We are all quiet along the Isar since the October Fest; since the young
king has come back from his summer castle on the Starnberg See to live
in his dingy palace; since the opera has got into good working order,
and the regular indoor concerts at the cafes have begun. There is no
lack of amusements, with balls, theaters, and the cheap concerts, vocal
and instrumental. I stepped into the West Ende Halle the other night,
having first surrendered twelve kreuzers to the money-changer at the
entrance,--double the usual fee, by the way. It was large and well
lighted, with a gallery all round it and an orchestral platform at
one end. The floor and gallery were filled with people of the most
respectable class, who sat about little round tables, and drank beer.
Every man was smoking a cigar; and the atmosphere was of that degree of
haziness that we associate with Indian summer at home; so that through
it the people in the gallery appeared like glorified objects in a
heathen Pantheon, and the orchestra like men playing in a dream. Yet
nobody seemed to mind it; and there was, indeed, a general air of social
enjoyment and good feeling. Whether this good feeling was in process of
being produced by the twelve or twenty glasses of beer which it is not
unusual for a German to drink of an evening, I do not know. “I do not
drink much beer now,” said a German acquaintance,--“not more than four
or five glasses in an evening.” This is indeed moderation, when we
remember that sixteen glasses of beer is only two gallons. The orchestra
playing that night was Gungl's; and it performed, among other things,
the whole of the celebrated Third (or Scotch) Symphony of Mendelssohn
in a manner that would be greatly to the credit of orchestras that
play without the aid of either smoke or beer. Concerts of this sort,
generally with more popular music and a considerable dash of Wagner,
in whom the Munichers believe, take place every night in several cafes;
while comic singing, some of it exceedingly well done, can be heard
in others. Such amusements--and nothing can be more harmless--are very
cheap.
Speaking of Indian summer, the only approach to it I have seen was in
the hazy atmosphere at the West Ende Halle. October outdoors has been an
almost totally disagreeable month, with the exception of some days, or
rather parts of days, when we have seen the sun, and experienced a mild
atmosphere. At such times, I have liked to sit down on one of the empty
benches in the Hof Garden, where the leaves already half cover the
ground, and the dropping horse-chestnuts keep up a pattering on them.
Soon the fat woman who has a fruit-stand at the gate is sure to come
waddling along, her beaming face making a sort of illumination in the
autumn scenery, and sit down near me. As soon as she comes, the little
brown birds and the doves all fly that way, and look up expectant at
her. They all know her, and expect the usual supply of bread-crumbs.
Indeed, I have seen her on a still Sunday morning, when I have been
sitting there waiting for the English ceremony of praying for Queen
Victoria and Albert Edward to begin in the Odeon, sit for an hour, and
cut up bread for her little brown flock. She sits now knitting a red
stocking, the picture of content; one after another her old gossips
pass that way, and stop a moment to exchange the chat of the day; or
the policeman has his joke with her, and when there is nobody else to
converse with, she talks to the birds. A benevolent old soul, I am sure,
who in a New England village would be universally called “Aunty,”
and would lay all the rising generation under obligation to her for
doughnuts and sweet-cake. As she rises to go away, she scrapes together
a half-dozen shining chestnuts with her feet; and as she cannot possibly
stoop to pick them up, she motions to a boy playing near, and smiles so
happily as the urchin gathers them and runs away without even a “thank
ye.”