An American Idyll Part 3

With Anna to leave the young with now and then, I was able to get in two sprees a week with Carl. Every Wednesday and Sat.u.r.day noon I met him at the University and we had lunch together. Usually on Wednesdays we ate at the Cafe Rheingold, the spot I think of with most affection as I look back on Berlin.

We used to eat in the "Sh.e.l.l Room"--an individual chicken-and-rice pie (as much chicken as rice), a vegetable, and a gla.s.s of beer each, for thirty-five cents for both. Sat.u.r.days we hunted for different smaller out-of-the-way restaurants. Wednesday nights "Uncle K." of the University of Wisconsin always came to supper, bringing a thirty-five-cent rebate his landlady allowed him when he ate out; and we had chicken every Wednesday night, which cost--a fat one--never more than fifty cents. (It was Uncle K. who wrote, "The world is so different with Carl gone!") Once we rented bicycles and rode all through the Tiergarten, Carl and I, with the expected stiffness and soreness next day.

Then there was Christmas in Berlin. Three friends traveled up from Rome to be with us, two students came from Leipzig, and four from Berlin--eleven for dinner, and four chairs all told. It was a regular "La Boheme" festival--one guest appearing with a bottle of wine under his arm, another with a jar of caviare sent him from Russia. We had a gay week of it after Christmas, when the whole eleven of us went on some Dutch-treat spree every night, before going back to our studies.

Then came those last grueling months in Berlin, when Carl had a breakdown, and I got sick nursing him and had to go to a German hospital; and while I was there Jim was threatened with pneumonia and Nandy got tonsillitis. In the midst of it all the lease expired on our Wohnung, and Carl and Anna had to move the family out. We decided that we had had all we wanted of coaching in Berlin,--we came to that conclusion before any of the breakdowns,--threw our pride to the winds, borrowed more money from my good father, and as soon as the family was well enough to travel, we made for our ever-to-be-adored Heidelberg.

CHAPTER VI

Here I sit back, and words fail me. I see that year as a kaleidoscope of one joyful day after another, each rus.h.i.+ng by and leaving the memory that we both always had, of the most perfect year that was ever given to mortals on earth. I remember our eighth wedding anniversary in Berkeley.

We had been going night after night until we were tired of going anywhere,--engagements seemed to have heaped up,--so we decided that the very happiest way we could celebrate that most-to-be-celebrated of all dates was just to stay at home, plug the telephone, pull down the blinds, and have an evening by ourselves. Then we got out everything that we kept as mementos of our European days, and went over them--all the postcards, memory-books, theatre and opera programmes, etc., and, lastly, read my diary--I had kept a record of every day in Europe. When we came to that year in Heidelberg, we just could not believe our own eyes. How had we ever managed to pack a year so full, and live to tell the tale? I wish I could write a story of just that year. We swore an oath in Berlin that we would make Heidelberg mean Germany to us--no English-speaking, no Americans. As far as it lay in our power, we lived up to it. Carl and I spoke only German to each other and to the children, and we shunned our fellow countrymen as if they had had the plague. And Carl, in the characteristic way he had, set out to fill our lives with all the real German life we could get into them, not waiting for that life to come of itself--which it might never have done.

One afternoon, on his way home from the University, he discovered in a back alley the Weiser Boch, a little restaurant and beer-hall so full of local color that it "hollered." No, it did not holler: it was too real for that. It was sombre and carved up--it whispered. Carl made immediate friends, in the way he had, with the portly Frau and Herr who ran the Weiser Boch: they desired to meet me, they desired to see the Kinder, and would not the Herr Student like to have the Weiser Boch lady mention his name to some of the German students who dropped in? Carl left his card, and wondered if anything would come of it.

The very next afternoon,--such a glowing account of the Amerikaner the Weiser Boch lady must have given,--a real truly German student, in his corps cap and ribbons, called at our home--the stiffest, most decorous heel-clicking German student I ever was to see. His embarra.s.sment was great when he discovered that Carl was out, and I seemed to take it quite for granted that he was to sit down for a moment and visit with me. He fell over everything. But we visited, and I was able to gather that his corps wished Herr Student Par-r-r-ker to have beer with them the following evening. Then he bowed himself backwards and out, and fled.

I could scarce wait for Carl to get home--it was too good to be true.

And that was but the beginning. Invitation after invitation came to Carl, first from one corps, then from another; almost every Sat.u.r.day night he saw German student-life first hand somewhere, and at least one day a week he was invited to the duels in the Hirsch Ga.s.se. Little by little we got the students to our Wohnung; then we got chummier and chummier, till we would walk up Haupt Stra.s.se saluting here, pa.s.sing a word there, invited to some student function one night, another affair another night. The students who lived in Heidelberg had us meet their families, and those who were batching in Heidelberg often had us come to their rooms. We made friends.h.i.+ps during that year that nothing could ever mar.

It is two years now since we received the last letter from any Heidelberg chum. Are they all killed, perhaps? And when we can communicate again, after the war, think of what I must write them! Carl was a revelation to most of them--they would talk about him to me, and ask if all Americans were like him, so fresh in spirit, so clean, so sincere, so full of fun, and, with it all, doing the finest work of all of them but one in the University.

The economics students tried to think of some way of influencing Alfred Weber to give another course of lectures at the University. He was in retirement at Heidelberg, but still the adored of the students. Finally, they decided that a committee of three should represent them and make a personal appeal. Carl was one of the three chosen. The report soon flew around, how, in Weber's august presence, the Amerikaner had stood with his hands in his pockets--even sat for a few moments on the edge of Weber's desk. The two Germans, posed like ramrods, expected to see such informality shoved out bodily. Instead, when they took their leave, the Herr Professor had actually patted the Amerikaner on the shoulder, and said he guessed he would give the lectures.

Then his report in Gothein's Seminar, which went so well that I fairly burst with pride. He had worked day and night on that. I was to meet him at eight after it had been given, and we were to have a celebration. I was standing by the entrance to the University building when out came an enthused group of jabbering German students, Carl in their midst. They were patting him on the back, shaking his hands furiously; and when they saw me, they rushed to tell me of Carl's success and how Gothein had said before all that it had been the best paper presented that semester.

I find myself smiling as I write this--I was too happy that night to eat.

The Sunday trips we made up the Neckar: each morning early we would take the train and ride to where we had walked the Sunday previous; then we would tramp as far as we could,--meaning until dark,--have lunch at some untouristed inn along the road, or perhaps eat a picnic lunch of our own in some old castle ruin, and then ride home. Oh, those Sundays! I tell you no two people in all this world, since people were, have ever had _one_ day like those Sundays. And we had them almost every week. It would have been worth going to Germany for just one of those days.

There was the gay, glad party that the Economic students gave, out in Handschusheim at the "zum Bachlenz"; first, the banquet, with a big roomful of jovial young Germans; then the play, in which Carl and I both took part. Carl appeared in a mixture of his Idaho outfit and a German peasant's costume, beating a large drum. He represented "Materialindex,"

and called out loudly, "Ich bitte mich nicht zu vergessen. Ich bin auch da." I was "Methode," which n.o.body wanted to claim; whereat I wept. I am looking at the flashlight picture of us all at this moment. Then came the dancing, and then at about four o'clock the walk home in the moonlight, by the old castle ruin in Handschusheim, singing the German student-songs.

There was Carnival season, with its masque b.a.l.l.s and frivolity, and Faschings Dienstag, when Hauptstra.s.se was given over to merriment all afternoon, every one trailing up and down the middle of the street masked, and in fantastic costume, throwing confetti and tooting horns, Carl and I tooting with the rest.

As time went on, we came to have one little group of nine students whom we were with more than any others. As each of the men took his degree, he gave a party to the rest of us to celebrate it, every one trying to outdo the other in fun. Besides these most important degree celebrations, there were less dazzling affairs, such as birthday parties, dinners, or afternoon coffee in honor of visiting German parents, or merely meeting together in our favorite cafe after a Socialist lecture or a Max Reger concert. In addition to such functions, Carl and I had our Wednesday night spree just by ourselves, when every week we met after his seminar. Our budget allowed just twelve and a half cents an evening for both of us. I put up a supper at home, and in good weather we ate down by the river or in some park. When it rained and was cold, we sat in a corner of the third-cla.s.s waiting-room by the stove, watching the people coming and going in the station. Then, for dessert, we went every Wednesday to Tante's Conditorei, where, for two and a half cents apiece, we got a large slice of a special brand of the most divine cake ever baked. Then, for two and a half cents, we saw the movies--at a reduced rate because we presented a certain number of street-car transfers along with the cash, and then had to sit in the first three rows. But you see, we used to remark, we have to sit so far away at the opera, it's good to get up close at something! Those were real movies--no danger of running into a night-long Robert W. Chambers scenario. It was in the days before such developments. Then across the street was an "Automat," and there, for a cent and a quarter apiece, we could hold a gla.s.s under a little spigot, press a b.u.t.ton, and get--refreshments. Then we walked home.

O Heidelberg--I love your every tree, every stone, every blade of gra.s.s!

But at last our year came to an end. We left the town in a bower of fruit-blossoms, as we had found it. Our dear, most faithful friends, the Kecks, gave us a farewell luncheon; and with babies, bundles, and baggage, we were off.

Heidelberg was the only spot I ever wept at leaving. I loved it then, and I love it now, as I love no other place on earth and Carl felt the same way. We were mournful, indeed, as that train pulled out.

CHAPTER VII

The next two weeks were filled with vicissitudes. The idea was for Carl to settle the little family in some rural bit of Germany, while he did research work in the industrial section of Essen, and thereabouts, coming home week-ends. We stopped off first at Bonn. Carl spent several days searching up and down the Rhine and through the Moselle country for a place that would do, which meant a place we could afford that was fit and suitable for the babies. There was nothing. The report always was: pensions all expensive, and automobiles touring by at a mile a minute where the children would be playing.

On a wild impulse we moved up to Clive, on the Dutch border. After Carl went in search of a pension, it started to drizzle. The boys, baggage, and I found the only nearby place of shelter in a stone-cutter's inclosure, filled with new and ornate tombstones. What was my impecunious horror, when I heard a small crash and discovered that Jim had dislocated a loose figure of Christ (unconsciously Cubist in execution) from the top of a tombstone! Eight marks charges! the cost of sixteen Heidelberg sprees. On his return, Carl reported two pensions, one quarantined for diphtheria, one for scarlet fever. We slept over a beer-hall, with such a racket going on all night as never was; and next morning took the first train out--this time for Dusseldorf.

It is a trifle momentous, traveling with two babies around a country you know nothing about, and can find no one to enlighten you. At Dusseldorf Carl searched through the town and suburbs for a spot to settle us in, getting more and more depressed at the thought of leaving us anywhere.

That Freiburg summer had seared us both deep, and each of us dreaded another separation more than either let the other know. And then, one night, after another fruitless search, Carl came home and informed me that the whole scheme was off. Instead of doing his research work, we would all go to Munich, and he would take an unexpected semester there, working with Brentano.

What rejoicings, oh, what rejoicings! As Carl remarked, it may be that "He travels fastest who travels alone"; but speed was not the only thing he was after. So the next day, babies, bundles, baggage, and parents went down the Rhine, almost through Heidelberg, to Munich, with such joy and contentment in our hearts as we could not describe. All those days of unhappy searchings Carl had been through must have sunk deep, for in his last days of fever he would tell me of a form of delirium in which he searched again, with a heart of lead, for a place to leave the babies and me.

I remember our first night in Munich. We arrived about supper-time, hunted up a cheap hotel as usual, near the station, fed the babies, and started to prepare for their retirement. This process in hotels was always effected by taking out two bureau-drawers and making a bed of each. While we were busy over this, the boys were busy over--just busy.

This time they both crawled up into a large clothes-press that stood in our room, when, cras.h.!.+ bang!--there lay the clothes-press, front down, on the floor, boys inside it. Such a commotion--hollerings and squallings from the internals of the clothes-press, agitated scurryings from all directions of the hotel-keeper, his wife, waiters, and chambermaids. All together, we managed to stand the clothes-press once more against the wall, and to extricate two sobered young ones, the only damage being two clothes-press doors banged off their hinges.

Munich is second in my heart to Heidelberg. Carl worked hardest of all there, hardly ever going out nights; but we never got over the feeling that our being there together was a sort of gift we had made ourselves, and we were ever grateful. And then Carl did so remarkably well in the University. A report, for instance, which he read before Brentano's seminar was published by the University. Our relations' with Brentano always stood out as one of the high memories of Germany. After Carl's report in Brentano's cla.s.s, that lovable idol of the German students called him to his desk and had a long talk, which ended by his asking us both to tea at his house the following day. The excitement of our pension over that! We were looked upon as the anointed of the Lord. We were really a bit overawed, ourselves. We discussed neckties, and brushed and cleaned, and smelled considerably of gasoline as we strutted forth, too proud to tell, because we were to have tea with Brentano! I can see the street their house was on, their front door; I can feel again the little catch in our breaths as we rang the bell. Then the charming warmth and color of that Italian home, the charming warmth and hospitality of that white-haired professor and his gracious, kindly wife. There were just ourselves there; and what a momentous time it was to the little Parkers! Carl was simply radiating joy, and in the way he always had when especially pleased, would give a sudden beam from ear to ear, and a wink at me when no one else was looking.

Not long after that we were invited for dinner, and again for tea, this time, according to orders, bringing the sons. They both fell into an Italian fountain in the rear garden as soon as we went in for refreshments. By my desk now is hanging a photograph we have prized as one of our great treasures. Below it is written: "Mrs. and Mr. Parker, zur freundlichen Erinnerrung--Lujio Brentano." Professor Bonn, another of Carl's professors at the University, and his wife, were kindness itself to us. Then there was Peter, dear old Peter, the Austrian student at our pension, who took us everywhere, brought us gifts, and adored the babies until he almost spoiled them.

From Munich we went direct to England. Vicissitudes again in finding a cheap and fit place that would do for children to settle in. After ever-hopeful wanderings, we finally stumbled upon Swanage in Dorset.

That was a love of a place on the English Channel, where we had two rooms with the Mebers in their funny little brick house, the "Netto."

Simple folk they were: Mr. Meber a retired sailor, the wife rather worn with constant roomers, one daughter a dressmaker, the other working in the "knittin" shop. Charges, six dollars a week for the family, which included cooking and serving our meals--we bought the food ourselves.

Here Carl prepared for his Ph.D. examination, and worked on his thesis until it got to the point where he needed the British Museum. Then he took a room and worked during the week in London, coming down to us week-ends. He wrote eager letters, for the time had come when he longed to get the preparatory work and examination behind him and begin teaching. We had an instructors.h.i.+p at the University of California waiting for us, and teaching was to begin in January. In one letter he wrote: "I now feel like landing on my exam, like a Bulgarian; I am that fierce to lay it out." We felt more than ever, in those days of work piling up behind us, that we owned the world; as Carl wrote in another letter: "We'll stick this out [this being the separation of his last trip to London, whence he was to start for Heidelberg and his examination, without another visit with us], for, _Gott sei dank!_ the time isn't so fearful, fearful long, it isn't really, is it? Gee! I'm glad I married you. And I want more babies and more you, and then the whole gang together for about ninety-two years. But life is so fine to us and we are getting so much love and big things out of life!"

November 1 Carl left London for Heidelberg. He was to take his examination there December 5, so the month of November was a full one for him. He stayed with the dear Kecks, Mother Keck pressing and mending his clothes, hovering over him as if he were her own son. He wrote once: "To-day we had a small leg of venison which I sneaked in last night. Every time I note that I burn three quarters of a lampful of oil a day among the other things I cost them, it makes me feel like buying out a whole Conditorei."

I lived for those daily letters telling of his progress. Once he wrote: "Just saw Fleiner [Professor in Law] and he was _fine_, but I must get his Volkerrecht cold. It is fine reading, and is mighty good and interesting every word, and also stuff which a man ought to know. This is the last man to see. From now on, it is only to _study_, and I am tickled. I do really like to study." A few days later he wrote: "It is just plain sit and absorb these days. Some day I will explain how tough it is to learn an entire law subject in five days in a strange tongue."

And then, on the night of December 5, came the telegram of success to "Frau Dr. Parker." We both knew he would pa.s.s, but neither of us was prepared for the verdict of "_Summa c.u.m laude_," the highest accomplishment possible. I went up and down the main street of little Swanage, announcing the tidings right and left. The community all knew that Carl was in Germany to take some kind of an examination, though it all seemed rather unexplainable. Yet they rejoiced with me,--the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker,--without having the least idea what they were rejoicing about. Mrs. Meber tore up and down Osborne Road to have the fun of telling the immediate neighbors, all of whom were utterly at a loss to know what it meant, the truth being that Mrs.

Meber herself was in that same state. But she had somehow caught my excitement, and anything to tell was scarce in Swanage.

So the little family that fared forth from Oakland, California, that February 1, for one year at Harvard had ended thus--almost four years later a Ph.D. _summa c.u.m laude_ from Heidelberg. Not Persia as we had planned it nine years before--a deeper, finer life than anything we had dreamed. We asked Professor Miller, after we got back to California, why in the world he had said just "one year in Europe."

"If I had said more, I was afraid it would scare you altogether out of ever starting; and I knew if you once got over there and were made of the right stuff, you'd stay on for a Ph.D."

On December 12 Carl was to deliver one of a series of lectures in Munich for the Handelshochschule, his subject being "Die Einwanderungs und Siedelungspolitik in Amerika (Carleton Parker, Privatdocent, California-Universitat, St. Francisco)." That very day, however, the Prince Regent died, and everything was called off. We had our glory--and got our pay. Carl was so tired from his examination, that he did not object to foregoing the delivery of a German address before an audience of four hundred. It was read two weeks later by one of the professors.

On December 15 we had our reunion and celebration of it all. Carl took the Amerika, second cla.s.s, at Hamburg; the boys and I at Southampton, ushered thither from Swanage and put aboard the steamer by our faithful Onkel Keck, son of the folk with whom Carl had stayed in Heidelberg, who came all the way from London for that purpose. It was not such a brash Herr Doktor that we found, after all: the Channel had begun to tell on him, as it were, and while it was plain that he loved us, it was also plain that he did not love the water. So we gave him his six days off, and he lay anguish-eyed in a steamer-chair while I covered fifty-seven miles a day, tearing after two sons who were far more filled with Wanderl.u.s.t than they had been three years before. When our dad did feel chipper again, he felt very chipper, and our last four days were perfect.

We landed in New York on Christmas Eve, in a snowstorm; paid the crus.h.i.+ng sum of one dollar and seventy-five cents duty,--such a jovial agent as inspected our belongings I never beheld; he must already have had just the Christmas present he most wanted, whatever it was. When he heard that we had been in Heidelberg, he and several other officials began a l.u.s.ty rendering of "Old Heidelberg,"--and within an hour we were speeding toward California, a case of certified milk added to our already innumerable articles of luggage. Christmas dinner we ate on the train. How those American dining-car prices floored us after three years of all we could eat for thirty-five cents!

CHAPTER VIII

We looked back always on our first semester's teaching in the University of California as one hectic term. We had lived our own lives, found our own joys, for four years, and here we were enveloped by old friends, by relatives, by new friends, until we knew not which way to turn. In addition, Carl was swamped by campus affairs--by students, many of whom seemed to consider him an oasis in a desert of otherwise-to-be-deplored, unhuman professors. Every student organization to which he had belonged as an undergraduate opened its arms to welcome him as a faculty member; we chaperoned student parties till we heard rag-time in our sleep. From January 1 to May 16, we had four nights alone together. You can know we were desperate. Carl used to say: "We may have to make it Persia yet."