But, though the old rhyme has lost its reason, it was the one that came back to me first when I found myself in the real Prague of the true Bohemians. These Bohemians, too, have their song, though I doubt if that, too, has not grown old and a little out of fashion. The old national ditty, Kde domof mug, began something like this:
‘Where is my house—where is my home?
Streams among the meadows creeping,
Brooks from rock to rock are leaping;
Everywhere bloom spring and flowers
Within this paradise of ours;
There—‘tis there, the beauteous land,
Bohemia, my fatherland!’
A beauteous land it undoubtedly is, but the language has peculiarities which are not calculated to make it grateful and comforting to the traveller who has to take it on after he is past his first youth.
When I arose and donned my clothes and oped my chamber-door in Prague to let in the ‘sklepnik’ with my coffee and brödchen, I had just two days to learn the language, see everything, and be off to Vienna. So, although my sklepnik was busy and the bells were ringing for him all over the house, I held on to him and insisted upon him giving me a short lesson in Czechish. But when I found that even his own name when you call him is not the same name as when you speak of him, and that he became in the course of five minutes’ conversation sklepnick, sklepnickee, sklepnicka, sklepniko, etc., I let him go and take other people their breakfast, and got on with mine.
My panskou was so good-looking that I had serious thoughts of writing a song in her honour, entitled ‘The Prettiest Panskou in Prague,’ and getting somebody to put it into Czechish, that I might send it to her anonymously next Valentine’s Day; but I heard that she was engaged to be married to the poshluhu on the third-floor, and so another example was added to my famous collection of ‘Songs without Words.’
Before I went out to see the sights of Prague I gave myself just a few minutes further private instruction in the language of the land, and sat down with a dictionary and a pipe in front of the printed notice in my bedroom. This time I selected for study the following startling passage: ‘Racte pouzy ucty kancelári stvrzone vyplácenti! Pokrmy a napoje v jidelne oderbrane buatez tamtez zaplaceny.’ I worried at it with my German Czechish dictionary until I felt that if there was any insanity in my family history I should develop the latent Deemingism in my system, and possibly bury the sklepnik, the panskou, and the poshluhu under the same cement; and then I sent for my guide. My guide was a Bohemian who acquired English early in the sixties in the goldfields of California. He has lost a good deal of it since. ‘Honyrabble zir!’ he said, ‘dat mean, your honour. Dat vat you eats and drinks underneath ze stairs pays for itself dere at ze times, honyrabble zir.’ After a few minutes of serious reflection, I solved this further problem: Racte pouzy ucty kancelári, etc., meant that all meals taken in the restaurant should be paid for at the time, and not put on the bill.
When you have sufficiently admired Prague itself, and recognised the fact that it is ‘picturesquely situated on the banks of the Moldau’ (vide guide-books), the first thing you do is to explore the venerable Hradshin, or Capitol. High on the Hradshin Hill stands the Archbishop’s Palace, the Schwarzenberg Palace, and the palace of the Emperor, and the famous cathedral dedicated to St. Vitus. On the hottest day of this present May, with thunder threatening and never a breath of air blowing, did I pant through palaces and crawl around cathedrals with the Californian-Bohemian. Many were the wonders that he showed me, and at least a hundred times that day did he call me ‘honyrabble zir.’ At last I became so worn out that it was almost with relief that I saw him suddenly slip up on a stone and turn his ankle. I am afraid he was in great pain; but his ardour and his pace were alike moderated after that, and I was saved from an apoplectic stroke following on over-exertion on a blazing hot day. After the accident, I offered him one arm and hired a native to give another; and between us we led him slowly around the Hradshin, and I allowed him to explain as much as I wanted to know, and then bore him away in triumph to something else. While he was a free agent his lectures were interminable, and he kept me for three-quarters of an hour looking at a brick wall in St. Vitus’s because a Jew boy had been buried behind it some centuries previously.
There are two legends, or perhaps I should say historical facts, which follow you all over Prague—the story of St. John of Nepomuk and the story of Slavata and Martinitz. From the moment you land in Prague to the moment you leave it the names of these three gentlemen are dinned into your ears with damnable iteration. I happened to be in Prague on the eve of the great annual fête of St. John of Nepomuk, and so I had an extra dose of him.
Of course you know the story of the patron saint of Bohemia. You remember that Johanko von Nepomuk was a great preacher in Prague in the fourteenth century. He became almoner to King Wenzel or Venzeslaus IV., the great German Emperor, and King of Bohemia, and confessor to the Queen. The Queen soon afterwards began to look depressed, and tears were often in her eyes. King Wenzel was annoyed. ‘Charlotte,’ he said, ‘why are you always in the blues? It gives me the hump. Cheer up, old lady, or tell me what is the matter.’ The Queen only shook her head and sniffed. Then Wenzel swore several oaths of the period, and went off to the Rev. Mr. Johanko von Nepomuk and said to him, ‘Look here, your reverence, the Queen confesses to you, so you know what is the matter with her, and why she is always snivelling and howling!’ (He was a brutal fellow was Wenzel, and very coarse in his conversation.) ‘Now, then, is it because I bully her, or has she got a love affair—eh, old chap? Own up!’ The Rev. Johanko frowned and shook his head.
‘The secrets of the confessional are sacred. Go to!’