of things awheel. (Or is the rattle that I hear only the rattle
of the "L" trains a block away, and am I really back in New York?) But
no; for still I see in the brilliant Berlin moonlight the bronze
Quadriga of Victory atop the distant Gate of Brandenburg and still I
hear a group of students singing in the Café Mozart, and still--but what
is moonlight beside the fairy light in your eyes, fair Hulda? What is
song beside the soft melody of your smile? Normandy is in the night air
... "_man lacht, man lebt, man liebt und man küsst wo's Küsse giebt_"
... and we and all the world are young. Ah, Hulda, mine own, mine all,
and who is that pretty girl tripping adown the street, that one there
with the corals at her throat and the devil at the curtain of her glance
... and _that_ girl who has just passed, that little minx with eyes like
sleeping sapphires and a smile as melodious as mandolins by the summer
sea? As melodious as your own, fair Hulda.
* * * * *
The play is over and I have alternated a contemplation of the loves
and fears, the tremors and triumphs of some obese stage princess with a
lusty entr'-acte excursion into Culmbacher and the cheese sandwich,
served, as is the appealing custom, in the theatre promenade. And thus
fortified against the night, I pass again into the thoroughfares still
a-rattle with the musketry of wheels. I perceive that many amateur
American Al-Raschids are abroad in the land, pockets echoing the
tintinnabulation of manifold marks and eyes abulge at the prospect of
midnight diableries. See that fellow yonder! At home, probably a family
man, a wearer of mesh underwear, an assiduous devourer of the wisdom of
George Harvey, a patron of the dramas of Charles Rann Kennedy, a spanker
of children, an entertainer at his board of the visiting clergyman, a
pantophagous subscriber, a silk hat wearer--in brief, a leading citizen.
See him oleaginate his grin at the sight of a passing painted paver. (To
his mind, probably a barmaid out for an innocent lark.) See him make for
the Palais de Danse where (so he has read in the _Saturday Evening
Post_) one may purchase the Berliner spirit at so much per pound. We
track him, and presently we behold him seated at a table in this
splendiferous hall of Terpsichore and Thaïs "opening wine" and
purchasing _blumen_ for a battle-scarred veteran who is telling him
confidentially that she just got in that afternoon from her poor home in
a little Bavarian village and that she feels so alone in this big, great
city, with its lures and temptations, its snares and its pitfalls. Soon
the bubbles of the grape are percolating through his arteries and soon
the "Grosse Rosinen" waltzes have mellowed his conscience and soon....
* * *
"Berlin spirit, huh!" he is telling his wife a month later--"Berlin
spirit? All artificial. Just to make money out of the visitors. And
_very_ sordid!"
* * *
At the Moulin Rouge and at the Admirals-Casino, at the Alhambra and the
Tabarin, at the Amor-säle and the Rosen-säle, we track down others such,
"seeing the night life of Berlin." We see them, too, champagne before
them, coquetting with Fräulein Ilona, who numbers Militär-Regiment 42 as
her gentleman friend, and with innocent-looking little Hedwig, who in
her day has tramped the streets of Brussels and Paris, of London and
Vienna; we see them intriguing elaborately with these sisters of sorrow,
who, intriguing in turn against the night's wage, assist the skirmish on
with incendiary quip and tender touch of foot and similar cantharides of
financial amour. And we track them later to such institutions as the
Fledermaus--"_der grosse luxuriöse, vornehmstes vergnügungsplatz,
paradiesgarten, grösste sehenswürdigkeit Berlins_" (in the
advertisements)--as the Victoria and the Café Riche, the Westminster and
the Café Opéra and--
* * *
"Berlin spirit, huh!" _they_ are telling _their_ wives a month
later--"Berlin spirit? All artificial. Just to make money out of the
visitors. And _very_ sordid!"
* * *
Ah, Cairo dreaming in the Nile's moon-haze--are you to be judged thus
by the narrow street that snakes into the dark of Bulak? And Budapest by
the Danube--are you to be judged by the wreckage of the Stefansplatz
that has drifted on your shores? And you, Vienna, and you, Paris--are
you, too, to be measured thus, as measured you are, by the crimson light
of your half-worlds that for some obscures your stars?
The Berlin of the Palais de Danse is the Paris of L'Abbaye; the Berlin
of the Fledermaus is the New York of Jack's.
But the Berlin that I know and love is not this Berlin, the Berlin of
Americans, not the spangled Berlin, the hollow-laughing Berlin, the
Berlin decked with rhinestones, set alight with prismatic electroliers
and offered up as mistress to foreign gold. When the River Spree is
amethystine under springtime skies and the city's lights are yellow in
the linden trees, I like best the Berlin that sips its beer in the peace
of the little by-streets, the Berlin that laughs in the Tiergarten near
the Lake of the Goldfish and on the Isle of Louisa, where watch
throughout eternity the graven images of Friedrich Wilhelm the Third and
of Wilhelm the First in the years of his boyhood. I like best the Berlin
that sings with the students in the undiscovered, untainted _wein_ and
_bier stuben_ of the thitherward thoroughfares, the Berlin that dances
in the Joachimstrasse, where the _mädels_, each to herself a Cecilie,
shirtwaisted, poor, happy, kick up their German heels, drink up their
German beer, assault the Schweizerkäse and bring back memories of that
paradise of all paradises--the Englischer Garten of Munich the
Incomparable, the Divine.
In such phases of this kaiser city, one is removed from the so-called
Tingel-Tangel, or _variétés_ and cabarets, where the visiting
_narrverein_ is regaled with such integral and valid elements of Berlin
"night life" as "_der cake walk_," "_der can-can_" and "_die
matschiche--getanzt von original importierten Mexikanerinnen_." So, too,
is one removed from the garish demi-women of the so-called "Quartier
Latin" near the Oranienburger Tor and from the spurious deviltries of
the Rothenburger Krug and the Staffelstein, with their "property"
students, cheeks scarred with red ink, singing "Heidelberg" (from "The
Prince of Pilsen") for the edification and impression of foreign
visitors, and fiercely and frequently challenging other prop. students
to immediate duel. The girls, alas, in these places are not unlovely.
Well do I remember the dainty Elsa of the Hopfenblüthe, she of face
kissed by the Prussian dawn, and employed at sixteen marks the week to
wink dramatically at the old roués and give the resort "an air." Well
does memory repeat to me the loveliness of delicate little Anna, she
with hair like the waving golden grass in the fields that skirt the
roadways from Targon to Villandraut, and paid so much the month to laugh
uproariously every time the hands of the clock point the quarter-hour.
And Rika and Dessa and Julia and Paulina--all sweet of look, all
professional actresses; Bernhardts of Fun (inc.), Duses of Pleasure
(ltd.). Not the girls in whose hearts Berlin is beating, not the girls
in whose _élan_ Berlin lives and laughs. Leave behind all places such as
these, seeker after the soul of Berlin. Leave behind the Tingel-Tangel
with its uniformed bouncer at the gate, with its threadbare piano, with
its "_na kleener Dicker_" smirked by soiled _decolletés_, its doleful
near-naughty ditties--"_Ich lass mich nicht verführen, dazu bin ich zu
schlau, ich kenne die Manieren der Männer ganz genau_"--"I won't be led
astray, I am too slick for that, I know the ways of mankind, I've got
them all down pat." Leave behind the Berlin of the Al-Raschids and keep
to the Berlin of the Germans.
Just as the worst of Paris came from America, so has the worst of
Berlin come from America by way of Paris. The maquereau spirit of
Montmartre, with its dollar lust and its poisoned blood, has not yet the
throat of this German night city full in its fists; but the fists are
tightening slowly--and the voice behind them speaks not French, but the
jargon of Broadway. And yet, when finally the fingers work closer,
closer still, around that throat, when finally the death gurgle of
spontaneous pleasure and of clean, honest, fearless night skies
comes--and yet, when this happens, Berlin will still rise from the
dunghill. I must believe it. For they--_we_--may kill the laughter of
Berlin's streets--as we have killed it in Paris--but we can never kill
the heart, the spirit and the living, quivering corpuscles of German
blood. The French may drink stronger stuffs, eat richer foods and love
oftener than the Germans, and may be better fighters--but they cannot
laugh, they cannot sing as the Germans laugh and sing. And Berlin is the
new Germany, the Germany of to-day and to-morrow ... the Germany whose
laughter will grow louder as the decades pass and whose song will echo
clearer from the distant hills. While Paris (to go to Conrad)--is not
Paris and her land already at Bankok, and far, far beyond? Her children
spent before their day, listening to the too-soon lecture of Time? And
all hopelessly nodding at him: "the man of finance, the man of accounts,
the man of law, we all nodded at him over the polished table that like a
still sheet of brown water reflected our faces, lined, wrinkled; our
faces marked by toil, by deceptions, by success, by love; our weary eyes
looking still, looking always, looking anxiously for something out of
life, that while it is expected is already gone--has passed unseen, in a
sigh, in a flash--together with the youth, with the strength, with the
romance of illusions...."
But again a truce to philosophisings. It grows late apace. (Ah, Hulda,
how like opals in the lyric April rain are your eyes in this first faint
purple-pink of the tremulous dawn.... Were I a Heine!) In my far-away
America, Hulda, in far-away New York, it is now onto midnight. I see
Broadway, strumpet of the highways, sweltering collarless under the loud
electricity of Times Square. I see a fetid blonde, dangling a patent
leather handbag, hurrying to an assignation in Forty-fifth Street. I see
two actors, pointing their boasts with yellow bamboo canes. A chop suey
restaurant flashes its sign. And I can hear the racking ragtime out of
Shanley's. A big sightseeing bus is howling the fictitious lure of the
Bowery, Chinatown and the Ghetto to gaping groups from the hinterlands.
A streetwalker. Another. Another. In the subway entrance across the
street, a blind man is selling papers. A "dip" calls a friendly "Hello,
Dan" to the policeman in front of the drugstore and works his steps over
the car tracks toward the drunk teetering against the window of the
Jew's clothing store. The air is dust-filled. An intermittent baking
gust from the river sends a cast-aside _Journal_ fluttering aloft. A
dirt-encrusted bum begs the price of a coffee. Another streetwalker,
appearing from the backwaters of Seventh Avenue, grins in the
drugstore's green light....
But to your eyes, Hulda, must be given no such picture. Yet such is the
New York I come from; such the New York, stunning by day in its New
World strength and splendour, loathsome by night in its hot, illumined
bawdry. Ah, city by the Hudson, forgetting Riverside Drive twinkling
amid the long tiara of trees, forgetting the still of the lake and cool
of the boulders that plead in Central Park, forgetting the superb
majesty of Cathedral Heights and the mighty peace of the
byways--forgetting these all for a Broadway!
But the symphony of the Berlin dawn is ours now, fräulein, and have
done with intrusive memories, corroding reflections. What are my people
doing in Berlin at this hour? What are these prowling Al-Raschids about?
Do they know the sorcery of the virgin morning light of Berlin as it
falls upon the Siegesallee and gives life again to the marble heroes of
Germany? Have they ever stood with such as you, fräulein, in the
coral-tipped hours of the dawning day before the image of Friedrich der
Grosse in that wonderful lane and felt, through this dead, cold thing,
the thrill of an empire's glory? Do they know the witchery of the
withering Berlin night as it plays out its wild fantasia in the leaves
of the Linden trees? Have they ever been with such as you, fräulein, at
the base of the Pillar of Triumph in Königsplatz or sat with such as
you, fräulein, near the Grotto Lake in the Tiergarten, or stood with
such as you, fräulein, on one of the bridges arching the Spree in the
first trembling innuendo of morning?
Where are these, my people?
You will find them seeking the romance of Berlin's greying night amid
the Turkish cigarette smoke and stale wine smells of the half-breed
cabarets marshalled along the Jägerstrasse, the Behrenstrasse and their
tributaries. You will find them up a flight of stairs in one of the
all-night Linden cafés, throwing celluloid balls at the weary, patient,
left-over women. You will find them sitting in the balcony of the
Pavilion Mascotte, blowing up toy balloons and hurling small cones of
coloured paper down at the benign harlotry. You will see them, hatless,
shooting up the Friedrichstrasse in an open taxicab, singing "Give My
Regards to Broadway" in all the prime ecstasy of a beer souse. You will
find them in the rancid Tingel-Tangel, blaspheming the _kellner_ because
they can't get a highball. You will find them in the Nollendorfplatz
gaping at the fairies. You will see them, green-skinned in the tyrannic
light of early morning, battering at the iron grating of their hotel for
the porter to open up and let them in.
For them, are no souvenirs of happy evening hours that sing always in
the heart of a Berlin they can never know. For them, shall be no memory
of that vast and insuperable _gemütlichkeit_, that superb and pacific
democracy, that dwells and shall dwell forever by night in the spirit of
the German people. They will never know the Berlin that lifts its seidel
to the setting sun, the Berlin that greets the moonrise, the Berlin that
meets the dawn. The Berlin that they know is a Berlin of French
champagnes, Italian confetti, Spanish dancers, English-trained waiters,
Austrian courtesans and American hilarities. They interpret a city by
its leading all-night restaurant; a nation by the _demi-mondaine_ who
happens to be nearest their table. For them, there is no--
But hark, what is that?
What is that strange sound that comes to me?
* * *
"Extra! _Evening Telegram_, extra! All 'bout the Giants win
double-header!"
* * *
A newsboy in neuralgic yowl, bawling in the street below.
Alas, it is true: after all, I am really back again in New York. My
rooms are littered with battered bags and down-at-the-heel walking
sticks and still-damp steamer rugs, lying where they dropped from the
hands of maudlin bellboys. My trunks are creaking their way down the
hall, urged on by a perspiring, muttering porter. The windows, still
locked and gone blue-grey with the August heat, rattle to the echo of
the rankling "L" trains. The last crack of a triphammer, peckering at a
giant pile of iron down the block, dies out on the dead air. A taxicab,
rrrrr-ing in the street below, grunts its horn. Another "L" train and
the panes rattle again. A momentary quiet ... and from somewhere in a
nearby street I hear again the grind-organ.
It is playing "Alexander's Ragtime Band."
LONDON
[Illustration: LONDON]
LONDON
Macauley's New Zealander, so I hear, will view the ruins of St. Paul's
from London Bridge; but as for me, I prefer that more westerly arch
which celebrates Waterloo, there to sniff and immerse myself in the
town. The hour is 8:15 _post meridien_ and the time is early summer. I
have just rolled down Wellington Street from the Strand, smoking a
ninepence Vuelta Abajo, humming an ancient air. One of Simpson's
incomparable English dinners--salmon with lobster sauce, a cut from the
joint, two vegetables, a cress salad, a slice of old Stilton and a mug
of bitter--has lost itself, amazed and enchanted, in my interminable
recesses. My board is paid at Morley's. I have some thirty-eight dollars
to my credit at Brown's, a ticket home is sewn to my lingerie, there is
a friendly jingle of shillings and sixpences in my pocket. The stone
coping invites; I lay myself against it, fold my arms, blow a smoke ring
toward the sunset, and give up my soul to recondite and mellow
meditation.
There are thirteen great bridges between Fulham Palace and the Isle of
Dogs, and I have been at pains to try every one of them; but the best of
all, for such needs as overtake a well fed and ruminative man on a
summer evening, is that of Waterloo. Look westward and the towers of St.
Stephen's are floating in the haze, a greenish slate colour with edges
of peroxide yellow and seashell pink. Look eastward and the fine old
dome of St. Paul's is slipping softly into greasy shadows. Look downward
and the river throws back its innumerable hues--all the coal tar dyes
plus all the duns and drabs of Thames mud. The tide is out and along the
south bank a score of squat barges are high and dry upon the flats.
Opposite, on the embankment, the lights are beginning to blink, and from
the little hollow behind Charing Cross comes the faint, far-away braying
of a brass band.