Home Life In Germany Part 5

"I would rather be unsociable than suffocated," you explain. "I have suffered tortures to-day."

"Have you? But you always say you don't mind smoke."

"In reason. Seven cigars and one woman are not reasonable. Never again will I travel with seven cigars."

"I thought we had a pleasant journey," says the Englishman regretfully. "That little man next to you----"

"Mr. Hoggenheimer----?"

"Was that his name?--I couldn't understand all he said, but he had an amusing face."

"A face can be misleading," you say; "that man bullies his wife."

"How do you know?"

"He told us so. He smokes before breakfast ... while he is dressing, ... and he has no dressing room...."

The Englishman looks calm.

"They do take one into their confidence," he remarks. "My neighbour told me that he never could eat mayonnaise of salmon directly after roast pork, because it gave him peculiar pains. I was afraid you'd hear him describe his symptoms; but I believe you were asleep."

"No, I wasn't," you confess; "I heard it all, and I shut my eyes, because I knew if I opened them he'd address himself to me. I shut them when he began talking to you about your _Magen_ and what you ought to do to give it tone. You seemed interested."

"It's quite an interesting subject," says the Englishman, who makes friends with every German he meets. "He is not in the least like an Englishman," they say to you cordially,--"he is so friendly and amiable."

CHAPTER XII

HOUSEWIVES

"Frenchwomen are the best housewives in Europe," said a German lady who knew most European countries well; "the next best are the English; Germans come third." The lady speaking was one whose opinions were always uttered with much charm, but _ex-cathedra_; so that you found it impossible to disagree with her ... until you got home. But to hear the supreme excellence of the _Hausfrau_ contested takes the breath away; to see her deposed from the first place by one of her own countrywomen dazzles the eyes. It was a new idea to me that any women in the world except the Germans kept house at all. If you live amongst Germans when you are young you adopt this view quite insensibly and without argument.

"My son is in England," you hear a German mother say. "I am uneasy about him. I fear he may marry an Englishwoman."

"They sometimes do," says her gossip, shaking her head.

"It would break my heart. The women of that nation know nothing of housekeeping. They sit in their drawing-rooms all day, while their husband's hard-earned money is wasted in the kitchen. Besides ...

_mein armer Karl_--he loves _Nudelsuppe_ and _Kuken mit Spargel_. What does an Englishwoman know of such things? She would give him cold mutton to eat, and he would die of an indigestion. I was once in England in my youth, and when I got back we had a _Frika.s.see von Hahnchen mit Krebsen_ for dinner, and I wept with pleasure."

"Perhaps," says the gossip consolingly, "your Karl will remember these things and fetch himself a German wife."

"Poor girl!" says Karl's not-to-be-consoled mother, "she would have to live in England and keep house there. It happened to my niece Greta Lohring. She had a new cook every fortnight, and each one was worse than the one before. In England when a cook spoils a pudding she puts it in the fire and makes another. Imagine the eggs that are used under such circ.u.mstances."

I remember this little dialogue, because I was young and ignorant enough at the time to ask what a German did when she spoilt a pudding, and was promptly informed that in Germany such things could not happen. A cook was not allowed to make puddings unless her mistress stood by and saw that she made them properly; "unless she is a _perfekte Kochin_," added Karl's mother, "and then she does not spoil things."

A German friend, not the travelled one, but a real home-baked domestic German, took me one hot afternoon this summer to pay a call, and at once fell to talking to the mistress of the house about the was.h.i.+ng of lace curtains. There were eight windows in front of the flat, and each window had a pair of stiff spotless lace curtains, and each curtain had been washed by the lady's own hands. My friend had just washed hers, and they both approached the subject as keenly as two gardeners will approach a question of bulbs or Alpines. There are different ways of was.h.i.+ng a white curtain, you know, and different methods of rinsing and drying it, and various soaps. Starch is used too at some stage of the process; at least, I think so. But the afternoon was hot and the argument involved. The starch I will not swear to, but I will swear to ten waters--ten successive cleansings in fresh water before the soul of the housewife was at rest.

"And how do you wash yours?" said one of them, turning to me.

"Oh--I!" I stammered, taken aback, for I had been nearly asleep; "I send a post-card to Whiteley's, and they fetch them one week and bring them back the next. They cost 1s. a pair."

The two German ladies looked at each other and smiled. Then they politely changed the subject.

This trivial story is not told for its intrinsic merits, but because it ill.u.s.trates the difference of method between English and German women. The German with much wear and tear of body and spirit washes her own lace curtains. She saves a little money, and spends a great deal of time over them. The Englishwoman, when she possibly can, likes to spend her time in a different way. In both countries there are admirable housekeepers, and middling housekeepers, and extremely bad ones. The German who goes the wrong way about it sends her husband to the _Kneipe_ by her eternal fussing and fidgeting. She is not his companion mentally, but the cook's, for her mind has sunk to the cook's level, while her temper through constant fault-finding is on a lower one. The Englishwoman sends her husband to the club or the public house, according to his social station, because she is incapable of giving him eatable food. But the English belief that German housewives are invariably dull and stodgy is not a whit more ignorant and untrue than the German belief that all Englishwomen are neglectful, extravagant housekeepers. The Englishwoman keeps house in her own way, and it is different from the German way, but it is often admirable. The comfort, the organisation, and the unbroken peace of a well-managed English household are not surpa.s.sed, in some details not equalled, anywhere in the world.

The German ideal (for women) is one of service and self-sacrifice. Let her learn betimes to serve, says Goethe, for by service only shall she attain to command and to the authority in the house that is her due.

"Dienen lerne bei Zeiten das Weib nach ihrer Bestimmung, Denn durch Dienen allein gelangt sie endlich zum Herrschen Zu der verdienten Gewalt, die doch ihr im Hause geh.o.r.et, Dienet die Schwester dem Bruder doch fruh, sie dienet den Eltern; Und ihr Leben ist immer ein ewiges Gehen und Kommen, Oder ein Heben und Tragen, Bereiten und Schaffen fur Andre; Wohl ihr, wenn sie daran sich gewohnt, da.s.s kein Weg ihr zu sauer Wird, und die Stunden der Nacht ihr sind wie die Stunden des Tages: Da.s.s ihr niemals die Arbeit zu klein und die Nadel zu fein dunkt, Da.s.s sie sich ganz vergisst, und leben mag nur in Andern!"

She is to serve her brothers and parents. Her whole life is to be a going and coming, a lifting and carrying, a preparing and acting for others. Well for her if she treads her way unweariedly, if night is as day to her, if no task seems too small and no needle too fine. She is to forget herself altogether and live in others.

It is a beautiful pa.s.sage, and an unabashed magnificent masculine egotism speaks in every line of it. Whenever I read it I think of the little girl in _Punch_ whose little brother called to her, "Come here, Effie. I wants you." And Effie answered, "Thank you, Archie, but I wants myself!" Herr Riehl quotes the pa.s.sage at the end of his own exhortations to his countrywomen, which are all in the same spirit, and were not needed by them. German women have always been devoted to their homes and their families, and they are as subservient to their menfolk as the j.a.panese. They do not actually fall on their knees before their lords, but the tone of voice in which a woman of the old school speaks of _die Herren_ is enough to make a French, American, or Englishwoman think there is something to be said for the modern revolt against men. For any woman with a spice of feminine perversity in her nature will be driven to the other camp when she meets extremes; so that in Germany she feels ready to rise against overbearing males; whilst in America she misses some of the regard for masculine judgment and authority that German women show in excess. At least, it seems an excess of duty to us when we hear of a German bride who will not go down to dinner with the man appointed by her hostess till she has asked her husband's permission; and when we hear of another writing from Germany that, although in England she had ardently believed in total abstention, she had now changed her opinion because her husband drank beer and desired her to approve of it. But it was an Englishwoman who, when asked about some question of politics, said quite simply and honestly, "I think what Jack thinks."

The truth is, that the women of the two great Germanic races are kin.

There are differences, chiefly those of history, manners, and environment. The likeness is profound.

"Par une rencontre singuliere," says M. Taine, "les femmes sont plus femmes et les hommes plus hommes ici qu'ailleurs. Les deux natures vont chacune a son extreme; chez les uns vers l'audace, l'esprit d'entreprise et de resistance, le caractere guerrier, imperieux et rude; chez les autres vers la douceur, l'abnegation, la patience, l'affection inepuisable; chose inconnue dans les pays lointains, surtout en France, la femme ici se donne sans se reprendre et met sa gloire et son devoir a obeir, a pardonner, a adorer, sans souhaiter ni pretendre autre chose que se fondre et s'absorber chaque jour davantage en celui qu'elle a volontairement et pour toujours choisi.

C'est cet instinct, un antique instinct Germanique, que ces grands peintres de l'instinct mettent tous ici en lumiere!... L'ame dans cette race, est a la fois primitive et serieuse. La candeur chez les femmes y subsiste plus longtemps qu'ailleurs. Elles perdent moins vite le respect, elles pesent moins vite les valeurs et les caracteres: elles sont moins promptes a deviner le mal et a mesurer leurs maris.... Elles n'ont pas la nettete, la hardiesse d'idees, l'a.s.surance de conduite, la precocite qui chez nous en six mois font d'une jeune fille une femme d'intrigue et une reine de salon. La vie enfermee et l'obeissance leur sont plus faciles. Plus pliantes et plus sedentaires elles sont en meme temps plus concentrees, plus interieures, plus disposees a suivre des yeux le n.o.ble reve qu'on nomme le devoir...."

I cannot imagine what M. Taine means by saying that Englishwomen lead a more sedentary and sequestered life than Frenchwomen, but the rest of his description presents a well-known type in England and Germany.

"Voir la peinture de ce caractere dans toute la litterature anglaise et allemande," he says in a footnote. "Le plus grand des observateurs, Stendhal tout impregne des moeurs et des idees Italiennes et francaises, est stupefait a cette vue. Il ne comprend rien a cette espece de devouement, 'a cette servitude, que les maris Anglais, sous le nom de devoir, out eu l'esprit d'imposer a leurs femmes.' Ce sont 'des moeurs de serail.'"

Here the "greatest of all observers" seems to talk nonsense, for marriage in the seraglio does not hinge on the submission of one wife to one husband, but on a plurality of wives that English and German women have only endured in certain historic cases. In both western countries marriage has its roots in the fidelity of one man and one woman to each other. A well-known English novelist once said quite truly that an Englishman very rarely distrusts his wife, and never by any chance distrusts the girl who is to become his wife; and just the same may be said of the German of the better cla.s.ses. In both countries you will find sections of society above and below where morals are lax and manners corrupt. German professors write sketches of London in which our busy grimy city is held up to a virtuous Germania as the modern Sodom and Gomorrah; and the Continental Anglophobe likes nothing better than to entertain you with pictures of our decadent society, pictures that really do credit to the vividness and detail of his imagination. Meanwhile our press a.s.sures the respectable Briton that Berlin is the most profligate city in Europe, and that scurrilous German novels about the German army will show him what the rotten state of things really is in that much over-rated organisation. But these national amenities are misleading. The bulk of the nation in both countries is sound, and family life still flourishes both here and there. The men of the race, in spite of Herr Riehl's prognostications, still have the whip hand, as much as is good for them in England, a little more than is good for them in Germany.

If you go to Germany you must not expect a man to open a door for you, or to wait on you at afternoon tea, or to carry a parcel for you in the street. He will kiss your hand when he greets you, he will address you as gracious lady or gracious miss, he will put his heels together and make you beautiful bows, he will pay you compliments that are manifestly, almost admittedly, artificial. That at least is one type of man. He may leave out the kisses and the bows and the compliments and be quite undisguisedly bearish; or he may be something betwixt and between, kindly, concerned for your pleasure and welfare. But whatever he is he will never forget for a moment that you are "only a woman."

If you marry him he will expect to rule everywhere except in the kitchen, and as you value a quiet life you had better take care that the kitchen produces what pleases him. On occasion he will a.s.sert his authority with some violence and navete. No one can be long amongst Germans, or even read many German novels, without coming across instances of what I mean. For example, there was once a quarrel between lovers that all turned upon a second gla.s.s of champagne. The girl did not want it, and the man insisted that she should drink it whether she wanted it or not. What happened in the end is forgotten and does not matter. It is the comment of the historian that remains in the memory.

"Her family had spoilt her," said he. "When they are married and my friend gets her to himself she will not behave so."

"But why should she drink a second gla.s.s of champagne if she did not want it?" I asked.

"Because he commanded her to," said this Petruchio, beginning to bristle at once; and he straightway told me another story about a man who threw his lady-love's dog into a pond, not because the dog needed a bath, but in a.s.sertion of his authority. The lady had wished to keep her dog out of the water.

"Did she ever forgive the man?" said I.

"Forgive!--What was there to forgive? The man wished to put the dog in the pond. A man must know how to enforce his will ... or he is no man."

I nearly said "Lor!" like Mr. Tweddle in _The Tinted Venus_, but in Germany it's a serious matter, a sort of _lese majeste_, to laugh at the rightful rule of man. You must expect to see them waited on hand and foot, and to take this service as a matter of course. I have known Englishmen embarra.s.sed by this state of affairs.

"They will get me chairs," complained one, "and at table the daughters jump up and wait on me. It's horrid."

"Not at all," said I. "It's your due. You must behave as if you were used to it."

"I can't. The other day I got the daughters of the house to sit still while I handed about cups of tea, and if some of the old boys didn't jump down their throats and tell them they'd no business to let me forget my dignity. Bless my dignity ... if it's such a tender plant as that...."

"s.h.!.+" I said. "They must have been old-fas.h.i.+oned people. In some houses young men hand cups."